Major Obstacles to Change Management and Ways to Overcome them

In order to survive and grow in a highly competitive market, organizations need to adopt changes and embrace transitions in their business setups. Change isn’t easy. The transition process is obstructed by several barriers and challenges. However, it’s those firms that overcome these hurdles, finally make their mark in their respective industries. In fact, the ability to successfully implement changes is one of the biggest factors that differentiate a flourishing and innovative firm from a simply sustaining one.

Whether you are new to leadership or not, consider engaging a change management consultant to help you. Change management firms offer strategic support from the beginning until the implementation of the plan. They predict measure and manage all the risks associated with the change to ensure your targets are accomplished within the stipulated period and with minimal struggle.

Here we are going to analyze some of the business hurdles that may affect your organizational change and also the solutions to overcome the same.
1) Lack of Employees Engagement in Change Initiative: There are a couple of reasons that make people resist change. This could be owing to the difference of opinions, personal apprehensions or fears and more. However, business success largely depends upon the active participation and involvement of employees. Hence, keep your employees involved in your change initiative in order to achieve your goal. Engage them in your strategy from the very beginning- from the planning stage to the implementation. Encourage them to give their opinion and feedback. Give a patient hearing to their concerns. You never know you may come across a valuable input that may help you optimize your strategy. So, keep all doors open and let your employees feel that they are an important part of your change initiative.

2) Absence of Effective Communication: Ideally speaking successful organizational change at its core is synonymous with effective communication exercise. According to one of the studies, a major reason behind organizational failure to successfully implement any organizational change is the lack of clear and effective communication strategy. Top change management consulting firms also vouch for this. Thus, it is crucial to communicate effectively about the importance of the change, how it will be implemented, what are the expected outcomes, and how it will impact employee’s lives. The leaders should be transparent in their communication; setting clear expectations, communicating timelines and updating organizational progress through reports at regular intervals. These efforts can be instrumental in achieving a more productive role of the employees in the change process.

3) Lack of Strategic Direction:  Even before you communicate about your organizational change plan to your employees make sure you have a well-defined objective to guide you to prepare a road map for attaining desired results. Reputed organizational change management consulting firms recommend the following points as the primary components for your change management strategy:

1. Setting clear and measurable objectives pertaining to the overall outcome.
2. Establishing an estimated timeline for achieving the set objectives.
3. Evaluating the progress through regular check-ins.
4. Outlining strategic communication to keep everyone involved on the same page.

Understanding your current state and the scope of laid out objectives will help you bring in the desired transformation and nurture the business atmosphere that is conducive to the change.

4) Be Prepared for the Cognitive Dissonance: During the organizational change or transition process chances of some cognitive dissonance is inevitable. Your team will witness certain hardships and issues in the initial stage due to the introduction of new technology, processes, and workloads. In order to avoid this situation provide enough information and support to the affected employees regarding the change.

Here it is also important to understand that if the gap between the expected benefits from the change and the real work being done to achieve the change is too big, there are possibilities of complex problems arising. Hence, materializing the positive benefits promised and communicating the same to the employees through proper communication channels is critical to the successful and smooth transition process. Let your leader align your communication with the expectations to ensure employees witness as much consistency as possible between expected and actual outcomes.

Change management, especially the ones with the complex scope and long-term objectives at times becomes challenging even for the Change Management Firms to handle; numerous barriers crop up at different phases, making it an uphill task but then you cannot even afford to ignore the benefits of the transition. So, the best route to smoother sail is adopting a systematic and practical approach.

Hiring services of Change Management Firms is a good option. CeveauSys Strategic is one of the most trusted business consulting firms known for offering the best consultancy in Pune and Mumbai. The organization excels in offering smart and strategic business and management solutions that empower the companies to overcome the challenges and accomplish their goals as estimated.