Leading
and Managing Change
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2: How Does One Overcome Resistance
to Change?
Change Factors for Success
1) Powerful Business Case. Having a powerful
business case for the change is critical to success. This business case
provides the rationale and communicates what is the "burning platform."
The business case demonstrates that the cost of not changing is greater
than the cost of changing. The business case is what helps those affected
by the change to understand why this is being done to them. Understanding
the reasons for the change helps to overcome denial and resistance and
creates energy for action.
Barrier or Enabler? Is there a good business case for changing? If yes,
then communicate it! If not, then build one! This might be a cost benefit
analysis, data regarding the increasing number of clients you are losing
each month, a benchmarking study about what the most successful people
in the legal profession are doing, and so on.
2) Vision Clarity. John F. Kennedy said, "Vision illuminates
the way and keeps everyone focused on the destination." A clear vision
of what the change will look like presents a compelling picture, a destination
of where you are going. The vision defines any new technology, people,
and process requirements for the future and specifies expected changes
in behavior.
Barrier or Enabler? If there is not a clear vision, people end up working
toward different goals. This contributes to confusion, lost time, reworking
of tasks, frustration, and so on. Communicating a clear vision means everyone
could have blindfolds on and still end up at the same destination.
3) Change Leadership and Accountability. Any change initiative
must have a clear leader who has the ultimate responsibility and accountability
for the success or failure of the project. This means a visible and consistent
demonstration of commitment to the initiative. The leadership team should
include executive sponsors and "change agents" who will be those people
executing the actual change at the tactical level.
Barrier or Enabler? Clearly, having no leader for the change is a barrier.
More often, however, the barrier that truly inhibits success is having
a clear leader who is ineffectual in exercising leadership to advance
the initiative. This person is either too busy or not available to put
in the time and energy that such dramatic change requires. Other doomed
initiatives have leaders who do not command the respect of those within
the organization or simply do not have a change management plan and are
unable to successfully manage to completion.
4) Change-specific Communication. Communication is critical to
many components of any change initiative. The primary goal of communication
is to build stakeholder commitment to the change or future state vision,
and to the organization's strategies. This CSF should outline the strategy,
content, and delivery method for all communications targeted at key stakeholders.
Generally, the communication plan is integrated with the business's overall
communication approach. Communications are key to ensuring that all stakeholders
understand the direction of the initiative, have expectations clearly
articulated, and provide updates to all team members to create efficiencies
and teamwork.
Barrier or Enabler? When it comes to communications, barriers and enablers
need to be assessed from an infrastructure, cultural, and competency standpoint.
For example, a fully enabled organization as it relates to communications
has an integrated technology and telephony system that allows communications
to occur rapidly and effectively to the entire organization. A large organization
that doesn't have the ability to leave voicemails to all personnel has
a technological barrier to effective communications. From a cultural standpoint,
I consider communicating on an "as needed" basis to be a barrier to successful
change. People will make up information where information is lacking.
This is highly dangerous to a successful implementation when buy-in and
support are so key. Communicating openly and often is a critical activity
of any change initiative. Having someone with communications experience
and skill is very important to drafting effective communications. A lack
of this competency is a barrier that must be addressed prior to initiating
the change effort.
5) Change Capability. When embarking upon a change, leaders need
to consider their employees' capacity for change. This is most significant
for an organization that has undergone rapid change over a short time.
I talk about a "threshold of dysfunction" to explain change capability.
When a situation occurs in which a person is using up more energy dealing
with life's multiple challenges than he or she has in reserve, we begin
to see dysfunctional behavior. The extreme of this concept is commonly
referred to as "going postal." Most often, exceeding one's change capacity
means resistance to more change, tardiness, attitude problems, and the
like.
Barrier or Enabler? Too much change, change with no change management
activities, or a history of failed change efforts are barriers to another
initiative. An enabler would be a group of people who love new things
and thrive on change.
6) Integrated Planning and Teams. A change effort needs to be
well organized, with people in the right roles for their skill sets. It
is important to have a "team" structure to the project, because most people
still will need to do their old job as well as the new.
Barrier or Enabler? Enablers in this CFS would be high performance project
teams; project management infrastructure and tools; and integrating the
people, process, and technology components that the change will affect.
7) Stakeholder Commitment. Building stakeholder commitment is
completely critical to any change effort. Stakeholder commitment builds
individual and collective commitment to turn the vision into reality.
It also assures that appropriate resources are available throughout the
project and it mobilizes these resources at the right time. Commitment
is critical if you want the stakeholders to be engaged with the change
once it occurs, for example, using the new email system. Stakeholder commitment
also is important during the process of changing. Without stakeholder
input and buy-in, the change initiative can be delayed, undermined by
resistors, built on bad information or data, and so on.
Barrier or Enabler? It is important to understand how the people affected
by the change feel about it. If a lot of resistance is anticipated, then
much has to be done to get stakeholders to understand the business case
and vision for the effort. In the case of layoffs, for example, few people
will feel commitment to losing their jobs; however, they can be committed
to identifying what they need from the organization to help make this
painful process go a little more smoothly, that is, severance pay, job
search assistance, and resume writing skill building. Also, having a well-respected
person on your side is a strong enabler and should be leveraged.
8) Aligned Performance and Culture. This CSF is about ensuring
that the "Organizational Performance Levers" (OPLs) are aligned with the
change that is taking place. These levers include: organization design,
performance management, training and development, culture, staffing and
deployment, leadership effectiveness, and communication. When putting
in a new technology, for example, having no training causes a misalignment.
Your training and development must account for this new technology.
Barrier or Enabler? A barrier occurs if the change effort requires many
other organizational changes that have not been planned for or are too
far in the future. This puts the effort at risk for not being sustainable
long-term.
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4: Conclusion
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