Change Management – The Secret Sauce in Transforming Your Business

Let’s begin with a blinding flash of the obvious.  Change is difficult.   

It’s no surprise then that change often meets with resistance, whether subtle or overt. In both our personal lives and in business, we tend to prefer keeping things just the way they are.  

Naturally, there is a small minority of adventuresome thrill-seekers who readily embrace change, and others for whom change is simply an inevitable part of life. Having lived in nineteen homes across three continents, one island, and thirteen cities and towns, I qualify for the latter category. Despite that, I can admit that change has not been easy and that I have far less tolerance for it than I once did. 

Managing Change in Business 

With the accelerating velocity of market, technological, and economic changes, it is a constant struggle for businesses just to stay relevant. To do so requires a regular and systematic re-think of processes, technology and employee role definitions.  In short, how a business goes to market and how it gets things done both operationally and talent-wise. 

Transforming a company is not only difficult, but it can also be disruptive to the business operations.  

To implement a business transformation, leaders must consider whether to make a go of it with only internal resources or to enlist support from outside the company. This is where the element of change management becomes crucial.  

A financial services executive I know coined the phrase, ‘organizational antibodies” to describe the headwinds facing any company-initiated change. With professional guidance, leaders gain the advantage of objectivity and experience, allowing them to detach from any emotional ties to past practices.   This enables company executives to mitigate the risk of a costly business interruption with minimal improvement to show for their efforts.  

Granted, internal efforts can succeed independently once employees and management have experienced a well-executed transformation and recognized its benefits for customer satisfaction, employee morale, and overall financial performance. 

The Power of Status Quo 

In any industry, whether public or private, change is not a welcome concept. Among employees, there is little appeal to upsetting the proverbial apple cart by abandoning the status quo. For executives, the status quo exerts a powerful influence on their decisions—or lack thereof. The looming possibility of workforce reductions is a significant factor that often leads to inaction, with the hope that circumstances will somehow improve on their own. 

Apart from the desire to keep the status quo, we see the following factors hindering the success of any change effort:

1. Employee fear of losing control over their role  
2. Leadership’s failure to clearly communicate why the change is needed  
3. Organizational failure to understand the source of resistance to change

Paving the Way for Change 

In an ideal world, leaders would prepare the organization for upcoming changes by clearly explaining what the changes involve, who will be affected, and how. However, this approach assumes that all changes are known before the transformation process even begins.  

This unfortunately puts the cart before the horse.    

A true transformation process requires a thorough assessment of current business operations to pinpoint areas for improvement. While leaders may have an idea of what needs fixing, they often overlook the root causes. If these are not properly identified and addressed, actions taken may be unnecessary and potentially harmful. One common misguided action is laying off personnel without fully understanding the upstream and downstream impacts on processes. 

Instead, leaders should prepare their organization for change by openly communicating the company’s challenges, such as declining sales, eroding margins, poor customer satisfaction, uncompetitive turnaround times, etc. By addressing these issues transparently and purposefully, employees and managers, who are already aware of these daily struggles, can now openly acknowledge and be ready to tackle them together.  This is the first and most important step in managing change.   

Understanding why people resist change can help leaders implement a business transformation to a successful outcome. Being candid about the challenges and emphasizing the necessity for change will help leaders build trust and instill hope for a better future among employees. Involving them in the transformation process and actively seeking their input will secure their commitment to change and minimize resistance. 

Implementing change is never easy. Recognizing the need for change is a strategic necessity due to the constantly evolving market and technological landscape.  Endurium Advisors is uniquely positioned to bring their expertise in process excellence and change management to bear on your business transformation.