Prepping for Organizational Change

For a while, we’ve been talking about burnout, its impact on individuals and its importance to an organization to focus on engagement. To move from burnout to engagement, an organization has to be ready for change. So, I thought it was prudent to look at why and how an organization makes a change.

Organizational change is very important if you want to boost productivity, decrease turnover, eliminate issues like burnout or if you need to increase employee engagement. Although it sounds simple, many organizations fail to plan properly for change. This is why we are here, to offer some guidance on how you can prepare your organization for change.

Measure the most important change factors

If you want to make an organizational change, there are some factors you need to assess right away. First, you have the Six Sigma Maturity Model? that helps leaders benchmark where their organization stand relating to larger patterns experienced by other organizations. This helps leaders to understand the need for change. Then, you want to check your change readiness to see how capable your organization is to change and how it reacts/adapts to being in a transformative situation. We can consider this an organization’s change maturity that focuses on the formal capacity for change. These assessments can serve as a guide to help you determine what areas are holding you back or negatively impacting your organization and the change that's needed (hint: Read Who moved my cheese?).

What can you change?

An organization can make a variety of changes. Very common changes are focused on the vision, strategy or mission. You may even change the logo and brand messaging. Moreover, organizations also tend to change their technology or the way they value their team. It’s also possible for a business to streamline its organizational structure to make its processes more efficient. There can be changes in the organizational culture and how things work within the office. Even the task-job design and the tools needed can be improved accordingly. But of course, my favorite, and in my opinion the most critical, is an organization’s focus on improving the level of employee engagement.

Create a plan, then share your vision

Once you assess the factors listed above, you will need to initiate a change plan. You can use Lewin's change model. There are many models to select from. One way is to begin by prepping the right environment. You can prep a list of changes, one that you will share with your team. This allows you to get some feedback from them, while also adding some new ideas to the list and creating buy-in. Sharing your vision with the team is important, since it helps you prioritize the changes and the team visualize how things will look once these changes take place. Creating buy-in also garners support for the change. Then once implemented, the team and individuals need quick and continually wins that serve as positive reinforcement to anchor the wins.

Communication is key here, so don’t hesitate to connect with your team via email, team meetings and individual conversations. This will make it easy for your team to understand your reasoning behind the desired changes. Plus, it also delivers a sense of transparency. This approach is how you get the?much-needed buy-in for successful change. After all, you want your employees to be active supporters of the proposed changes, and this approach will help.

Adapt and adjust accordingly

There are numerous models on organizational change. But, there’s no one-size-fits-all blueprint for the best approach because every business has its own culture, goals, challenges and unique features. That’s why you need to be prepared for potential failures, unexpected challenges, and resistant stakeholders. So, you must adapt to any challenge that can arise. Changes need to be thoughtfully implemented by collecting data, identifying any areas of improvement, and then optimizing accordingly.

If you want successful change, then you need to come up with innovative, creative solutions that help improve your business processes. This can include training employees, standardizing procedures, creating an environment the supports innovation and optimizing the way everyone communicates within your business. A proper organizational transformation requires involvement and innovation.

Conclusion

Implementing organizational changes is not easy but beneficial when done properly. So if you experience major challenges when it comes to employee engagement, productivity and sales; then it is sensible to make some modifications to your business. The tips listed above are just a starting point for your organizational changes, but you have to start somewhere. And once you start, you will be incredibly impressed with the value and efficiency you can even get from simple organizational changes.

Author:

Natalie Robinson Bruner is the founder and principal strategist of Glad ? ED Solutions, where she trains and coaches leaders to better engage their workforce and retain employees. She is an experienced leader overseeing multi-tiered organizations that serve thousands of people in the non-profit and educational worlds. As a 20-year experienced leader, she has led national organizations, conducted research on organizational development topics and was chosen to speak on many platforms including the TEDx stage. Driven by a passion to create a culture of productivity, she develops training, offers coaching and provides consultation that helps individuals flourish and organizations thrive.

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