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DEVELOP A CHANGE STRATEGY

By Ruth Tearle

 

Many new projects, systems, strategies or cultural changes fail to be implemented successfully, because people resist change. To ensure your changes or projects achieve the benefits you want, it is useful to develop a change strategy that will take into account everything that has to be done, to ensure your change works.

Answer the following questions to develop a powerful change strategy. A strategy that incorporates rational intelligence (IQ), emotional intelligence (EQ) and spiritual intelligence (SQ).

1. Why is this change needed?

• What are the benefits of the change? Prepare a list of benefits of your change, to the company, the customer, the team and to each individual.
• Why should an individual care about these benefits?
• How can you ensure the individual gets enough benefit from the change, to make the extra work and effort worthwhile?
• What are the implications of not doing this change? Can you provide a sense of meaning and purpose around your change? Think of great world leaders. Can you link your change to a sense of greatness?

2. How it will happen.

• Prepare an implementation plan which details ‘who will do what, by when.’
• Define all the roles that will be played. This could include the roles of every individual, the middle manager or branch manager, the executive sponsor, the change team and internal vs external change consultants.
• Specify the support that every role player will receive. Support could include training and tools. It could also include the time and attention of a manager or executive sponsor.
• What are the stages in the change process. e.g:
  • Training of role players in the skills they need to perform their roles.
  • Communicating the initial change.
  • Skills training on a new system or way.
  • Assessment of skills.
  • Communicating progress.
  • Preparing for a cut over day.
  • Post cut over assessments.
• What further plans do you need to make to ensure the change is implemented successfully. These could include:
  • Ensuring that every role player gives out the same message.
  • Providing recognition and rewards for people who contribute to the change.
  • Developing a feedback and monitoring system to identify, assess and deal with problems.
  • Providing sanctions for people who sabotage the change.
  • Providing training, tools and coaching. Getting all role players to share what they have learned as well as their success stories so as to encourage others.
  • Providing people whose status will be affected by the change, with a more attractive role.

3. What order will it happen in?

• What are the phases or interventions that make up your change?
• What order will these phases follow? Put these onto a calendar.
• How will your change be rolled out? For example. You may choose to do a pilot project first. Or you may choose to start your implementation in a small, low risk area, learn lessons, and build experience before rolling out the change in larger or high risk areas.
• Who will manage the logistics, assessments and follow ups?

4. What is your intention as a leader?

The leader and the change team’s intentions influence how people feel about the change. What are your intentions? For example do you intend to:

• Force through the change.
• Or to help every employee to become a hero.

Your intention will show up in the way you choose to communicate and to manage your change. E.g.

• Do you encourage people to voice their fears and concerns, and suggest ways of ensuring the implementation works?
• Do you and your change agents make people feel their contribution is important and valued?
• Do you provide training, coaching and tools to help people to perform their roles successfully?
• Do employees and change agents believe that when they have problems, they have someone to go to who will listen?
• Does every employee feel that he/she is special. And that his/her talents can at last be used, and appreciated during the change?
• Do you give every employee a chance to visualise the future change at work? i.e. What it will mean to the customer, the company and themselves.
• Do you give everyone a chance to contribute creative ideas to make the change work better in their areas?

What should you communicate in any change?

During an initial communication, you need to communicate the following, clearly and simply.

What are the benefits of the change:

• To the company.
• To the team.
• To each individual.

What will the end result look like:

• Give people a chance to visualise their future after the change.
• Give them an activity to do, during which they can act out the role they will play in the future.

How will the change be implemented?

• What are the phases/steps?
• When will each occur?

What roles will be played?

• How will you ensure the change is supported at all levels and no mixed messages occur?
• What is the role of the individual, middle manager, branch manager, change agent, executive, sponsor, CEO, internal change consultants, external consultants and the change team?

What support will each role player receive?

• What training/tools/support will be given to each role player to ensure they: Understand their role? Feel they have the support and tools they need? Communicate the same message about the change to others.

How will you reinforce behaviour?

• What rewards will you give to people who actively support the change?
• What sanctions will their be for saboteurs?

Questions you should you be prepared to answer when communicating change.

What will you do to:

• Overcome fear.
• Compensate people whose roles/status will be worsened as a result of the change.
• Create heroes.
• Encourage people to discover their special gifts and talents and use them during the change process.
• Treat people as though they are special.
• Make the change process a magical adventure of self discovery.
• Inject magic, fun and creativity into the change.
• Support your company’s vision/values as you implement the change?
• Ensure the change stays on track?

Why should this change/implementation work, when previous ones have failed?

Give people a chance to participate.

One of the secrets of getting buy-in to any change is ‘participation’. When people participate in planning how the change will impact on them, they are less likely to resist change. So let employees communicate:

• Their hopes, fears and ideas on how to make the change work.
• Their vision of the future after the change has been implemented.
• The contribution they’d like to make to the change – using their own special talents and strengths.
• What they can do ensure their team and the company achieve the benefits they want.

A final word on resistance and buy-in

When people resist change, they are not ‘being difficult’. Rather they have a real reason why the change will not work, or will not benefit them.

• As the ‘author’ of your change process, you can choose to win them over with a well conceived plan,
• or you could choose to push them into a situation where they feel trapped, and thus create drama and conflict.

The choice is yours.

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If you'd like to get a group involved in developing a change strategy, and want to facilitate a powerful session, have a look at "Winning the Game of Change." Based on best practices of successful change management and strategy implementation, it provides a step by step approach for developing a powerful change strategy.