Everyday Change Management

 

Let’s face it.  Most of us don’t like change.  Heck, sometimes the smallest changes can set me off.  Little things like a menu update at my favorite restaurant, software updates to my phone, or dare I say reorganizing products at my local supermarket have been known to send me on a rant.   Yet, the amount of change occurring across all aspects of our lives is increasing exponentially.  Futurist Ray Kurzweil aptly described the times we’re living in as “The Age of Acceleration.”

Constant change makes the daily demands of leadership feel overwhelming, and it’s a source of frustration and burn-out for many people.  Yet, once we recognize and accept the fact that change is part of everyday life, and not some special activity reserved for HR or project management professionals, we can begin to approach it as a capability that we all need to develop.

Having been deeply involved in significant change management efforts throughout my career, I’ve noticed some common practices that have proven to be incredibly valuable.  I think of these as the five daily practices for change management.  These are approaches that can be applied by anyone, at any level, to help manage the daily drumbeat of change.  It doesn’t matter is you’re the CEO or an entry level team member — you can proactively lead positive change every single day.

Here are five “habits” that every leader is empowered to use to manage everyday change:

1. Look outside the organization – People get blindsided by change when they lose touch with what’s happening in the broader world around them. It’s important to stay informed on market trends, new competitors, and sources of disruption. This can be as simple as staying up to date on trade publications, attending a conference, or reading the news. To gain new perspectives try getting out of your daily routine.  For example, if you work in accounting at a large corporation, consider taking a “field trip” to learn what accountants are doing in smaller organizations – or vice versa. Continually explore how new insights could affect your work and pursue ways to keep yourself and your team relevant.
2. Stay close to the people you serve – It’s really easy to mess things up when you’re disconnected from understanding the ever changing wants, needs, and expectations of the people you serve. It doesn’t matter is you’re in sales, marketing, operations, IT, engineering, accounting, HR, finance, or another area within the organization — somewhere there are people who are dependent on the work you do. Take time to meet with them, discuss ways to improve, and even identify ways they might get their needs met elsewhere to help inform you about your competition. This can be done formally via a meeting or informally over coffee or lunch.
3. Measure outcomes – Positive change is really about consistently producing better outcomes. While commercial aspects of the business may have clear outcome metrics like revenue and profit, results in the back-office may appear more difficult to track. They’re not. Items like adoption, usage, satisfaction, defects, cost, time to complete a process, effort to complete a process, total number of outputs, etc… are all ways to assess outcomes. As long as you’re correlating changes to improved outcomes you’ll know you’re headed in the right direction.
4. Cultivate continuous communication – Communication is the core element to successfully managing change. It requires leaders to establish a diverse and ongoing set of communication channels with their stakeholders. This should include ways to obtain open and honest feedback based on mutual trust. Examples might include meetings, one-on-one conversations, newsletters, training, videos, chats or forums, intranet sites, emails, or dare I say an old fashioned bulletin board. Set a steady rhythm and adjust as the needs of your audience evolve.
5. Set a vision and iterate – Managing through continuous change doesn’t mean you need to respond to every single whim or issue that emerges. Instead, it requires leaders to establish a clear vision of where they’re going while also allowing for changes along the way. Start by developing a roadmap or plan. You might pair that with project management and operational methods like agile and Kanban. This will enable you to keep things progressing in the right direction while also incorporating changes as new information becomes available