Good News About Change
Every day you as a leader face change. And the changes come at an ever faster rate!
How can you possibly get your team to deal with so much change? People resist change, right? Not exactly. It might seem that way sometimes, but it’s not change that they resist.
When you’ve decided to trade in your old car, aren’t you eager to drive the new one? And how many people do you know who want to watch only one movie over and over again?
You see, most people love change. So why do they appear to resist it sometimes? When you know the answer and what to do about it, your team will turn in world-class performance.
Master Change and Control Your Destiny
Change is inevitable. It confronts everyone in every organization every day. What can you do about it? You can either react — by getting angry or depressed, blaming someone or something, whining and complaining about how unfair life is—or you can anticipate change and shape it to help you reach your strategic goals.
You’ll have much more control over what happens when your team is poised to intercept change and use it to their advantage.
People React to Broken Promises and Undefined Risks
People don’t resist change per se, but they do react to poorly managed change:
1. People become cynical when they’ve been promised substantive, beneficial changes too many times only to be disappointed. (“Oh great! Here comes another new program. How long do you give this one?”)
2. People feel threatened when they have not been involved in identifying and planning a change that will affect them. They feel they have little or no control over what is happening to them.
3. People may fear a change that involves undefined risks. They want to be given enough information to decide for themselves if the risk level is acceptable to them.
4. People rebel against changes that dump unpleasant tasks on them, that appear to be unfair or unjust, or that violate their personal values and beliefs.
5. People resent being left out of decisions when their knowledge could save the organization time, money, and grief. They feel insulted and undervalued.
A Change Process That Works
Have you ever tried to persuade people to go along with a change that has been decided by top management or the board of directors, a change that people don’t like and haven’t been consulted about? Then you know how destructive and futile a top-down change process can be. Managing change is difficult enough without having to fight your own people as well. Instead, get them involved right from the start.
Involving people early in the change process is proactive. Dealing with the fallout of forcing change onto people is reactive. Both take time. Which seems more productive to you?
Create a Climate for Ongoing Change
Preparing your people to be constantly open to change may seem like asking them to accept permanent instability, but it’s actually the opposite. The following steps will give your team solid footing, even when everything seems to be shifting beneath their feet:
1. Clarify Mission, Vision, and Values – As a team, make sure you are clear about your mission, vision, and values and your commitment to them. Take steps to fine tune them if needed.
2. Build Enthusiasm for Change - Invite the team to adopt an attitude that welcomes change. Every good thing that has ever happened to them has probably been the result of a change of some sort.
3. Develop Team Skills – Sharpen your team’s clear thinking skills (e.g., problem solving, goal setting, and decision making) and their relationship skills (e.g., giving feedback, listening, and dealing with conflict).
4. Find a Way to Measure Everything – Adopt a set of measures to help you evaluate all of your critical processes.
5. Look for Better Ways – Encourage your people to continually prospect for better ways of serving internal and external customers. Ask them to be realistic. Reward them for pointing out the flaws in your systems.
6. Spot Trends – Be alert for trends and events in the outside world that may present obstacles or opportunities for the organization.
7. Promote Interdependence – Facilitate better communication and relationships between your team and other departments. To anticipate and manage change well your people need to have a “big picture” view of the entire organization as a set of interdependent parts.
Introduce Change Wisely
1. Set a Clear Goal – When the team identifies a need for change, have them state it as a specific, realistic, time-bound, and measurable goal.
2. Use Group Processes – Enlist the team’s brainpower in projecting benefits, risks, and obstacles, and build consensus on the proposed change. Encourage people to openly share any fears or concerns they have about the change, and then help the team to address every one.
3. Keep Others Informed – Have the team notify all others who may be affected by the change as early in the process as possible. Simply being informed can make the difference between their resistance and their cooperation. (Don’t forget to include your external customers and suppliers.)
4. Set Priorities and Action Plan – Set team priorities and write out a step-by-step action plan with built-in measures of success. Include contingency plans that you can fall back on if things don’t go as expected.
5. Test the Change – Implement your action plan on a limited basis first, if possible, to see how it is going to work.
6. Expect a Performance Dip - When a positive change is being made, there is usually a temporary dip in key performance indicators before they begin to rise again toward your projected levels. Become familiar with the sigmoid growth curve, so that you can prepare your team for the dip and let them know that it’s normal, somewhat like bending your knees before you jump.
Follow Up for Lasting Change
1. Talk About the Change – Once the change has been implemented on a limited basis, maintain a dialogue among team members, customers, suppliers, and others inside and outside the organization. Ask them what’s working and what’s not working.
2. Measure Results – Use the measures you built into your action plan, and also have the team rigorously monitor all of your critical process measures as well. How does reality stack up against the benefits and risks you projected?
3. Make Adjustments – Help the team identify and make necessary adjustments. Let those affected know about the fixes you’re planning to make, and ask for their feedback and support.
4. Implement It Fully – When you have made the adjustments, fully implement the change.
5. Be Vigilant – Vigorously continue your dialogues, feedback, and measurement, looking for opportunities to further improve the systems involved in the change.
6. Show Appreciation – Recognize your team and others inside and outside the organization for their contributions to the success of your change initiative.
Take Charge of Change!
1. Invent the future instead of trying to retrofit the past. Anticipate and visualize what your customers are going to expect five, or even ten, years from now and determine what your team can do now in order to give it to them.
2. Avoid battles. Try to make every change a win-win situation. You’ll build a reputation for integrity, and you’ll gain the support you need.
3. Keep your sense of humor. Be willing to laugh at yourself and with others. Shared laughter heals wounds and sparks creativity.
4. Support your immediate supervisor. Respond to your supervisor’s needs and desires. Keep your boss’s boss off your boss’s back!
5. Forgive. Others will make mistakes. So will you. Forgive them as well as yourself. Complete and unconditional forgiveness is a powerful tool for peace of mind.
Filed under: Shared Spirit
