Managing change

Managing change successfully depends on choosing the right approach. This will reflect the type of change you are facing, what you want the change to achieve, the culture of your organisation and its management style.

Common approaches to change management

Collaboration/participation: involves those who will be affected, in defining and planning change.
Education and communication: involves the explanation of the reasons for and means of change.
Intervention (or facilitation): maintains co-ordination or control of change with a single person or group.
Coercion/edict: involves the imposition of change or the issue of announcements about change.

Each of these approaches has benefits and drawbacks and their suitability will depend on the type and cause of change you are managing and your organisational culture.

Organisational culture

Culture is the way things usually happen in an organisation - the way people behave and interact with each other. Managing change will be more successful if you choose an approach that fits with your organisational culture. For example, an approach in which senior managers make decisions without much consultation may fit well if that's how things usually happen, but is less likely to work if your organisational culture is more democratic, involving staff at all levels in decision-making.

Changing your culture

Sometimes, organisational cultures themselves need to change to enable an organisation to achieve its goals. For example, a grant-funded voluntary organisation many need a fundamental shift in culture in order to become a successful social enterprise.

A culture of improvement

To become truly successful, all organisations can benefit from developing a culture of improvement and fostering creativity in the way they work. The concept of quality can be a useful mechanism for implementing this sort of positive change within an organisation. Find out more about quality.

Whatever approach you choose to bring about change, you need to be prepared for people's reactions. Read more about responses to change.

Leadership

Above all, managing change requires clear leadership. This includes creating and communicating a clear vision for the transition by answering some key questions: Why does this change need to happen now? What will the organisation look like afterwards? And who will it affect and how?

The process of leading change involves making subtle judgements about what approach to take with people, when to drive change forward, or when slow the pace. Overall, the leader of change needs to create and share a compelling vision for change and to be trusted and followed by all in the organisation.

A magic formula?

There is no single approach to leading change successfully. Every situation is different. You need to achieve a balance between:

having a clear, flexible plan with ambitious but realistic targets
allowing input and debate
being decisive when necessary.

Don't go it alone

But leading change doesn't mean trying to manage change on your own. It's a good idea to build a core team of people to help you drive change throughout the organisation. This could include staff at different levels of the organisation, as well as trustees, volunteers, users and external stakeholders. Take a look at our section on involving people.