Change Process and Organizational Behavior / Management

Abstract
Organizations today must learn to adapt to an ever changing global market or they will surly fail. Changes within a firm must be optimized to address the increased competition as a result competitors producing products better, faster, and cheaper. Change management processes must be developed and matured within the organization in order for them to remain competitive. Only through good leadership and the understanding of how to incorporate change can a company survive in today’s fast-paced, ever changing world.
Common Errors and Consequences to Anchoring Change
Over the years many firms have tried, but failed miserable because they were unable to effectively manage the processes of change which they have established in their organizations. Major change management is an extremely difficult simple process, but when all of the steps or phases of that process are followed, as mentioned in Kotter’s book Leading Change, the outcome will most always be positive. But, if a step(s) is skipped or only partially completed, implementation of the desired change effort will be less than desirable or fail completely. Kotter (1996) states, “To some degree, the downside of change is inevitable. Whenever human communities are forced to adjust to shifting conditions, pain is ever present.” (p. 4). Below are eight the most common errors and the consequences that affect the success of the change process.

Figure 1 - Eight Errors Common to Organizational Change Efforts and Their Consequences (Kotter, 1996, p. 16)
The errors above are only the common ones, there are countless more. All of these can be avoided when an organization develops and implements a quality change process. In addition to developing the change process, it must be followed in its entirety each and every time a change effort takes place