Three Steps To Get Your Employees Ready For Change

This summer (2011), my daughter graduated from high school.  This was a highly anticipated change event. Like many parents, I had been looking forward to seeing her graduate for months, perhaps even years. Yet, as she walked across the stage to get her diploma, I felt a deep sense of loss. As I looked around the hall at other mothers dabbing their eyes and fathers fidgeting, I knew I was not alone.

At that moment, I was reminded of how a single change event was both an ending and a beginning.

I also noticed that my response to the event was determined by whether I focused on the ending or the beginning. And this directly influenced my change readiness. When I focused on the change as the end (of her childhood), I experienced a sense of loss and felt sad. When I focused on the change as the beginning (of her adulthood) and the next phase of our lives, I became more aware and open to the opportunities.

Help People to Accept the End with the Beginning 

A change event as both an ending and a beginning has implications for organizational change. To adopt the new state, change-recipients need to accept the ending but focus on the new state. Just shifting the change-recipients focus is not enough for organizational change success, but it is necessary. Without this shift in focus, change cannot happen.

Like the graduation, where the change recipients focus their attention will define their response. It directly influences whether their energy is focused on maintaining the current state or moving toward the new state. One important task of a change leader is to help the change-recipients understand that change is not either an ending or a beginning.  It is both an ending, and a beginning. Leaders who effectively balance the old system’s ending with the beginning of the new system can increase the change-recipients’ level of readiness. William Bridges author of Managing Transitions said, “It is the great paradox of change: to maintain continuity we must change”.

Raising Change Readiness

Here are three things you can do to help people see the beginning with the ending and raise your organization’s change readiness:

    1. Talk about the need for change and allow time for people to internalize this need. The need for the change should be clearly understood by everyone affected — it must be internalized. When we internalize the need for change, it becomes meaningful. Adopting the new becomes tied to both our success and our failure.  If the students had not internalized the need to complete high school (almost a decade ago) and the teachers and parents had not enabled the internalization, graduation could not have happened.
    2. Acknowledge the ending of the current state with respect. Remember that what the organization now considers old or in need of change was once the new idea. As my daughter and I move through our significant life transition, we do find ourselves looking back. Not to wish for the past, but to acknowledge where it has brought us, understand how it has shaped our relationship, and use it as a building block for an even better relationship.
    3. State a clear, concise, and concrete intended outcome that is meaningful to the change-recipients and the organization.  It should provide a clear and concrete picture of the new environment. This is essential for change readiness.  This year’s graduates couldn’t possibly know exactly what the future holds, but as they accepted their diplomas, each one stated a clear intended outcome for the year ahead. They were looking toward life after high school. Every change requires people to let go of the current state and adopt a new state. In this respect, every change is both an ending and a beginning. Leaders that help their employees balance the ending with the beginning can raise the level of change readiness in their organization.

Updated from Original Version published Sept 6, 2011 (September 5, 2016)

HELPING YOU MOVE CHANGE FROM A LIABILITY TO AN ASSET FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION!

Dr. Dawn-Marie Turner

Conversations about Climate: How Change Management Can Bridge the Divide

/
0 Comments
Social media, newspapers, news feeds, television — anywhere you look, you’ll find something about climate change and the devastating effects it is having around the world. Close to home, shifting weather patterns — record-breaking floods in Ontario, tornadoes in the mid-western U.S., droughts and devastating wild fires along the west coast of the U.S. and Canada — have created a stark reality. And yet, the debate about whether global warming and climate change are real continues. For someone like me, who looks to science to guide my thinking, it’s hard to understand how there can be any debate.

How to help your employees when positions are being deleted, but they’re not being let go

/
0 Comments
Twenty years ago I used to like Diet Coke. I drank it almost like water. I don't drink it anymore, but that's another story. When I went to a restaurant and asked for a Diet Coke and they served me Diet Pepsi I would grumble.

You Just Announced A Restructuring Now What?

/
0 Comments

3 Things A Whaler and a Change Leader Have in Common

Dr. Dawn-Marie Turner This summer I got an unexpected demonstration of change leadership. While whale watching off the coast of Vancouver Island our whale boat captain reminded me of three factors necessary for successful change leadership.

Read more

Your Employees Don’t Share Your Change Vision, How to Change That

Read more

Oh No! Don’t Yo-Yo: Three Actions for Creating Sustainable Change

Read more

Three reasons to stop trying to project manage change

I often hear leaders talk about change management as the people side of project management. This isn’t surprising because for most leaders their first introduction to change management is when launching or implementing a large project.

man with plan project plan j0308929The informal surveys and conversations I have had with leaders, and the research all suggest a project-based approach to change is the most common. But, it isn’t the most effective or efficient way to enable organizational change.

Approach Versus Methodology

Before talking further about the advantages and disadvantages of a project-based approach, it is helpful to understand the difference between a change management methodology and your approach to change.

A change management methodology is a structured set of steps for planning and implementing organizational change. Like other methodologies, (e.g., project management, business process re-engineering) it provides a consistent framework for decision-making and guiding the activities of the leaders. For example the DEAM methodology, I developed, is a process based framework that helps leaders apply the essential elements for successful and sustainable change.

Your approach to change is broader and deeper than a methodology. It reflects your values and beliefs about change. It will drive what you focus on throughout the process, the time you allocate, and how you perceive and involve the people affected. Your approach also determines the way you use a change management methodology.

Three disadvantages to the project-based approach to change

The project-based or as I call it in Launch Lead Live the project-centric approach to change draws heavily from project management. This approach is better than nothing. Another advantage of the approach is that it provides leaders with a structure for managing the Event dimension of change. However, when compared with more developmental and participative approaches (e.g., change-recipient centric) it has three disadvantages. These are:

1. Discourages ownership.

The focus of the project-based approach is on establishing a change leader and one or more project/change teams who act as change champions. This team or teams have been delegated the responsibility for planning, and implementing the change for the organization. The focus on change champions versus wide spread active involvement of the change-recipients absolves people from owning the behaviours and activities needed to achieve the intended outcome.

The result—change in the larger group of change-recipients is inhibited.

2. Minimizes the impact of the Whitespace.

The belief that change can be managed through the completion of tasks and deliverables (i.e. case for change, training) overlooks the impact of the Whitespace. The Whitespace is the intangible space between where people are when the change is announced and where they need to be to sustain the new environment and get a return on your investment. Although people move through a predictable pattern, change is an iterative emergent process. This means there is lots of back and forth. Research has shown leaders who used linear approaches, and who saw change as predictable and sequential tended to fail.

3. Underestimates on the amount of time needed for sustainable change.

Estimating the time needed to complete a project is typically based on scope, resources, and the tasks and deliverables. The problem with using this method to estimate the time needed for change is, people don’t adopt a new behaviour, activity, or work environment by completing a series of tasks or deliverables. Especially when some one else or some other group has defined these tasks and deliverables.

People need time to internalize the need, make sense of the outcome, and navigate the implementation of the new behaviours or activities. Then people (we) need time to enable these new activities to become normalized (new steady state). It’s only when the new environment has become our normal environment that the change will be sustained. For example, the new software or business process is used as intended (without the “tweaks” that turn it into the old), and become,“the way it’s done around here”. The time people need to reach new steady state is usually not accounted for in a typical project-based approach. The failure to achieve new steady state is a contributing factor to change fatigue.

In Executive Change Leader and Living and Leading Change Course I show leaders how to complete a Transition Map. A transition map provides a snapshot of key intangible elements. These intangible elements need to be included in your planning if the new activities and behaviours are to be sustained.

The failure to reach new steady state makes it easy for employees to wait the Event out, or shift back to the old way after the project is completed.

The most effective approach to change is the least used

There is an alternative to the project-based approach; it is the change-recipient centric approach. This approach moves beyond a focus on tasks and deliverables and enables leaders to address the intangible elements people need to adopt and sustain change. It is an emergent, participative approach that focuses on building readiness instead of managing resistance.

2016 Pixabay group planning involvement startup-593341_1280Leaders using this approach view the change from the perspective of the change-recipient. They expect, encourage, and create the environment for the active involvement of the change-recipients.

Adopting the change-recipient centric approach to change is in itself a change. It requires new and different leadership and management skills–and like all change it will initially feel uncomfortable. It is also not the common or popular approach. Despite this, I believe, it is worth the effort to adopt this type of approach. Research has shown a participative and emergent approach to change results in higher levels of adoption in the shortest amount of time. It also enables healthier, stronger organizations that thrive because of change and not simply survive in spite of change.

Here are three questions that can help you develop a change-recipient centric approach to change:

  1. What is the change-recipients’ perception of the change?
  2. What impact do current organizational structures and systems have on the perception and success of this change?
  3. What is needed to create and enable the conversations for change?

Helping you move change from a liability to an asset for your organization!

Dr. Dawn-Marie Turner

Portions of this post are excerpts from Launch Lead Live: The executive’s guide to preventing resistance and succeeding with organizational change.

Don’t have your copy. Order it today.

Roadsign Changes next exit

Oh No! Don’t Yo-Yo: Three Actions for Creating Sustainable Change

/
0 Comments
photo of skyscrapers

Three reasons to stop trying to project manage change

/
0 Comments
I often hear leaders talk about change management as the people…
Men in suites running on a track crossing a red ribbon finish line

3 Ways an Intended Outcome Story Will Help Your Change

/
0 Comments
The lack of a clear vision is one of the major reasons organizational change initiatives fail. I agree that every organization should have a vision, but every organizational change needs more than a vision, it needs an intended outcome.

To learn how to use the change-recipient centric approach Contact us to learn about upcoming courses.