3 Ways to Get Change Done

Executive Summary: How can we direct individuals in an organization to change their behaviors in order to support transformation? In this article, we look at three directives which leaders and managers can execute to make simplify actionable change steps for the individual.

When we think of change management, we often think of large, sweeping flows that require huge investments of time, money and effort. We assume it involves overcoming resistance across large swathes of the organization. We conjure up scenarios of harried managers sandwiched between an oblivious executive leadership team and resentful direct reports.

Well, this year, as part of my goal to read more mindfully, (I have been accused of being a mindless speed reader), I spent some time on Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. Which got me thinking about how we approach change management in large organizations, particularly through the lens of the learning culture and practice, and through the lens of how change impacts the individual. The individual - that poor cog spinning away in the large wheel known as the organization.

How can we help that individual? From Switch, I extracted three actionable steps that we can apply to our change practice in order to make small wins in the direction we desire, without leaving the individual feeling helpless or powerless .?

#1: State the Action / Create Clear Behavioral Directions ???

“Clarity dissolves resistance.” - Switch, Chip and Dan Heath

Diminish the monster in individuals’ minds by stating small steps clearly instead of focusing on the largeness of the change.

• Spend 15 minutes in a Friday documenting your successes and areas for improvement?
• Spend 30 minutes on your self-development plan every month
• Start using this AI agent to help you tackle meeting notes

A large change can seem overwhelming at the start. Slay the giant by giving clear directions which can shrink the giant in people’s heads. Perhaps you’re in charge of a huge AI implementation. It’s good to tell people about the ultimate end goal - to create an AI-driven culture. But it’s necessary to supplement such messaging with clear, simple steps on how to begin (e.g. use AI to help you summarize meetings and generate emails; attend a 30-minute brown bag session, use this free AI licence that we've bought for employees to generate ideas for pitches).

The big, strategic change becomes easier when you show your people how to start. And we start with clear, small steps that help to drive acceptance.

#2: Shape and Create the Right Environment??

It’s easy to say “Why is everyone being so stubborn!”; but maybe you have a situational or systemic problem, not a people one. Perhaps the ways that your workflows are set up makes it challenging for employees to adopt a new system- that’s a situational problem. Or maybe you want to change the culture but the way your employees are incentivized remains unchanged and conflicts directly with the change you want - that’s a systemic problem.

To shape the right environment, you need to

1. Make everyone’s lives easier - is there something hidden hindering everyone’s ability to change, such as bugs in the new tool you’re introducing, or kinks in the processes?
2. Go beyond simple cause-and-effect (e.g. they don’t want to change because they’re lazy) to root out the real systemic problems (e.g. they don’t want to change because their metrics or KPIs are tied to the old ways of doing things).
3. Explain how your change fits into their schedules, instead of leaving it to the individual to figure it out themselves.

#3: Exploit Emotion ??

Can you connect the change to needs, fears and goals? In here, I don’t mean “exploiting” in the negative sense, but rather, to show individuals the WIIFM (what’s in it for me).

Storytelling is the tool for this job. A company video I watched recently had a sales leader say to his team: “If you’re not talking to your clients about GenAI, you can be sure that someone else is.”

This simple statement exploits the fear of missing out, but not in a way that’s meant to be threatening or menacing (although it might feel that way for the target audience). But the leader was able to effectively spotlight that resistance to change was not the best reaction in the environment we all find ourselves in today. Tapping into that emotion benefits your people by giving them that motivational kick they need to not get left behind.

1. Identify the emotion that you want to tap into
2. Frame the narrative in a way that is meaningful to them
3. Once you have their attention, give clear, actionable items they can work on (which links back to my first point)

Big Picture / Small Picture? ???

We all like thinking of strategy as the central focus of change and transformation. We often think that change is about the big picture, that overarching vision. We often forget that it requires small, actionable behavioral changes in areas less sexy, like operations, or logistics. Although we need that change roadmap, it’s about shrinking the immensity of the change in people’s minds that make it easier to get things rolling. We should all start with something small, simple and direct for our next change steps.