Change management is the ability to lead and manage change initiatives to drive organisational outcomes and benefits. Organisation development is essential to this.
What is organisation development?
A planned and systematic way of embedding continual improvement across an organisation to improve its ability to achieve positive outcomes. It includes planning and taking actions to improve ways of working organisation-wide, spanning structures, processes, governance, and culture.
Essential for:
- All types of transformation
Knowledge
- Understanding of Organisational Development theory, concepts, and models.
- Knowledge of Change Management principles and practice.
- Understanding of behavioural psychology.
Skills
Able to:
- Think strategically and focus on outcomes: Aligning organisational development plans and activities with corporate strategy to support organisational outcomes.
- Apply Organisational Development, Change Management, and behavioural psychology: To create the conditions for successful transformation.
- Develop contextual awareness: To ensure that the approaches developed align and will be well received within the existing culture and ways of working of the organisation.
- Develop and integrate plans: Integrating organisational development activities into wider plans, sequencing activity effectively to maximise overall impact.
- Collaborate: With colleagues and stakeholders to ensure organisational development principles and practices are embedded at the heart of transformation activity.
- Communicate effectively: At all levels, both verbally and in written form.
- Engage stakeholders and build relationships: To increase understanding of organisational development and to achieve outcomes collectively.
- Understand and implement governance: To ensure organisational development activities are well embedded as part of strategic planning, decision making and transformation delivery.
- Prioritise: Organisation development activities to maximise value against the overall strategic objectives to be achieved.
- Be emotionally intelligent: Recognise, understand, and manage emotional responses effectively in the achievement of outcomes.
- Set and model positive behaviour: Lead by example, demonstrating the behaviours or new ways of working the transformation/change initiative seeks to achieve.
- Implement effective and robust HR practices: To ensure compliance with the law and mitigation of risk.
Behaviours
- Collaborative
- Attention to detail.
- Problem solving
- Persuasive
- Positive
- Resilient
- Solution orientated.
- Committed to continual learning.
Related roles
- Organisational Development Specialist / Lead
- Chief Transformation Officer / Transformation Director / Head of Transformation
- Leadership Development Manager
- Change Manager
Change Management – maturity index
The index below sets out the typical Change Management characteristics demonstrated by councils at each stage of their transformation maturity.
