Modern corporations find that transformation and change is the new 'normal', thus their ability to manage change becomes part of everyday operations - not part of the abnormal or unusual.

If change or transformation does not contribute to the corporation's KPOs, then it shouldn't be undertaken. Therefore the ability to handle change and transformation becomes a key criterion of managerial competence.

Goals are achieved though people.

It’s common within organisations to observe managers who think that all they have to do to change things, is to announce the change and it will happen.

Rarely, if ever, is this the case.

What managers are increasingly learning is that most change within organisations affect people. If you change the way a person does his/her work, or change who he/she reports to, then you are changing the way that person thinks about what they do and who they report to, among other things.

These aspects of a person’s work life are instrumental in shaping the way they regard themselves. It shapes their self-image, their feeling of value and worth, and inevitably, their sense of security. It’s not surprising then, that changing a person’s context can have enormous impacts on them. Some people can handle well the change and the unknown, while others are impacted enormously.

When that happens, and if the people being changed don’t understand why you are doing it or how it will affect them, they will respond with some type of psychological reaction – some reactions will be noticeable and some not. Some reactions will be supportive of the change while other reactions will impede the effective implementation of the change.

However, most of these reactions are unsurprisingly negative, at least initially, and may generate stress in the employee or may trigger serious dysfunctional behaviour – either at work, at home or socially.

The management of change discipline is intended to help the organisation manage these impacts on people. At the most basic level, an effective management of change strategy:

• Prepares people for an intended change
• Explains the purpose of the change
• Explains how people will be affected by the change
• Explains how people will benefit from the change
• Explains how the work that people do will be affected by the change
• Trains people to be effective after the change
• Provides on-going feedback on how the change is performing

Therefore, an effective management of change strategy should have the following impacts on a change initiative – it will:

• Increase understanding across the organisation
• Increase understanding of the change by external stakeholders
• Decrease resistance to the change – internal and external
• Decrease stress and dysfunctional behaviour on change-impacted people
• Increase skill-preparedness of change-impacted people
• Increase confidence and cooperation
• Decrease re-work
• Decrease time needed to deal with resistance and objections