Why Your Digital Transformation Needs Change Management

The evolving digital world requires change; from businesses, from individuals, and society. Change, however, can be a tricky notion for businesses – even if society and individuals have already adopted those changes. Businesses need to be able to alter their initiatives and cut down on inefficient practices while also keeping up with technology. Usually, people agree that businesses require change, yet, there is often pushback about how it should take place, or resistance to what has been decided by those who did not, could not, participate in the decision. For real change to happen, everyone in a company needs to be aligned around that change. Change is indeed, difficult. However, changes happen all the time and so do the many challenges that arise with them. Change management helps your business prepare for those necessary changes, to better support and strengthen your operation. But how?

Your Digital Transformation and Change Agents

Digital transformation can be defined as the adoption of digital technology to transform your business or service. This can involve replacing manual systems with digital technology or even replacing old technology with newer, advanced digital tech. When a business commences on their digital transformation, change is not only expected but essential. This is because certain procedures will become obsolete, job roles will shift, and specific processes will become more streamlined, modifying the way your entire company conducts business. This process brings innovation and an evolution to the way your company does business, but it also brings about a lot of emotions for the individuals and teams impacted by this change. These emotions are not necessarily negative, but actually, that is often the case and, sometimes, fear reigns, making it impossible to ensure that people are aligned and work together to go in the direction the company wants.

A well-thought, mindful change management program will help your managers acquire the skills that allow them to engage employees in that change, without resistance. This is because managers, not top-level executives, are the real agents of change within an organisation, as they are the ones who have to explain and thus, navigate, how changes made impact real people and jobs. When companies make changes without communication and without creating engagement is when opposition forms.

Cultivating Your Soft Skills

Change management can be beneficial to your digital transformation by nurturing and cultivating your (individual or company-wide) soft skills. Soft skills are an expression of emotional intelligence and are all those skills that require balanced management of one’s own emotions and of other people’s emotions and responses. In other words, soft skills are not quantitative or measurable skills, but rather the skills that allow people to affect one another. In business, skills like these are gaining rapid value because they lend themselves to not only putting the customer first but also empathising with them; while guiding our behaviours in a genuine and effective way.

When an organisation seeks to (digitally) transform itself, these skills are necessary in order to survive said transformation and collectively thrive as an establishment. For companies like Nexen, which supports companies in their change process, the most effective way to develop these skills is through individual or company coaching.

The Competency Model

Nexen helps develop new competencies to explore the potential of individuals and teams alike. The competency model serves as a framework for defining the skill and knowledge requirements of a job, whereas competencies are a collection of behaviours. Nexen takes into consideration what skills or behaviours you may already have, and which skills you or your organisation lack, to create a unified picture of your competencies and which ones you need to build to be successful in the (digital) transformation you want to implement. Nexen helps you find the skills, tools, and the means to work towards your goals in an informed and pragmatic way. In addition, they can even help you define what your goals are: whether they are tangible or intangible, or lead to a concept (i.e. company happiness), versus hard results.

How Nexen Can Support Digital Transformation

When a company or client resolves to transform, Nexen looks at what soft skills are needed for them to succeed. Nexen offers individual coaching, team coaching, workshops, and training (a blend of coaching and eLearning) to best support soft skill and competency development. By investing in the skills of your people and how they handle changes, your digital transformation will succeed at improving your company’s practices and operations, minimising resistance and boosting engagement. Your company will have a firmer grasp on what is needed to effectively achieve results while developing the skills and behaviours in order to do so. Websfarm, in partnership with Nexen, believes you should always have the tools and the knowledge needed to improve, and ultimately, transform your business.