Manage Organizational Change Carefully, Avoiding Pitfalls —Practice Management Solutions

Engage Employees with Teamwork and Consensus; Look Beyond Your Own Industry, and Execute Carefully

In a recent issue of the Financial Planning Association’s Practice Management Solutions, Paul R. Brown identifies important factors successful business owners pay careful attention to when managing substantial change in their organizations successfully. Here’s what to pay attention to.

I’ve helped restructure the operations and business development practices of a number of financial advisory and other professional service firms. I’m starting to believe there is a secret manual on terrible ways to change an organization. I say this because I usually work with businesses after they already have attempted to change. Most have failed for the same reasons. By sharing these reasons, I hope to reduce the number of failures other business owners experience.

If you have directed a change initiative or been involved in one―whether that initiative encompassed your entire organization or just part of its operations―you may have fallen into one of these traps:

• Drive Change from the Top Down
• Do It Yourself
• Rely on Your Industry Only
• Execute Poorly, if at All