Have you heard of the 1-2-3-7 concept in Change Management?

The probability of you answering Yes is low or unheard of.

Let me narrate it with the help of a story.

If your boss assigns you a project find out the reason for an issue prevailing in the company and rectify it.

The most logical framework taught in Business schools,

-???????Study the situation

-???????Identify the problem and problem area.

-???????Report and recommend to management corrective steps

-???????Delegate to the team for actioning the implementation.

A month goes by post-implementation and the issue still persists, post 6 months still the problem remains and has now become massive.

What did you do wrong?

You have committed an error 1-2-3-7.

Every successful project goes through 7 steps, which are:

a)???Assessing the situation

b)??Isolating the problem

c)???Formulating the solution?

d)??You woo your superiors to “ Buy-in” into the proposal and approve

e)???You woo your departmental colleagues, key people in the company laterally, to accept the solution

f)????You get the “Buy-in” from your own teammates to accept the solution.

g)???Finally, the implementation- always assign the task to a project manager who works on it full time and not in addition to his/her current responsibilities.?

(Remember-The sure shot way for any project failure is to assign it to someone for whom the project is a part-time assignment).

Without steps 4-5-6 your project would fail since the stakeholders, partners (and colleagues) would not accept your solution for change and without their support, the system would collapse.

I followed these steps during a couple of big brand revamp exercises done by me during my career (one for a local perfumery group with a mass media campaign, the campaign is still being followed by the brand after 14 years & second for implementation of Oracle retail implementation)

Advertising the benefits of your solutions and aligning them to the workers i.e. how your proposal would help them grow and ultimately the organization to evolve is very crucial. Every one of us is more interested in the concept of “WIFM” (what’s in for me)

So next time you are involved in bringing change management to your business follow all 7 steps to implement the SOPs effectively.

In case you are a business owner and want to grow & scale your business then please feel free to email me at [email protected]

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