Change Management Approach for Agile Coaches

When we roll out any new changes, be it organizational structural modifications, process modifications or role reforms, or marrying with someone! we require to rely massively on the change management team or change management capability.

Agile coaches are the key change agents in a transformation process, it is fundamental to polish this skill to impact the transformation process.

Change management is the process, tools, and techniques to carry out the people side of change to accomplish its expected business outcomes. 

The change management process is the array of steps or tasks that a change management team or change leader follow to implement change management to a change in order to encourage individual transformations and safeguard the project satisfies its expected outcomes. 

How can we anticipate the change method as a change agent?

Powerful and sustained change requires constant communication, not only throughout the rollout but after the major elements of the plan are in place. The more kinds of communication employed, the more effective they are. – DeAnne Aguirre

Let us follow these 6 steps process to execute change initiatives....

1. Why are you changing? How are you changing? What are you changing? (Strategic Thinking)

At this stage, we need to clearly communicate the big purpose. Strong vision about the change from the leaders.A high level guideline how to change process will be executed.A propose structural approach about the whole change initiatives and how it has to execute.

As a change agent you should have this big picture thinking. Ensure at this stage this picture is clear. and it is convincing to change. The benefits are higher.

2 For whom you are changing? ( Alignment)

All the team members impacted by the changes process need to take care and communicate one to one. Involve all the staff in the change process. Get along with them and take them with you in the change journey.

As a change agent you should have this habit of getting along with most of the people. It takes time, but as a team,we need to understand all the impacted team members.

3. What is their behavior? ( Support All )

Explain the positive side of the change. Motivate them for the reforms. Understand their side and feedback the voice to the concern team.

4. How are you building up their knowledge for change?

Motivate people for the change process. Give direction to the impacted people. Encourage them to conquer fear. Develop the journey map for them. If the jobs are impacted handle this issue with absolute care. Provide one to one counseling session. Provide training to enhance knowledge. Create curriculum to enable individuals.

5. What is their feeling?

Grant importance to solicit the feedback and thoroughly implement the plan to address their feeling. Have a session with all the impacted team members. Keep time for them, arrange a slot for discussion. Make it safe to open and have dialogue.

6. How are you communicating the changes?

A systematic communication plan is vital. Convey the message skillful manner and ensure that it reaches the appropriate form. Gather criticism and have grounded to get the real flow.

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The announcement is the easy part; it makes the manager look bold and decisive. Implementation is more difficult, because no matter how good and compelling the data, there will always be active and passive resistance, rationalizations, debates, and distractions – particularly when the changes require new ways of working or painful cuts. To get through this, managers have to get their hands dirty, engage their teams to make choices, and sometimes confront recalcitrant colleagues. – Ron Ashkenas and Rizwan Khan

In our apartment as a president, I applied this approach in one of the change initiatives.

In our apartment, many local people use our basement as a path to pass over one side of the building to the other side of the compound. We have come across many security issues discovered in our residence premises.

We determined to close this pathway for public use.

As a part of the steps, below steps has been taken

1. Why are you changing? How are you changing? What are you changing? 

We established a notice board to all the passers-by that at certain date onward we are closing this gate. For safety and security issue of the building. We decided to open only during the 10 AM-5 PM and after that, we will close. we kept security guard at the time.

2. For whom you are changing?

All the local people are informed as they are getting impacted and they require to find an alternative passage beyond certain hrs.

3. What is their feeling? 

All these people had got annoyed with this new change. They have complained to the local leaders(MLA), and we have been called for a meeting and we have increased the hr for 5 PM to 7 PM’

4. How are you increasing their knowledge for change?

We have provided posters, about the new timing , educated our security guard. We have requested them and share our concern about stealing incidents happening at our premises. Initially, they do not care, after some months, they also have adjusted their expectations

5. What is their feeling?

They are agitated, as they had to choose a lengthy passage, we further take help from MLA to support us. Occasionally we are also flexible after the routine hrs in case of emergency. They adapted, and we also standardized.

6. How are you communicating the changes?

It took several meeting, request, posters, message, etc attempt to communicate the message. It took several months to implement these changes. We had to call the police also due to aggressive local people. It becomes routine after 6 months.

The local communities now already registered in their mind that there is no available passage. There is a passage but it is regulated at certain hours. It helps all of us.

Change management implementation will be more accepted when we think through all these 6 steps and give due importance to all these factors.

If we think God will take care, sometimes things will go beyond our control and result into a failure.

If you are entrusted with bringing about change, you likely possess the knowledge needed to advance the organization, and you might have a plan — but knowledge is not enough. You have to bring yourself to each interaction in a deeply authentic way. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. – Doug Conant

Chandan Patary is the author of The Agilist Guidebook, this book enables any change agent to help organizational agile transformation smoothly. This book has 5 chapters, 88 stories, 55 mindmaps, 6 case studies, 30 pictures, 160 quotes, 288 pages and 100 Rs, a 4 years journey into this book. He has composed seven different free e-books available for download at Slideshare. He has written 445+ blogs in LinkedIn. He has presented 13+ seminars as a speaker in numerous conferences. He has uploaded 30+ presentation at Slide share on diverse topics. He has written 20+ technical papers in various national and foreign journals. He has earned many rewards in all the enterprises he has served for. He has received PM World Journal, 2017 Editor’s Choice Awards for the paper “Increasing Business Agility through Organizational Restructuring and Transformation”.