Their task is to help shape, enable, orchestrate and facilitate successful progress. Change recipients represent the largest group of people that must adapt to the change. In the case of a new product development, the end user is also a recipient who must be convinced that the change will be beneficial to them. If the initiative lacks credibility with any of the targeted audiences, the initiative is dead before it even begins. .
The actual case was a late-1990s project that involved the development of a tactical radio system for the military. The idea was that the revolution in the cellular market would allow for the development of one radio whose software could be reprogrammed to mimic any of the military's current inventories of radios. The change management team was successful in defining the change and getting the target audience behind them. .
Step 3: Evaluate the climate for change .
This step is similar to Jick's step 1 (analyse the organisation and its need for change) but with further elaboration. Both change strategists and implementers must implicitly understand how the organisation functions in its environment, how it operates, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. Such understanding will assist in developing alternative scenarios that could be created by the proposed changes. This will facilitate crafting an effective implementation plan. As part of this analysis, change masters need also study the company's history with previous change. Although failures of the organisation in implementing previous change efforts do not forever doom an organisation to future failure, Dalziel and Schoonover (1988) suggest that these patterns of resistance are likely to be repeated. In such situations, a gradual non-threatening, and more participative process is advocated to break the failure syndrome. .
The authors' tactical radio project experience reinforced the need for assessing the company's readiness to support a change initiative.
