From the course: Building Change Capability for Managers

Why managers need change capability skills

From the course: Building Change Capability for Managers

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Why managers need change capability skills

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- How does change happen in your organization? One approach is to have a separate team of change managers who'll work with line managers to bring about change in their area. And this can indeed deliver effective change, but it relies on the cooperation and the commitment of the line manager, but that doesn't always happen. You see, change managers will focus on delivering change. That is their primary driver, whereas a line manager's primary driver is to keep operations running smoothly. So as you can imagine, there can be significant challenges when these two managers try to work together to deliver change, especially if the line managers are resistant to the change themselves and fear has been imposed on them. Now, imagine your business takes a different approach. And rather than having separate change managers, they train line managers to have the change capability skills. So now when a change comes along, these managers have better control of operational stability while also designing and delivering change in the most effective way for their area. There are a number of major benefits to using line managers to deliver change. First, they understand how their business units work and the people within it. So they're in the best position to explain their expectations and needs to make positive changes. They'll also need to work closely with the project or program team delivering the change, making sure that they can plan business continuity while also delivering the change and providing the resources to do this. They'll then balance ongoing performance alongside implementing the change effectively in their own areas without it detrimentally affecting performance. They'll also help to identify learning skills and gaps for their staff and define the learning needs required to bridge that gap. It's their responsibility to reinforce the change and ultimately to track and measure the benefits in their business areas and report back to the business on the success of the changes. And then there's also all the associated people skills like managing resistance and emotional responses, learning anxiety, motivating staff, and dealing with conflict, just to name a few. Some managers already have great skills in some of these areas, but many don't have all of the skills required to deliver effective change. So this course is going to focus on building your change capability skills to make you a great asset and change manager for your business.

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