Managing Change in the
Larger Organisation

If one half of strategic management involves thinking, the other half involves actually getting the thoughts into action and making sure they work.

The key to achieving this lies in how fit your organisation is for change.

Before implementing any large scale web implementations take this health check of the key factors you have to get right to manage change effectively.

Values

Is there a clear long term goal to which everyone subscribes?

Leadership

Is there strong leadership with clear communication channels?

Strategy

Does everyone know why and how they are involved and how they can help?

Customers

Do you have a good understanding of your customers?

People

Do you have adequete skill sets and are staff suitably trained with access to the Internet?

Results

Is your focus entirely on the short term bottom line or are you looking five to ten years ahead and investing for it?

There are no hard and fast rules for managing change and certainly no magic formulaes. Your business relies on your staff, and if they haven't bought into your web project, then it will probably not succeed.

My advice would be to read a book or two, even quick 'how to' books. It will only take a few days to read a book but could save you a fortune in the long run. If your organisation is not fit for change then your only other option is to scale back your web plans. Consider taking on a webmaster and running the website as a seperate department. This is not the best solution but for some organisations it is only answer.