Organizational Change Management and Context Changes

Introduction

It’s known that context changes generate waste in doing tasks. But this is true if you are planning to go back on those tasks to finish them, unless you never come back to finish the work. In that case, from the unattended task point of view, the waste is infinite assuming not cancellation.

From a general perspective it’s like changing direction each time you go towards a location. Maybe the goal is to get to many places at a time, but advancing to all directions finally will get you to any place first, at the cost of (let’s hope) unconscious waste.

1. Organizational Change Management

Organizational change management it’s all about people in general, but specially in a culture evolution context. This culture is a long-term behavior ingrained into the members of the organization and sometimes in the industry as shared practices. But what happens when organization’s culture must be changed frequently, let’s say, every 3 years?

2. Solution Discovery

A discovery process begin searching for the most adequate culture for the organization. Necessity is clear: organization needs to change old habits for new ones that allow it to be more competitive and adaptive. This process has to be managed in order to control impact and mitigate risks.

3. People

People are the executors of organizational culture. Once they ingrain expected behavior then culture begins its materialization. Every 3 years can be stressful for anyone, but the organization needs to find the right culture at the right time in order to lower change frecuency at least for 5 years if needed.

Conclusions

Maybe the real question is: to what extent an “agile” discovery process can be applied? Involving an entire organization is complex. A possible strategy is to set a ten years goal to change culture, and during the process implement incremental change at the same time that final culture is discovered. Of course this is a project that has to be executed carefully.

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Published by Alexis Henríquez

My name is Alexis Henríquez. I'm a Software Engineer, master in Information Technology. I've a beautiful family that, besides my wife and daughter, includes a couple of cats and a bunny. I like to play videogames and listen to music, also to enjoy Nature's gifts. Practitioner of Lean, Agile and Software Craftsmanship. Developer with Microsoft technologies. Everything I do is done in a way to balance theory with practice.

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