Many institutions seek to make positive changes related to organizational change that contribute to bringing them closer to achieving their strategic goals, it is worth noting that change is a complex process that will be accompanied by many obstacles and challenges coming from inside or outside institutions, and therefore it must be understood and plans must be developed that ensure effective dealing with them, avoiding them, and reducing potential negative effects, attention should be paid to the importance of change, its processes, the extent of its comprehensiveness, its potential effects, and how to treat and manage it effectively.
Here we must pay attention to the fact that change is a process and not a reaction or an event that exists in itself, and it should not be considered as an output or result, but rather a completed process with people focusing on acquiring new skills, beliefs, concepts, behaviors and practices.
What is institutional change or organizational change?
Organizational change is defined as one of the organizational administrative patterns, practices and behaviors that are followed to move employees, departments, divisions and various organizations from one situation to another in a way that ensures the satisfaction of all stakeholders, in other words, organizational change can be viewed as a set of activities carried out by a company or facility, through which the main components of the organization are modified, such as the prevailing culture, the technology used, the infrastructure, or internal procedures.
The origin and history of institutional or organizational change
We cannot say that there is a specific date according to which organizational change arose, in fact, change is considered an essential part of any economic activity, and it is linked to the internal changes that may occur in the business (such as a change in strategy, for example, or a change in members of the work team, or management, etc.), and external changes surrounding the work environment (such as the emergence of new technology, or changes in the political, economic, or other environment).
In general, it can be said that any change from the above will require changing the way work is conducted in some way, otherwise economic activity will stop or decline, all activities that the entity will undertake to keep pace with this change can be considered as organizational change.
We note two cases here:
The first is in which the change is mainly a response to an external stimulus, and therefore the change is primarily adaptive, and the changes are fairly simple because they aim to deal with the external variable without significantly affecting the rest of the facility’s activities.
The Second, the change is mainly a response to an internal decision, and therefore the change is transformational, and it is a wide-ranging change that comes in the form of many activities, work mechanisms, and goals, and has repercussions on the strategy and work teams.
Certainly, changes in general cannot be classified as purely adaptive or transformational, most changes find themselves somewhere in the middle between the two types, with variations in their approach to one of them.
Why might you need to implement institutional or organizational change?
There are many reasons why organizational change is necessary, some of the most prominent reasons managers face include the following:
- A change in leadership within the entity or one of its departments
- Changes in the structure of organizational teams
- Application of new technology
- Adopting a new business model
In fact, there are many reasons for implementing organizational change, and in most cases, it is necessary for the project to survive and be able to meet the needs of customers or its beneficiaries, and maintain profitable margins.
The important question may be about managers’ role in managing organizational change, as change management is defined as the methodology for using change processes to achieve a positive result, which includes the use of the necessary resources and the reduction of side effects associated with change.
What are the stages of institutional or organizational change?
Perhaps you are starting to wonder whether you need to implement organizational change in your workplace? What are the necessary steps for that?
The “Lewin” model is one of the most important international models that describe the stages of organizational change, it is a model that was developed by the scientist Kurt Lewin in the mid-forties of the twentieth century, despite the age of this model, it has proven its effectiveness to this day and is considered a cornerstone of any organizational change process.
Lewin defines 3 stages of change:
1- Unfreeze: At this stage, what needs to be changed is determined, and ensuring that there is strong support from senior management for the change, the need for change must also be confirmed, and doubts and fears regarding implementing the change process must be managed and understood, this stage usually corresponds to planning within existing management methodologies.
2- Change: In this stage, procedures are implemented by which systems and activities are modified, and communication is carried out periodically with all stakeholders to clarify the changes, refute rumors, and reduce the process of change resistance, success at this stage requires people to be involved in it.
3- Refreezing: Here changes are integrated into the organization’s culture, and work to develop new ways to maintain change and make it sustainable, and support is provided to teams to be able to keep pace with changes, and it is important to celebrate success.
What about organizational or institutional change in government entities?
Some may believe that organizational change is linked to achieving profit and maintaining market share, and is therefore limited to for-profit enterprises and the private sector, in fact, organizational change is applied even in non-profit institutions, whether they are government entities or civil society organizations such as charities and development organizations.
Steps for organizational change
When considering organizational change in a government entity, the following steps must be followed:
- Define your goal for change, are you seeking to develop new services for the entity’s beneficiaries? is the goal to reduce waste or reduce office bureaucracy? perhaps the goal is to improve communication with beneficiaries?
- Study the influencing environmental factors, change, as we mentioned, is linked to the internal and external environment, so it would be useful to analyze these factors and how they affect the organization’s current and future activity.
- Identify the stakeholders, who are the ones involved in the change? who is responsible for it? who will benefit from it? at the same time, who will be harmed by this change? and who may oppose the change and seek to undermine it? it is essential to precisely identify the stakeholders while determining the relationship of each and their stance.
- Establish phased steps for change, we all know that change does not happen overnight, it may require you to create a time plan with different phases with what needs to be accomplished in each phase.
- Identify the resources needed, change may require certain financial or human resources from you, and may require using new technology in business, you have to determine that and also determine the sources of these resources.
- Make more communication, we all know about the state of rumors that hit the workplace when a new change is made, your role is to reduce these rumors as much as possible as they may create enemies for change, and this requires intensive communication with everyone about the change that is taking place and what its goals are.
- Evaluate periodically, it is not enough to have a good change management plan, as you may encounter unexpected circumstances, it is important to evaluate the stages of work periodically and measure the results at each stage.
- Celebrate success! Many people neglect to celebrate success at the end, but, if you don’t celebrate now, how will you motivate others for the coming change?
There is no doubt that government entities face special challenges in the previous steps, administrative complexity makes the decision-making process difficult, and the diversity of beneficiaries of entity services from different segments of citizens makes change a process that is not easy, however, with good planning and following the above steps, you can make the change process enjoyable and rewarding at the same time.
What are the challenges facing institutional or organizational change?
Change resistance is the biggest challenge facing organizational change, which is represented by those involved in the change process rejecting change procedures or taking steps against them, the reason for refusing to change is usually the fear of losing benefits, such as senior management believing that the change will lose their authority and powers, or employees believing that the change will limit the number of employees and lose their jobs, or even the belief of service beneficiaries that the change will make services more expensive or difficult to obtain.
Another challenge that can face organizational change is the challenge of poor planning, such as planning large goals within a short period, or not involving appropriate resources in the change, and not taking the surrounding circumstances into consideration.
At the same time, many managers fail to realize the different aspects of the change process, as expert management consultant Peter Drucker says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” referring to the impact of the organization’s culture on the success and failure of strategies by not giving it the necessary importance, in fact, most managers give little importance to the culture of the organization, and assume that adapting to the change process is inevitable, even if it takes time, thus, they make mistakes in managing the change process and lead it to failure without knowing that.
So, how can these challenges be avoided?
The manager’s experience certainly plays a major role in the ability to avoid the challenges that will face the change process, experienced managers will have a greater ability to distinguish the obstacles that stand in the way of a successful change process and to overcome these obstacles.
In addition to experience, the importance of dealing with change comes from an administrative perspective, this requires that we do not consider change as a spontaneous matter and an independent event, but rather as an activity that must be subject to management according to its well-known methodology and tools, and here we can apply change management as follows:
1- Planning: The required change must be planned, strategic and operational objectives must be set, in addition to the analysis of internal and external environmental factors and entity factors, including decision-makers and stakeholders.
2- Organizing: Here, the necessary resources for the change process are allocated, including human, financial, and other resources, and the relationship between these resources and the rest of the entity’s departments is determined, in addition to determining the management tools used, powers, and other reporting models.
3- Follow-up and guidance: This stage is concerned with following up the change process through monitoring, reports, measuring results and comparing them with plans, in addition to directing teams to take the necessary steps to keep pace with the change process and overcome any obstacles that may face the work.
4- Evaluation: At this stage, the results are evaluated and the extent of success in achieving the goals is determined, in addition to evaluating the method of work, resources allocation, studying both successful and failed experiences, in addition to preparing a report on the lessons learned.
Although the previous steps seem easy in theory, but their application requires high experience and advanced skill, whether in analysis and research or in decision-making and strategic management.
For this reason, organizations often hire managers specialized in the field of change management to lead the change or development process or to support managers in other departments.
How can I develop my change management skills?
Of course, you can work on developing this skill even if you are not a professional practitioner of it, those interested can pursue postgraduate studies and obtain a master’s degree in the field of change management, they can also participate in multiple training programs dedicated to change management and obtain professional certificates in this field, the most important of these programs are:
- Certified Change Management Professional
- Change Management Specialist
- Certified Problem and Change Manager
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