Five Tips For Successful Change Management

Five Tips for Successful Change Management

Brought to you by Rosy King @ Corporate Training Options

In today’s environment of rapidly changing technology, constant disruption, globalisation, connectivity and of course Covid-19, organisations are altering dramatically.  New businesses and new industries are emerging, and success relies on being able to adapt quickly. This places demands on leaders across all industry sectors.

Change in the midst of a crisis is never easy—especially one like Coronavirus, which hits as hard at global markets as it does at life around our kitchen tables.

You can use the strategies covered in the CTO Change Management Course to respond effectively and to continue to deliver against your business goals.

So what are the steps that lead to Successful Change Management?

Successful Change Management for your organisation is based on open communication, management and team collaboration, and commitment from everyone to the change process.

If you’ve ever led your team or company through an organisational change, you know change management is not easy.  It’s not easy for existing managers, existing team members or for any new people who may have joined the organisation as part of the change.

You need to focus your efforts

Leading your team through an organisational transition successfully means knowing where to focus your efforts and resources. There can be a lot of guesswork, lost time, lost productivity and frustration for everyone involved.

One of the challenges is understanding that approximately 50% – 70% of organisational change projects fail to achieve their objectives.

Why?  For any number of reasons.  In some cases, mid-level managers and employees are excluded from the planning process. So they do not understand why the changes within the organisation are happening and therefore have no idea of how the process will take place.

Then they are told how it is and are expected to make several transitions at once, usually in a short time.  This can bring resentment from those staff excluded from the planning and implementation process.

With any organisational change, there will be loss, denial and resistance.

Resistance to change can come from employees, managers and supervisors, senior management, even suppliers, for any number of reasons.

It’s not necessarily a case of people not liking change in their workplace.  It’s more a matter of how the organisational change is planned, communicated, delivered and executed.

Most of us understand that effective leadership and the ability to adapt is crucial to ongoing employment, increased market-share and business success.

However, having a new employer or supervisor, or changing the way specific processes are done, will engender resistance.  And telling your team to undertake a task in a totally new way, without asking for their input, may well breed resentment within your organisation.

That said, here are …

Five Tips To Successful Change Management

1. Managing change – It all begins at the top

Yes, it’s crucial to involve your team members at every stage of your organisational change. However, before that can happen, you need to ensure your management team are in sync and committed to a successful outcome. Doing this will set the stage for engaging and leading the change in your organisation from the top down.

2. Resistance to Change & Preparing for change fatigue

With organisational change comes uncertainty, which means your team’s cosy comfort zone is about to become uncomfortable.  Part of organisational change means we’ll also be changing our employee’s lives.

You cannot introduce change without including your people in the process.  The best way to instil change is to do it with them.  Tasks and issues such as proposing new systems, introducing new supervisors or managers, and scheduling additional training, usually accompany an organisational change.  And that’s a lot for your existing team to take on board.

For successful change management, you need to take into account:

• How the changes will affect your team
• Where to focus your efforts
• The pace at which the change will happen
• Understand the five phases of planning for organisational change

3. Understanding Change – Collaboration, Communication and Commitment

Many of the leaders who have completed our Leading Change Management course have believed that  meeting with their team once, to share why change is happening, will make everything clear.  Then it’s full steam ahead!

It’s a common mistake and a BIG part of why many change management programs fail.

To experience successful organisational change, you need to encourage collaboration and commitment from the top of your organisation to the bottom.  And you need to communicate, communicate, communicate !

Organisational changes made within your ranks need to be consistent and regular (daily or weekly to start with), with input and updates from everyone involved.

4. Leading Change – Lead from the front and create new behaviours

When an organisation and its people undergo organisational change, old habits have to make way for the new, and that’s not easy.

As a leader, you must lead from the front and create new behaviours that employees will see, model and follow.

Some ways you can achieve this include :

• Meeting with your team before and throughout the change
• Keeping them motivated and involved in your organisational changes
• Listening, and creating a vision together, so as a group, you have a vested interest in a successful organisational transition

Only by leading change from the top will your team grasp that the organisational change is happening, and needs to be accepted, because they are seeing you driving it.

5. Develop a Change Management Action Success Plan

It may seem obvious, but many organisational changes fail because they’re introduced and executed on an adhoc basis.

Let’s compare leading your management and team through an organisational change, to building a house.  You don’t start with the roof.  You start with the plan and design, then you build the foundations.  After that, you work your way systematically through the building plan, until the project is completed.

Creating a change management action plan for your organisation is essential if you want the transition to be executed successfully and profitably.  You need positive support and contributions from senior management filtered down all the way to your team on the ground.

In Summary – Successful Change Management can be achieved

You can achieve a successful change management project, with planning.  Failing to plan the structure of your organisational change could otherwise result in your change program being in the 50% – 70% that fail.

There are certain outcomes each individual in your team must achieve for change to be successful. A Change Management Plan, when followed successfully, allows leaders and change management teams to focus their activities on what will drive individual change, and therefore achieve organisational results.

You need a change management plan which provides clear goals and outcomes for change management activities.  It should also provide a simple, easy-to-use framework for everyone in the organisation to begin to implement change.  Teams, managers and senior leaders alike can then all describe, discuss and achieve the desired changes together.

Want to learn more about Planning for Successful Change Management ?  

We have a training course available for you, which will achieve a number of learning outcomes.  These outcomes include:

• Exploring and understanding the changes taking place in organisations today
• Being able to explain how organisations can prepare for change
• Clarifying human reactions to change and how to deal with them
• Explain team involvement and visionary leadership

You will learn about:

• Facing Change
• Understanding Change
• Leading Change
• Creating a Change Action Plan

If you’re ready to upgrade your skills to provide Successful Change Management for your team, contact CTO today for friendly, professional advice.

We’ll discuss your specific needs, and tailor your training program to suit your requirements.

Brought to you by Rosy King @ Corporate Training Options