This mindset, when combined with the widespread assumption that most change management projects are destined to fail, can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However, your employees are primed to view every minor issue as confirmation that the change was never going to succeed. Successful change management hinges on convincing your workforce to adopt the new tools, procedures, or experiences that you create for them. If your staff are motivated and enthusiastic about the planned changes, then immediately your initiative stands a far greater chance of success. In this environment, your change management project is almost guaranteed to fail.
Each unsuccessful change management project will serve as yet more evidence that these kinds of projects never end well. Change management can be complex and time-consuming, full of missteps and false starts. This may sound simple, but the Tipping Point of Perceived Change study found that it can have dramatic results. After reminding participants that people can improve with a little bit of effort, these people were quicker to notice changes for the better and more willing to overlook changes for the worst.
You can strengthen your positive messaging by including real world examples. You should have no issues finding instances where your employees have implemented change successfully.
This might be something as simple as mastering a new application, or a major change such as migrating to a new platform, or completing a staff training course. By communicating these victories across your organization, you can continuously reinforce the fact that your project is on track.
By creating lots of small wins, you can create a steady stream of positive press for your project, which will help keep staff morale high. This is because one-way communication, even with the best of presentation materials and most extensive FAQs designed to educate people, is not enough to win employees over to being willing change agents.
To enlist employees, leadership has to be willing to let things get somewhat messy, through intensive, authentic engagement and involvement of employees in making the transformation work — in asking them for their reactions, opinions and ideas, and then by transparently sharing what was learned and what will be done with the input provided.
Well designed and executed engagement processes will ensure deeper understanding of the changes required as people learn by assimilating and applying information, not just by absorbing concepts intellectually.
And in the end, people will more willingly embrace and drive change when they feel they are, to some degree, in control of their own fate. Culture change is an essential element of transformation. Culture change efforts should alter the way work is done by people individuals and teams , starting in places where the transformation must take hold. For example, if the transformation is one of getting sales people to stop selling products to customers and start engaging them in finding solutions to their needs which still require them to buy products, but in a different way , then the behavior of the sales force needs to shift from pushing their wares to engaging with customers more as consultants or trusted advisors.
This is a major culture change for product-oriented sales people. Culture is, however, hard to work on directly. The first step is to clearly define what behaviors are necessary for driving the transformation. This is an ideal area in which to engage employees see 5 : Identifying behaviors that will be key to success going forward is an optimal topic to put to small groups throughout the organization, as a way for them to connect their day-to-day life with the larger ambitions of the transformation and to participate in co-creating a vital part of the new organization.
But to truly achieve culture change, you need to leverage the organizational systems that possess the most powerful tools for reshaping behavior:. In the end, if well managed, culture change can be one of the most powerful drivers of a successful transformation. Pick your metaphor of choice: A transformation is a journey, not a trip; a marathon not a sprint; a passage to a new way of life, not a modified way of doing business.
Without understanding the underlying nature of a true transformation, it can be easy to fall into the following traps:. Organizational transformation efforts rarely fail because of bad design, but rather from lack of sufficient attention to the transition from the old organization to the new one.
A study by the Corporate Leadership Council now Gartner for HR highlighted three major failure modes associated with managing this critical transition:. Typically, this is best done through a cascading series of team interventions focused on ensuring that the new organization is fully aligned on mission, vision, goals, and strategies, as well as building relationships and enhancing team cohesion at all levels.
Done well these processes can dramatically accelerate the transition from the old organization to the new. Finally, too many transformation initiatives fail to focus on development of the capabilities required for people to be successful in the new organization.
But unlike many business organizations, the military has droves of new recruits coming in every day — energized and ready to take the fight to the enemy. Seasoned soldiers rotate back to civilian life and the new blood takes over. So how do the best leaders and managers mitigate change battle fatigue, keep fear at bay and keep the team engaged and energized? By doing two things: identifying and celebrating early successes and creating cultural experiences that support the vision and keep the change train on track.
Allison, a visionary emerging leader at a global packaging company has just been promoted to be the VP of Operations. The strategy includes everything from a series of acquisitions and an overhaul in operations to completely reworking the look and feel of their branding. Basically, they were becoming a new company. During one of the first task force meetings Allison attends she decides to observe, listen and learn. The transformation has only been underway for four months so there will be plenty of time to assert her influence over the process.
None of them specific and none time bound. It quickly became apparent that none of this had been clearly defined. She asked. Realistically, we knew it was going to probably take longer. The senior leaders assembled a task force similar to this one that included senior leaders and a solid cross section of key people throughout the company.
About a year into the effort, we had made some progress, but not as much as we had hoped. The change evangelists that were not part of the task force but actively promoting the effort throughout the ranks began to lose hope.
The cynics gradually became more emboldened by the perceived failures. After doing so, the task force realize that they were making more headway than even they realized. If this was the case, that meant not many people in the company could possibly know what the quick wins were either. Because during the planning process they had failed to identify and even manufacture specific early milestones that could be achieve and celebrated at the six and twelve month marks. Nobody had specific ownership over early stage wins that could be leveraged to tell their story of progress.
Additionally, even though the company was going through a complete operational and cultural overhaul, no cultural experiences had changed to match the new vision. Any experience that either supports the desired culture and vision or detracts from it.
The task force unanimously decided then and there that they had a lot more work to do before moving ahead. This was going to be a long change battle and they needed to be prepared. Early victories needed to be identified and communicated broadly across the organization and new cultural experiences needed to match their vision for being an innovative industry leader.
Stories like this are not uncommon and why so many transformations fail in the long run. Where is Sponsorship needed? Where will we have resistance, and how will we manage it? What do we need to communicate, when, and how? What reinforcements are needed to drive the change to sustained, full implementation? All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy Cookie Policy.
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