Chapter 10 Expanding Your Ability to Apply What You’ve Learned 165
Take a look at the Resources page at the end of this book. On my web-site (www.askaboutchange.com) you will find a lot of free resources that can help you teach this approach to others.
Don’t worry about teaching it perfectly. Better to get it out there so people can begin to use it. You can work on the fine points as others read portions of this book or take advantage of the free resources.
Use These Lenses as You Plan and Implement Changes
You may find that the four stages in the cycle—Making a Compelling Case for Change, Getting Started on the Right Foot, Keeping Change Alive, and Getting Back on Track—provide all the structure you need to plan and implement a change. If so, force yourselves to stick with this model. For example, if the work is at the Making a Compelling Case for Change stage, then keep your focus there until it’s done. In other words, stay at that stage until you know you’ve made a case.
Reread the chapter that covers the stage where you are working. And bring in other resources that you know apply at that stage.
The temptation will be to move too quickly. You’ll make a half-hearted attempt to make a case. You’ll think that your epic PowerPoint show replete with bullet points and clip art did the job, and you won’t take time to see if you truly finished the work of that stage.
You may already have a change process that you love to use. Great. Don’t switch horses now, but make sure that the process you follow covers all the things you need to do to build support for your new initiative.
Or perhaps you are about to start a very technical change, like creat- ing a software system that touches all parts of your organization. You need a game plan that reflects the very specific challenges associated with this new enterprise-wide software. I encourage you to use the approaches you’ve just learned—the Cycle of Change and the three levels of support and resis- tance—as a lens to look at the human side of change at every stage.
Here are some things to consider:
Making a Compelling Case for Change
You may need to back up and add this stage into your plan if you skipped it. If so, read chapter 6 again, “How to Make a Compelling Case for Change.”