If you search “change management” on Google today, you’ll get 145 million results.

Not helpful when you’re returning to your office after a meeting, at which someone declared “change management” is critical” and you have no idea what that even means.

Let me break it down.

For starters, let’s acknowledge that “change” is a pretty vague word and, on its own, doesn’t mean much.

Think of a change as anything you wish to do in your business or organization that will be different, or make something different, than it is today.

A new software tool to manage the finances of the business.

A modified process for handling customer problems (or problem customers).

A new employee paid time off policy.

A strategy for entering a new and emerging market.

Any of these will represent a change.

If you want to activate a change successfully, it’s important to be deliberate and intentional about how you go about implementing. That is, you need to “manage” it.

Much of the focus of “change management” is on the people who will be impacted by the change and will have to adapt their ways of working in some way (for your staff, customers, partners, etc).

(This would be a good time to stipulate that it’s difficult to manage something as complex as people and their feelings, but we’ll save that one for another day. For now, let’s stick with helping you to understand what change management is).

The practice of change management is about helping people to understand why something is happening and how it will affect them, and to prepare them for when they will need to do things differently.

Having said that, it should come as no surprise that communications, engagement, education and transition support are foundations of change management.

When someone says “we need change management,” these are the types of focus areas that require attention, and usually lots of it.

They sound like common sense, which is exactly why they get underestimated, overlooked, or left until very late.

Bottom line – every change needs some change management. Every change needs for people to be prepared.

Maybe I should have written this one first.

Have a great weekend!