Change as a Competitive Advantage

Evan Piekara,Director, Change Management, Nestlé

New technology.Evolving workforce dynamics.Shifts in consumer tastes and preferences.Reorganizations and restructures.Mergers and Acquisitions.One thing is clear – change is constant.

Today’s business is operating in an environment where the pace of transformation has accelerated. We are in an era of corporate Darwinism where the companies that survive are not the strongestor have the most intelligent workers – the survivors are the companies that are ‘most adaptable to change.’

Change is a muscle that can be built and conditioned over time and is also subject to rip or tear when it is overworked. To keep up with the accelerated pace of change, companies too often overwork this muscle without the proper exercise, thus, subjecting their employees to change fatigue. This can lead to deleterious results in the form of avoidance of change, productivity dips, lower morale, changes not fully realizing their benefits, attrition, and other harmful effects. Building a concerted and intentional plan that dedicates the time, resources, and focus to strengthening change capabilities can empower leaders, teams, and organizations to make change part of their corporate DNA.

Change capabilities can be embedded in an organization leveraging three mutually reinforcing pillars: (1) Leadership, (2) Standards, and (3) Competencies. Organizations must start by assessing how mature their organization is with managing change (leveraging tools like Prosci’s Change Management Maturity Audit). Once companies have established their baseline – they can determine their targets, gaps, and build a roadmap to establishing stronger change capabilities.

Leadership is how committed and dedicated an organization’s leaders are to building change management capabilities. Advanced organizations have established a coalition of leaders who express a sense of urgency around building change capabilities, have a strong vision for how change management can be leveraged as a competitive advantage, are willing to put resources behind building change capabilities, and have established and socialized procedures, guidelines, and metrics for tracking progress and continuously improving change capabilities.

"Change is a muscle that can be built and conditioned over time and is also subject to rip or tear when it is overworked"

Standards are how an organization institutionalizes change within its organization. While no two transformations are alike, organizations need to have consistent methods and applications, clear roles, responsibilities, and goals, and have core frameworks and tools that are used to deliver the change. Advanced organizations have formalized frameworks, tools, and techniques for managing change, criteria for evaluating change initiatives’ readiness, impact, and success, and apipeline for applying and managing resources across a portfolio of transformation projects.

Competencies are how people are trained, developed, and empowered to build change management capabilities. Core knowledge and skills need to be established for distinct career stages and roles – for example, someone delivering change management activities will require different knowledge and skills than a people manager responsible for guiding their team through change oran executive leader serving as a sponsor for an enterprise change initiative. Core competencies need to be established with intentional time and paths devoted to building those competencies through experiential learning, networking, and training. Not only does training need to be established, but it also needs to be regularly updated, evaluated, and continuously improved to meet the evolving roles and needs of people involved in the change. Leaders need to facilitate the development of these competencies, build talent networks, and empower people to broaden their change leadership, toolkit, and skills across the enterprise.

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations that prioritize and invest in building change management as a competitive advantage will not only survive but thrive, setting themselves apart from their competitors and building a culture and workforce that is able to adapt to the external and internal pressures that are accelerating change.