5 Requirements to Managing Complex Change

I’m Joe Jackson, business advisor with the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program, and an independent consultant. I’m here to discuss five requirements to managing complex change. Well, I can tell you one thing that is a commonality amongst all continuing improvement processes. It always has the requirement that companies be open to the possibility, and the potential for mandated change. As a result of this, we get a little bit closer to our real answer for the entrepreneur if we take a more detailed look at the five requirements or aspects that are required to be in alignment in order to have successful change.

In the accompanying chart, it’s easy to see that the five requirements for successful change management are: vision, skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan. The chart also shows the resultant symptom that you may have experienced if any one of those component requirements was missing throughout the process. The one that I happen to run into the most often is the last one. Many entrepreneurs are able to work out all the details of their continuous improvement program without having a detailed action plan for implementation. This will always result in a false start that is very identifiable in comparison to some of the other symptoms listed on the chart.

The challenge for every business owner is to determine what skills you have internally, what skills you may have to seek out on the outside in order to successfully achieve your continuous improvement and change management goals. Always start with extensive pre-planning, and identify if anybody is needed from the outside. Who might be that correct source? Who might be the right firm? Who has the information that you lack that can help to make the process a success?