Business Change: Ways In Which Executive Tour of Duty Can Affect Organization Change

Best practices in HR mean that position rotation has genuine benefit for a company. It permits staff the opportunity to expand their breadth of expertise. It creates employees who can readily grasp the bigger picture of the business. It sometimes creates a more flexible business. This rotation between positions can be likened to an army tour, where a soldier is stationed somewhere for a period and is then reassigned. However, these company tours of duty can have a downside for the business change professional.

Business change initiatives are sometimes long term, even multi-year, projects that need extensive integration and intense coordination between the mid-level, upper-level, and executive management. It regularly takes the backing of someone at the executive level to lend sufficient authority to keep a change project moving forward. So what takes place when your friendly executive's tour of action to a close and there is still a year left to complete the project?

In the worst case eventuality, the business change initiative come to a grinding halt while the new executive settles into their new position and decides if they want to lend their support to the project. If they don't wish to resume lending support, the only thing to do is go on the hunt for another friend at the executive level. This, naturally, is the thing to work to avoid. There some things that will be done to keep the executive support in place even if the executive changes.

Make it a point to see what kind of official, or unlicensed, revolution policies exist and where the key executive player is on the revolution. If their tour is going to up before the end of the project, ask them if they know who their replacement will be. If the politics permit it, start to bring the new executive to cruising speed on the project before they take the new position. Alternately, ask the outgoing executive to bring the new executive to cruising speed. Either way, this allows the new person to hit the ground running in terms of the business change underway.

For more information, please see our website: Business Change