At this point, what challenges aren’t organizations being forced to adapt to? Between the COVID-19 pandemic, turbulent international relations, supply chain friction, domestic politics and policy changes, climate change, and more, organizations are navigating waves of risk that force them and their employees into rapid business and process changes. But, while necessary, these changes now occur so frequently that stakeholders are increasingly facing fatigue, confusion, and burnout with each wave. Many organizations are therefore investing in their organizational change management (OCM) practices to achieve more immediate, effective, and successful change. Forrester defines OCM as follows:

A method that companies use to evolve capabilities via people, process, and technology. Success of OCM rests with the organization’s ability to continuously sense and respond to changing requirements in order to generate scale at strategic, operational, and leadership levels.

To help determine the best path forward with OCM, Forrester published its inaugural Organizational Change Management Landscape, Q3 2022, an overview of 14 major OCM service providers — Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini, Cognizant, Deloitte, EY, Korn Ferry, KPMG, McKinsey & Company, North Highland, Perficient, PwC, Tata Consultancy Services, and West Monroe. The OCM Landscape provides background details on these providers and identifies Forrester’s top five use cases for OCM: 1) cultural transformation; 2) mergers and acquisitions; 3) organizational restructure; 4) process improvement/engineering; and 5) workforce transformation. Please read this report if you want to know how these use cases apply across the business and which providers most highly value the use cases that are directly applicable to your organization.

What’s next for OCM? According to service providers, it is a growing emphasis on people. As one provider put it, “Compared to traditional change management, which is often characterized by heavy process, timeliness, roll-outs, and so on, the emerging trend of leveraging organizational culture seeks to change behavior at scale in a more human-centric and agile way.” Eleven of the 14 providers featured in our OCM Landscape independently called out this trend, including by describing the evolution of EX and the development of hybrid and anywhere work. One provider even outlined the advent of a “human metaverse.”

If you want to chat about human-centered OCM and the future of the OCM market, we welcome you to schedule an inquiry or briefing!