Is your organization undergoing a radical transformation? It should be because the U.S. healthcare dynamics are drastically changing our customer’s business model. It is an understatement to say that in five years, we’ll see our healthcare ecosystem significantly change for our patients, customers and businesses. This transformation will be both a challenge and an opportunity.
But what role does change management play in building business strategy? Most of the time, change management is an afterthought to strategy development. Unfortunately, most change initiatives fail. That’s a correlation that’s hard to ignore.
Business Change Management
David J. Jones and Ronald J. Recardo state their case in Leading and Implementing Business Change Management: Making Change Stick in the Contemporary Organization (Routledge, 2013). Change management should be integrated at the origins of strategy planning, throughout the implementation cycle. It should also ensure strategy sustainability.
Jones and Recardo introduce the Business Change Management concept, a new coined term. It is defined as an end-to-end process from assessing the need for change and designing a target solution in alignment with overall strategic business direction through implementation and institutionalization.
Like previous change management work, this approach takes a multi-dimensional perspective:
- Technology: Info, data, networks.
- Organization: Culture, roles and responsibilities, org structures.
- Process: Workflows, rules, performance measurement.
Building on past efforts, Business Change Management seeks to evolve traditional change management through four attributes:
1. Cascades from business strategy: Integrated from inception and critical to the solution.
2. Considers internal and external stakeholders: Collaborates with environment, partners, regulators, etc.
3. Proactively leverages culture, resistance and leadership: Sets roadmap and mitigates risk.
4. Encourages organizations to adapt this DNA: Builds competitive core capability.
The strategic, external, proactive and capability-building aspects of this concept are novel in a change management context.
Business Change Management is an ambitious endeavor. But think through the opening question, then consider the four key attributes. Now ask yourself, “If I was preparing my organization for the upcoming healthcare landscape, would my probability for success be better by applying Business Change Management?” Speaking from personal experience, the answer is a resounding yes.
In parallel to the changing landscape, nearly all of the latest thinking around market strategy has one common theme: We must prepare our organizations to be flexible. Long gone are the days of building differentiated products, capabilities or sustainable advantages for the long-term. The speed of business, technology disruption, customer transparency and global competition call into question the sustainability of any business, let alone singular advantages. Marketing leaders must now be both strategists and change agents.
If you are considering a change management effort, then pick up Leading and Implementing Business Change Management. It will be a great guide and companion in your journey. Good marketing!
