How to Effectively Implement Change

Published date01 May 2015
Date01 May 2015
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22044
AuthorSandra Suran
5
© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22044
This article was originally published in Volume 14, Number 2 of The Journal of Corporate Accounting and Finance.
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inability to perform, of appear-
ing incompetent, of job loss or
loss of prestige— which might
result from the change.
This fear is so strong that
the Federal Reserve Bank
credited it with keeping the
economy on an even keel, with-
out high inflation, in the face
of eight unprecedented years of
extremely low unemployment.
Even with employers frantic
for more workers, over two
thirds of U.S. workers feared
that they would lose their
jobs—because of the pace of
change they feared that their
skills were not current or were
not sufficient for their jobs! In
numerous surveys, the #1 perk
today is new skills training and
education.
KEYS TO SUCCESSFULLY
IMPLEMENT CHANGE
People are the driving force
in successfully accomplish-
ing change; conversely, lack of
Sandra Suran
H ow to Effectively Implement Change
Major change
may include
the merger
of organizations or
departments, a system
overhaul establishing a
new division, restruc-
turing to increase the effective-
ness of operations or to refocus
on core products. You may have
the vision of where you want to
be, but how do you get there?
You may have brought in the
systems analysts to design the
changes and hired the industrial
psychologists to improve inter-
nal attitudes towards change;
now, how do you make the
change happen—successfully
and quickly?
It is relatively easy to deter-
mine new directions or changes
that need to be made to achieve
greater profitability, more effec-
tive customer service, or increase
market share. It is not too dif-
ficult to develop strategies to
accomplish those changes, to
hire the public relations special-
ists or the systems experts, or
to negotiate the merger. The
major difficulty is changing the
way business is done—changing
people’s day-to-day jobs—while
maintaining staff and manage-
ment morale. The basic problem
is fear —of the unknown, of
personnel support is
the major cause of
failure to accomplish
change. Since fear is
the dominant reason
for workers’ failure
to support changes,
then building faith and trust
that everything will be okay is
the solution. The objective is to
create a change plan and imple-
mentation processes that people
will believe in, can trust, and,
ultimately, will support. How do
you do that? People will believe
in a plan they understand; they
will support new processes and
structures more readily if they
have an opportunity to partici-
pate in developing them.
The keys to successful
change, therefore, are more
open, collaboratively developed
strategies, structures, and pro-
cesses. The corollary is that col-
laboratively developed structures
and processes also tend to be the
most effective and profitable.
1 . Clearly defined and commu-
nicated strategies. Organiza-
tions typically have a vision
for where they want to go
and have the basic strate-
gies to get there. But is the
strategy clear? Can every
group and department
Mergers mean big change. But while you may
have the vision of where you want to be, how
do you get there? And why is it so difficult to
implement major change? © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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