The changes are present in the day to day of all the companies. And is that the pace of the market, new technologies and continuous changes in the needs and expectations of customers makes the time for an adequate and effective adaptation to the new situation is reduced and establish a suitable dynamic becomes a key and guarantee Of the future.
In this way, change management becomes an essential aspect that actively participates and outlines the guidelines that companies will follow in order to face all those changes, renovations and innovations that are affected and that they decide to take.
In this article I will talk about managing change through John Kotter’s 8 Keys and how you can help reduce resistance to change and improve the effectiveness of change.
The Importance of Change Management.
Change Management through the 8 Keys of John Kotter
Carrying out a proper change management can be a great opportunity for the future of the company and for this the 8 keys of John Kotter are a great help.
Lately speaking about the Management of Change has become a compulsory subject, and is that with the updates of the Quality Management System according to ISO 9001: 2015 or the Environmental Management System according to ISO 14001: 2015, the The importance of effective change management has become relevant for the future and growth of all companies regardless of sector, activity, market, size or location.
If we take the very general definition that is indicated in the article “Importance of Change Management”, the change is an alteration of the strategy or organizational design established by the company that seeks to make a modification that allows it to adapt to a Changing situation both in the present and in the future.
That is, change is present in every step of any company. It is the one that allows the innovation, the improvement, the advance and the adaptation to the novelties of the market.
Properly managing the steps to effectively carry out these changes is the key that will mark the success of the same and that will turn a situation marked by instability into a great opportunity.
Although in previous articles I have already talked about change management, as in the aforementioned “Importance of Change Management” or in “Empowerment: a technique for effective change management”, there are other guidelines that point the way for any Change is done effectively, as are the 8 keys set by John Kotter.
The 8 Keys to Change Management by John Kotter.
John Kotter’s work is focused on the areas of leadership and change and, as such, show how change has become an essential skill to be cultivated not only by management but also by all those intermediate Found in lower links of the chain of command.
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In this way, it structures the successful change in 8 keys that guide us throughout the process and that mark a roadmap to follow in all the changes that we undertake in the company, either of great relevance as a minor change. Then, I’ll do a little review for each of these steps:
Point One The most difficult thing about change is to make the rest of the people involved understand the need to carry it out. In this first stage you can use the sense of urgency to start acting immediately exposing the consequences of not doing so to bring the negative implications. Also, you can use the initial excitation that occurs when seeing a change, before we think of all those steps that we are going to have to realize and the resistance to make those modifications appear.
Point Two Once we have the urgency to make the change, we must establish a leadership team that has leadership capacity, credibility, authority, ease of communication, capacity for analysis and sense of urgency. This team is the one that will direct each of the actions and establish the dynamics of the change, preventing in the later steps the change is paralyzed, while limiting the resistance of the change.
Point threeAfter this point, it is time to define what to do, changing the strategy that has been used up to that moment and adapting it to the new vision of the future. At this point it is necessary to establish the guidelines, responsible, time periods and verifications that will be carried out so that this vision of the future, which, for the moment, is still a sketch on paper becomes a reality in the near future.
Point fourOnce all those involved have internalized the need for that change and its urgency, we have a guiding group and plan which guidelines will be