Best practices in Human Resources mean that position revolution has genuine benefit for an organization. It permits workers the opportunity to improve their area of expertise. It creates employees who can with less complication, grasp the bigger image of the business. It sometimes creates a more flexible business. This revolution between positions can be compared to an army tour, where an infantryman is stationed somewhere for a period of time and is then reassigned. However, these company tours of duty can have a disadvantage for the business change pro.

Business change initiatives are sometimes long term, even multi-year, projects that need intensive 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 loan acceptable authority to keep a change project moving forward. So what occurs when your friendly executive’s tour of duty comes to a close and there’s still a year left to complete the project?

In the most extreme case eventuality, the business change initiative come to a grinding halt while the new executive settles into their new position and decides if they need to lend their support to the project. If they don’t want to resume lending support, the single thing to do is go chasing another buddy at the executive level. This, of course, is the very thing to work to avoid. There some things that will be done to keep the executive support in place whether or not the executive changes.

Make it a point to discover 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 up to speed on the project before they take the new position. Alternately, ask the outgoing executive to bring the new executive to standard speed. Either way, this allows the new person to hit the ground running the business change in terms of the business change underway.

For more information, please see our website: Business Change