Leading and Managing Change

Having trouble implementing change in your organisation? You’re not alone. It is widely quoted that 70% of all business change initiatives fail to achieve their stated objectives. So, what are the key things you need to think about when implementing change in your business?

1. Vision and roadmap
2. Learn from your failures
3. Planning and change management
4. Celebrate success

Bur before we start exploring these principles in more detail it’s important to understand the difference between change management and change leadership.  Both of these elements need to be present in any large-scale change program.

Change leadership is about building a sense of urgency.  Why do we need to change?  What’s in it for me? What happens if we don’t change?  It’s about building a coalition of people from across the organisation to unite behind a common vision.

Change Management is about the processes, tools and methodologies that you apply to ensure the smooth adoption of your changes across your organisation.

1. Vision and roadmap

You need to be easy to follow.  Be clear on where you are going and how you will get there.  Be clear with people on what’s in it for them to change with you.

You need to be the Chief Meaning Office.  Make people feel connected to what they are doing” Jack Welch

Get rid of the silos.  Get rid of the things that are in the way.  Trust and empower people to get things done.  Be clear in your communication.  Engage at all levels of the organisation.  Develop ongoing communication processes.  Set expectations with people early.

“You need to be the Chief Broomer.  Clear the things that are getting in the way.”  Jack Welch

2. Learn from your failures

You are going to find that in a lot of instances things don’t work out the way you have planned.  You need to keep going and try again. There can be a number of factors that can cause change efforts to fail such as resistance to change, change fatigue, ineffective change management processes or lack of institutional support.

• People naturally resist change
• People fear change
• Sometime people get irrational about change

The truth is that people do not resist or fear change that they believe is in their best interests.  Ultimately change efforts fail because of poor leadership.

While change leadership is an integral element of moving any organisational change effort forward don’t underestimate the planning and change management effort required.

3. Planning and change management

Change management

• Methodology – Ensure you have adopted a structured change management approach for the project E.g. Kotter’s 8 steps of change or PROSCI Adkar
• Tools – Ensure you have identified a set of change management tools that will assist you to assess and plan for the changes E.g. Change impact assessment, change plan, communication plan
• Structure – Ensure you have developed a project structure that will enable you to engage widely across your organisation which includes roles like change champions, project sponsors and a steering committee.
• Processes – Ensure you have defined clear communication and engagement processes and channels (Town Hall, Team Meetings, Email, Slack, Yammer, Social Media).

Project planning

• Scope – Ensure you have worked with key stakeholders to clearly define the scope
• Objectives – Ensure you have worked with key stakeholders to develop specific objectives that define success
• Resources – Ensure that a project manager is overseeing project resources and tasks
• Risk and issue tracking – Ensure you have mechanisms in place to track progress and resolve issues and risks
• Sponsorship – Ensure that the executive sponsor will have availability to work on issues that impact timeline, scope or budget

4. Celebrate success

Never let success get to your head and never let failure get to your heart.  A large number of change initiatives that you will get involved with throughout your career are not going to achieve their business objectives. Statistically you have a 30% chance of success in large scale business transformation programs.

So why is it important to celebrate success?

• It reminds you of the goal you set and why it was important
• It strengthens the team and helps you focus on the positives
• It builds motivation in the team for the future
• It builds trust and stronger relationships in the team

Conclusion

You know your business needs to constantly change and evolve. To move into the digital world. To create a better customer experience. To keep your talented employees engaged. To improve efficiency and profitability.  So, before you launch into that next change initiative step back and think about your approach.