Enhancing Opportunity for Change Managers to Become Change Leaders

The evolution of technology may prompt change, but it also changes how change management is conducted. For example, the cloud has enabled remote specialists to be engaged on a change program and have valuable input in real time. Artificial Intelligence promises to change the business world more than any other technological advance to date. It will also alter change management, especially the people side of change management.

AI – Creating More Efficient Change Management

In the same way that AI is making task management more efficient, it also promises to make change management more efficient. AI gives change managers the potential to measure digital activity in real time, all the time – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 

AI allows the change manager to take corrective action before it is needed, as the technology uses the flow of data to predict what will happen. Certain actions could be taken without intervention, with AI technology permitted to make changes automatically to avoid predicted issues. In such an event, the change manager will be alerted to the change, rather than execute the change. This will accelerate the pace of change and help to ensure that projects are delivered on time and within budget.

AI – Enhancing the People Side of Change

AI promises to enhance the people side of change management in many ways. For example, by relieving the change manager of the need to input reams of data, collate it and analyze it, the change manager is given time to focus on the people affecting the change and being affected by change.

AI should enable change management teams to identify and mitigate risks more easily and with greater speed, using best practice approaches and people with the necessary skills to do so.

Utilizing the capability of AI, organizational change is no longer restricted by organizational hierarchy. Talent will more often be employed virtually, and switched in and out of a change project as needed – this may be for an hour or two at a time, with AI technology used to bring talent in more fluidly. The result will be a more agile approach to change.

In such an environment, change projects could be handled at a greater pace. AI can analyze a change project, and match up the skills required at each stage using experience and learning from previous change projects. Where skills need to be enhanced, AI can match up required training with those who need to be trained.

For largescale projects, AI can interrogate data sources such as in-house HR files and LinkedIn accounts to identify those with the skills needed. This will facilitate building change management teams more consistently, matching individual capabilities to project needs at all stages of the project.

As the change project is progressing, AI technology can be employed to monitor meeting minutes, emails, documents, etc. to ensure that tasks are coordinated, issues are addressed, and risks are raised and managed effectively. On all these processes, the use of AI removes human bias, ensuring that all decisions benefit from identical logical thinking. 

AI will allow change managers to optimize their approach, enhance decisions, and accelerate the change process using the best talent available. Change managers will have more time to do what they do best – instead of managing the process of change, they will become leaders of the people side of change.

Contact us today, and discover how we could help your organization transition to a culture of evolutionary change.

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