Q5: Why managing strategic change is a challenge

Why managing strategic change is a challenge

One of the major challenges in a business organization is managing strategic change. This paper develops significant reasons as to why this is the case with many businesses and what could be done to make strategic change work more effectively

Strategic change is aimed at making the plans a business has effective work as planned. A business is triggered by some factors such as significant external disconnection and increasing competition to implement change. The factors, therefore, revolve around technological change, industrial crisis and changing social values. It might also be directly affected by rivalry, shorter product lifecycles, and global consideration.

Strategic change, therefore, involves actions in different areas that include the global structure, organizational culture and the ability to manoeuvre across international cultures.  The strategies see the business succeeding in its attempt to achieve it long term and short term goals.  businesses, therefore, identify in one or more ways of managing change. These include unfreezing the organization to make the barriers that hinder change lesser or moving to a new situation. The business might also decide to refreeze so that the change effected remains constant. This calls for different styles of managing strategic change for the business. The styles applied include intervention, direction, coercion, education and communication, collaboration and participation.

However, there are numerous challenges that face the business in its attempt to manage strategic changes effected over a period of time.  The challenges are experienced in implementation as well as management. Challenges experienced management might overshadow those felt in implementation. The challenges start from as early as recognizing the need for change and the right strategies to employ. They are then felt in creating the willingness to accept change, deciding on the right paradigms and later adopting the appropriate change management style.

Management challenges are far reaching and might affect the business’s profits in a big way. They include lack of knowledge in directing the business to the overall aim, lack od=f support from others, communication breakdown and the rivalry of subsidies. Other challenges in managing strategic change include underestimation of time expenditure, a workload that might lead to derailed performance. This is because different people have a different understanding capacity.

There have been other problems related to strategic changes in the business that include convincing g stakeholders to risk their resources towards the new strategies that the business decides to set.

The solutions to these problems include enhancement of better communication strategies within the business to ensure a good flow of information, making communication become interesting in the way it is relayed to other people within and without the business to create a friendly atmosphere to motivate people and coming up with more familiar conversations. Giving support to raise enthusiasm might be a point closer to tackling the challenges. The business leadership might as well enhance teamwork spirit by holding meetings and allocating roles to individuals within the business. They might consider giving responsibility to raise commitment and identification as well.  They should ensure that resources within the business are fairly allocated to avoid misunderstanding between among various individuals. Dialogue could also be substantial in solving the various management challenges. With this at hand, a higher performance would be achieved in the business.

In conclusion, strategic change comes along within many challenges. It has proved difficult to manage different ideas laid in a company. The challenges include, but are not limited to, lack of time required to develop, implementing plans and the ability to choose the right people to do a specific task and assign it to them.  However, there are solutions to these challenges that have been found to revolve around enhancing good communication and related strategic consensus