Understanding Types of Change

To improve is to change;
to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill

Developmental – This change occurs when a company makes an improvement to their current business. If a company decided to improve their processes, methods or performance standards this would be considered developmental change. Companies are continually processing developmental change to some degree in order to stay competitive.

Transitional - This change is more intrusive than developmental change as it replaces existing processes or procedures with something that is completely new to the company. The period when the old process is being dismantled and the new process is being implemented is called the transitional phase. A corporate reorganisation, merger, acquisition, creating new products or services, and implementing new technology are examples of transitional change.

Transformational - This change occurs after the transition period. Transformational change may involve both developmental and transitional change. It is common for transitional and transformation change to occur in tandem. When companies are faced with the emergence of radically different technologies, significant changes in supply and demand, unexpected competition, lack of revenue or other major shifts in how they do business, developmental or transitional change may not offer the company the solution they need to stay competitive. Instead of methodically implementing new processes, the company may be forced to drastically transform themselves.

Business Reengineering - The final change element is often called business process change management. In essence it’s the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed. We have evolved this change process within PMCDE Limited to additionally include that of the organisational culture.

Why Change?

Changing environments, expectations specifically customers, market, technology, organisational demands, competition, legislation, changes within structures are all factors to why change is essential. Within the UK we are usually more inclined to have change forced on us then have principles of change controls built into our organisations specifically around continuous improvement (KAIZEN).

An organisation which understands its environments and aims to continuously adapt to achieve excellence will ultimately excel or rise to the top compared to organisations that wait until it has to change.

We believe that a culture where organisations are prepared for change and continuous improvements is as important as managing change when it’s forced on us. Logically organisations who invest in consultants to assess and deliver business improvements based on developing a learning culture around change will achieve rapid results at sometimes a minimal financial outlay. For instance our service delivery relating to human factors and idea development workshops with staff builds a creative energy within organisations that is based on creative solutions which provides business improvements. In many ways we prepare organisations to meet their future environments.