Change has been the driving force behind so many businesses that have survived the tide of time over so many decades. You take the examples of so many brands in the world that have managed to stay big despite being decades, even centuries old. Be it Sony, or even the famous Coca Cola, they have always survived owing to how good they have been managed to stay relevant to their consumer base.
Yes, a lot about them has stayed the same over the years, but what has really changed about them is the way their internal operations are handled by their teams. They analysed the way they work, they found some errors, they made changes, and put in a change management process in place to make sure that it is followed. Wait? Change and change management are two different things? Speaking on a management level, yes, and very much so. Here is a comprehensive look at how the 2 terms differ from each other in terms of business operations.
What is Change?
Think of a process that is being pushed to its limit because of being understaffed or because the tool being used in this department is outdated. The result from such delays and shortage of staff will be evident in all departments of the organisation, especially the ones that directly depend on this process to function properly. You decide to improve the overall standard of the result that is coming out of the process. So you will hire new people or make the switch to the new tool that has better features.
This is change; when you decide to make a small improvement in the existing process by moving a few things, hiring new resources, or updating tools. This is how problems are solved in organisations, by making changes. This is a rather simple example of change. In the real world, changes can be anything from the following
Transition from legacy systems to one integrated system on the cloud
Mergers
Transition from verbal to documented processes
Launching a new product
Bringing new equipment/tool/software into the process.
What is Change Management?
If you see change as the act of transition, then change management can be called the key to seeing this transition through. If the management wants to take the state of the processes from its current state to the desired future state, then change management is an essential investment that needs to be made.
Since change is not a sudden and overnight event, but an interlined chain of events, it has the potential of ruining all efforts if it is not contained and managed by supervision. Uncontrolled and uncontained change directly affects the everyday life of an employee, which eventually shows up in the overall productivity. The reason behind this can be anything, from a disruption in the workflow to even a resistance to the offered change. Change management is all about making sure that the implementation of your improvement plan goes smoothly and in the way you expected it to go.
It may include redesigning the process, mergers, cultural change, and even extra effort to streamline things. A major part of change management is the use of a business process documentation software, which records all observations and changes in order to keep them as references for the future. Change management is just as important as the change itself, but it is not the same. While one takes you from Point A to Point B, the other makes sure that the transition as smooth as possible so there is no resistance to the journey between these points.
These terms are not interchangeable and thus, should not be used interchangeably in business process management.
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