It is useful for people involved in organizational change to pay attention to the nature of the change outcomes that they wil be dealing with. It’s a bit less straightforward than it might appear to be at first sight. My research and experience have shown that there are three aspects to the concept change outcome.

First, there is the issue of intentionality. Any planned change has objectives – these are shown in Powerpoint presentations. So managers undertake planned change initiatives with certain outcomes in mind – these are intended outcomes. However, the unpredictable nature of change processes means that there will be unexpected outcomes which were not predicted. These develop as the change initiative progresses.

Next, when a change outcome is classified as intended, there is the issue of how well it meets its goals, i.e. whether its intended results have been achieved fully, or not achieved at all – or something in between. In fact, there can be different views within the same organization about the extent to which an intended change outcome has been achieved.

A third aspect of the concept ‘change outcome’ relates to the level where the change has an effect. A planned change initiative could be introduced which is intended to have a specific effect at the level of the organization, group or individual. One of the characteristics of change initiatives that I have observed is that initiatives that are intended to have an effect at one level also have an impact on other levels. For example, one change I studied was supposed to achieve improved decision making at the organizational level, but also had related effects at the level of the individual, because it reduced the level of job autonomy of some members of staff.

Organizations should have contingency plans in place, so that an unexpected change is not an unplanned change. It’s far easier to have successful change management with a planned change. All companies should plan for the unexpected, so that an unexpected change is actually a planned change.