Business Success - Effective Change in Business

There are two key motivators of change in any aspect of life:

Desire for the results of the change
Avoidance of pain of the present

Whilst the positive 'I love myself' brigade will no doubt advocate that the best way to motivate change is by selling the 'desire' proposition, I can assure you that after many, many years of change management consulting that nothing effects change better than fear of the alternative.

Change requires a number of environmental factors to be in play at the same time:

Absolute coalition of a powerful management force driving the change.
A sense of urgency to effect the change
A real awareness throughout the organisation of what will happen if the change is not effected, as soon as possible.
A meeting of the minds of all stakeholders that the change is inevitable and is beneficial overall
A trusted methodology to implement the change

Any one of those five factors missing, and you will struggle with your change initiative.

Socialising the project is a most important step that is too often rushed through, as the benefits are not tangible. But it is essentially the foundation upon which the change will proceed.

A single center of resistance to change can do incredible damage to the change effort, and where such resistance can not be effectively neutralised, it [they] should be removed. All sounds very James Bond like, but the old saying "one bad apply ruins the barrell" is so true.

Some people just hate change, or fear change so much they will do anything to prevent it, regardless of whether they believe the change is a good thing or not. They will work insidiously in the background to undermine the change effort, creating dissention against corporate values and objectives that are aimed to provide the best possible customer value.