Public sector organisations are increasingly being asked to provide better and more efficient services, while coping with shrinking budgets and fewer staff.
Implementing change in agencies and departments can be a challenging prospect, particularly if the existing processes have been in place for some time.
However, effective change management skills can ensure your leadership development is heading in the right direction, enabling you to handle significant overhauls within your organisation’s operations.
Whether these changes are technological, cultural, structural or process-driven, the time frame under which they must be enforced can range wildly from incremental to overnight.
Challenges to change
If your public sector agency is looking to make changes, there could be a number of hurdles you face when trying to breathe new life into processes.
• Lack of government structure or support
• Poor communication of your final vision
• Failing to provide adequate role models for staff to emulate
• Being too quick to declare success
To ensure you overcome these problems, attending high-quality leadership training courses can help to boost change management skills and instil confidence in your abilities.
Learning better change management
There are a number of questions public sector leaders need to ask themselves when looking to make alterations to the workplace.
How much change should be introduced? Should the entire system be overhauled or should some parts be salvaged? When is the right time to instigate change?
Here are just some of the skills needed to overcome the problems that may arise from change.
• Ability to interpret current programs and structures to assess whether change is needed
• Compiling evidence to build a case for change
• Formulating a strategy
• Knowledge of different models of change management and which ones may be best for your organisation
• Effective monitoring and evaluation skills to ensure changes implemented are working
• Managing conflict that arises from new procedures