ADAPTING to CHANGE

“In today’s business environment, more than in any preceding era, the only constant is change. Successful organizations effectively manage change, continuously adapting their bureaucracies, strategies, systems, product, and cultures to survive the shocks and prosper from the forces that decimate the competition.” – Robert waterman, Jr. (1987)

The strategic-management process is based on the belief that an organization should continually monitor its internal and external events and trends so that timely changes can be made as needed; this is so because the rate and magnitude of changes which might affect organizations are increasing dramatically. The strategic-management is aimed at allowing organizations to adapt effectively to change over the long run. The need to adapt to change will leads organizations to key strategic-management questions such as ‘What kind of business should we do?’, ‘How customers are changing?’ and so on.
By adapting to change, Strategic management allows an organization to be more proactive than reactive in shaping its future; allows an organization to initiate and influence activities which might exert control over its own destiny. Historically, the principal benefit is to help an organization to formulate better strategies through the used of more systematic, logical, and rational approach to strategic choice.
Two of most important changes which might helps are change in communication and change in involvement. The manner in which strategic management is carried out is also important. A major aim of the process is to achieve the understanding of and commitment for all managers and employees. It’s obvious that when all managers and employees understand what the organization is doing and why, they often feel that they are a part of the firm and become committed to assisting it. They will become surprisingly creative and innovative when they understand and at the end, will support the organizations mission, objectives, and strategies. Change in communication will provide the opportunity to the empowerment, the act of strengthening employees’ sense of effectiveness by encouraging them to participate in decision making and to exercise initiative and imagination, and rewarding them for doing so.
The empowerment process then will lead to the change in involvement. Through involvement in the process, line managers become ‘owner’ of the strategy. Ownership of strategies by the people who have to execute them is a key to success, but it’s a must to keep in mind that strategic management is not a guarantee for success; it can be dysfunctional if conducted haphazardly.