How can you scale and sustain change management benefits?

Aligning with culture is also important. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. And it can block your change process if you don’t align it.

In communicating change it's important that whoever is doing that can connect with individuals and ultimately find 'what's in it for them'. Human beings don't dislike change, they dislike discomfort and ambiguity. Even if the change communicated is negative, the communicator can still speak from a position of empathy to reduce resistance and have the employees more likely to understand and participate in what's to come. Ultimately not all changes are 'beneficial' - think of redundancies in a team because the work is being outsourced. However how you communicate can have an impact on reactions that ripple through the whole organisation and impact employer brand.

It's also key to align to what your affected people are going to go through with this change. Change management is all about people, so they need to be included as a vital part of any change- in addition to any process or technology change.

Change management is the backbone of successful organizational evolution. In today’s dynamic business landscape, adaptability and collaboration are key, but it’s equally essential to infuse empathy and interpersonal skills. We must show that we’re in this together, leading the process with care to minimize disruptions. Resilience helps us adapt, but it’s solidarity within the team that makes the transition truly effective. To scale and sustain change management benefits across the organization and beyond, it’s crucial to cultivate a culture of continuous learning and improvement, where the lessons from each change effort inform the next. #ChangeManagement #Resilience #Empathy #Teamwork #ContinuousImprovement”

I find myself always coming back to Kotter's 8 steps to change management. He maps a concise process flow for leading a change initiative with steps such as creating a sense of urgency, building a supportive coalition and taking some early wins. Each step in the process builds upon the other; follow the steps to increase your chances of success. I have unfortunately seen too many failed projects in which a failure to change the culture of the organization, the hearts and minds of the associates, led to a failure to embrace and adopt the change. Creating lasting change takes continuous effort to make it stick. Its important not to celebrate too early.

Including a feedback loop from these people is also helpful. Since change agents are the ones on the ground in the change, they may have pieces of information that would be vital to be able to sustain the change. It's good to inform people when and how their feedback is going to be implemented (or why it can't be). This way, people involved can feel a part of coming up with the solution and feel that they are being heard. This can help them become even stronger champions for the change.

It is not enough to engage change agents. To move from a push effect to a pull effect, you need to build internal communities of change, who see the change as part of their role, part of their personal mission to deliver. These communities build powerful momentum for change, and will drive #strategyexecution. #turbochargeyourtransformation

Change agents are so critical to getting people to even take baby steps to change. They can speak about change using their groups jargon to help them understand and feel heard. They serve as a voice for the challenges of their group and can provide tailored solutions and 1:1 trainings when people feel lost, frustrated, and intimidated.

It’s not good enough to provide opportunities for employees to share their thoughts, ideas, and strategies…you must also provide “safe” options for them to “try-it-out.” Good coaches know the value of consistent practice, and good supervisors understand that employees with guidance, ample time, and resources perform better.

This particular step is a critical element of creating an effective Change Management plan and as outlined highlights the potential to include different levels withing an organization. What I have found helpful when identifying Change Agents is to identify and approach the "indirect leaders" within an organization. These individuals are seen by their peers as leaders in their specific domain and have earned the respect of others through their engagement, behaviors, and direct actions. This type of person demonstrates leadership qualities outside of a declared leader title and instills trust when they are included as a Change Agent.

In the quest to scale and sustain change management, consider the strategic adoption of an Agile Change Mgmt Suite (ACMS). Integrated with your existing PDLC tools, an ACMS can offer a real-time holistic view of change impacts, enhancing your Unified Delivery Framework. ML algorithms can personalize change initiatives down to team or individual levels, dramatically increasing adoption rates. Employing a data lake for A/B testing change strategies facilitates data-driven decision-making, optimizing your approach in real-time. These technologies not only streamline change but turn it into a competitive advantage.

Keep in mind that there are many behind the scenes data analytics tools designed for IT admin incorporated into the technology that many enterprises use today. Often, these out of the box tools can provide excellent insights into the adoption of those technologies and processes without the need to build custom data analytics systems. Be sure to verify what tools exist for the IT admin before making any decisions about bespoke data tools. This is especially important in large distributed organizations where system admin teams are often separate from enterprise data teams.

Consider technology as your lookout perched high in the crow's nest. It can provide early warnings and real-time insights, just like a vigilant crew member scanning the horizon for potential obstacles. Use online surveys, dashboards, and analytics tools to measure your progress and identify areas that need immediate attention. In this journey, remember that while technology and tools are indispensable, it's the way you wield them that truly matters. Embrace a pro-social leadership paradigm, where empathy, engagement, and inclusivity guide your actions. Just as a skilled captain inspires trust and loyalty among the crew, your leadership will foster commitment and resilience in your team. Emotional engagement over checkbox tasks.

In today's fast-paced business landscape, change is the only constant. Change management has become an essential methodology for businesses to stay adaptive and competitive. To sustain the benefits of change management, it's essential to embed change into the company culture. It involves creating an environment where employees embrace change, are open to new ideas, and are willing to adapt to new processes and technologies. Some of the best habits to practice change on a daily basis include effective communication, voicing and managing ambiguity and uncertainty as a collective, collaborating to iteratively improve processes, and creating room for experimentation, innovation and learning.

Embracing change isn't just a buzzword; it's a strategic imperative. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have demonstrated the profound impact of fostering a culture of change within their organizations. By encouraging their teams to be adaptable, open to new ideas, and willing to pivot when necessary, they've not only remained industry leaders but have also shaped the future of technology and business. In the realm of change management, this cultural shift is equally crucial. A culture that celebrates change empowers employees to embrace new processes, technologies, and ideas with enthusiasm, leading to smoother transitions and a competitive edge in today's ever-evolving marketplace.

A key factor in defining an organization’s health status is its ability to adapt to change. Creating models of the future and forecasting results are necessary practices to align efforts and set goals. However, they should never be confused with certainty or seen as step-to-step guides to success. Creating and fostering a healthy culture that rewards and celebrates learning, not just success, is key for future proofing organizations.

In todays world, change is constant. While people may be more comfortable with change in the outside world, they may be more resistant to change within a working world and feel more change fatigue if they are experiencing too many changes at once. Incremental changes and helping to explain why these changes are important will help improve the general culture of change. Having those change agents, as above, can help with the culture, as well.

A crucial element of how you build this culture is at recruitment and selection stage of new team members. If you have an organisation that is growing fast or competes in a sector of constant innovation and improvement, it is both more cost effective and also fair to all parties involved to acknowledge this during interviewing stage and really assess how the candidate has dealt with such work environments in the past. How likely are your candidates to view change as a positive.. what is the biggest change they had to deal with in previous roles and how did they handle that - professionally and personally. How do they prefer changes to be communicated? These questions also help you in future to know how to support them.

The world has shown us that if we don’t evolve, we become obsolete and tend to disappear. That's why we need to adapt and understand that even though areas are independent, they are interrelated, and those interactions could create the best processes and practices. I believe in the LEAN methodology, in which we will always find improvements or wastes to improve processes. As part of a company or business, we must understand that we do not work in silos. Still, we work as a gear in which we all need to be synchronized, and ideas could come everywhere. Improvement should drive better customer and employee experience, increase incomes, and decrease risks.

It's also essential that leaders and top management showcase the values they wish the organisation to foster, walk the talk and support their teams to understand why change is necessary and the behaviours that would make a new approach useful.

Organizations spend millions to advertise their products to broad segments of customers, and won't spend a cent to advertise organizational change to its employees. Just as successful ads must evolve to engage a changing audience, adapt your change strategies to resonate with your employees. Your role, as a leader, is akin to a creative director – foster innovation, encourage collaboration, and regularly evaluate and adjust your change initiatives like ad campaigns to ensure they inspire and engage your team. This way, you'll create impactful change, just like memorable advertising campaigns capture attention. Emotional engagement makes the change stick, not a checklist of tasks.

Change is hard and painful many a times. My perspective : First thing is to contextualize - Why. Enough iterations on building this narrative and communicating it. Then comes Sythesize - Bring alignment, impactful stories, and more. Catalyze - Being those active players in the game and play it, run, score, celebrate, communicate and make a difference. Finally Humanize - What changed, how did it make an impact/difference and so on. Each time I design and lead any large scale and high impact Change internvention I remind myself that C O M M U N I C A T I O N Is the key driver. The sharper it is the deeper the impact.The better it is the greater the impact. It holds magical power and space in Change Management.

This is a good approach for changing tasks and processes, however to ensure change is effective and actually adaptive you need to look at the behaviours of all the individuals, teams and organisations. Effective change requires roles and teams to be redesigned - not just ‘what’ you do but ‘how’ you do it. These behaviours need to be reviewed and changed by the people themselves who are affected. At that point then everyone becomes involved and responsible for the changes and empowered to continue to adapt their activities and behaviours within the new system. Tip: A behavioural coaching psychology practitioner is trained to look for and advise on the behavioural components of change. It’s hard to see these when you’re inside the system.

In my experiences it is critical to engage the organization to assure it is prepared to receive transparent and authentic communication. Communication is critical throughout change, but starting the communication before you have prepared the team to receive it will have a clear impact on the planned change and likely end up as one of your Critical Lessons Learned for future change.

Change management is all about the people. Until the people, that make it happen every day believe that change is required, it won't happen. It is up to leadership to do the hard work and bring everyone, who is willing to go along on the journey.

The most important thing in my experience is "Fairness to all stakeholders". Business is made up of people at the end of the day. Just like in a society, the things that are fair last longer and work better. It is true that corporations are not democracies. But to the extent possible, it is critical to involve and empower all stakeholders in "the new way of doing things". To scale and sustain, change must be democratized from top to bottom.