To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often

Winston Churchill

Organisational leaders often talk about what could be and how great their organisation has the potential to be. At the same time, leaders also notice resistance to change within their teams. And sometimes, this resistance seeps down right from the top teams. We all know that change is the only constant, no matter what industry we are in or what kind of clients we deal with, Yet resistance to change is almost omnipresent. The ability to constantly evolve ourselves and encourage and train our employees to do the same makes a difference. It is the core job of the leadership to do that.

As a coach, I have collaborated with many leaders and their employees to understand their development requirements. Change management is usually a crucial part of leadership development initiatives. Leaders need to prioritise the strategic aspects of change management, considering its positive impact on the business and on building the levels of trust. They can make a tremendous difference by simply promoting the necessity for change across all levels. Building a narrative that change is essential, could be the first step in change management and building positive cultural changes.

If we want to enable a culture of change, there are effectively three questions that we need to reflect upon:

1. What is the kind of change we are looking for?

Business leaders must treat change management projects as ways to help people evolve. Myopic changes will not help; what is needed is a more profound change in the way people think, act, and perform.

To summarise, leaders need to craft people’s expectations during different stages of evolution through the change management program. So change management has multiple phases to evolve people, processes, and purposes.

The leaders are the program’s authors, and the change management coach facilitates the journey.

2. Why is the change needed?

Change is needed to survive, evolve and grow. Organisations which fail to change with time fail to deliver results. Sometimes, organisations that don’t evolve perish. Fortune 500 companies can become misfortune 500 if the idea of change is not sold well to their people. Leaders need to position a sense of urgency towards enabling change. Most of the time, leaders do not realise the importance of communicating a sense of urgency. Communicating the need for change is critical to form a powerful guiding coalition. Change is needed to grow. The trigger could be survival in a challenging macroeconomic situation to build future readiness.

3. How do we implement change in a time-bound manner?

Talking about change management is just one aspect of it. Implementing them on a real-time basis is needed. Here’s what we need to do to ensure that:

• Assess the current situation. This means asking the hard questions. If something goes wrong in the organisation, we must assess it and think deeply before concluding.
• Diagnose the reason behind situations. Changes are always based on particular situations. They could be one-offs or a series of things that are happening. Deep dive into the diagnosis.
• The leaders are the best judges of their people. They should carefully craft the plan for the next 6-12 months based on what is acceptable to their people. They also need to lay out a clear structure for the necessary steps towards adaptation.
• Leaders need to build a storyline that will help establish a joint agreement and encourage people to move forward. The process and the storyline should seem manageable, and leaders should democratically execute them by understanding the pace of adaptation.
• Use coaching, mentoring, training, and counseling to build the required momentum to drive people toward change.
• Make sure to assess continuously. It is essential to understand that the results of change are a slow and time-consuming process.

What do we need to understand about change management?

Change has a compounding effect on the entire organisation. For leaders, it is essential to believe in this change’s value. Think about mastering the art of yoga, sports, or music. Practising the same thing repeatedly is incredibly important to become a zen or a music maestro. As soon as we stop practising, we go back to square one. For businesses, this could be detrimental. If we take a step ahead and two steps backwards, the entire activity is a lost cause.

The main challenge in change management is knowing the art of sustaining. The biggest warning for organizational leaders is to be sure not to stop once they have started. My experience suggests taking more than average time to assess the change management program before we begin holistically. After you start, staying committed to bringing radical change is essential.

What is it that we need to drive change management?

Every organisation is different, and so are the change management projects. Hence, there are plenty of methods to drive change.

The key element to driving change is building motivation to execute these actions. Transformation is a long journey, and hurdles are on the way.

• Some of these are political, which means certain people in the organization’s management could hinder it.
• They could also be cognitive, meaning the people affected by change don’t understand why the project is being taken up. They see it as a waste of their time and energy.
• The hurdles could also be motivational. This means that initially, people might see it as a project, but soon they realise the effects won’t be practical. They tend to lose motivation.
• Any change management project can easily be a victim of these hurdles. Resistance is a part of human nature, and so is procrastination. Sometimes, leaders think that the way their organisations run is just fine. They might be under false impressions, which makes them reluctant to change.

Conclusion

As an organisational leader, it is essential to understand that change management projects are long-term, sometimes up to 3-4 years. Sustaining the project and being consistent is a part of the change. Big transformations need skill, will, and resources. The right way to manage all three is the main driving force behind ensuring that organisations succeed.

And that is why Albert Einstein rightly said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

Want to drive change management collaboratively? Feel free to write to us at dinkar@kabirlearning.com to learn how.