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Management
BusinessCompanies

Can your managers manage change?

In a constantly changing world, it’s the companies most able to adapt that will survive - and that’s where good management comes in

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Why you can trust SCMP
The ability to adapt quickly and efficiently to change is built into the DNA of successful modern businesses. Photo: Shutterstock
Andrew Woolf

In this new world of volatility and constant change, it is not the biggest or the strongest who will thrive. It is those who are the most agile and adaptive to change.

As a result, companies are starting to rebuild their businesses for agility, with a variable cost base and flexibility built into their DNA.

This starts with the people. Embedding change activity as a small part of all managers’ and employees’ roles, and training them to handle change, can make change the norm rather than an exception. Training up experts within your company about how to manage change can be essential.

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For example, a global insurance broker had highly decentralised and inconsistent processes and wanted to fix this. Working with the client, we assessed the opportunities to eliminate non-value-adding activities, streamline end-to-end processes and automate standard tasks. Lower complexity and lower-client-value activities were moved offshore to reduce the cost base.

Most change is technology-enabled, and digital innovation is changing industries as far flung as oil and gas to health care and financial services

At the heart of this program was a central “people and transition” change team that worked side-by-side with the human resources leadership and programme management to effect a timely and collaborative decision-making process which engaged key parts of the organisation and helped to embed the change.

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To ensure a smooth transition to this new operating model, integrated change teams were established across the four business units. These teams used proven business readiness and change transition methodologies to ensure a smooth knowledge transfer to the new operating hubs.

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