As competitive design businesses, we are pushed to continually change – by new initiatives, tech updates, project-centred workloads, ever-adapting workflows and evolving competition. Change is as inevitable as it is hard. No arguments here.

Around 50 percent of our 16,000 users are architects. A majority of those either are currently or have been recently in throes of a considerable software change. The changes they’re making are critically important to the business they do – improving systems, streamlining administration, improving capacity for collaboration and speeding up workflows – but that doesn’t make going through the changes any easier.

The challenges range from the complexity of acquiring new software (who do you consult about making the right purchase, and what questions should you even ask?), through to the difficulties inherent in data migration and administrative downtime, all of which can be greeted with staff and stakeholder resistance to adoption at the implementation stage. Brutal.

Like any other sort of improvement, it’s important, it’ll probably make your pants fit better, but it really hurts. Are there any big business changes you’ve got your eye on for your architectural practice? Are your concerns similar to other clients’, and ours? Our consultants work most of their hours most of their days on helping businesses accomplish change effectively – we’ve written this article to help you.

McKinsey Quarterly’s ‘Four building blocks of change’ says, “We know from research that human beings strive for congruence between their beliefs and their actions and experience dissonance when these are misaligned. Believing in the ‘why’ behind a change can therefore inspire people to change their behaviour.”

Successful change requires successful management, and the team’s belief, and a well-considered strategy that covers the congruence between the action of the change, the belief in why the change is happening, and a commitment to the change as necessary. We’ve been hunting for some tips on creating a change process that does this, and we found a methodology that we’re using currently. We thought you might find it useful too. *wink*

Read the full article to find out:

• what steps a change manager needs to guide you through for success
• how to gain staff and team belief
• the results of over four decades’ study of organisational change and transformation, and
• the eight-stage, step-by-step plan for successful, lasting change.