7 Ways to Facilitate Change Within Your Organization

Part 2 of a four-part series

Part 1: Faster Change Management
Part 2: 7 Ways to Facilitate Change
Part 3: Problem Solving vs. Process Improvement
Part 4: How Delays Affect Change

You want to get change going within your organization. The question is how do you get started?

1^st Create a Change Baseline

Your own assumptions about what motivates people will determine the success or failure of your change program. If your assumptions are incorrect, you may miss the keys to gaining stakeholder ownership of the change process.

Why is this you ask? Because, people do what they do for a reason. A person’s behavior (what we observe) is an expression of their underlying beliefs and assumptions. Therefore to make our change initiative appealing to others, we must understand why they do what they do.

The baseline is created by identifying the dissatisfaction, vision, 1^st steps and change resistance for each stakeholder involved with your change program. Use an excel spreadsheet and make a table listing the stakeholders and each area of investigation.

• Who are the stakeholders?
• What are people dissatisfied about?
• How do they feel about the planned changes (Vision).
• What steps will have a good Return on Investment (ROI)?
• And finally, what resistance must be overcome to succeed.

2^nd Define the Change Strategies

We now have a baseline of the key issues for each stakeholder. The next step is to select the ones that you can realistically alter and develop targeted strategies to alter them. People won’t change unless they feel safe, secure and in control over the results. You can’t just force people to change by management decree. You must change their underlying assumptions with a credible plan.

List what assumptions need to change. Include a strategy for overcoming the resistance to change identified for each stakeholder group. The strategy should fill the gaps. Increasing dissatisfied will improve motivation. Increasing the vision element will ensure the program is completed. Increasing 1^st steps will make sure the program gets started. And decreasing resistance will simplify the whole effort.

3^rd Change the Measurements

The measurements define the culture of an organization. What you measure is what you manage and the person that does the measuring is the manager. So, in order to change the outcomes we must change what is measured and possibly, who is the one doing the measuring. Think about this a little.

The one that measures is receiving feedback, which is the result of prior changes. This is known as a control loop. If the one that measures can’t make changes or the one that makes the changes can’t measure the results then you will have a delay in making new changes and delays are serious wastes that cause serious troubles… (We will talk about delays again next week).

Leaders define the performance standards or measures. You can’t introduce new measurements into the organization and then continue to ask for the old ones. So if a leader keeps asking for the old information, people will give it to them. If a leader seems to counter the aims of your change program, then people will respond the same way.

4^th Communicate Change Details

Define what needs to change in as much detail as possible. For example, you can’t just say that salespeople need to be friendlier to customers. You have to communicate the behavior characteristics, such as greeting customers warmly, asking about their concerns, or addressing them by name. Once you know what the behavior looks like, translate it in detail to employees and then reward them immediately for doing it.

5^th Communicate Successful Changes

Reward those that change and acknowledge there contribution. Focus your attention on people that change and ignore those that do not. This will send the message to others that you value the changes made and, in turn, encourage others to participate in the change program. For the best benefit, the reward and the acknowledgment need to be immediate and public.

6^th Measure Change Progress

Make sure you have a regular method to capture where the organization stands with respect to the change program. Is the current dissatisfaction, vision, and 1^st steps level greater than the change resistance? People are not mechanical systems. Their behaviors are the result of internal beliefs and assumptions. We must measure and monitor the progress being made to ensure that the change program is having an affect on those beliefs and assumptions.

7^th Ensure Change Lasts

Increasing the values in the change formula will help bring about behavior changes. However, it alone will not make them stick. Organizational culture is far more persistent than people may allow for. So, change must be an iterative and interactive process and not a single event. Go back to the 1^st step and update the change baseline. Discover new changes that are needed. Develop new change strategies and keep up the change.

Only the mediocre are always at their best. The rest of us must keep on changing, striving for something better, and achieving something more.

Part 1: Faster Change Management
Part 2: 7 Ways to Facilitate Change
Part 3: Problem Solving vs. Process Improvement
Part 4: How Delays Affect Change

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Posted on Friday, March 11th, 2005 under Business Management & Operations, Business Process Improvement