Seven drivers of organizational change: external and internal factors

Organizational Change

According to Identifying Your Drivers of Change (Anderson and Anderson) there are seven drivers of organizational change including environmental forces, market place requirements for success, business imperatives, organizational imperatives, cultural imperatives, leader and employee behavior and leader and employee mindset.

This paper classifies these into external and internal factors and discusses what they mean.

Externally, organizations must adapt to many factors. One of the largest is the environment in which the company must operate such as social, business and economic, political, governmental, technological demographic, legal and natural environmental conditions. Changes in environmental forces lead to changes in marketplace requirements, the set of customer requirements that determine a company's success. Market place requirements include the portfolio of products and services, delivery specifications, ability to customize, quality, innovation, and customer service, to name a few.

As customer requirements evolve, a company must update its business imperatives to response. This involves strategic level changes such as a change in mission, strategy, goals, products and services, pricing or branding.

To accommodate change in business imperatives a company must also turn its focus inward and make necessary adjustments to organizational structure, systems, processes, technology, resources or staffing and skill sets. Cultural imperatives have to change to facilitate the changes the organization undertakes. Cultural imperatives include norms or collective ways of working and relating in the company.

Leaders and employees must behave differently to recreate the organization's culture.