Changes Without Change Management: A Brief Overview
Doing business is never an easier task. You have to tackle several issues, problems, and incidents in your daily routine operations. Moreover, you have to update, upgrade, add or change various tools, trends, or techniques within your organizational structure. As the common goal of every organization is to get higher returns hence organizations run these processes to get higher benefits. There is no sanction to have a desire for higher returns but getting it practically is not an easier task. You have to be very careful and focused while running a process. It is because a failed process not only decreases benefits but also causes many harms. Some processes are so sensitive that their success and failure directly hits an organization’s overall productivity and performance.
Bringing a new change within your organizational structure is also one of these sensitive processes. If the change process is successful then it brings many benefits and returns in an organization but if it fails then it could be harmful and could affect the whole organizational structure. That’s why organizations always try to make their change implementation process effective so that it could be successful and they could prevent the harms of a failed process. In this way, they use different tools, trends, techniques, and many predefined conditions. All these tools, trends, techniques, and predefined conditions are collectively called change management.
Change management plays an important role in the development of an organization. It is because it guarantees successful change implementation processes. We have discussed the concept & benefits of change management in many of our previous articles. This article does not contain the properties and benefits of change management. In this article we have projected what could be a change implementation process without a prior change management strategy. In this way we will discuss what could be its harms, benefits, and also discuss how a change could be implemented without change management and what could be the consequences of poor change management. But before we go in depth, first we should know what is change management? So let’s start with it.
What Is Change Management?
Change management is a comprehensive, well-defined strategy for managing the transformation or transition of an organization’s tools, technologies, procedures, or goals. It is possible to achieve this through the practice of change management. It gives businesses a rigorous process to follow in order to make productive and risk-free changes, and it allows these businesses to use this technique.
Change management can be defined as the set of established processes and procedures that a company decides to follow in order to implement any new changes. It is a straightforward definition of change management. Changes implemented in businesses without proper planning or preparation can be both beneficial and detrimental to the organization. As a result of this, it is absolutely necessary for businesses to have a successful and efficient method of change management. The following section contains all of the information on the concept of change management.
Change management is further classified into three types: developmental, transitional, and transformational. The first type, developmental change management, refers to the introduction of new tools, trends, or techniques. Transitional change management seeks to replace the old with the new in people’s minds, and the organization must destroy the old while constructing the new to assist individuals in mentally letting go of the old. When new information, boundaries, and interactions result in minor improvements, transformational change management emerges.
How Do We Implement Changes Without Change Management?
Before we discuss the term changes without change management, let’s discuss what is an ideal change implementation practice. In the Ideal universe, whenever a change request comes organizations never rapidly accept and implement it. But there is an ideal mechanism through which that change request passes, like after submission of the change request a service team member examines that request and sends it for approval to approvers. After its approval it is implemented carefully under predefined terms and conditions. Through this standardized ideal change management strategy the implementation process becomes efficient and risk free.
On the other hand, when we talk about changes without change management it means we are talking about randomly implemented changes. In that case, whenever a change request comes, organizations decline it without examining it and if accepted then they start implementing it without any prior planning. This could be disastrous if the change plan goes in the wrong direction because due to the absence of predefined conditions they have no backup plan. In some cases they have a plan but that is a poor plan and the poor planning also acts like no planning. That’s why it becomes important for organizations to manage their change implementation process effectively.
What Do We Mean From Term Changes Without Change Management?
The term ‘changes without change management’ is a bit confusing that’s why we have decided to discuss it first before we go in depth. In fact, when we say changes without change management it means poor change management because there is no process without management. Now, here the question raises: why don’t we use the term poor change management simply and prefer to use a more tricky term?
The answer is we intentionally used such a tricky term to show you that poor change management is in fact change without change management and it is not so difficult to understand the fact that any process without proper change management always leads towards absolute failure or less benefits if it fortunately succeeded. In other words, we use that tricky term as our topic to inform you of the consequences of poor change management. Now, we hope you have understood the purpose about which we are talking.
Consequences Of Change Implementation Without Change Management
After briefly discussing the concept of change management and changes without change management now we should overview the consequences of poor change management and changes without change management. So, following are some positive and negative consequences of the change implementation process without change management.
Positive Consequences
There is nothing in this world that hasn’t any benefits and there is no process that hasn’t any positive consequences. Then how could it be possible that change implementation without change management does not have any positive consequences. Although they are small in numbers, we could not forget to discuss them. Like sometimes the organization does not have enough time to discuss a lot due to the seriousness of a matter.
For example, an electricity breakdown has occurred in an organization and the generator’s batteries are not working. There is nothing to think about because a long time electricity breakdown could result in some massive loss that’s why changing the batteries without any systematic way could be a better choice for organizations. In this way, it will not only save from loss but also saves a lot of time and effort. No doubt, it saves a lot of time and effort but at the same time it also causes an increase in possible risks. That’s why organizations should always try to follow standardized mechanisms as much as possible.
Negative Consequences
There are also many negative consequences of poor change management or change without change management. If we compare them with its positive consequences then we learned that the number of negative consequences are much more than the number of positive consequences. Following are some negative consequences of changes without change management.
- Unsuccessful Change Implementation
The first and most obvious consequence of a poorly planned change management process is failed change implementation. We said this because an effective change management process always provides a risk-free change management process; therefore, following the standardized change management process increases the chances of successful change implementation. As a result, if you do not adhere to a standardized change management strategy, there is always the risk of change implementation failing.
- Unnecessary Changes
Unnecessary changes are another complication that can arise as a result of changes without change management. This is due to the fact that an effective change management strategy provides a comprehensive mechanism for determining the level of necessity of required change. It is difficult to complete the change process in the absence of an effective change implementation process. Fortunately, you were able to finish it. After completing the entire process, you discovered that this change was unnecessary; therefore, what would you gain from this process other than a waste of time, energy, and resources? As a result, you should always opt for a standardized and efficient change management strategy.
- Waste Of Time, Effort, And Resources
Even routine business processes require a significant amount of time, effort, and resources. That is why organizations strive to complete change processes on the first try. Because it takes a significant amount of time, effort, and resources to launch, the entire process is repeated. However, this would be impossible without an effective change management strategy. Furthermore, an unnecessary change implementation is regarded as a waste of time, effort, and resources. As a result, you should always try to implement change in accordance with effective change management. It will not only help you avoid wasting time, effort, and resources, but it will also provide you with some additional benefits.
- Disruption Of Other Daily Routine Operations
Never assume that the change process will not have an impact on other directly or indirectly related daily routine operations. Even if it is successfully implemented, it will undoubtedly cause disruption. And you can imagine how quickly it would affect the associated operations if the change implementation process failed. As a result, an effective change implementation strategy only recommends necessary changes and strives for risk-free implementation. As a result, a poor change management strategy may also disrupt other daily routine operations.
- Customer Experience
A failed or unnecessary change implementation process as a result of a change without change management process has serious consequences for the organization’s internal aspects as well as the customer experience. For example, suppose you own a coffee shop and are dealing with a request for a new coffee machine. The existing machine is functioning properly, but your poor change management approves the change as a developmental change. If it fails, it will undoubtedly have an impact on customers. However, even if it is successful, it may have a negative impact on customers because there was nothing wrong with the previous machine and people were comfortable with it.
- Employee Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is likely to suffer as a result of changes without change management strategy. We said this because employees usually put forth great effort in every process, and failure of the process, despite their efforts, has a direct impact on their level of satisfaction. Because that failed process not only squandered their entire effort, but it also cast doubt on their performance, despite the fact that they made no intentional errors. Furthermore, when they are enjoying the success of a long process, it reveals to them that it was an unnecessary process, implying that all of their efforts were in vain. In this way, a poor change management process has a direct impact on employee satisfaction. That is why we advise you to use a standardized change management strategy.
- Overall Performance
A failed or unnecessary change implementation affects not only specific aspects, but also the overall performance of the organization that is employing a poor change management strategy. It is because all of the aforementioned effects had a negative impact on overall performance. In this scenario, it is critical for organizations to implement new organizational changes using a standardized change management strategy.
Conclusion
After briefly discussing the whole scenario about the term changes without change management, we concluded that organizations should avoid such kinds of adventures until they face some extraordinary issue that could not be awaited to follow the long process. It is because changes without change management mostly lead an organization towards disasters. Despite the harms of poor change management strategy, there are also many benefits of effective change management that force organizations to follow the best change management practices. That’s why we always recommend you to use an ideal change management process to prevent these harms and to get these benefits.
