When social media are changing the laws of gravity for business, there is no way organizational change practitioners (OCP’s) can stand aside and pretend that their methods and tools should not be reviewed.
Remember my rant on Social Architecture? Turns out that this is not only a necessary upgrade for companies but also an upgrade for Change Management as we know it. Take note of the word: “upgrade” => not “replacement”.
The organizational change management approach caters for 4 different elements. They are: Communication, Learning, Organization and Performance. Each element represents a specific need that people have during a change.
- Communication: people need an identity to hang onto so they can see what is in it for them. Constructing an identity for your project is necessary in order to provide an answer to the question “What’s In It For Me?”.
- Learning: People need to know what is expected of them in terms of attitude, knowledge and skills. A part of this is provided in the form of classroom-trainings (the know-how), but the largest part of the knowledge transfer will take place in practice, during the testing phase and the phase of problem-solving. That is why the learning work is never restricted to the classroom and – most of all – we need to carefully build a network of local ambassadors for the project.
- Organization: this is the need to know “Who does what?”. This means that the setup of the future roles and responsibilities needs to be clarified upfront. Next, the support structure in the long run needs to be setup, i.e.: the community of ambassadors who will be responsible for the sustainability of the solution.
- Performance: Finally, people need to know what exactly will change in practice and how this will affect their working habits and usage of time. This includes a detailed follow-up of the chronology of tasks and the creation of a uniform procedure that is shared among all departments.
So What’s the Point?
When social media are changing the laws of gravity for business, there is no way organizational change practitioners can stand aside and pretend that their methods and tools should not be reviewed. What’s more: social media are specifically affecting the core of our business.
In other words: the streams remain the same, but the focus needs a radical change. In my opinion, this is how social media is requiring the focus of each of the change management work-streams to shift:
Your thoughts?
