How can you reduce risks and uncertainties in change management?

This is an excellent opportunity to do the first stage of the actual change management and get buy in and ideas from the stakeholders. Deliver a strong communications campaign first. This needs to educate the stakeholders about some of the thoughts around why the change is necessary. It also needs to openly get answers from the stakeholders about their own thoughts. At this stage you should also deliver any assurances you can to the workforce about the change. If you do this well, the stakholders will embrace the change and fully participate in delivering it.

Remember that your stakeholders are not just those in leadership positions. Involve the people who do the work. Include people with varying levels of experience and tenure. For process changes, include people from upstream (i.e. those who provide inputs for the process) as well as downstream from the process.

Embarking on organizational change? ?? Do your homework first! ?? 1?? Understand the Current State: Grasp your organization's present situation.?? 2?? Identify Need for Change: Determine urgency, benefits, costs, risks.?? 3?? Use Analysis Tools: Leverage SWOT, stakeholder, gap, risk analyses.?? Armed with this knowledge, you'll navigate change effectively, capitalizing on strengths and addressing weaknesses. ???? What's your first step when initiating change? Share your strategies!

A much better way than SWOT is a SOAR analysis, as it takes a more positive approach. SOAR stands for Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, and Results. Here's how the SOAR analysis framework works: 1. Strengths: Identify and leverage your organization's existing strengths and capabilities. Focus on what your company does well. 2. Opportunities: Identify external factors or trends that could create opportunities for your organization's growth or success. 3. Aspirations: Clearly define your organization's vision and goals. What do you want to achieve? Use this as a guide to steer your decisions. 4. Results: Determine the specific outcomes or results you want to achieve. Think about the measurable impact and the desired end state.

Charting a new course? ?? Craft your vision and strategy! ??? 1?? Define Vision: Determine the desired future state of your organization.?? 2?? Create Strategy: Map out the pathway to reach this state.??? 3?? Communication is Key: Share your vision and strategy compellingly and consistently with all stakeholders.?? Make sure they align with organizational values, mission, and goals. Show how the change benefits everyone. ?? How do you communicate vision during change? Comment below!

Use these 5 change models 1. The Bridges' Transition Model states that change requires individuals to go through 3 stages: endings, the neutral zone, and new beginnings. 2. Kotter's 8-Step Model: create urgency, form a coalition, develop a vision, communicate the vision, empower employees, create quick wins, consolidate improvements, and institutionalize new approaches. 3. Lewin's Change Model proposes a 3-step process: unfreeze, change, and refreeze. 4. The ADKAR Model emphasizes 5 outcomes: awareness of the need, desire to support, knowledge of how to change, ability to implement, and reinforcement to sustain. 5. McKinsey's 7-S Model highlights 7 factors for change: strategy, structure, systems, skills, staff, shared values, style.

This is another opportunity for the organisation to move together and to find the collective vision. It is exciting to be able to listen to stakeholders thoughts about the organisation and give a more rounded view. It also takes everyone on the journey. This means that the transistion from ending to new beginnings is shorter and less likely to meet resistance.

Charting a new course? ?? Craft your vision and strategy! ??? 1?? Define Vision: Determine the desired future state of your organization.?? 2?? Create Strategy: Map out the pathway to reach this state.??? 3?? Communication is Key: Share your vision and strategy compellingly and consistently with all stakeholders.?? Make sure they align with organizational values, mission, and goals. Show how the change benefits everyone. ?? How do you communicate vision during change? Comment below!

If you ignore the stakeholders then change will become a war where everyone loses. The whole change process should be built around good people and should empower them to support the process. Everyone has something useful to contribute and the whole change will be better delivered and more meaningful.

Engaging your people isn’t just a “nice to have.” If you want to truly mitigate risk and get from point A to point B, you need to think about people risks. To bring people on the journey with you there has to be effective communication and established feedback loops. Otherwise people feel change is happening TO them instead of WITH them.

The main role in change management is for the innovators, trailblazers, visionaries, pioneers, revolutionaries, creators, mavericks, or game changers. Answer the following five questions to check if you are really an innovator: ? 1. Are you curious and able to come up with original ideas? ? 2. Do you have the courage to take real risks in everyday life? ? 3. Are other people prepared to follow you when you take them on a path no one ever took before? ? 4. Do you change your mind and pivot your idea when it is proven wrong? ? 5. Do you persist and make it reality, even when everybody tells you it can't be done? A real innovator is a curious, creative, courageous, convincing, persistent, open-minded human being. Are you ??????

Engaging and encouraging employee input and feedback is key. It needs to be done effectively. Roundtable session where everyone has an equal opportunity to engage (from senior management to junior staff) in an open discussion where titles are left at the door. Afterbrurners Group have a great process for effective de briefs.

Here are five examples of how you can apply SMART criteria to your change management project: 1. Specific: Define a specific objective f.e., "Increase employee engagement by implementing a feedback mechanism." 2. Measurable: Establish measurable metrics f.e. "Increase employee satisfaction scores by 15% within six months." 3. Achievable: Ensure realistic goals f.e. "Implement new communication channels to enhance collaboration within the organization." 4. Relevant: Align with overall objectives f.e. "Improve customer satisfaction by reducing product delivery time." 5. Time-bound: Set a specific timeframe f.e., "Complete the implementation of new processes and tools within three months."

Answer the question: "How do we know or how can we prove that this change is sucessful and then create a data lake and collect the metrics to suppprt the insight against that as a framework.

Managing change? Measure and monitor your progress! ???? 1?? Outcomes: Track both quantitative and qualitative impacts of the change. ?? 2?? Indicators: Use relevant metrics for performance, quality, and efficiency. ?? 3?? Feedback: Collect and analyze stakeholder data to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. ?? Remember, continuous improvement is the key to successful change! ????? What metrics do you use to measure change in your organization? Let's discuss below!

Generally we do a change readiness assessment or audit once during a change and that is it. Measurement is many times an afterthought for change management practitioners because we are focused on the 'soft' side of change. Build in more assessment gates on the people side. There are at least 4 key assessment gates to ensure readiness for each phase of a change effort starting with leadership, then launch, then implementation and then transition to operations.

To prevent wasting time on a change that is not optimal - or worse, does not work at all - consider iterative change. You can pivot more easily than with a big bang change, and resistance to the change will likely be less.

Change is constant and learning from it is crucial. ???? 1?? Reflect: Learn from the change process and apply insights to future decisions. ???? 2?? Share: Disseminate best practices and insights across the organization. ???? 3?? Celebrate: Recognize and reward efforts and achievements. ???? Foster a culture of innovation and learning for continuous improvement! ???? What's a key lesson you've learned from managing change? Share your insights below!

I find running a change project in an Agile format works really well in this scenario. Agile has some routines and rituals that are just about learning from the current project - this is always critical.

Encourage progress over perfection to create a collective growth mindset and celebrate small wins, when possible to promote learning. Be reassuring throughout the process and communicate that through key messages in written form and in person to maintain trust.

I like to share with you that in a culture that embraces change FAIL stands for ‘FIRST ATTEMPT IN LEARNING’. Help others in your organisation sharing this quote ???.

As change is being implemented, organization should also define and strategize the long term sustainment plan. A few examples include: ?What mechanism or tool to use to track and communicate changes in policy & procedures ?Who to maintain the change documentation, policy & procedure, or job aids ?a define process to review and approve the changes They sound minor but they feed into the continuous monitoring and improvement plan to keep the communications and expectations aligned within an organization. And they are integral in enterprise implementation where they aid in gap analysis, and organizational development.

Every leader in the organization should be formally trained in the basics of change management. It's the leader's job to create, cultivate, and ensure this is the culture. Micro changes lead to macro results.

The keys to change boil down to understanding what the proposed change is and how it supports the objectives of the business, knowing your risk tolerance, and having a contingency plan. All too often I’ve seen people chase shiny objects and ideas that don’t fit into the larger plan, and even if successful can ultimately have unexpected consequences (for good and bad) that derail other core objectives. On the other side is discouraging people from taking risks, which then means the business falls behind, and so do people’s careers. Make informed decisions, accepting things won’t go to plan, but knowing you can adapt!

?? Every Change Management (CM) is associated with risk or uncertainty (R/U). These R/U can be illuminated or reduced at the initial or during the change stages. ?? The R/U at the initial stage; Change impact Assessment (CIA) should be conducted in order to identify the R/U and their level of impact on the process, system and people. This will lead to the creation of the CIA Plan which will contain the R/U control measures. ?? The R/U during the change stage; This is as a result monitoring. It involves reviewing and updating existing CIA Plan for implementation being it on processes, people and systems. ??Reduce strategy: ??People: Communication and Training. ??Process: illumination or introduction. ?? System: Modification or upgrade.