The speed and intensity of change requires companies not only to be adaptable, but also to fundamentally realign and probably professionalize their change competence.
The first part of our blog has already outlined the tectonic shifts influencing change management. Now, the question is how these changes can be anchored structurally in order to establish change as a continuous competence. In the third part, we will then raise the question of whether change management as a whole needs a new framing – especially in view of growing change fatigue.
The (new) requirements for CM 2.0
A reminder from Part 1: Whether we like it or not, the current situation presents companies with a bundle of challenges that they can only successfully meet with excellent change management. Accordingly, these are the requirements on which change management must quickly and professionally develop:
- The control of corporate and divisional processes for strategy development.
- The control of strategy implementation, which transfers content-related and factual topics and emotional-cultural topics in integrated change processes and at all levels of intervention (entire company, departments and individuals in their professional roles)
- The consistent alignment of the entire organization with profitability and competitiveness in all relevant elements of the management system.
- Initiating and supporting digitalization and innovation throughout the company and its divisions, while at the same time making excellent use of digital tools and methods in the change support team itself.
- Taking into account the psychological stress and change fatigue of people undergoing change – this would involve the explicit integration of health management in the context of change processes.
Change of perspective: system qualification instead of individual training
With the extensive demands on change management explained in the first part, it would be an excessive scenario to expect all of this from individual managers. The much more important question is how to equip the entire company so that change management is available and executed at the highest possible quality at all times. Our idea is therefore to structurally anchor change management competence in the company. This does not mean that individual qualification for executives becomes obsolete – on the contrary: It must be thought of and synchronized with the organizational anchoring.
Structural anchoring of organizational change competence
Organizational change competence, like “quality management”, is a system performance and the responsibility of the entire organization (and not the responsibility of more or less qualified/willing individuals). Here are some suggestions on how this change competence could be structurally anchored in the organization:
- Create a permanent support team with the responsibility of considering every major change project from these five perspectives and designing the change process accordingly, drawing on their knowledge and methods.
- Assign this support team with the goal of anchoring and professionalizing organizational change competence in the overall organization and in the people responsible: Strategic further developments and organizational adjustments only take place together and under the co-management of the change support team.
- Make “change competence in the organization” an explicit corporate value and part of the corporate culture.
- Anchoring “organizational change competence” in individual training courses for executives.
- Consistently check in change projects and initiatives whether the above-mentioned five fields of requirements and perspectives
Individual qualification in “organizational change competence”
The Change Support Team: It would be unrealistic to expect individual change managers to be able to cover the above-mentioned perspectives from 0 to 100 in terms of depth and professionally alone in complex change projects. A realistic requirement, however, could be that the individuals within it receive excellent training in the individual fields of requirements. These experts then jointly design the analysis of more complex change projects, the conception and implementation of interventions in the support team, combining their respective professional perspectives and integrating them into the change process.
Managers in general: Managers must have an excellent knowledge of the fundamentals of the change management approach practiced in the company and ideally be able to independently manage smaller and less complex changes in their department. They are the ones who know their departments and needs best. On the basis of your change fundamentals qualification, you must be able to immediately recognize whether a case of change arises that you can either handle yourself within the scope of your qualification or for which you can draw on the support offered in the company.
“Change Pool”: Approach for medium-sized companies in particular
There are many companies that are actually too big not to have professional change expertise in their organization, but are too small to afford the professional change support team suggested above, or even long-term support from external change consultants. These include corporate groups or member companies of regional chambers of industry and commerce in a region, which, in our view, fall into this category.
If these companies were able to establish a functioning cooperation on the topic of “organizational change competence”, they could share the costs of setting up such a support team and training its members. Of course, this would cost significantly more than if they did not support such an initiative. On the other hand, they could benefit greatly from such a support team or “change pool” without having to bear the full cost burden.
We have already successfully built such support clusters, for example in the field of artificial intelligence. These models have proven themselves and show that it is a realistic and economically viable solution for companies to build up change competence professionally in a network.
Conclusion: Change as a core competence of the organization
Today's challenges demand a new quality in change management: away from selective initiatives and towards a strategic core competence of the organization. This requires:
✅ Institutional anchoring of change management with clear responsibilities
✅ The development of change competencies at all management levels
✅ The use of new technologies and data-based control
✅ A culture that understands change as a continuous learning process
Outlook: Does change management need a new framing?
Now that we have described a highly structured and systemically anchored change management model, one question remains: Is it still appropriate to regard change management as a separate discipline, or does it need a new framing that takes into account the increasing change fatigue? We will take up this exciting perspective in part three. Stay tuned!
