Evolutionary theory: Adapting your business

PA’s Stephen Brooks, people management expert, is quoted in an article in Edge, the Institute of Leadership & Management magazine. Stephen gives his view on how important it is for companies to be adaptable and capable of change in an increasingly competitive global economy.

Stephen gives his view on how organisations can get their staff to embrace the change process and suggests one useful approach to develop engagement is to identify potential “change agents” within the organisation.

Stephen has worked on a number of change programmes and advocates the use of change agents. He says it became a useful technique while working on a project with UK Visas, where part of the visa issuing process conducted in British Embassies around the world was outsourced to the private sector.

Stephen says: “The civil servants in UK Visas now had to work with those outsourcers – it was a very big change to the way they were working.”
As part of this process, people who could act as change agents within UK Visas were identified. Stephen says these agents needed to be a contact point, a cheerleader, an expert and a helper all at once.

“You’re looking for people at different levels in the organisation, not senior people necessarily, who’ve got the right kind of temperament and skill sets,” adds Stephen.

“They need to be people who are respected by colleagues and have credibility with other staff. They will be trained in change management, helping them to understand what people are going through from a psychological perspective. They’ll also know about the change itself, what’s behind it and why, how it’s envisioned it will work, and what that’s likely to mean for the organisation.

"The change agents fill in the bits about how it will affect particular jobs, because they will know and understand those roles and jobs better.”

You can read the article in full here.

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