Change Management: Office Politics

For most cases, change is a good thing. Change can represent growth, maturity, and innovation. It can show the progress individuals, organizations, and leaders are making. Likewise, change can promote others to strive towards aspirations. However, sometimes changes are not as easily noticeable or accepted by others. For example, an office management restructures may result in moving employees to new departments they are unfamiliar with. Change can also lead to conflict and digression within a project, especially if not everyone supports the change.

What Should You Do When Faced With Change?

However, change is unavoidable. Whether for good or bad, changes do occur, and Six Sigma projects are no different. When faced with change, how you chose to manage and integrate it can directly affect your progress, efficiency, and office politics. In today’s article, we will outline five tools you can use to embrace change with the most success!

First, Key Constituents Map.

When a change occurs, the first thing to assess is who it affects. Creating a Key Constituents Map outlines what departments within a process will experience the greatest effects. Typically, this map is in the form of a pie chart to represent the entire organization. In more detail, each section of the pie chart weighs to the corresponding number of personnel in each department. This helps shows how many people will experience the impact of the change.

Second, Attitude Charting.

Of course, not everyone will feel the same level of excitement and enthusiasm for the occurring changes. For this, we advise creating an Attitude Chart. In this chart, you will look at each department and categorize employees based on their attitude towards change. For this, there are four categories. The first, Innovators, will most likely embrace change. Their goal is to lead their team effectively towards the new structure, innovation, or organization. Second is Early Adopters. Like Innovators, they quickly accept changes and finds means to implement them. Next, Late Adopters do not necessarily resist changes but fail to implement them in an efficient manner. Last are Resistors. These employees will openly resist changes and create the most turmoil in a team.

Third, Responsibility Grid.

The easiest way to roll out changes is to for individuals to know what exactly their responsibilities are. This tool visualizes each employee in a department and assigns them a task, corresponding to one of the stages in the DMAIC method. By clearly outlining managerial and decision-making roles to individuals, change is easily implemented.

Fourth, Stakeholder Analysis.

Of course, not all who experience the impacts of changes works hands-on every project. For most Six Sigma projects, there will be stakeholders involved. This tool predicts how stakeholders will react in order to properly consider their opinion to changes. By assessing stakeholders’ level of support, project managers can determine where to focus their efforts and where reassurance may be needed.

Fifth, TPC Resistance Analysis.

An acronym for Technical, Political, and Cultural, this tool analyzes what resistance the project will face. Do team members lack technical knowledge of the process? Are employees nervous that their roles will be altered or removed from the project? Is deviating from past procedures worrisome to long-time project team members? These three variables can easily be assessed to see what issues the project will face, from where, and when.