Business Management Skills

One of the potential pitfalls of any profession is the development of language. Some jargon can be useful. As an example, acronyms ( if used judiciously ) are akind of language that can provide ahelpful shorthand for otherwise cumbersome phrases. However, often language can be extremely counter-productive is a given term has more than one meaning within the same field. This is aproblem that exists in the area of business change management.

The irony is that the term “change management” itself is the piece of lingo which is causing the issue. This is term that has multiple, occasionally tangential, definitions applied to it. Here is an example of a kosher definition of change management. Change management is the study of ways to make change occur in an organization. This is meant as a active definition of change management with atarget making change. It seems an almost self-evident definition. Yet, this does not represent the generally accepted view of what “change management” means in the field.

The prevailing definition among business change management professionals for the term “change management” is the definition that IT pros give to “change management.” This largely comprises managing changes to software projects, product releases, and requested changes to software or systems. Regardless of the prevailing perspective per the term, the IT definition of “change management” by no means covers the complete scope of what occurs beneath the banner of “change management.”

Business change management may include a component of IT change management because so many business changes comprise changes to software and systems. However, there are still change management tasks to be accomplished that fall beyond the remit of IT. When change is occurring there are processes and job outlines that need to be changed, HR adjustments made to reflect new skills or responsibilities, or coaching to be scheduled. These tasks all fall beneath the term “change management.” As such, it’s best to make sure most are on the same page when it comes to the term “change management”.

For more information, please see our website: Business Change Management