Leveraging the Value of an Organizational Change Management Methodology

In today’s environment successfully navigating change and developing organizational change capacity is essential for every organization. The pace of change today requires organizations to continuously adapt and respond. Greg Hackett, an American consultant and researcher, has called for a new organizational paradigm, where survivability, flexibility and systems thinking are key success factors (Hackett, 2006). This will require organizations to have an even greater investment in change. Yet, despite organizations’ considerable investment in change to date, research shows about 70% of organizational change initiatives fail and many fail to give the expected return on investment (Miller 2002, Haines et al 2005, Alvesson & Svenningsson 2008). The challenge of “how to do” change management has become like the elixir of life; as organizations in an effort to capitalize on change management’s potential attempt to adopt, develop and implement an organizational wide change management methodology. However, with the plethora of change management methodologies and models it can be difficult for an organization to know how to choose and use a change management methodology or model. The purpose of this paper is to 1) review the literature to identify the difference between change management methodologies and models,2) explore the role and value organizational change management methodologies have in reducing failure rates for organizational change; 3) present a conceptual framework to guide organizations on the development, adoption and implementation of a change management methodology; 4) explore how organizations can leverage change management methodologies and models to achieve greater organizational change capacity.