Why It’s Time to Embrace Change Management in Professional Services

By Moira Alexander, founder of PMWorld 360 Magazine and Lead-Her-Ship Group

Between 2020 and 2030, job growth in areas such as change management is expected to grow 14% faster than the average profession. Why? Because we’re in times of major change for many industries and agencies, with the speed of change increasing, not least due to worldwide events that are impacting projects and daily work.

To meet these fast changing needs, professional services organizations must achieve Dynamic Resource Optimization (DRO), which will enable them to both respond to change and become drivers of change. Reaching DRO depends on how companies adapt and evolve their change management and change leadership, which will help both align and mature a company’s people, processes, and technology. It’s all about:

• Developing a company-wide mindset around change
• Developing a more flexible leadership style
• Bringing change management experts to the forefront
• Adopting technologies that support resource optimization

Change Management vs. Change Leadership

If you’re new to the area of change management, let’s start with what it is, and how it differs from change leadership.

Change Management

Change management relates to the concepts, technologies, or models that organizations use to manage and reduce disruption when changes impact processes and people. The primary focus is managing change as it relates to how it affects human resources.

Change Leadership

Change leadership is more about company executives and leadership traits, as these are the driving force behind enabling large-scale change. The focus is placed on developing, communicating, and supporting a strategic plan for a clear vision, especially as it pertains to change.

Combined together, change management and change leadership can significantly minimize the impact of change on the workforce to ensure operations run smoothly and effectively. Here’s how.

Develop a Company-Wide Mindset Around Change

Adapting to change starts in the minds of employees; leading change starts in the minds and actions of executives. Most employees fear change because they think it will lead to job loss or disruption, and they act accordingly. Alleviating fear and paving a path toward DRO starts with leaders recognizing what has or what will change, how this impacts employees, and helping employees manage their fear of change. Leading change as the “new normal” can reduce anxiety and increase innovation. Change leadership starts by normalizing change and communicating a change vision and strategy for the desirable future. Leaders should regularly communicate these concepts:

• Change should be expected, not feared
• Change can generate opportunities for individuals to share ideas and grow
• Change can create career development or advancement opportunities
• Changes can open or expand reward and recognition systems

The key to developing a holistic cultural mindset around change is to keep communications about strategy and vision frequent and straightforward.

Develop a More Flexible Leadership Style

It should come as no surprise that leadership style can be instrumental in smoothing the path toward the effective evolution of change management. There are three components of leadership adaptability that are necessary for adapting to change: cognitive flexibility, emotional flexibility, and dispositional flexibility.

Cognitive Flexibility

This leadership style has the ability to incorporate different thinking strategies and mental frameworks into planning, decisions, and daily work management. Leaders with this ability can handle numerous scenarios simultaneously and determine the best time to shift. They are quick, divergent thinkers who can offer new ways of doing things and learn easily from others.

Emotional Flexibility

Many leaders with this style often fail to factor in the emotions of others. But those leaders with emotional flexibility can adjust their approach to take into account dealing with emotions. They’re comfortable with transitioning and adapt to change using a give-and-take strategy to move an agenda forward.

Dispositional Flexibility

This style of leader can be optimistic and open but still realistic at the same time. They typically can recognize a bad situation yet also visualize a better future. It’s important to note that they aren’t completely positive nor wholly pessimistic and they handle ambiguity well. This type of leader sees change as an opportunity.

Executives can learn to harness these various components of leadership adaptability to become more adaptable themselves and help their company and employees evolve within change management for better DRO.

Bring Change Management Experts to the Forefront

Far too often, change management specialists or experts are seen as an accompaniment or “backup singer” in projects, programs, and operations. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Change management professionals are in high demand for a reason — change isn’t going away for the foreseeable future. It will continue to impact companies of all sizes and across virtually every industry around the world.

Change management is an essential element for successful cultural and operational change. Your people are the most critical factor impacting the success of projects and operations — so it only makes sense that change management personnel should be involved in all aspects of a business to ensure the potential uncomfortable impacts of change on employees are minimized.

Embrace Change and Change Your Approach to Resourcing

Change management experts can work with executives and functional managers to identify and embrace change as well as change how they approach change. This is where it becomes essential to take the following actions:

• Accept and embrace change as an opportunity
• Identify the changes that are taking place and those that have already happened
• Determine how change has or will impact resources
• Develop a plan to manage change and set benchmarks for success
• Identify the best change management and change leadership models to adopt
• Evaluate and secure technologies that better support employees throughout changes
• Set metrics to measure results
• Implement the plan and monitor results
• Monitor results and adjust to ensure company-wide resources are optimized

Adopt Technologies That Support Resource Optimization

Change is difficult enough for employees and leaders to contend with; no one wants to struggle with manual tasks and workarounds. One of the most vital tools a company can use to evolve in change management are technologies that enable automation to do the heavy lifting in areas such as:

• Planning resources across an entire organizational structure
• Providing a resource-centric data model to deliver more clarity around business performance
• Building trusted networks of resources that can be seamlessly managed
• Precisely determining the optimal mix of resources for the ideal outcomes

Throughout times of change, having a strategic approach to maximize, adjust, and better understand how resources can be optimized across all projects and divisions in real-time should be the end goal. The key to reaching a state of DRO is adapting and evolving change management through company-wide mindsets, leadership styles, help from experts, and adopting purpose-built technologies.

Learn more about how Kantata can change the way you approach resource management for new levels of success.