Positive Strategies for Managing Change

Positive Strategies for Managing Change ~ Consultant's Postscript

Positive Strategies for Managing Change - an employee-centric model

This ten-question model and the diagram on the following page are designed to help employees identify, address and manage how they will respond to organizational changes. It is based on the research completed for this project, the resources assembled in the Participant booklet for Positive Strategies for Managing Change workshop (see Appendix) and the consultant's experiences and observations.

Question	Example	What can I do?
ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL
1. What are the external change factors affecting our orqanization?	Political Economic Natural Technological	Clarify what the external change factors are.
2. What will they impact in our organization?	Technology Structure Programs People	Find out what areas of the organization will be affected by the change. Remember, changes to one area of an organization can affect the others.
3. How serious are these changes likely to be?	Surprise Incremental Crisis Strategic	Use Martin's (2001) 2X2 matrix to help identify the level of severity and degree of planning required.
4. What can be done at the organizational level?	What works well and what doesn't work well?	Review Pam's Elements that Affect our Response to Change list and Scott and Jaffe's (1995) guidelines for or anizational change.
INDIVIDUAL LEVEL
5. How well do I deal with change?	Am I receptive to change?	Use a personal change-readiness survey such as that found on the ReadersFirst web site⁴.
6. Are there other stressors in my life that could affect my ability to cope with change?	Marriage Divorce Financial stress Birth Death	Use a personal stress index, such as the one included in Appendix D of this report, to help identify other stressors and their potential impact on your ability to cope with changes.

⁴ http://www.scripps.com/virtuals/readersfirst/change.html