By Paul Plotczyk, President, WSA
Last month's article examined Why Change Efforts Fail. This month, the focus is on how to make change efforts succeed. What does it take to realize real strategic change? Where do you focus? How do you sustain it? How do you know when you've succeeded?
Successful Strategic Change:
- Requires - a Shift in your Organization's Lifestyle
- Demands – Self-knowledge, Planning and Persistence
- Addresses – Attitude, Work Environment and Processes.
Change Your Organizational Lifestyle
Many organizational change efforts have the staying power of a typical New Year's Resolution. We are willing to make radical changes for a little while to achieve a specific goal. But once the goal is reached, we revert back to old ways of doing things. A quick fix is achieved, but no permanent change takes place.
In order for your organization to undergo major change, you must change its lifestyle so that it will perform differently and achieve different results as a natural consequence of the new way of doing business.
Self-Knowledge, Planning and Persistence
Honestly assess your organization today – its strengths and weaknesses in terms of markets, customers, products & processes and profitability. Understand what you do and why and how you do it. Know both the intended and unintended results of the way you operate. Know why you are dissatisfied with the way things are.
Define the new “end-state” you desire. Express this in your vision statement. Where do you want the enterprise to be in five years? What new markets? New products or services? Where should profits be?
This typically is an iterative process in which leaders address the key questions focused on defining the business need and shaping the problem, such as: “Why should we change?” and “What ‘problems' are we trying to solve?”
Understand the gap. The difference between where you are now and where you want to be. Design an action plan for your change initiative to close that gap.
Open up to Change. To achieve the improvements you want, you might have to consider changing many things – processes, procedures, operations, systems, structure, tools and the measures of what's important.
Align Senior Management. Key individuals must be committed to the shared vision and the changes required to achieve it. They must champion the change process and be visibly and personally involved.
Deploy the resources necessary to create the infrastructure and the critical mass needed for successful change. For example, prepare to invest in training substantial numbers of employees at all levels in a variety of skill areas. To get more return on investment, effort should be placed in “on-the-job” training vs. classroom so people can quickly assimilate their new skills and competencies.
Plan for the change process. Create a road map. Identify how you will start, what you will do, who will be involved, who will be accountable. Expect complexity and multiple initiatives. Know that most systems are affected by many interdependent variables.
Define measurements. How will you measure progress during the systemic change process? Tie change process goals and measurements into managers' overall operational goals. Change is everybody's job, not a special project. Determine how you will get regular feedback, which is essential to assess progress and allow for mid-course correction.
Communicate continually. Honest two-way communication is essential in any competitive organization. Make sure that all formal and informal communications are linked to each other and express and reiterate the message of change. (See below, Leaderships' Critical Behaviors)
Address Attitude, Work Environment, Processes
These three dimensions are intertwined and you should address all of them together. In each, there's a distinct barrier to overcome if the change process is to succeed.
- “I don't want to” – the attitude barrier. This is the most difficult barrier to overcome, as the change process challenges fundamental beliefs about work, relationships at work and personal identity. People wonder: “How will change affect me? Will management really follow through?” Some will immediately embrace the change; others will take a wait-and-see attitude and become convinced when they see positive results; others will always resist.
- “I'm not expected to” – the work environment barrier. Empower people to act. Ensure accountability by adjusting targets and measures to the new goals. Reward them for doing business the new way.
- “I don't know how to” – the process barrier. Train people to do what's expected of them. Convert goals to tasks: establish procedures for monitoring processes according to the new expectations.
Significant change in the way an enterprise organizes itself requires new skills; upsets traditional relationships and networks; alters positions, titles, compensation and career opportunities; and changes the status and the power of many individuals and groups within the company.
Activities that educate and/or involve broad cross sections of employees in the discovery and implementation activities can yield huge dividends in gaining rapid acceptance of the emerging culture, counter the tendency to be self absorbed (“naval gazing”) and help maintain the focus on business results and performance. And of course, we can't emphasize enough the crucial need for leadership involvement.
Critical Leadership Behaviours
Express: (Say) State the message. Use your position of leadership to say what you need to say - repeatedly, at every opportunity. Once is not enough.
Model: (Do) This is twice as important as what you say. Actions speak louder than words. What do you need to do differently? (Decision making, setting priorities, allocating resources)
Reinforce: (Drive) How will you reward people as well as provide consequenses? This is three times as important as what you say. (Recognition, promotion, rewards)
What to Do
Although each stage is presented as distinct and independent, organizational change is uneven and non-linear and therefore, the stages are interdependent and overlap. Consequently, the order in which the suggestions are presented do not necessarily represent the order in which they may be carried out. At any point, the implementation of this process could be characterized as, “a work in progress.”
If you are interested in a set of specific actions for your organization, please contact us 781-343-4008 or at consulting@wsa-intl.com.
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