Why organisational change is inevitable?

Ok. I’m back and I am going to share with you my second update.

For everyone’s information, I’ve attended a 3-day class on Leading Organisational Change (“LOC”) module from March 16 – 18, 2009 (LOC -14) at the ULC as part of the UEM-MBL program. In the short 3 days, I’ve met some new faces within the UEM Group family that I’ve never met before. Indeed, they were just awesome and it’s been a great honor to be in their group and to be able to work with them. The teamwork was just great and the level of competitiveness amongst the group when it comes to class assignments was so intense at times… I remember that I had to skip the coffee breaks just to make sure that we complete our class presentation on time. But needless to say, it worth the sacrifices.

Over the 3 days, I learnt about change and the change management issues surrounding an organization. Topics covered are:-

1) Understanding the need for change;
2) Dealing with resistance to change;
3) Leading change initiatives;
4) Creating a change-management plan; and
5) Learning from change.

Speaking of change management, I think it is now one of the most important disciplines of today’s business environment. As the forces of external factors continuously evolve around us, businesses must keep ahead of the pace or be left behind. I know that change within organizations has always been around, but the pace of change has somehow become more prominent in the last few decades. During the LOC program, we were introduced with numerous factors that force organizations to change; these include external factors like global economic downturn, changing in political landscape (more apparent in Malaysia now after the general election), global competition and technological advances, or internal factors like changing in the need for expansion drive, the need to increase profitability (as in the case of UEM Group), or change in senior management. Regulation, in particular, is the most influential. With the stroke of a pen, you can change a whole industry’s nature and many companies facing difficulties to adapt. One classic case is the long unresolved issues on the establishment of the Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA) and how the local car manufacturers are the direct “victims” of the threat of AFTA. The whole scenario and the playing field have changed overnight. They know that they have to come out with their own remedies to change in order to face AFTA as they know that nobody can escape from liberalization of car industry.

In a nutshell, change is inevitable in today business, so organizations that can handle change have a competitive advantage over their competitors. I found out from the 3-day program that the life expectancy of an organisation will be fast declining if they are not ready to change. That was very surprising. I was taught that corporations were immortal and humans were mortal. I know I was wrong.

Therefore, change management is seen as a permanent business function to improve efficiency and keep organizations adaptable to the competitive world. However, in realizing successful change in today's competitive environment, it requires thoughtful systematic and effective planning so as to provide a structured approach to change that allows organizations to discover change opportunities and better manage change initiatives.

I will be back with more insights on change..