WBW & Associates Organizational Change Consulting

Organizational Change Consulting

Planning, communicating, and implementing large-scale strategic change initiatives

Our experience has proven that organizations that expect to survive and prosper are those that embrace change. WBW & Associates works with organizations to assess, plan, communicate, and implement the kinds of large-scale, strategic change initiatives that have become a way of life for leading organizations.

Our areas of expertise include:

•	Organizational assessment
•	Culture change strategy
•	Global organization design
•	Problem solving and conflict resolution
•	Action planning
•	Ongoing change management and measurement

Our expertise is particularly valuable for organizations that are facing mergers and acquisitions, global market shifts, new company ownership, changes in employee demographics, increased competition, reduced margins—and a broad range of other significant change management challenges.

Our Approach

The WBW & Associates approach to Organizational Change and Development is customized to each client’s unique situation. Our approach often includes:

•	Consulting to help organizations identify what needs to be changed, and the objectives, strategies, and activities that will enable the change to occur.
•	Identifying the leaders, sponsors, advocates, stakeholders, and other key decision-makers that must be involved in order for change to be successful.
•	Partnering with clients to develop the structure and processes for employee participation. Deciding which employees need to participate and how they will be involved, in order to ensure maximum commitment to and ownership of effective change.
•	Managing the change process on an ongoing basis, including identifying success criteria, measuring and monitoring against the criteria, and adjusting the plan accordingly.
•	Communicating the change process to others on an ongoing basis.

Please contact WBW & Associates, LLC to discuss your situation and explore how we can be of help. Meanwhile, here is something that may be useful:

Accomplishing Organizational Change

Bringing about major organizational change can be a daunting task– whether it is intended to adjust or recast corporate culture; redirect the focus of the business; reorganize, expand, or contract organizational structure; or commit to new organization-wide goals.

Our experience working with many leading corporations has shown us what levers to pull to bring about such a change. (And you cannot skimp on these levers; you need to use them all!) To the right is a Culture Change Levers Checklist that will be helpful in determining if all of the levers are being employed as you attempt to bring about true and enduring organizational change.

Culture Change Levers Checklist

	Create vision of future
	Identify gap between current situation and future vision
	Make business case for change
	Create sense of common destiny
	Involve people in understanding the issues
	Involve people in creating solutions
	Establish a sense of urgency
	Gain support from opinion leaders
	Develop compatible systems, technology, processes
	Develop new ways of organizing
	Develop a leadership and management style that supports the strategy
	Identify role of leadership group and other groups in change
	Provide supportive training and coaching
	Build trusting one-on-one relationships
	Reassign or change key personnel
	Build coalitions to gain support
	Foster candor and sharing of information
	Align power groups
	Build coalitions to gain support
	Communicate the vision in multiple ways, internally and externally
	Communicate benefits of change
	Communicate how change will occur
	Recognize behaviors consistent with the change
	Reward behavior consistent with the change
	Promote and transfer “best practices” of change
	Identify how success will be measured
	Create short-term wins
	Identify specific actions and assign accountability

Universal Principles

For organizations, significant change may be a major business turnaround, a reorganization, or a culture shift. For individuals, it may be rearranging priorities, overcoming a difficult event, or creating a more satisfying life. Regardless of the nature of the change, it will be affected by a common set of universal principles. The chart below offers tips for using those principles to best advantage.

*Change Principle*	Organizational Change	Individual Change
Power	Individual with the greatest power (e.g., CEO) must be directly involved.	Individuals have the greatest power when it comes to self-change. Any self-change is within your power.
Current State	Bring dissatisfaction with the current state to the surface. Develop a clear image of the future state.	Face what is wrong with your current personal situation, then create a clear image of what you want.
Proactivity	To be effective, change must be proactive, anticipatory, and planned—not reactive.	Take control of your environment, or it will dictate your fate.
Participation	Obtain the appropriate level of participating in planning and implementing the change.	Self-change should not be an isolated journey. Seek support from others; joint exploration accelerates development.
Feedback	Obtain feedback about the progress of the transition.	Periodic observation, correction, and recognition from others is very valuable.
Realignment	Realignment must occur among the organization’s culture, vision, goals, core strategies, systems, structure, tasks, and rewards.	Personal change makes people feel out of sync. Creating alignment among personal vision, goals, priorities, affiliations, activities, and sources of reward will help.
Setbacks	Change is not a smooth upward curve. Setbacks are normal.	Be prepared for setbacks. Manage them by reaffirming the desired future state.
Rewards	Reward desired behaviors during the transition, rather than waiting until the change is complete.	Avoid being too hard on yourself and failing to recognize the progress you are making.

Also see the following articles from SUCCESS STRATEGIES, the WBW & Associates, LLC. newsletter:

“Accomplishing Organizational Change” Winter 2003

“Creating Organizational Culture” Winter 2003