The role of a change manager. By Ruth Tearle

Anyone who helps a team or organization to achieve a specific goal, is involved in change management.

A change manager may be a full time internal change consultant, an organizational development professional, a leader of a division, a middle manager charged with the responsibility of bringing about a change in his/her area or a team leader who gets employees excited about a change. 

Depending on the type of change he/she is tasked with, a change manager or change agent may perform a few of the following roles. However a change master, is able to perform all of these roles.

Like a medical practitioner, the change manager will begin by diagnosing the organization or team in order to identify specific issues that need to be addressed. He/she will begin by analyzing:

• The existing problems or issues highlighted by leaders.
• The current reality of the organization/division.
• The desired future ideal state.
• The barriers preventing the organization from achieving that desired state.
• The forces for change that exist within the organization
• The dreams, goals and values of the key stakeholders within the organization
• The organization's future strategy.
• The organization's values.
• The organization's readiness and capacity for change.
• Changes occurring in the organization's external environment that may impact on the organization and its customers.

From this the diagnostician will determine the type of change required by the organization or division.

A change master doesn't just 'manage change.'

He/she does whatever it takes to solve a specific problem or achieve a clearly defined goal.

The most complex role of a change manager or change agent, is getting others to 'buy in' to the change process. The means he needs to get them to do something to make the change work. This could involve them learning new skills, playing a new role, or changing a habit.

The change manager in his role as a facilitator gets involved in:

• Identifying the key stakeholders of the change.
• Involving these stakeholders in the diagnostic process and helping them to agree on the changes the organization needs to make. This participative process helps create ownership for change.
• Helping the stakeholders to set clear goals for their change process.
• Educating these stakeholders about the changes they want to make and helping them to understand how the changes they've selected will impact on the rest of the organization (systems thinking.) 
• Helping the stakeholders to understand how these changes will benefit the company, their division and themselves. This in turn builds commitment to the change.
• Helping the stakeholders understand how to understand the 'costs' and lost opportunities of not making these changes.

Designing a change process that will achieve specific change goals, is a creative process. In his role as a designer, the change manager gets involved in:

• Reviewing all the change tools and interventions that are available.
• Selecting those specific change tools and interventions that will help the organization to achieve its change goals.
• Creating additional activities and interventions to fill any gaps.
• Checking that each intervention supports every other intervention, and that all interventions support the company's values and strategies.
• Arranging and integrating these interventions into one simple, seamless, step by step process.
• Deciding on the roles that need to be played to support the process..

 Many different roles are required for a change process to work. Often a change manager or change agent will play the role of a project manager and coordinate the activities of the different role players. Typical roles in a change process include:

• A change steering committee.
• The CEO of the company.
• The executive team.
• Regional coordinators (in large scale changes).
• External consultants.
• Internal consultants.
• Middle managers.
• Departmental, divisional or branch change agents.
• Communications coordinators.
• Change web designers.
• Marketing professionals.
• Individuals within the company.

While many people will find that they can perform one or two of the agent agent roles with ease, a change master would be able to perform all the change roles. The ideal change master would have the following qualities:

• Common sense. And the courage to use it.
• Credibility and trust - the ability to work at all levels in the organization
• A wide range of business experience - for example someone with experience in 3-4 different areas of the business, or an MBA, or a general management experience.
• Knowledge of a range of change management tools and how each tool is used in different situations.
• The ability to work with teams of people both inside and outside the organization This includes the ability to work with people across all departments and functions.
• The ability to do very unstructured work.
• Creativity.
• The ability to custom design processes to meet the goals of the organization
• Self confidence balanced by humility.
• Superb facilitation skills.
• Design skills.
• Coaching skills.
• A love of innovation and learning new ways of doing things.
• A sense of humour and a sense of fun.
• A spirit of caring.
• Rational, emotional and spiritual intelligence.
• The ability to inspire people. To bring out the magic within every individual and every team