Overview

Change is the only constant in the fast changing business world of globalization. CEOs today feel the relentless pressures of adapting to changing external environments as well as keeping up with lagging internal dynamics. Both competing in the global economy and innovating from within demand flexibility. In such circumstances, resistance or failure to change can turn the tables around and strip an organization of competitive advantage. Adaptability is key to performance.

Challenges

Purposeful change is a challenging undertaking for most organizations; typical reasons include employee resistance, lack of readiness, poor communication, and lack of alignment. Globalization, industry complexities, and changing customer patterns require companies to change much more frequently than even a decade ago. Sometimes, the needed change is dramatic, such as a product or service innovation; and at other times, the change is focused on becoming more efficient in order to reduce the cost of doing business. Often the organizational process-efficiency changes require information technology as an enabler. Typical change implementations of this nature include enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and product life-cycle management (PLM).

IT-enabled business changes often require a combination of changes in people (roles and responsibilities) as well as processes and systems. They typically require millions of dollars of investment, often take years to complete, and either get abandoned halfway through or fail to provide promised benefits and returns. Every year hundreds of companies take the plunge into these energy-draining, risky implementations with few benefits realized. In most cases, after the change, employees experience decreased levels of productivity, higher work demands, lower morale, and less job satisfaction. This is even more puzzling when the best of implementation teams bring years of experience and best practices as part of their proven implementation methodologies, only to stumble all over again.

Our Approach

While change itself has become a norm the same must not hold true for failure of change initiatives. No matter how big or small the scope of change undertaken by an organization, failure to adapt is avoidable. The success of a change effort lies in a host of factors. The better these elements are understood and leveraged the greater the benefits of the change initiative.By virtue of our advisor network and experience of various engagements we have developed a change management roadmap geared towards maximizing the fruit of the change effort and ensuring sustainability. Our methodology stems from our proprietary workshop driven approach and ensures involvement of all stakeholders through both push and pull factors.

Our Services

• Design mind-set for Managers (Boland)
• Organizational Storytelling for Leaders (Boje)
• Business-IT Alignment for effective change
• Enhancing commitment to change
• Change Communication planning and execution
• Build a Learning Organization
• Talent development & CIO Academy
• Career planning and personal vision development
• Managing Organizational Culture Change
• Improving group dynamics and decision quality
• Design of roles and responsibilities for effective execution of strategy
• Organizational commitment and readiness assessment for change

Papers Presented

Various research on change management, organizational communication and business-IT alignment have been accepted for presentation at Academy of Management (AOM 2008 - California), Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2008 - Toronto) and ECREA's 2nd European Communication Conference (2008 - Barcelona). Have also been speaker at various industry events (Gartner, Microsoft and Executive retreats and conferences).

Industry Memberships

HR Outsourcing Association (HROA), Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), Human Capital Institute (HCI), American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), National Human Resources Association (NHRA).

Academic Memberships

Academy of Management (AOM), European Communication Research and Education Organization (ECREA), International Communication Association (ICA).