What is Change Management?
As businesses expand and move forward, it often becomes necessary to evolve. This could be in the form of changing organizational structures, incorporating new technology, or anything else related to strategy and performance. Indeed, businesses that fail to take advantage of opportunities to improve and adapt will often lose their competitive edge as customers and clients start looking elsewhere.
However, making any kind of ‘change’ in a business requires a clear understanding of people; and people are naturally resistant to change. This is what ‘change management’ is all about: planning, instigating, and maintaining organizational change while ensuring that those involved support the transition. Approaching change in such a way ensures that transformation is not limited in scope, guaranteeing that the business in question can benefit as much as possible.
The APMG Change Management framework offers practical knowledge, tools, and proven best practices to help users successfully facilitate change and transformation management projects. Change Management practitioners have everything they need to prepare, convince, equip, and support individuals, teams, departments, and stakeholders to take part in the change management process. Even better, they are also experts in creating workplace cultures that are permanently supportive of organizational change management initiatives.
How Does Change Management Work?
As is the case with project or IT service management, it is usually best to facilitate change or transformation management using a set methodology. This is exactly what the Change Management framework offers; developed in collaboration with the Change Management Institute (CMI), it ‘works’ by providing tools, techniques, and best practices for successfully managing organizational change.
The framework itself is based on the Effective Change Manager’s Handbook and aligned with the CMI’s Change Management Body of Knowledge (CMBoK). As such, much of the framework is based on decades of practical industry knowledge alongside a clear understanding of how change management is continuing to evolve. It demonstrates how change works in an organization, how different initiatives fit together, and how practices can be adapted to suit specific targets, stakeholders, and industries.
Among other things, the framework covers how to:
- Understand the human side of change management
- Support and motivate individuals, teams, and stakeholders
- Use contextual understanding of different professions and departments to make transformation painless
- Choose the correct team members to fill roles in a change management team and create clarity over who will be responsible for specific tasks
- Handle resistance management
- Keep stakeholders accurately informed throughout the change process
- Use various paradigms to support, sustain, and understand change
- Make sure change is optimized in terms of speed and efficiency
- How to define change management in a way that creates ongoing motivation
- Utilize key processes for facilitating different types of change
- Establish permanent frameworks with clear roles, skills, and activities to help leaders with future change management initiatives
Most importantly, the Change Management framework addresses that change is a human process, one that impacts how we think and function from day to day. It acknowledges how change is a personal experience and emphasizes the need for understanding and empathy from change project managers. What priorities will need to be addressed? How will change impact different teams and departments? How can stakeholders be brought on side?
Change Management addresses these issues while providing a structured approach to transformation initiatives. It offers change project teams and managers everything they need to optimize the positive results of change and digital transformation projects.
How can Change Management Certification Help my Business?
As necessary as change is to evolve and compete, many businesses fail to take full advantage of it. The typical reason is a simple lack of clarity regarding the purpose of advocated changes, leading to minimal support or even obstruction from affected teams. As a result, any benefits will often be limited in scope.
By adopting the APMG International Change Management framework, a business can enjoy numerous benefits:
- Optimize planning in a way that accounts for roadblocks, as well as the concerns of different departments, stakeholders, and so on in advance
- Minimize the possibility of failed change management projects, as well as conflict, disruptions, risks, and wastage
- Ensure employees are educated on the new status quo in advance, including changes to their daily practices, targets, and so on
- Make sure change and transformation initiatives are fully aligned with organizational goals
- Keep stakeholders fully invested in change, regardless of their priorities or background
- Maintain morale and productivity throughout the transition period
- Optimize communication planning to enable streamlined communication and collaboration with other teams and departments
- Maximize the final ROIs of all change management initiatives
- Create workplace cultures that are permanently supportive of future change initiatives
