10. Insights from Change Management Consulting: Linking the Hard and Soft Side of Change with Heuristics

Change management offers different approaches that force organizations to tackle many priorities simultaneously. In doing so leader still fail to rigorously balance hard and soft factors of change. The purpose of this paper is to develop a holistic model that integrates these factors through theory-based methods in order to facilitate effective change management. The approach consists of theory-building and heuristics by drawing upon change and management consulting literature and examining implications for linking hard and soft factors in change management. We found that heuristics and theory-based change concepts can act as the precondition and vehicle for effective change strategies fostering learning, reflection, and self-organizing problem solving activities. This paper helps leaders to be better prepared for shaping their organization’s change strategy. Three examples that link hard and soft factors of change provide insights into the means by which organizations applying heuristics can outperform the change efforts of their counterparts.