Change management is the process, tools and techniques to manage the people-side of change. It helps you get to your required outcomes with the individual, the inner team, and the wider system. In other words, change management helps you help your organization to recognize, accept and adopt new approaches and methodologies that are needed to help you grow and improve efficiency and effectiveness, to support you in your efforts to better serve your constituents and support your mission.

There are a multitude of definitions of change management, but a common denominator consistently is the concept that for an organization to grow, the individuals within that organization must change - change the way they do business, change the systems and solutions they use to achieve certain objectives, change their perspective, sometimes their attitude, certainly their methodologies. And to change, they must not only learn the new approach, they must also understand and appreciate the reason for the change, and the value this change will bring to the end result. Only if organizations and individuals within organizations learn and accept the reason for change, will they be able to master a positive change. In other words, change is the result from an organizational learning process that centers around the questions: 'In order to sustain and grow as an organization and as individuals within, what are the procedures, what is the know-how we need to maintain and where do we need to change?', and, 'How can we manage a change, that is in harmony with the values we hold as individuals and as organizations?'

Section II: The Change Process

In essence, change takes place on three levels: The individual, the team or the (small) organization, and the wider system or organizational unit. Learning and acceptance of the need for change must be facilitated on all three levels to be successful.

Managing change can be seen as a matter of moving from a problem state to a solved state; from an uncomfortable, unproductive state to one where employees are motivated, comfortable and confident.

Goals are set and achieved at various levels; ends and means are discussed and mapped out. Careful planning is integrated with effective communications to ensure understanding and buy-in from all three levels that need to implement and embrace change - the individual, the team, and the wider system or organization.

Section III: Steps to Get Started

Following are some simple guidelines and action items that can help you get started in this challenging but valuable effort:

1. First step: jump in. The first step is the hardest; once you're in, you'll see the water may be cold but you'll survive!
2. The simpler the mission statement the better.
3. Build a team. Seek out those who are great negotiators and positive people to help keep momentum going and spread the positive attitude needed to climb mountains and build new attitudes and processes.
4. Maintain a flat organizational team structure and rely on minimal and informal reporting requirements.
5. Pick people with relevant skills and high energy levels. You'll need both.
6. Toss out the rulebook. Change, by definition, calls for a new and innovative response, not adherence to prefigured routines.
7. Shift to an action-feedback model. Plan and act in short intervals. Talk about lessons learned immediately, and incorporate those new approaches in the next wave.
8. Set flexible priorities. You must have the ability to drop what you're doing and tend to something more important.
9. Treat everything as a temporary measure. Don't "lock in" until the last minute, and then insist on the right to change your mind.
10. Ask for volunteers. You'll be surprised at who shows up ­ and by what they can do.
11. Find a good "straw boss" or team leader and stay out of his or her way.
12. Give the team members whatever they ask for - except authority. They'll generally ask only for what they really need in the way of resources. If they start asking for authority, that's a signal they're headed toward some kind of power-based confrontation and that spells trouble. Nip it in the bud!
13. Concentrate dispersed knowledge. Start and maintain an issues logbook. Let anyone go anywhere and talk to anyone about anything. Keep the communications barriers low, widely spaced, and easily hurdled. Initially, if things look chaotic, relax - they are.

Remember, the task of change management is to bring order to a messy situation, and create an environment that encourages and nurtures productivity, to help your organization better serve its constituents through improved processes and procedures. Change can be painful, but it also usually brings improvements. And it can be implemented in a way that inspires acceptance ­ and even enthusiasm ­ if it's approached and handled well.