Change Management: Lessons Learned from Top Companies

Profitable businesses must keep changing to achieve continued success. Sometimes it is unexpected, sometimes it is necessary. To maintain normality during times of change, employees look to their leaders for guidance. The key is to get the leadership on board with the change and to establish methods to help your teams manage the change. Leaders must possess certain qualities for a smooth transition and to maintain momentum in the workplace.

Navigating the changes is difficult; even the best ideas will fail if they are not adapted correctly. These are the top three companies that implemented major changes and what we can learn from their successes and failures.

Alphabet

Alphabet is now the parent company of Google and is led by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The restructuring came about so Google’s search engine could stay focused on its original mission of organizing the world’s information. Among the companies now under Alphabet are the collection of companies Brin and Page have delved into, including Google, Calico (their quest to cure death), and Nest Labs.

Since this was a major organizational restructuring, leaders should have minimized uncertainty among their employees. Instead, they shocked their employees and the world at the same time when Larry Page published a blog post on Google+. They didn’t give their employees much warning, and that brought the workday to a halt, as everyone from interns to senior engineers reeled from the news.

The blog post addressed many of the questions leaders must answer during a time of change, including why the change was necessary and where they are in the process. However, employees were surprised when leaders could have been candid about the changes and how they would affect their teams. As the situation unfolds, we will continue to learn how Alphabet is managing the transition and how its employees are adapting.

Amazon

When you’re a giant retailer like Amazon, your name is synonymous with change. However, staying competitive is not an easy task, because you are up against other innovative retail giants. Without a solid strategy to ensure your business is ready for change, failure is inevitable.

Such was the case with the launch of the Amazon Fire phone. The online shopping company made its foray into the smartphone realm, which seemed like a smart move. But one detail was missing: The phone didn’t offer enough reasons for smartphone owners to switch from their Apple or Android smartphones. The phone had some intriguing features, but was not competitively priced for what it had to offer and was sold in limited locations.

Was Amazon prepared for this step? Maybe not. What was initially considered a great idea may now require “many iterations” and “a few years to get it right,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Change readiness is a process that prepares your company to change direction, even if you still maintain the same overall strategic focus. Having these conversations with employees can result in an even better product.

Nike

To successfully navigate change, leaders must initiate and encourage conversations and debates about change within companies that represent positive reasons to support change. When the language of change is used well, it can prevent the “engagement dip” that often occurs when employees lose sight of the goal and revert to previous behaviors. This may have been a factor in Nike’s struggle over the years to maintain a favorable image after its factories in Asia were exposed for abusive labor practices in the early 1990s.

Those in power at Nike didn’t act on the need to implement a more ethical supply chain until activists, college students, and consumer protesters called on them, until customers boycotting their products hit the supply line. company background. Its poor labor practices were a way of cutting costs to increase profits, which ultimately ended up costing Nike its reputation in the court of public opinion. Since then, Nike has made positive changes, but it took time for the company to recognize all that it needed to do to improve working conditions. By working closely with employees and having ongoing conversations about what actions would be necessary to make lasting changes, Nike could have improved its supply chain practices before they made headlines.

In each of these examples, properly preparing employees for the changes and thoroughly discussing how the plans should play out could have solidified strategy execution efforts and led to profitable innovation.