Effective Change Management, while desirable, is an elusive goal to achieve. To accomplish meaningful change, there are at least three levels you will encounter. We call them:
- A) Preparing for Change – recognizing that change is needed
- B) Managing Change, establishing a structured methodology to work with, up and through transition, and finally,
- C) Sustaining Change – ensuring an effective business environment that has met key business process objectives, is well aligned and can be maintained.
TBI’s 21 steps in building an Effective Change Management Plan is the product of 40 years of guiding and assisting clients in helping them realize positive results.
PREPARING FOR CHANGE
Build Urgency
- 1. Raise a feeling of urgency so that people start telling each other “we must do something” about the problems and opportunities.
- 2. Reduce the complacency, fear and anger that prevent change from starting.
Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition
- 3. Help pull together the right group of people with the right characteristics and sufficient power to drive the change effort.
- 4. Help them to behave with trust and emotional commitment to each other.
Create a Vision and Strategy
- 5. Facilitate the movement beyond traditional analytical and financial plans and budgets.
- 6. Create the right compelling vision to direct the effort.
- 7. Help the guiding team develop bold strategies for making bold visions a reality.
Communicate the Vision
- 8. Send clear, credible and heartfelt messages about the direction of change.
- 9. Establish genuine gut-level buy-in that shows up in how people act.
- 10. Use words, deeds, and new technologies to unclog communication channels and overcome confusion and distrust.
Empower Associates to Act
- 11. Remove barriers that block those who have genuinely embraced the vision and strategies.
- 12. Take away sufficient obstacles in their organizations and in their hearts so that they behave differently.
MANAGING CHANGE
Generate Short-Term Wins
- 13. Get sufficient wins fast enough to diffuse cynicism, pessimism and skepticism.
- 14. Build momentum.
- 15. Make sure successes are visible, unambiguous, and speak to what people deeply care about.
Gain Momentum
- 16. Help people create wave after wave of change until the vision is a reality.
- 17. Do not allow urgency to sag.
- 18. Do not duck the more difficult parts of the transformation, especially the bigger emotional barriers.
- 19. Eliminate needless work so you don’t exhaust yourself along the way.
SUSTAINING CHANGE
Make Change Stick
- 20. Ensure that people continue to act in new ways, despite the pull of tradition, by rooting behavior in reshaped organizational culture.
- 21. Use the employee orientation process, the promotion process and the power of emotion to enhance new group norms and shared values.
An efficient and well thought out plan can help any organization reach positive solutions. TBI’s Change Management methodology is a structured process and set of tools to help you manage your Change Management issues, to mitigate the risk and maximize the outcome.
