The business environment is changing fast in response to the evolving conditions. Managers are assuming the role of change agents with unfailing regularity. With increasing complexity of the change process, managers should arm themselves with special skills and attributes to ensure a trouble-free transformation.
Change management is yet another widely-debated and written-about topic in management. The last couple of decades have seen managers experiencing a series of radical changes at the workplace. Change is a complex process-it is a response to continuously evolving conditions. The days of stable environment and relatively few changes are over; today we have an environment where change is not only continuous but requires the management to adopt multiple strategies to meet them. Various writers have considered myriad aspects of change management. Notable among them are Kurt Lewin's three-step model, Underwood's small changes approach, and Ken Blanchard's six stages of concern to identify the required skills as enablers of change. Most of the theories revolve round changes that are small and basically unidirectional. These changes normally occur in a stable environment and affect small companies. Today, managers are faced with many concurrent changes. Changes, whether uni or multidimensional, possess certain basic characteristics. People must be able to visualize the imminent, and understand the reasons for change, followed by knowing the process of its implementation. Finally, the manager who leads the change makes all the difference, since his/her, capabilities impact the outcome. Moreover, change processes have become a kind of turning point in organizations with their vast scope leaving one with the idea that it is not the change of culture one should get used to, but to the culture of change. Not all changes result in a positive outcome, more so if they are concurrent in nature. This is where the actual skill of a manager comes to the fore, both in terms of technical and social competencies. They should be able to understand the concept of change in technical terms and know how it affects the system in general. Social skills help the managers communicate with people-first, to let them know what is generally expected of them and then to the extent of even selling the change to them.
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