Chapter 18

Ten Essential Principles of Leading Successful Change

In This Chapter

Creating a consensus of the change and developing a clear plan for the change

Building a change team and defining change management roles

Removing critical barriers and managing employee resistance

Communicating and building competencies through training and educational programs

Leading business change is not easy. The difficulty arises in trying to keep the business going while the change is happening — some equate leading business change to changing the oil in your car while driving. But with the right team and right method, your change can be sustainable and impactful and maintain productivity while it’s happening. The ten tips in this section give you the overview.

Creating a Consensus of the Change

When you know your business is changing, begin creating a concise vision of the future state and the reason why the organization needs to make this change. This common understanding of why the change needs to happen links the vision of the future, the core values of the company, and the mission of the organization. The vision is generally provided by the senior leaders, but it should include the perspectives of everyone impacted by the change. It is much easier to generate a shared understanding if most of the people who will need to change how they do business already agree with where the organization wants to grow and change.

The case for change needs to grab the attention of employees. Some reasons for change include achieving higher customer and employee satisfaction, creating long-term sustainability in a volatile market, increasing revenues and profits, or creating an innovative and open company culture.

To build a powerful case for the change (check out the tools in the change toolbox in Chapter 4 for how to do this), you need to work relentlessly to generate understanding and consensus. You will know if the vision and need are shared when everyone in the organization knows what needs to change and why they need to change in the first place. Storytelling and visioning a brighter future illustrate how the company will make positive change for their employees, customers, and external stakeholders.

Developing a Clear Plan and Strategy for the Change

Creating a strategy for change moves the organization from simply having a vision of the future to having a plan for how the organization will get there. Making a change strategy includes creating objectives and goals that are long-term focused on financial performance, people management and employee retention, customer satisfaction, and robust operations. Change requires people to act differently, so the strategy should also include designing new measures that are consistent with the new goals of the business.

A documented and detailed action plan eliminates confusion and false starts associated with the change. A project plan for change includes definable phases of the change, measurable steps to track progress, and assigned responsibilities for these steps. Aligning the change plan to strategic objectives helps set short-term goals, creates clear action items, and quantifies milestones along the way to turn change slogans into change substance.

Engaging Executive Sponsorship

Strong leadership is required if the change is to be momentous and sustainable. Good leaders inspire the employees to rally behind the change and make it happen.

Grassroots change (change that begins at the employee level) can happen. It just takes much longer. Leadership from the top puts the seal of approval on the change and can help align change initiatives to the broader mission of the company. When executives actively participate in change from beginning to end, they automatically build a coalition of other leaders in the organization for employees to rally behind.

The number-one rule for engaging leaders during change is to make sure executives do what they say they will do. It’s hard to admit, but most leaders are really bad at follow-though. Projects get started and then stop because of lack of funding, lack of interest, or another idea that came along. Executives (like you, perhaps?) should be honest with employees about why past projects stopped and what they’re going to personally do to make sure that this one doesn’t. And then they should get things done as promised.

Executive sponsors can help create a continuous conversation about the creation of value for all parties involved. Leaders often have a broader view of how the changes may impact other departments and teams and will therefore be able to make the tough calls when it comes to sharing resources or resolving dissent.

Outside of building a vision and creating a shared understanding of why change needs to happen, executives are also connected to both internal and external customers of the change. From this position, they’re able to rigorously examine the customer needs and help the change team prioritize the needs of the customers.

Building a Powerful Change Team

If leading business change is like an oil change while driving, you need a stellar pit crew to make sure you don’t skid off the change road. Building a powerful change team isn’t just about getting a bunch of superstars in the room and giving them the authority to change the organization. It’s recruiting people who work well together, who have extraordinary communication and conflict-resolution skills, and who will actively engage other people.

Involve team members from the different departments that will be impacted by the change on the change team. Bringing in people from around the company builds commitment and significantly increases the likelihood of a successful transformation.

Powerful change teams don’t just follow a project plan; they facilitate ideas. Encourage teams to come up with new and better ways of doing things instead of just doing what they’re told. Team members who develop a new process or solution are likely to be advocates to other employees.

Ideal change team members should have the desire to challenge the status quo, be optimistically persistent, cultivate relationships within the organization, and balance short-term goals with long-term objectives. The team should have a good mix of individuals who foster ideas and creativity and those who get things done.

Defining Change-Management Roles Clearly

A powerful change team works together to make things happen because the members have clear roles and responsibilities on the project. Just like a pit crew on the race track, change-team members all have their own responsibilities and trust that other team members are doing their job.

Common change-management roles include a change agent (the project leader), a change sponsor (the executive ultimately responsible for making the change happen), and four to eight core members who represent the departments and job roles going through the change. Most teams also have team members who support the core team; these team members may have specific talents or information that is used at various points during the change but do not have a full-time role. Many of these team members will be your change advocates or change ambassadors (check on change-leader roles in Chapter 3).

Using the RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) model for change-management roles helps eliminate confusion around who is doing what and who is responsible. Each change project should have the following roles:

Responsible: The individual or individuals (limit this role to one or two people) in charge of getting the job done. These people are your change agents.

Accountable: Change sponsors are often the ones who have the ultimate decision-making and approval authority.

Consulted: Change advocates are often part of a group that can provide input into a decision or action before it occurs.

Informed: This group is the individuals or teams who must be informed that a decision or action has taken place. Be sure to include people who will be most impacted by the change.

A change network can help foster organizational acceptance in real time. Individuals in positions of influence in the organization can help communicate messages out to employees, solicit feedback from individuals in the field, and provide input to the change team throughout the project. These agents are the eyes, ears, and heart of the organization; they also are brutally honest and optimistically realistic on how the changes are being viewed and accepted in the larger employee population.

Removing Critical Barriers to Implementing Change

Identifying barriers to change is the first step to being able to knock every barrier or obstacle down. Executive leaders can help change teams align agendas and balance interests to reduce concern and conflict. Some of the common barriers to implementing change include

Lack of experience or knowledge on how to change

Undefined goals and objectives

Fear that employees lack the skills to do the job needed in the future

Lack of planning, structure, support, and resources to make the change real

Poor communication

Insufficient leadership support

The following suggestions can help you overcome these common barriers to change:

1. Be sure to create, communicate, and stick to a strategic plan.

2. Don’t jump into change without explaining the process to employees. Even though the change team and leadership team may be on board with the amount of work that needs to happen to make the change work, give employees ample time to learn about the new process.

3. Use productivity measures throughout the change process. Measurements don’t just come at the end of the change project; check to make sure the team is on track during the entire process of transition.

4. Communicate, collaborate, and communicate again.

It’s hard for employees to be against a new idea or way of doing business if they helped create the new way.

Managing the barriers to change is a fine balancing act between purely moving ahead and moving ahead while cultivating relationships to make the change last. Just blowing past barriers because a leader has the power in the organization to do so may get the change to the finish line faster, but this approach is rarely sustainable. As you work through barriers, treat each barrier and its owner with respect and ask others for help in removing the barrier, even if the person’s ideas of how to get rid of it (or whether it even needs to move) are different from your own. Building agreements on how to remove obstacles takes time, but the investment will pay off with a change everyone can agree with and support in the long term.

Managing Employee Resistance

Business changes can result in people resisting new ways because they fear losing status, power, or even their jobs. Employees may also become so used to a certain culture or way of doing things that they greet a new approach as they would a three-headed alien. Employee resistance can take many forms, everything from absenteeism to outright disagreement with the change.

To counter this resistance, keep everyone informed about what is happening, how they will be involved, and where employees should go if they need more information. This communication may be easier said than done for traditional, hierarchical organizations with a poor history of encouraging open discussion of issues, problems, and ideas. Managing resistance in these organizations or departments should start at the top with heads of departments talking with one another and visibly changing their behaviors to break down the walls that exist in the organization.

Whether your method for encouraging new ideas and communication is social media or employee meetings, you should give visibility and ownership to the event and recognition to people who contribute. Give people the power to make appropriate changes to the way things are done in their organization. Put a plan in place to act on good ideas and suggestions and let people know why you may not implement ones that don’t fit with the organizational strategy.

Sometimes the best way to eliminate resistance is to show success to the employees who are hesitant about the change. Although most change leaders want to make a significant impact with the change, be sure to balance out long-term goals with short-term wins. You can generate much-needed momentum by creating short-term milestones that employees can use to visibly demonstrate the positive influence the changes will have in the long term.

Creating and Using Communication Plans

For many employees, change may seem like an overwhelming task. Beyond the work involved and the emotional impact of changing the way business is done, many questions may pop up: What do I need to change? What do I need to do? When do I start? As a change leader, your job is to tell the truth and listen for feedback.

For your change to succeed, you must communicate continuously. Organizations with a high degree of trust and communication between decision makers and other workers minimize productivity loss during the transition from old to new. Keep employees informed about changes that will be happening before they happen. Clear, succinct messages will be understood. Honest messages will be believed.

You need to consider two main communication audiences during change:

Internal audiences usually require dialogues between employees and leadership.

External audiences, such as customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders, need communication from the organization. Often it is the CEO or public relations team communicating with large external audiences, but sales-team members and customer-service employees also speak with these audiences on a daily basis.

Keeping both sets of audiences informed about the process of change, the expected outcomes, and the results helps reduce resistance and increase buy-in and excitement for the future.

A communication plan should encompass the type of communication being used (company website, podcasts, e-mail, social media, meeting, webinar), the key message (what are the two or three things that people should learn), the channel for communication (how people will know about it), the owner (who is delivering the message), and the audience (who is receiving the message). The communication plan should appeal to your target audience and focus on accomplishments and success stories throughout the change cycle.

Building Competencies through Training and Educational Programs

A natural productivity loss is associated with all complex changes because of the learning curve required to move from the old to the new. Building competencies from the beginning of the project helps to lessen the significance of the productivity loss. You can build competencies in the organization in a number of ways, ranging from formal in-class training and virtual webinars to less-formal mentoring and networking opportunities.

Adults learn best when the training is relevant and can quickly apply to how they do their job after they leave the training. Role-based training is most effective when it is based on defined needs that address gaps in competences and when employees see the connection between the training and how they do their jobs.

Creating informal networks within the organization is a great way to encourage ongoing training and learning. Training should not be a “one and done” activity; make sure you have a plan to continually educate individuals on new best practices, refresh what was learned in the original training, and provide the same training opportunities to new employees.

Anchoring the Change

Anchoring the change involves celebrating successes, whether they be milestones or the completion of the change. But it’s not just about holding a party and shaking hands, although these aspects of change are important. Throughout the change process, to maintain focus and check your direction, take time to talk and document what is going well and why. And then properly acknowledge the completed change in various ways, from public celebrations to individual verbal acknowledgment to cash rewards for performance.

Paying for performance makes change sustainable because you’re rewarding the behavior the change set out to accomplish. Giving outstanding performers rewards for their contributions helps to motivate continued high performance. Remember to link the accomplishment to the reward and keep in mind that rewards do not need to be monetary. Non-momentary rewards include recognition from senior leadership, leadership-development opportunities, or creating an award of excellence. These forms of recognition can cost little but mean much more than a $10 gift card for coffee.

To celebrate the individuals with verbal acknowledgement, take the opportunity at the beginning of regular team meetings to highlight the successes and praise extraordinary accomplishments by team members. Giving credit where credit is due builds support and relationships. Be authentic with your praise and thanks.

Larger milestones and the overall completion of the change project need celebration, too. Taking a break during the long change journey is a great way to re-energize teams to keep moving forward and to take a much-needed look at how much progress has been made during the project. Outside of recognizing all the efforts and formally closing a project, celebrating success is a great opportunity to review expectations of the future and how the team can leverage lessons learned during the change in the future.