The New Book “Change Insight” Introduction Chapter 2 People Centric Change Management via “5W+1H” Navigation

Digital is the age of people. The human element of change entails a people-centric approach to management style. Thus, empowering the workforce to embrace change is a most effective, efficient and result-oriented management in organizations. People are the center of any Change Management, and people are also the weakest link in any change effort as well, so how to practice people-centric Changement via “5W+1H” navigation, and how to manage change in a systematic way?
Self-awareness might be the first step to getting involved in a change process: Sometimes people are not part of change because they feel like they don’t need any transformation, and even the ones who recognize the importance or urgency of change, do not understand their own role, impact and most importantly, emotions involved in a change process. Change is a continuum and once you accept that life will be a constant shift going on around us, then you are able to seek ways and means of adjusting your perspective and those around you. Self-awareness means the true recognition, and total perception of the current state as it is, one’s role in that state and its impact, why and where that state needs to be changed, one’s participation and the influence on others and the results expected. From change management perspective, many organizations focus so heavily on the “doing,” hey lose sight of the “purpose,” the “WHY” part of changes. Once people agree with the “WHY” part of the reasoning, they can develop their own level or means of participating. Because change can not be completely manipulated from top-down, it starts from the mindset.
The critical elements in people-centric Change Management: Change is usually required when an organization is expanding its business, its mission or updating processes or technologies. For the large changes or business transformation, vision and strategy are the most critical elements for the organization. For any type of changes, communication is critical to Change Management. Change Management research points to Sponsorship as #1 importance to successfully managing changes. Upward feedback is absolutely necessary. Then they need to communicate their understanding and the contributions they expect of their parts of the organization to their teams and employees. Last but not least, assessment and measurement: A change manager needs to assess and evaluate every specific scenario to create the change program success.
Change needs to be embedded into the mechanism of multiple management disciplines, such as innovation management, project management or talent management: Change is the vehicle, not the purpose of doing a project. Change in and of itself is never the reason. The true business goals are always related to business growth, customer satisfaction or cost optimization. Change Management is about mentoring the human side of the business through profound, unsettling change. If top management truly believes that their personnel is the true measure of their company’s worth, then they’ll hopefully do their utmost to make sure that personnel is educated, accepting and eventually invested in that change themselves. Ultimately, you can only put the benefits of the new systems in front of the group, give them the best tools possible including training or coaching, and keep evaluating and remediating their progress.
Change Management has a very wide scope and is a relatively new area of expertise. But often Change Management lacks the insight of understanding the inner nature of things or the core issues of a situation. Too often people take the easy path, fix the symptoms, not root causes, without spending enough time to understand what’s going on underneath. Change Management needs to focus on coordination and facilitation, winning both hearts and minds, follow the right set of principles and take the best practices for taking people-centric change approach.
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