As a leader, what are some of the biggest issues you might face when making an organisational change?

Making sure that all your staff take full ownership of this change. People should feel this change is their goal in order for it to succeed, otherwise they will oppose it either by deeds, talk or even by their hearts.

After an organisation change some of the colleague will be opposite to my decision & inverse to them will be job insecurity, for some good thing implementation it takes a lot.

Organizational change efforts need clear and thoughtful governance as much as the organization’s operations do. What roles are needed to lead and carry out the organizational change? Who will fill these roles? Who will have authority for decisions? What will the people in charge be chartered to do? How will they meet, communicate, manage the information of the effort, and interface with operations? All of this needs clarity to expedite a rapid and coordinated organizational change start-up.

In the rush to get organizational change efforts moving, many leaders press for a plan of action or delegate to project teams without giving them the authority to make key decisions about how the change should be run. Too often we hear, “We are in too big of a rush to spend time on set-up. Just find the right people and get them moving.” Unfortunately, this lapse in setting up conditions for success radically slows progress, since more time is needed to sort out the resulting confusion, political dynamics, back-tracking on decisions made, or lack of action from people unclear about who is authorized to do what. Good organizational change governance, set up from the beginning, remedies all this and enables speed and efficiency in designing and executing change.

Conscious change governance requires clear definition of change leadership roles: sponsor, change process leader, change leadership team, initiative leads, project teams, and change consultants. Change leadership roles must have clear responsibilities and ways of relating to the other roles. Each needs to be structured in ways that expedites their ability to act and lead in a coordinated fashion. They all need to agree on decision levels and authority, and the decision style and process that best supports the organizational change.

This is particularly important if your change effort involves a change in organizational culture around how power is exercised and decisions are made. All parties will need to align to the new cultural norms, while letting go of the old. Otherwise, people will not believe the organizational change is real because the leaders will be espousing the virtues of one set of cultural norms, but demonstrating another. How you govern your organizational change efforts must model your desired future state culture.

Lastly, it is advisable to clarify the ways in which those in change leadership positions will interface with those who run the operation. This should begin with the relationship between the executive team (for major enterprise changes) and the change leadership team. Frequently the same people are on both teams, but the teams have very different charters. So these people must wear their “two hats” skillfully. Clarity between the two is essential. The organizational change effort will undoubtedly have an impact on operations— taking resources, time, and attention required to make the change. Such pinch points are quite predictable, so having pre-determined agreements on how to handle pinch points in ways that best serve the future of the business is important.

1. User comfort with the legacy even though it is broken.
2. Apprehension about the new system, especially if it an out of box solution
3. Typically the legacy system is customized which will lead to an unfair comparison with an industry standard OOTB solution
4. The perception that somehow their business, company, industry, country is unique and what may have worked in other places won’t work with them
5. Disruption of power equations within the company. Typically new systems tend to democratize information and increase transparency which may lead to a sense of loss of importance and power amongst those who were previously the custodians of data. This group will try to sabotage the implementation by passive agressive behaviour and finding faults in the new system
6. The fact that due to the learning curve productivity will take a dip as people grasp with the new environment. Expectations and targets have to be calibrated accordingly
7. Lack of leadership support. If the management and leadership plays a passive role , the project rarely gets traction with the rest of the population and slips down middle management priority list.

For me is trying to convince leaders who are opposite to the strategic decision.