Organizational Change Readiness at a Glance
Posted by Doreen McGunagle on Mon, Feb 13, 2012 @ 09:00 AM
Growing Your Business | Global Strategic Management Solutions
In order to progress towards achieving goals, organizations come up with new strategies to enhance better performance. They set up new policies that should improve the overall results. The policies in most cases can bring out a complete modification even in the management. An amendment is always important where progress should be made. It is brought by the need to do attain more in the organization. However you should note that it is not an easy process. There are very many barriers towards achieving that. The main one is resistance which is why organizational change readiness should be addressed before making any decisions
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In any given organization, you find certain groups of people categorized by how they take it. There are the initiators of change. There are those who accept the transformation. Then those others are totally opposed to it.
Therefore the process is not usually a walk in the park. Several factors are causes of resistance to the same. Sometimes even the managers could be against the idea due to threat of power. If the transformation is going to decrease their authority, then they are mostly likely going to be opposed to it.
The employees can also be opposed to it where it could be meant to increase control of the managers on the employees. The subordinates do not like the idea of being controlled by their seniors. The other factor which could lead to resistance is economic factors. Sometimes the organization can decide to adjust the salaries. This is definitely going to be met by negativity.
Another factor that could lead to resistance is threat of comfort. Organizations can decide to transfer some employees to new locations. This means that they will have to adjust to the new place and forget their old way of doing things which brings about dissatisfaction.
Job security is another factor that causes a lot of resistance. Some amendments could be meant to completely do away with some departments which mean some people might loose jobs. The other factor that can affect the process is relocation of resources. Some departments in the organization can receive more resources on a damage of the others. This is obviously going to be strongly opposed especially by the people who are going to loose
The other factor which is common in many organizations is misunderstanding. People are likely to be opposed to the same when they do not have a clue what the modification is all about. This is why is important to clearly explain the alteration to avoid such resistance. Mistrust of the initiators could be a factor affecting achievement of alteration. Difference in perception and evaluation can also affect change.
Fear of the unknown can also affect the implementation of the same. Obviously people fear for the uncertainty. They think that the whole process has a hidden agenda. This is why they would rather oppose it than bare the consequences later. The other factor which can affect the process is habits. Employees have a way of doing things and changing that is definitely met by resistance. To curb all this, it would be advisable to look in to organizational change readiness.