When it comes to business change endeavors, change agents are frequently employed as external consultants. Usually, this is done because there are staffing difficulties, mistakes with prior initiatives, or because a change management expert is needed to facilitate the whole process. This can be a productive decision and improve the odds of success. Change agents, however, are not subject matter experts, despite all their expertise. It is impossible for a change agent to be an expert in the minute details of every business that may employ them as a consultant. For a business change to be successful, they often require a subject matter expert.
The role of the change agent is to handle the components of the process in which they have expertise. This may include coming up with new procedures for evaluation, developing new modes of communication to keep everyone well informed, or seeing to it that the internal staff is on task with the change project. Their other primary role is to make sure that the subject matter experts are brought on board for input where it is necessary.
Subject matter experts are not experts on change and typically are under-qualified to run a business change initiative. They are not in the position or capacity to develop the business change proposal. Technical experts can be kind of cranky at times and this is often why they find themselves excluded from the whole process of business change. This is wrong, in more ways than one. They should be brought in to vet any technical aspects of the proposal. For instance, they will be aware of everything about the competition, relevant patents, and other technologies that is used by the business. This puts them in the position of being able, when a technical choice needs to be made, of identifying the choice that has the highest probability of success.
A useful idea to keep in mind when a business change is at hand is that business is about business. For a successful business change, someone with a high level of expertise is needed. This is the subject matter expert, not the change agent.
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