Building change leadership capability: ‘The quest for change competence’

While the literature highlights the continuing, and indeed growing, significance of the challenge of implementing change effectively (eg Kotter, 1994; Carnall, 1999) and explores reasons for failures (eg Kotter, 1996) there seems to be little agreement on a way forward. The seeds for potential progress appear to lie within the examination of change competencies and the building of capability for managing significant and continuing change. This paper examines the literature relating to change competencies and capabilities and presents a case study which demonstrates how a competence-based approach has been applied in practice. The process of identifying critical competencies is explored, and a specific change competency framework is examined. In exploring the case, qualitative evidence is presented which suggests that the competency framework, and its application in practice, has had a real impact on the development of change capability in an organisation. This research is seen as being exploratory, however, and providing a stimulus for further research streams which are described towards the end of the paper. The paper concludes that it is focusing on what is involved in implementing change which will lead to a real understanding of the critical competencies required and of a means of building change capability with an organisation.