Purchasing Resources for Change Management

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Are you looking to change your company's working philosophy, perhaps from a traditional approach to a more holistic, customer-focused approach? Do you need a way to smoothly transition your employees from one way of doing business to another without causing undue stress and disruption?

A change management firm can help you through this critical time in the life of your business. Although exciting, change can be stressful to employees and sometimes confusing to customers. A consulting firm can help mitigate any negative effects of your change in business style. Coming from outside of the company, they can see more clearly what needs to be done and what issues need to be addressed.

Look for a change management firm that has experience in structure changes such as yours. Such a company should be willing to spend at least several weeks with your company getting to know your corporate environment and your employees before starting the transition.

When looking for a management consulting firm, it's important to compare the products and services offered by several different companies. Business.com understands this and offers a large selection of consulting firms. Visit the links on the left to learn more about the services they offer.

Change Management Key Terms

Learning how to navigate change with a solid change management plan

Change can be difficult. There's no doubt about that, especially when it comes to a business change. Perhaps you are contemplating a company culture shift, or you will be changing up your day-to-day operations. If that's the case, you'll need to come up with a change management plan to help lead your employees on the path to making that leap to permanent change with you. Learning some of the basic concepts and key terms in change management can help you start the process.

Change management

Change management refers to the structured strategy and process for managing change within a business or organization, and more importantly managing the reaction to change by employees.

Communication plan

A communication plan is a change management tool used to spread the message to employees about the need for change. The communication plan should include why the company is undergoing the change and how the change will affect the day-to-day work flow. The plan will also include strategies on how to convey the message, tailoring it to a specific audience.

Resistance management plan

Identifying where resistance may come from and what it might entail and taking steps to take to prevent or reduce resistance make up a resistance management plan. Using a resistance management plan can help build support early and address potential concerns before change is implemented.

Transition state

The transition state is the implementation phase of change management, the "trying out" of the change and working out issues as they come up. Managers need to work in this state to minimize resistance and further change for quick adoption of new methods.

ADKAR model

The ADKAR model is a goal-oriented change management model that focuses on five key areas: Awareness of the need to change; Desire to support the change; Knowledge of what the change means; Ability to implement the proposed change; and Reinforcement to solidify the change as common practice.

Lewin's change management model

Psychologist Kurt Lewin developed a change management model that has three stages: Unfreeze, Transition and Refreeze. The main theory behind his model is that any type of permanent change is a journey and takes an undetermined amount of time in each of the three stages.

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