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Change the box

Change management has moved away from ticking the box to thinking outside of it.


Johannesburg, 21 Aug 2017
Anton Hingeston, director, Change Logic.
Anton Hingeston, director, Change Logic.

Change is inevitable, both in life and in business. It's how you manage that change that dictates its success or failure.

Change Logic director Anton Hingeston says that while he's in the business of change management, he refuses to be defined - or confined - by the term.

"People are comfortable with ticking boxes. They like a to-do list that they can work through, marking off each item completed along the way. That's not what we do. We pride ourselves on thinking outside the box. We take each client and the journey that they're embarking on, and create an individualised project plan for their unique scenario," clarifies Hingeston.

"Sure, there are some processes that you have to adhere to when managing any kind of business transformation, but we cherry pick the ones that are relevant to that client and their change process."

But with the accepted failure rate of most new projects lying at around 70%, it's pretty clear that perhaps a new approach is needed that goes beyond delivering a project on time, to specification and within budget. Hingeston says: "If you implement the right change management process, you should be successful every time. It all comes down to understanding the client's expectations around what defines success and ensuring you deliver on these.

"It's vital to continuously monitor business outcomes and expectations along the way and ensure you're staying on track. It's also important that you are able to adapt your change management process to accommodate unanticipated changes within the client or the business itself, should this be required."

He's excited about this new evolution in change management that sees a shift away from the traditional way of doing things, an approach that has, itself, changed to keep pace with the times. He says: "The basic principles and concepts stay the same, but the way that we apply them is what's changed. Success is measured by how well the change has been adopted by the people within the organisation, and not by the number of milestones that we ticked off along the way."

When it comes to change within a business, whether it's change to the structure as in new management or a merger, new systems being implemented or a new business strategy, the expectations of staff and management need to be managed along with the change itself. That change might impact on an individual, a group of people or the entire organisation, but it still needs to be managed properly in order to beat that 70% failure rate.

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