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How are your new year resolutions for 2022 evolving so far? 

One quarter through the year, this time offers us an opportunity to reflect upon our progress and assess where we stand. You may ask yourself: Have I achieved positive change - or probably more precise: Was I able to ???????????????? habits of positive change? 

Change and how to manage it well is a recurring challenge in businesses just as much as in our private lives. 

Over the years I’ve learned that an indispensable foundation to every successful change process are the following 5 enablers of change - without these, change is extremely difficult to achieve, neither in businesses nor in private life. 

Here is how you can apply them:

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Identify role models in the area of desired change. If you are a manager - be that role model through exemplary leadership! No employee will feel the urgency to change if their leader doesn’t. If possible, you can also point your employees to other great leaders in the organization. Ideally, each person finds a role model with whom it is easy to identify. And be specific about it - you don’t need to find one role model that covers every single area of your change project. Pick someone who excels in one area, and then find someone else for another area if necessary. 

For personal change - ask yourself who inspires you most? Get in touch with that person or, if a public figure, listen to talks, interviews and read their books. 

Why do we need role models? Living examples are an inspiration for what is possible and develop a desire and urgency within us to change as well. 

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“If you don’t know what to change, you won’t change.” 

Define precisely ???????? you want to change and within what timeframe you want to achieve it. As a manager, communicate that repeatedly to your team. Messages that are clear, simple and transparent are perceived and remembered the best. Complexity will only increase the natural resistance towards change. The more you are able to break the area of change down to a simple concept and idea, the quicker people will follow. 

This, of course, looks a little different in private life. Here is my application: First, write down ???????? you want to change. This will provide clarity and help you define your goal and remember it over the long haul. Second, tell a friend or family member about it to create accountability. If it makes sense, why not find like minded people and pursue change as a group?

And to make those communication efforts credible - both in the corporate world and privately: Start immediately with small and easy to adapt habits in order to start the change process. Make these first changes easy, so that you kick off change with an encouraging experience. But most importantly: Get the process running and make your intentions authentic.

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Change must be realistic. If you lack the necessary skills and competencies - attain them or hire them. Check if you have a good foundation for change: Oftentimes, un-learning old habits and behaviors is just as important and time consuming as establishing new ones. Identify what hinders the change you aspire, so that these details can be changed first.

To accelerate that process, reach out to your community to share best practices and learn from each other. Have other organizational units gone through similar change processes before? If you are pioneering: Bring people together to collect ideas from diverse backgrounds. This will not only enrich the process with new ideas but also increase ownership among the people who have to promote the change process.

In our personal lives I translate that to: If you lack the necessary skills or knowledge to attain the change you aspire, get the input and help that you need. If necessary, adjust your goals to what is realistically possible for you. This will help you stick to it over time.

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Of course: In business, goals must be measurable. Regular tracking allows you to make adjustments where and when necessary. 

Only what gets measured, gets done.

But the best about it: Measurability will not only help you evaluate your process, it will also motivate you! Celebrations of successes and milestones keep you and the team on track. 

In personal life: Define milestones or other key indicators and track them in an app or note book - whatever your style is ;). Visualizing your efforts and progress can create momentum that will make it even easier to keep going.

In both environments it is important to define the right objectives and key results! Once your indicators for success become a means in themselves, they lead you astray. Your goal and the motivation behind it must remain the focus of your attention. Smart indicators are the scaffold to reaching your goals. On the other hand, if poorly defined indicators become the focus of your attention, they can lead you away from the original goal.

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Lastly, change is unnecessarily hard if the underlying systems and processes still reward old behaviors. Creation of an environment that supports change is the basis to success. And, as James Clear puts it: “Environment is more important than motivation.” This aspect however, gets our attention too rarely. 

In a business environment, the idea of changing underlying and long established processes can be overwhelming. Start with solutions that are within your sphere of responsibility. Once you have successfully exploited these, you have a good reason to reach out to other teams or superiors to tackle the processes which have previously been out of reach.

In personal life: Create an environment that makes change easy – it’s called “nudging”. To put it in a simple example: If you want to drink less coffee, place other delicious drinking options in a more prominent space in your kitchen. Signaling the right cues to your subconsciousness can make change almost a no-brainer - or at least easier. : )

Conclusion

???????? ?????????? ?? ?????????????? ?????? ???????????? ???? ????????, ?????? ?????? ???? ?? ???????????? ???????? ???????????????? ?????? ??????????????! In all the change projects I have been working on for the past 15 years, these have been a constant basis and reliable starting point for me and my teams. I hope you’ll find them helpful, too.