Can A Leader Reap A High Return On Their Investment In “DIY Change Management”? Here’s How.
Leading change is both an investment and a recruitment activity.
This is the second article of six, starting with Leaders Everywhere: How Can You Lead Changes In Your Team? (Article # 1 of 6)
Leading change takes focus, systemisation and energy — amounting to a significant investment. Your investment. Unfortunately, this investment doesn’t have an immediate return on your efforts, nor is it entirely risk-free.
Can you leverage the skills of people in your team? An article by Changefirst (Influencers of Change) suggested four different strengths in your employees.
First, advocates — those who can persuade others in your teams about the benefits of your change. Can you work with advocates to uncover both the features and benefits of your change?
Second, connectors — those who can find allies and enlist support for your change. Connectors are skilled in creating positive momentum for your change. Advocates differ from connectors slightly: one crafts messages, the other gets the message out there. Both work with people to make this happen.
Third, controllers — those who control access to people or information. It is often junior employees with specialist skillsets or relationships with other key employees.
Fourth, experts — those seen as technically capable by others. Controllers act as gatekeepers, while an expert’s credibility is perceived capability and “street cred”.
Which type of employee will provide you the warts ’n’ all about your change? Their feedback is valuable intelligence, and any negative feedback is not to be confused with negativity. Ignore negative feedback about your change at your peril, as long as you can do something constructive about this feedback, your effort spent in taking this onboard is worth it.
Yet not every employee or manager in your team may be worth relying on to help you lead change. You probably know which employees and leaders you can rely on from previous changes and operational challenges.
What will your change system look like?
I liken a single change on a page to a chessboard. Your change on a page helps you organise chess pieces while being an accessible medium for others to grasp your change quickly. You might have access to a change “toolkit”. This toolkit may be from various sources. For example, within your organisation, from a change professional who shared their way of implementing change, or from a change management training organisation.
Change systems aren’t only about planning. Systems thinking in this context may also examine what your employees and managers think about a change. If you are the leader of several teams, your presence alone may deter employees from venturing a candid opinion of the change. Yet if you have a structured, systematic way of collecting likely pain points, features and benefits, and someone in your team administers these questions? The below “Stakeholder Shoes” worksheet may help any Change Champion responsible for collecting information about your change:
What if your change is complex? For example, a new system. Here is a simple model to help you break down complexity.
Think about the most complex computer application you’ve dealt with. Hard to understand? How about thinking of it in terms of inputs/throughputs/outputs?
The IPO model (short for “Inputs , Processing — or throughputs, outputs”) helps you organise complex systems. These systems include quickly understanding entire business units.
You can use a single-page worksheet like this one for your IPO work.
What if your main change-related challenge is not the complexity of the future way of working, but more the attitudes and opinions of employees and managers in your team? Are there “thought traps” which may keep your team’s minds closed and impact their attitude to adjusting to new ways of working?
This is going to be an uncomfortable yet necessary reflection. What are the “sacred cows” held by employees and managers alike? Otherwise known as the status quo, these sacred cows may need challenging before successfully systemising and implementing change.
Think through aspects of your change to have a predictable, structured approach to influencing your team’s behaviours.
Aim for progress over perfection.
Your change system nor the implementation has to be perfect in every way. Business moves way too quickly to aim for a nine or ten out of ten. Your systems and templates for implementing change need to be easily and quickly adaptable. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, coined the term “Minimum Viable Product” (or MVP). We want you to have an MVP mentality when creating all aspects of your change. Because your plans and tools for change will themselves change in the course of time!
If you want to put a number on what progress over perfection looks like? Aim for a seven out of ten! If the idea of a seven out of ten makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself why.
The next article in this series explores useful templates and approaches to leading change. These resources help you plan and systemise your change.
Creating a regular drumbeat and exploring your team’s habits is the focus of the fourth article.
We examine systems thinking applied to how you lead change in the fifth article. The last article examines the psychology of change management. Arm yourself with psychological insights to help you influence change in your teams.
Our book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out our online course on Change Management.