General: Change Management

The contradiction

Every person is affected by change every day, either thru their personal life or within a business environment. If a change occurs slowly the individual accepts the change without or with minimal friction. If the change occurs “fast” or unwanted the individual does not want to accept the change and created friction. If we do not change, the individual gets bored.

Challenge

How to invoke change with a high level of acceptance?

One theory describes three stages of change:

a) Unfreeze: Make the individual aware of an upcoming change. If we want to increase the level of acceptance we need to involve the individual in the change process.

b) Mind Set: The actual change takes place. This is the time of confusion.

c) Refreeze: The change has been executed. Now we need to adapt and make the change part of our day-to-day routine.

Too many simultaneous changes have a negative effect on the individual. The refreeze stage needs complete prior to a new unfreeze.

My personal take on this

Changes are inevitable. The key in this is the acceptance of changes by (business) users. How can we make sure that the user accepts the change? We can do this by various or a mix of strategies.

a) Communicate clearly and frequently

b) Have the users participate in decision making moments. This will make the user own the change.

c) Have users participate in creative processes regarding the change; such as logo, name, color-templates etc.

d) Create mistakes in the UAT phase. Users will find it and report it. Now the user has a higher level of acceptance.

Source(s):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_management