Change Anyone? Part II Managing Change

In my last article, Change Anyone? Part I, we learned why many of us resist change and why otherwise normal people act out in uncharacteristic behaviors. So...what can we do to get our organizations through a major change?

Let’s review how it feels to go through a major change experience. Change evokes a grieving process, similar to when we lose someone. This happens because we are losing the current state and have to move to a new state or environment. Like the grieving process, we move through several stages before we accept the change. We also stated that in order to get through these stages of change, we must be able to assimilate ourselves in the future environment and realize that we’ll be successful in the new environment.

There are several tools and methods that we can employ to help get us through the change experience. They are:

Change readiness assessment, communication, training, organization redesign, and sponsorship coaching.

• Change readiness assessment is a tool that involves surveying those affected by the change to determine how much resistance exists and the portion of the change that is causing the resistance. This survey used is psychologically based and should be administered in a facilitated setting. Just being part of the change will cause a certain amount of resistance, but specific feelings by the participants will elicit even higher levels. For instance, those affected by the change may feel that the change will be unsuccessful because it won’t be supported by the leadership, or they may feel that they don’t have the skills or experience to succeed in the new environment. The results of this assessment will be used to target the use of the other tools.

• Communication is an extremely important tool because it’s the main source of information that will help those involved in the change to be able to assimilate themselves in the future environment. We do this with a robust communication plan that identifies the messages we want to send, the audiences, what media will be used, and a schedule for execution of the plan. The change readiness assessment results will help us to surgically address messages to the sources of the resistance.

• Training is used to enable the change participant to be competent in the new environment. Their jobs may change and require new skills and the training will prepare them so that they will feel comfortable that they will be able to add value and be successful. Again, the change readiness assessment might identify the perception that they will not be capable of performing in the new environment.

• Organization redesign is used when the existing organization design is not sufficient for the new environment. It may be necessary to redesign jobs and change the grouping of functions to better align with the changed environment.

• Sponsorship coaching is the process of making sure the leaders are on board and encouraging their employees to work through the change. Remember that the leaders are going through the same stages of change that the employees are. However, the leaders will greatly affect the workers level of support or resistance by what they say or don’t say about the change. This tool identifies leaders who are supporting and those who are resisting the change. Those leaders who are supporters are encouraged to help those who are resisting. The resistors are also given special attention by the change management team in terms of special one-on-one communications, talking points that they can use in their staff meetings and other similar tools. Resistance among leaders is another source of worker resistance that will be identified in the change readiness assessment.

Managing change is possible through the use of tools such as readiness assessment, communication, training, organization redesign and sponsor coaching. I have personal, successful experience in using these tools and methods and I’m here to say “they work”.

Change is inevitable in this fast-moving, crazy world...try not to resist it, but to find some good in it and help make it happen.