We’ve written previously about the importance of balancing organisational capacity for change with change demand.
Organisations that fail to do this will stagnate and be poor competitors in the marketplace.
Organisations that do it well will achieve greater ROI, implementation success rates, and achieve their strategic objectives.
After all, our ability to execute organisational strategies quickly, efficiently and effectively is a competitive advantage in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.
Here are some specific things organisations can do to balance demand and capacity.
1. Build organisational capacity for change
Leaders should:
- Set and communicate an energising overall context for change (join the dots!)
- Establish an effective operating environment for ongoing change
- Develop change skills and personal adaptability widely in the organisation
What we’re striving for: an environment where change isn’t seen as an obstacle to doing our work; it’s just what we do.
2. Manage change demand
Even if organisational capacity is increasing, leaders must still manage change demand so that the workforce isn’t overloaded, and resources are focused on strategically important initiatives.
Critically, leaders must be able to:
- Control the number, speed and complexity of changes being implemented.
- Assess the extent to which people are coping with the current and imminent change demands.
- Understand the trend in the overall number of changes being implemented in the recent past and imminent future.
- Prioritise and communicate business imperatives. This includes making tough decisions about delaying, rescoping or cancelling changes that are not strategically important.
This requires the right infrastructure, including a demand and capacity management tool, to prioritise the mix of planned initiatives alongside fluctuating organisational capacity.
(Do you have the right infrastructure in place?)
Key points
- Successful organisations strive for a balanced relationship between organisational capacity and change demand
- This balance allows for stretch without overwhelming your capacity for change
- Addressing the fundamental issues around capacity and demand is a core organisational-level, executive leadership responsibility
How we help
If you’ve read this far, this must be a topic of interest – so we invite you to learn more about our demand and capacity management tool, ChangeViz.
Spreadsheets can be thing of the past – you can dynamically visualise, align, and prioritise your entire portfolio of change!
