Change Management: It's About Them, Not You
Chip Laingen, CDR, USN (Ret.), M.P.A.
Military Veteran, Business Executive, Graduate Faculty
Change is not hard, people are.? I’ve been thinking a lot about change management lately.? For many reasons, from a lagging economy to heightened consumer expectations, the businesses we work with are ramping up their efforts to change things, mostly internally, to improve their bottom lines.? And it’s often not going well.? That’s caused me to think of ways that change can be more effectively implemented.? Let me start by saying I’m not a change management expert; nor did I Google it to see if my own thoughts are off the mark.? But my gut tells me one thing above all else:? that change is far and away more realized by the changee, than the changer.? With that in mind, here are ten ways to improve your organization’s change management approach, as a leader trying to implement change.
1) Know that humans don’t actually resist change; they resist being uncomfortable.? So if the change you’re seeking will do that, think ahead about ways to mitigate the discomfort.? Don’t get me wrong, sometimes discomfort is also a motivator, but are you also building incentives so those you lead can visualize a better future?
2) Create a climate that can cultivate change.? Effective leadership is not dictatorial, it’s influential.? It may be that your first set of changes should revolve around your own leadership style, and the impact that it has on the culture.? You may need to spend considerable time building trust, communication channels, and internal champions, before other changes should even be conceived of, much less implemented.
3) Change should ultimately be driven by benefit to the customer, not benefits to the corporation serving them.? That’s the only way to avoid change driven by template-oriented systems like ISO and other management certifications.? While such systems can be effective as a starting point, they should be designed with your particular market’s needs in mind.? The rest will naturally follow.
4) Make sure the change you seek fits your organization’s culture and mission, not a one-size-fits-all change that has been successfully implemented elsewhere.? “Elsewhere” is not your unique organization.? Best practices and case studies are great guides, but they’re often just a framework to begin a fact-finding journey.
5) With apologies to HR professionals, if the change is in any way HR-related (and most change is), remember that HR doesn’t drive the mission, it supports the mission.? Notwithstanding legal requirements and ethical mandates, difficult change creates unique and often unforeseen impacts that require discretion, a concept often anathema to modern HR guidelines.? Only solid, principled leadership can deliver that discretion.
6) Realize that maybe it’s not just change you need, but more buy-in on the corporate mission itself.? Without a unified approach to goal achievement, changing strategies and tactics only sew confusion.?
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7) Communicate what change is coming first, and why; then wait to implement it while keeping communication open in the other direction.? This requires patience, which is admittedly hard for driven leaders.? This doesn’t mean waiting for and accepting all dissent; but it does mean at least acknowledging dissent, and in some cases adapting changes based on useful feedback.?
8) Use the “cut it in half and then double it” principle:? whatever you have in mind, implement only half the change that you think you need; and allow for double the time you think you need to implement it.? This doesn’t mean you can’t realize all the change you desire, but it does mean that it will take a lot longer than you expect.
9) Relatedly, change incrementally.? Implement some, then analyze the impact of it a lot.? Then keep what you can from that round and discard the rest.? Then repeat the process with your next set of changes.
10) Accept that resistance to change is your fault, not theirs.? If you’re ignoring steps one through nine, the changee will win, pure and simple.? Then the customer loses; and then the organization loses.? You can change to win both, but only if those you lead have been influenced to get there with you.
Finally, I do know that ‘changee’ isn’t a word.? But I hope that it makes you remember who will implement the change you seek as a leader.? And it’s not you.
Chip Laingen ~ 2024
Regional Director, Gifts & Estate Planning at Hillsdale College
2 个月Chip I have been going through my books--thinning and sorting--and found your book on leadership which I kept! This is a great piece--glad it came from you and not "the Googles." Thank you!
I make life easier with software, from planning to execution.
2 个月I see this in the "digital transformation" of so many businesses, where an expert is brought in from the outside, and maybe they even help the business come up with a solid plan to make really impactful changes. ...but to a good chunk of the company, it can feel like an outsider was paid to "shake things up". And in those awesome cases, where it seems like everyone is on board? It's still hard because of how monumental the change "feels". It's uncomfortable, just like you said. I love the idea of "cut in half and double", because I know that most of us overestimate our own abilities and undersell our constraints (which helps us to keep going when things are tough, so it's not inherently wrong). My biggest takeaway from this is that you are right on the mark about change truly being driven by the people who are "doing the work" and the people affected by the work.
Director, Global Logistics and Transportation Compliance at INVISTA
2 个月Chip, spot on. I also think organizations underestimate the value of good change management. If a senior leadership team gets this wrong, it will take years to correct - and that is if they have the humility to recognize their missteps quickly and are willing to pivot. If it is done incorrectly, and the leaders don't have the humility to recognize their missteps, it will take a decade to recover from the talent losses that occur.
Owner, Reagent Services LLC
2 个月Great article, Skipper! There is an old maxim that states, “People don’t know what they like, they like what they know.” I have found that wisdom to be instrumental when implementing change, therefore I find your question,“…are you also building incentives so those you lead can visualize a better future?” to be the center of gravity of this topic.