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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

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

Change Management 101

Defining change management

What is change management? That was the question I was asked while introducing myself and answering the: “what do you do”, question. Although the person had heard the term he really didn’t understand what it was, or the value it can bring to an organization.

In broad terms, organizational change management is the process used to help people, in an organization, to let go of their current activities and behaviours, and adopt different behaviours, activities and interactions to enable a new work environment.

Three words you need to know for successful organizational change

Process – change is a process. Change management focuses more on facilitating the change process and less on managing the concrete dimension of the change. Unlike project management you don’t really manage change you support and enable the change process.

Turner Change ManagementPeople – organizations don’t change unless the people do. While new processes, strategies and cutting edge hardware and system changes may be critical to your organization’s success, none of these alone can carry your business over the finish line. They need people – your people – to bring them to life and make them work for your business.

Adopt – integrate the new behaviours or activities so people can live the change. It is only when people adopt the new behaviours as the normal way of working that your changes can be sustained.  Every organization can implement change. But only organizations that can sustain the new environment are able to use change as their competitive advantage. Change management focuses on building true commitment to the change initiative by fully engaging the individuals involved.

The role of change management

Change management’s role is not to manipulate people into doing something they don’t want to do. The role of change management is to help each person move through the changes the organization needs to make, as comfortably as possible.

This means helping them envision and prepare for the new work environment — doing new tasks, using new skills, or even sitting in a new seat. Once prepared and confident of their success in the new world, they can approach the change with less stress and anxiety.

Change Management good for businessChange management is good for business. It can help you achieve the true value of the change with less disruption to your daily operation. And when your change management efforts are directed toward readiness, resistance can be prevented. The effects of well-managed change are cumulative. Successfully managing one change builds both your organization’s and your team’s capacity for the next organizational change — and that’s just good business.

Regards,

Dawn-Marie

P.S. Check out Living and Leading Change —  one of the most comprehensive organizational change programs available. Learn the knowledge and skills you need to turn change into your competitive advantage.

Dr. Dawn-Marie Turner is an international researcher, speaker, writer and certified management consultant (CMC). She is president of Turner Change Management, a company that specializes in helping leaders navigate the complexities of organizational change.  She has a doctorate in applied management and decision science from Walden University.

This post was updated on August 23, 2017. It was originally published as “Three Words You Should Know When Managing Organizational Change”

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