How to navigate organizational change
Caeleigh MacNeil
December 9th, 2022 • 10 min read
Summary
Organizational change occurs when businesses go through a major transition that impacts company culture, infrastructure, technologies, or internal processes. Many employees feel the effects of organizational change—whether that change involves onboarding new leadership, introducing new tools, or updating your company goals. Learn about the different types of organizational change and how big transitions can impact your team—plus some key strategies to handle change when it occurs.
What is organizational change?
Organizational change occurs when a business experiences a major transition that affects most or all of its employees. This type of change is far-reaching because it impacts company culture, infrastructure, technologies, or internal processes. In other words, organizational change alters your team’s day-to-day experience. Sometimes these big transitions are meticulously planned out, and other times they happen without any advance notice.
Organizational change vs. organizational change management
The terms organizational change and organizational change management often go hand-in-hand. That’s because whenever big transitions occur, it’s important to plan how you’ll guide employees to make sure everyone is set up for success in the new environment. That’s what organizational change management is all about—preparing for and managing any new organizational change.
The change spectrum
Organizational change can be big, small, or somewhere in between—and that’s where the change spectrum comes into play. On one side of the spectrum is incremental change, which represents smaller transitions your company makes over time. On the other side is transformational change, which represents big transitions when your company reinvents existing processes or infrastructure. We’ve outlined the difference between incremental and transformational changes below, but keep in mind that your particular situation may not fall directly into one of these buckets. Rather, you may find yourself somewhere in between.
