Change Management That Sticks

A lot of things have been written on Change Management, but most of them are based on the work of John Kotter.

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Kotter is a professor at the Harvard Business School and a world-renowned expert.

He came up with 8 steps that are crucial in effective change management.

I have helped a couple of organizations through this process and I must admit things hardly ever work out exactly like this.

However, these steps, or building blocks, will give you direction in the process. They are all important and it’s a handy guide to use when you get stuck. I always ask the question, “where are we in the change management process, and which steps did we neglect".

So here are the 8 steps of effective change management.

Step 1: Create a Sense of Urgency

It can be quit frustrating to get stuck on this one if you are eager to get the process going. But trust me; the time that you spend on urgency is never wasted.

If there are no urgency, people will lose hope, and revert back to the old ways of doing things.

Urgency is also the very thing that will help you overcome the resistance to the change process. It will get you through that uncomfortable feeling that goes with change.

The best way to understand the importance of urgency, is to use weight loss and stopping smoking as a metaphor. Lack of urgency is the very reason why most of those efforts fail.

If you want to lose weight and stop smoking, you will feel uncomfortable in the process…feeling the hunger or the cravings are powerful obstacles. But if you just had a heart attack and the doctor says that you will die if you don’t change your lifestyle, you will be much more urgent and motivated to combat those cravings.

How much urgency is needed? Kotter says, 100% of top management, 75% of middle management and 50% of the rest.

Now, this is very difficult to measure. It’s not as if you buy little urgency meters at every corner shop. And how do you measure emotions anyway...because that is what urgency is, an emotion.

Have you ever bought a piece of clothing that just sits and feel better than another one of the same size? You just know when it’s right.

It’s the same with urgency.

Step 2: Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition

It needs to be their sole focus. Here are important things to consider with forming this coalition.

Step 3: Create a Vision for Change

A vision should be something that can easily be communicated. It should state exactly what you want to achieve. Nobody should have any doubts.

The shorter the better. Sometimes when you read a companies vision, you feel like you have to read it again to absorb it all. That isn’t good enough.

If you wake the cleaning person up in the middle of the night and ask him/her what the vision are, they should be able to say it without any trouble.

Being South African, I remember the vision that Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk had for the country. It was during the early 1990’s, in the build-up to our first democratic election. “We are building a new South Africa”.

Both of these wonderful leaders, hammered it down our throats. What made it easy was that it was short, descriptive and compelling enough, so everyone could understand it. No big, fuzzy words, where you have to reach for a dictionary to understand it.

You will find yourself struggling with it at first, coming up with long, difficult to digest sentences. Just work at it. Shine it, so it appeals to everyone. If you get stuck, think of the benefits of the new vision.

Another example, which I encountered recently with a bank in Swaziland (no, not Switzerland), was also quite striking. Their company color was green and their vision was to improve their margins by improving the service levels of the employees. This is what they came up with.

The Green Revolution: Super Profits through Super People.

Step 4: Communicate the Vision

• Have some kind of a launch where you can introduce the vision.
• Then bombard everyone at EVERY possible opportunity. Whenever you do or say something, it should be linked back to the vision. If you had a meeting or any form of engagement with employees, open the meeting with a reminder of the vision. And most importantly, end the meeting by asking everyone to reflect to make sure that all the decisions made in that meeting was in line with the vision.
• Let the people experience the vision. Actions speak louder than words. Let me give you an example. If your new vision is “Customer First” and you have pictures of all the previous Presidents and Vice-Presidents against the wall of the boardroom or wherever. Take them down and put pictures of your major customers there.
• Reflect twice a day on what you’ve DONE in the last couple of hours to communicate the vision.
• Never stop communication the vision. I almost want to go as far as to say that you need to push it down their throats. If you’ve get to a point where the staff starts mocking you about talking about the vision all the time, you’re in the right spot.

Step 5: Remove Obstacles and Empower Action

People learn best by experience and if they experience certain changes, they will be pushed out of their comfort zones to start doing things differently. This is probably the most powerful way of communicating.

Another common mistake that companies make is to decide on these obstacles at leadership level. Or to leave it to the guiding coalition to think up.

Remember, they experience the obstacles daily. They have a better understanding of the nature of their day to day activities.

The best way to do this is by using focus groups. Try not to use surveys or e-mails. Why? Well it’s simple:

Obstacles might vary from “We are not empowered to make immediate decisions when interacting with customers” to “We don’t have enough resources”

Make sure that you action all these obstacles. There is nothing as de-motivating to employees as when you interact with them, just to do nothing about the issues being discussed.

Step 6: Create short-term wins

It the same with change management. Everyone needs to see quick short-term wins.

What you can do is:

Step 7: Keep on Going...Build on the Change

After each short-term win, have a debrief session and improve on it for the next one.

Build new energy, excitement and momentum.

It will get easier the further you move away from the old way of doing things.

Step 8: Anchor The Change In The New Culture

Key points to remember.

Sometimes you need to go back, but if you keep on pushing, you will have change that sticks.

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