PLANNING STRATEGIC OPERATIONAL CHANGE

Planning Strategic Operational Change

Planning Strategic Operational Change

Introduction

Strategic Management is a tool used by managers to make plans and deal with problems. Strategic management is also about the reading of signs and portraits of the future and interpreting them in order to choose an appropriate direction for the future development of the organisation. However, this world has been changing everyday. How to manage change and get more benefits from change are more important to each organisation. Some organisations are successful when they face change and some of them are not.

Change And Change Management

Change has many different meanings. The most important one is the process of transformation.

Cultural attitudes to change itself may fall into one of at least two categories

The view that change is random, which is lacking determinism or teleology (philosophy view: theory that events and developments are meant to fulfil a purpose and happen because of that).

The view that changes is cyclical, whereby one expects circumstances to recur. This concept is often seen as related to the Eastern world views such as Hinduism or Buddhism, nevertheless had great popularity in Europe in the Middle Ages, and often appears in depictions of the wheel of fortune.

The view that change is a reflection or shadow of a higher-dimensional topology (topology being possibly a non-logical inference, a simplification of the truth of that-which-is-unthinkable to 4d life forms, similar (but perhaps more meta or abstracted) to the way in which a flatlander cannot conceptualise 3d) which may appear to be random or cyclical, depending upon the shape of the higher-dimensional topology. This is an evolving concept that is coming to light in recent years.

Change management is the process of developing a planned approach to change in an organisation. Typically the objective is to maximize the collective efforts of all people involved in the change.

Change management can be either reactive, in which case management is responding to changes in the macro-environment (that is, the source of the change is external), or proactive, in which case management is initiating the change in order to achieve a desired goal (that is, the source of the change is internal). Change management can be conducted on a continuous basis, on a regular schedule (such as an annual review), or when deemed necessary on a program-by-program basis.

Change management can be approached from a number of angles and applied to numerous organizational processes. Its most common uses are in organizational development, information technology management, strategic management, and process management. To be effective, change management should be multi-disciplinary, touching all aspects of the organization. However, at its core, change management is primarily a human resource management issue. This is because implementing new procedures, technologies, and overcoming resistance to change are fundamentally "people issues".

According to Lamarsh (1995: xi--xii), there are three things about managing change:

First, the pace of change is increasing, and is unlikely to slow in our lifetime. Many factors combine to ensure that we will all face significant change at a rate faster than ever ...