Purchasing Transformation

When it comes down to it; we, as humans, have two primal impulses that drive our behaviour. The first is the need to conserve energy, or in essence, to flee danger. The second is the exact opposite of the first; we strive to expand energy in order to hunt for food or seek a mate. The first impulse is the strongest, and the second only comes after strong stimuli.

This has to be taken into account when you are setting up your change process.

Because people are afraid of change, it’s deeply rooted in us as humans, and we need strong motivation in order to overcome this very conservative impulse. Just telling people about the goals and the processes is not enough. As humans, we focus on feelings, not facts, so the change needs to be perceived as positive and result in positive emotional memories in order to be successful.
Change is a fragile fruit, and should be treated as such. It’s a process of what you reap is what you sow. As in any growth process, control is of the essence.

A structured approach to change management follows this four step process:

Stakeholder Management and Change Leadership

• Stakeholder analysis
• Change management plan
• Set up of global and local change management organizations
• Communication

Communication plan

• Project marketing
• Expectation management
• Motivate and support
• Integrate and build acceptance

Organization Design and Training

• Job and organizational design
• Skills and competences gap analysis
• Training

Benefit Identification and Tracking

• Business case
• Project goals
• KPI follow-up
• Feedback

This needs to be supported by a project team building effort.

Still, even the most well planned change program can fail and numerous risks have to be taken into account. But following the above mentioned guidelines gives you both a basis for risk assessment as well as a structured and controlled process.

This entry was posted on September 18, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Change Management, Governance, Organization, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.