Managing Organisational Change After Mergers

Organizational change is a double edged management tool. Managing change is a Herculean task as it involves changing the organizational culture. It can build a tighter, more focused business-or unleash a backlash of unrest and turbulence. Change is the only constant in organizations today. Change initiatives take many forms and may be the result of internal forces, such as change of an organization's mission or operational structure, or external forces, such as a change in the industry or economy. It is the process of developing a planned approach to change in an organization. Typically the objective is to maximize the collective benefit for all people involved in the change and minimize the risk of failure of implementing the change. The discipline of change management deals primarily with the human aspect of change, and is therefore related to pure and industrial psychology. Organizational Change...its tough enough even when you make all the right moves. Make a few wrong ones, and your change management initiative can end up a part of this year's failure statistics.

Whenever an organization imposes new things on people there will be difficulties. Participation, involvement and open, early, full communication are the important factors. Workshops are very useful processes to develop collective understanding, approaches, policies, methods, systems, ideas, etc. Staff surveys are a helpful way to repair damage and mistrust among staff - provided you allow people to complete them anonymously, and provided you publish and act on the findings. Management training, empathy and facilitative capability are priority areas-managers are crucial to the change process - they must enable and facilitate, not merely convey and implement policy from above, which does not work. The leader must agree and work with these ideas, or change is likely to be very painful, and the best people will be lost in the process!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!