Due to the crisis brought by this pandemic, many businesses need to change their processes, culture and various aspects of their business model…FAST. This is all related to change management. But if your required changes are not well managed and for example, you try to sell people on decisions that were made without their input and with which they may not agree, then your change will fall flat on its face.

The root problem is in many instances not in managing change itself, but generating organisational alignment around objectives, strategy, tools and methods i.e. corporate governance – the continuous practice that generates better decisions, more alignment with company’s priorities and more buy-in from stakeholders. So Change Management and Corporate Governance are linked – while Change Management focuses on “who” and “how”, Corporate Governance adds the “what” and the “why”.

So believe me when I tell you that implementing any change in a business without having an effective corporate governance structure is a recipe for disaster. It ends up creating a multitude of confusion about who is in charge of what, political in-fighting and back-tracking on decisions made. People will fail to take action if they are unclear about who is authorised to make decisions, or who should be getting informed about key issues.

For any change to stand a chance of making to the finish line it needs good change governance. But how will this be possible if the business does not have any normal corporate governance structure and a professional culture to support it?

So my advice is simple. Do not attempt to jump the gun. Do not attempt to make radical changes in your business, as you are faced by various important external pressures, without first sorting your corporate governance issues. It will be wasted energy to do otherwise.

Actually, few realise, that implementing a proper corporate governance structure in a business that has none or a very weak one, is a whole change management project in itself. Such a change will likely end up bringing the changes you wanted to implement in the first place, but backed up by a whole structure to support and implement the changes, rather than stir confusion.