Communication - Change Guides LLC - Guiding Organizations Through Change

Do You Believe in Change?

November 5, 2014/0 Comments/in Change Management, Communication, Employees, Leaders, Resistance/by admin

In today’s business environment, there’s no such thing as “steady state”. Getting accustomed to making change happen quickly is an integral part of building and leading an effective organization. Whether responding to customer demands, making course corrections when a strategy is running off the rails, or quickly integrating a new product or service line when the perfect opportunity drops in your lap, organizations need to change fast. If you sell your own products online, blister packaging is the best way to impress your customers and make them able to identify your product easily next time, learn more about blister packaging.

When it comes to organizational change, there are some things that leaders should know, and some common misconceptions that should be dispelled. Here’s what you should believe, and what you should not believe.

BELIEVE: Organizational changes happen when individuals within the organization change. Organizations are essentially groups of individuals. New processes, structures and rules can be put in place, but if people are not committed to new ways of thinking and acting, the changes are not likely to be successful.

BELIEVE: The human reactions that occur during any given change are at least as important as any other aspect of implementing change. People naturally and inevitably react emotionally when we ask them to think and act in new ways. The behavior of the people who make the organization work changes as individuals move through their individual transition process and develop commitment.

BELIEVE: The more involved people are in a change, the less negative their inevitable reactions will be. People naturally support what they help create.

BELIEVE: The emotional response people will have to a change intensifies as the speed of change increases. If you want change to happen fast, you can expect there to be stronger resistance than if you are on a “we’ll get to it when we get to it” timeline.

BELIEVE: The longer a group, individual, or situation has remained static, the greater the investment in the status quo and the greater the resistance to change. The fact that people are proud of what they do and how they do it is a great thing – except when you want to change it.

While there are basic truths that leaders should believe about change, there are also some little-white-lies about change that they should not believe.

NOT BELIEVE: Time takes care of everything. People are able to think and act in new ways by moving through the human process of transition and developing commitment – not through sitting and waiting. Without intervention, that process can take weeks, months, years, or may never fully happen. (William Bridges, Managing Transitions, 1991 & 2003 William Bridges and Associates)

NOT BELIEVE: Everyone who isn’t on board with a change has something wrong with them. New neuroscience research confirms that it takes more physical energy to do new things than it does to do things the same old way. And the natural human reaction is to conserve that physical energy. Resistance is a natural response to change. (Rock and Schwartz, “The Neuroscience of Leadership”, Strategy + Business, Issue 43)

NOT BELIEVE: The reasons for the change will be seen in a rational manner and will therefore be easy for people to go along with. People are not singularly rational beings. There is an emotional connection that people need to make to really commit to the new way. (Lee Colan, Passionate Performance, 2004 Cornerstone Leadership)

NOT BELIEVE: If communication is done “right” the first time, it is enough. People generally need to “hear” a message anywhere from eight to ten times to really get it. And “right” is different during a change process for each person. While there are times that a company-wide meeting and presentation is what people need, there are also times when they need a one-on-one conversation with a boss or a roundtable conversation with peers.

NOT BELIEVE: Change happens at or on a scheduled discrete event. While new processes, structures or rules can be scheduled to start or take place on a specific date, people travel through their individual transition over some period of time.

Based on the facts and the fiction, it may seem that we should all throw our hands up and go home. But luckily there are proven ways to manage change that can deal with the challenges that are presented with changing organizations.

According to a recent study by Prosci, the most important element of effective organization change is having effective and engaged sponsors. Second is effective communication and third is involvement by employees. Next, the fourth critical success factor for effective change is the use of a common easy-to-use methodology and language around change. And rounding out the top five is the use of easy-to-use and well organized tools that support the application of change management. (“Enterprise Change Management” Prosci Research, 2006)

Kate Nelson is a partner with Change Guides, LLC (www.changeguidesllc.com) and a co-author of The Change Management Pocket Guide. She can be reached at [email protected].

The Return on Investment for Change Management

September 23, 2014/0 Comments/in Change Management, Change Management Competency, Change Readiness, Communication, Culture, Employees, Leaders, Resistance, The Change Management 101 Model, Training/by admin

Our clients ask us all the time about the return on investment for time and money spent managing change. Studies conducted by McKinsey several years ago showed a correlation between successfully managing change and increased returns from the changes studied. But this analisi tecnica study provided no clear formula or way of calculating the increased value of future changes. We know that the benefits of investing in change management come from increased speed of adoption, adoption rates, and the skills or abilities of people who will take on new ways of working. So we were wondering… how do you measure the return on the investment in change management?

We asked past Change Management Certification Participants the following questions about their return on change management investments.
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How do you justify the use of change management on your projects?

Lots of respondents said that they basically don’t justify the use of change management on projects. For some, they don’t because they don’t need to. Their leadership teams just know intuitively that it helps. For others, their lack of justifying the use of change management is a problem that they are continuously battling when resistance to change management arises.

A few justify change management with surveys and sharing the successes of change management in previous projects.
Have you measured the return on investment for change management and have you found the best way passive income? If so, what did you measure in order to determine the ROI of change management?

Most of you haven’t measured the return on change management investments which are as smart as ira gold custodian investing. For those that have, measuring productivity of the workforce before and after a change was suggested, along with measuring adoption rates and surveying people about their engagement in a new way of working. Lenders use credit reporting to help them decide if they will loan you money, what interest rates they will offer you. Lenders also use your credit report to determine whether you continue to meet the terms of an existing credit account.

Several folks commented on the “soft” or “intangible” benefits of change management and the difficulty in measuring it.

In which change management activities do you invest the most money? According to GlobeNewsWire, Carpathian Gold can help you with the necessary information needed for investing in different precious metals, bequests, and withdrawal rules, so that you are fully informed.

The most common things noted were communications (planning, executing, and materials), bringing stakeholders together for communication engagement, and training on how to invest in goldco precious metals for bigger profits.
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Thanks for those of you that shared your experiences with the ROI of change management. There is no formula that we can point to just yet. But if you are thinking about measuring the benefits of the change management work you are doing, look to the cost savings or benefits for the organization that result from: faster adoption of new ways, greater utilization of the change, and greater skill or ability to use the changes. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Our Change Management Pocket Guide is now an App!

June 4, 2014/0 Comments/in Change Management, Change Management Competency, Change Readiness, Communication, Culture, Employees, Leaders, Resistance, The Change Management 101 Model/by admin

Many of our customers have asked over the past year about offering our Change Management Pocket Guide as an eBook. We listened. Change Guides is very excited to introduce The Change Management Pocket Guide in a mobile App format!

Here is some information about our new App:

The Change Management Pocket Guide mobile application is a practical resource for anyone tasked with making change happen. The tactical, hands-on electronic pocket guide is a fully functioning and integrated mobile app solution for Android and Apple devices.

Like the hard copy book, the Change Management Pocket Guide app uses the Change Management 101 Model to step you through three major phases of managing change: Plan, Do and Sustain. These three major phases are broken down into the two specific stages as you move from one phase to the next. The tools in the Change Management Pocket Guide are used to interactively gather information, set milestones, and measure progress. There are over 30 valuable change management tools and templates that are integrated within the mobile solution so that they can be purchased, downloaded and easily customized to match the requirements of your specific change challenge. Each tool in the change toolbox is detailed, flexible and scalable.

Use the In-App purchase functionality to download the tools you need directly from the Change Management Pocket Guide and customize them for your project. Each downloadable tool has already been created in Word and Excel and can be used as they are explained in the Change Management Pocket Guide.

Overview of App Functionality

The Change Management Pocket Guide mobile app allows you to use the “tools for managing change” in an interactive and useful format. You can read and learn about the Change Management 101 Model™ and use the tools, answer key questions and build your own change management solution with an actionable plan for each change initiative you encounter. The mobile app is designed around the following functional areas:

PDF Reader format: A consistent format with the ability to search, bookmark pages and zoom in/zoom out
Integrated Change Pocket Guide companion templates: In-App purchase functionality for all Change Management Pocket Guide templates
In-App share integration using Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

To Purchase the Change Management Pocket Guide App: Visit the App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/change-pocket-guide/id864653668?mt=8) or the Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.changeguidesllc.changepocketguide) today to buy the app for your mobile device.

About the developer: Apptimize Group is a mobile application design and development company that creates general and enterprise internally deployed mobile client solutions. Our focus is to create simple and useful mobile apps that make for a memorable customer experience. For more information visit www.ApptimizeGroup.com and contact John Gurnick at [email protected].

A Walk In Their Shoes

March 25, 2014/0 Comments/in Change Management, Communication, Employees, Leaders, Resistance/by admin

One of the best ways to help people navigate through change is to put yourself in their shoes. Looking at a situation from someone else’s perspective helps you understand what individuals and groups need to engage and commit to new ways of working.

When thinking about an organizational change, consider the questions that people in the organization have on their minds. If you were in their shoes, what would you want to know?

Why is the change happening? People want to know why the change is happening. Remember, if you are leading a change, you have had months of preparation and planning for the change. For most employees, this is new information. They may have heard rumors, but their first real information is when the change is announced or formally communicated. Whatever the answer is to the “why” question, share as much as you can. It is better that people get their information from the change leaders than making up their own answers.
If we just wait, won’t this just go away? If people are burying their heads in the sand, get their attention and make sure they understand that the change will not simply disappear. (If you have started and stopped projects or changes in the past, this is harder to sell, but it is still just as important.) People who believe that this might just disappear are much less likely to commit their time and energy to the effort. And that lack of engagement is a drain to productivity and limits the probability of the change’s success. So people need to understand that this is not going away.
What will the change mean to me? Tell people what it means to them individually – or as specifically as you can. The more specifics you can provide, the more their comfort level rises.
What is the risk of not changing? Make sure that that people understand the consequences for the organization if change does not happen. The risks of not changing for the organization can be anything from bankruptcy to loss of business to limited opportunities for growth. If people understand how they would suffer as the organization would suffer, the realities of why the change needs to be successful may sink in.

Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is not always easy. It requires us to think outside of ourselves and tap a level of empathy that might not be intuitive for some.

If you are having a hard time figuring out what people might want to know or what questions they might have, the solution is quite simple… just ask them. But to get started, ask yourself, “What would I want to know if I was in their place?”

The Blind Spot

February 17, 2014/0 Comments/in Communication/by admin

You’ve probably heard the phase “actions speak louder than words”. What are your actions saying?

Tacit communication is the type of communication that is invisible, unspoken, inferred, or implied.
It communicates much more than our words often do. It is a key part of how we relate to one another and gather meaning, and it unveils what’s behind our intentions, assumptions, prejudices and biases.

Understanding what our actions are really saying requires us to have a good deal of self-awareness and actually seeing what for many may be a blind spot.

The key to understanding and managing your own unspoken messages is a healthy dose of introspection. Ask yourself….

Do you value some opinions more than others?
Do you have unspoken beliefs about how things should be at work?
Do you give all an equal opportunity to succeed?
Do you have relationships that you value above others at work?
Do you truly, deep down, care about someone’s opinion or idea?
What do you truly want out of a situation, your job, your life?

Ask questions of yourself and see what you can uncover. If you are stuck, turn to someone you trust that will be honest with you about the messages you send. The more diligent you are at uncovering your blind spot, the more effective you become as a leader.

The Leadership Looking Glass

November 21, 2013/0 Comments/in Change Management, Change Management Competency, Communication, Leaders, Uncategorized/by admin

Leadership is the core of change. When it comes to change within an organization, leadership is the most important contributor to success… or failure. Employees watch their leaders relentlessly. They know a leader’s action speaks louder than their words. If the ‘walk’ doesn’t follow the ‘talk’ then the employees won’t follow either.

When it comes to Change Management there are key behaviors we look for in our leaders. In our book The 8 Constants of Change we note that these behaviors include:

Get involved in the change – by attending meetings, process reviews, workshops and making time to attend executive training. Your attendance and participation signals that these activities are important.
Communicate the Change – by getting the message out there, ensuring it is understood, updating the information as progress is made, and paying attention to issues and concerns.
Reward people for doing the right thing – by encouraging employees to get involved in the project, rewarding them publicly and maintaining a regular contact with the change management team. People who are doing a really great job need to be recognized and rewarded.
Walk the talk – by showing what is really important in action rather than just words. There are endless projects competing for time and resources, how a Leader supports any given project reflects directly the likelihood of success or failure.
Keep a positive attitude – by expecting the learning curve and knowing that productivity will dip while changes are put in place. Be patient and maintain that positive outlook, even if the messages are negative.

There are a couple additional behaviors that aren’t included in The 8 Constants but certainly merit a mention here:

Never stop nurturing – Mentor the team, and in turn you may learn new ways of thinking and approaching things. This effort creates a working infrastructure of shared values, ideas and accomplishments.
Try what might fail – Empower the team to try things that aren’t necessarily guaranteed to work. Look at any outcome of an effort as either success or education. Both are invaluable.

The times when leaders are tested most is when they’re not looking…in a hallway conversation, a passing comment or even a facial expression. Can you hold up the Leadership Looking Glass and know that your actions reflect your words?

So How Big of a Deal is This Change, Anyway?

September 26, 2013/0 Comments/in Change Management, Change Management Competency, Communication, Culture, Leaders, The Change Management 101 Model/by admin

During the first few weeks of a new project it is not unusual to hear concerns expressed about how impacted employees can take on more, or refocus their attention or even survive a major change initiative. Typically these concerns are expressed from an intuitive or empathetic perspective. Management or team members may not know for a fact that the stresses of change will be challenging, but their first-hand knowledge of their team or unit can typically be right on target. So the question becomes: How can the change management team capture the data needed to identify the impact to the people of the organization?

Well, there’s a tool for that! The People Impact Assessment tool, newly added to the 2nd edition of The Change Management Pocket Guide is an assessment that measures the impact that a change will have on people within an organization. A well implemented assessment will show how the changes will impact people who work in the organization, identify where within the organization to focus change management activity, contribute to the Change Management Workplan, and ultimately help the team get people in the organization ready, willing, and able to work in new ways.

Dimensions that need to be explored in order to assess the impact of the change on people include:

Roles – How will the changes impact primary roles and job tasks?
Staffing – Will the size of the workforce be impacted?
Relationships – How will the organizational structure change? Will there be new types of workgroups or interactions?
Employee Competencies – Are new skills or knowledge required?
Decision Making – Will there be changes in scope and decisions that employees and managers make?
Culture – How must the culture change to support new behaviors?

Assessing the people impact of any given change can become a huge effort. It may require more than a spreadsheet to manage the data and could include several people to help gather the data needed. And like many change management tools, the people impact assessment will grow and evolve as the project progresses. New data that surfaces as the project progresses will require updating the assessment.

But, it is worth the effort. A complete understanding of the impacts of the change on people is really the basis for most of the work that a change manager or change management team does. If you have limited resources and can only focus on a few change management activities, consider a people impact assessment. Knowing how people will be impacted and where to focus your time and change management resources will be well worth the effort.

Assumptions Can Lead to Failure

September 24, 2012/0 Comments/in Change Management, Communication, Leaders, Uncategorized/by admin

You share information and assume others will share it. You describe a new process that needs adopted and assume employees will adopt it. You think an idea is best for the business and assume others will think so too. When you assume, you are hoping for the best but should expect the worst. Assuming others will think and act like you do is a bad assumption. You should assume the opposite. They won’t share the information. They won’t adopt a new process just because you ask and they won’t agree that the idea is the best thing. Only when you assume the worst, can you take proper steps to impact communication and behavior change.

These are not bad people who ignore you or disagree. These are your friends, trusted colleagues, co-workers. In fact, it’s probably not even their fault. If you are trying to influence others, the onus is on you to provide the needed direction for that to happen. Maybe you didn’t hand them talking points and give them a deadline to share the information with their team. Maybe you didn’t provide support materials that describe how the process works and how it is different from the old process. Maybe you didn’t listen to what the other leaders think and offer your support to them.

To be successful implementing an idea or project, you must influence others. Nothing can be done alone. “I assumed she would tell them,” my client said. I hear that a lot. I always reply with, “don’t assume” and “what can we do to make it as easy as possible for this person to support us.” Sometimes I get push back like, “those managers should know what to say,” or “those leaders should know what to do.” That’s not really the point. Maybe they should know what to say or what to do. The point is, in most cases, they aren’t saying what we want and they aren’t doing what we want.

Influencing others takes a thoughtful, proactive approach that requires effort. Your effort gets rewarded with results. When we assume, results usually aren’t achieved. When it comes to influencing others, providing the needed guidance and tools can make all the difference.

We have a tool called a “leadership involvement plan”. It’s a very simple idea. You have the leader’s name at the top. You have activities you’d like that leader to do – for example, 1) show up at a meeting and voice support (using talking points provided), 2) provide a resource by a certain date to help with process mapping, 3) talk to a peer leader that has concerns about the project. These are simple things that probably wouldn’t happen unless we explicitly asked and made it a plan. Leaders, if you can get in front of them, are usually receptive to this and even may add items to their lists. If you are trying to push positive change for the business, leaders should understand that their involvement is important.

So, next time you find yourself assuming someone will say something or do something to move your project along, don’t. Ask yourself, what can I do to help them support me?

Changing for the Workforce of the Future

July 25, 2012/0 Comments/in Change Management, Change Management Competency, Change Readiness, Communication, Culture, Leaders, Uncategorized/by admin

Can you imagine fully half of the people who work for your company being either contractors such as the best roofing company in Denver, CO, temporary workers, or freelancers? That may very well be the future we face.

A 2012 Economic Intelligence Unit Study shows that by the year 2030, 50% of the workforce will be made up of contingent workers. The U.S. contingent workforce is made up of self-employed individuals, independent service firms, entrepreneurs and temporary workers. By 2020, 40 percent of American workers, or nearly 65 million people, will be contingent, and shortly thereafter that percentage is expected to rise to 50 percent.

Others confirm that the use of contingent workers is already on the rise, and will continue. The Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as reports from the Staffing Industry Analysts, a research and advisory firm focused on staffing and contingent labor, have demonstrated that the number of contingent workers has been increasing year over year for a few years. And in June 2011, over 34% of the 2000 organizations surveyed by the McKinsey Global Institute said they plan to use more temporary labor in the next five years.

The trend is clear. But are organizations ready for it?

Work in the future will be more collaborative, flexible, and goal oriented. Temporary workers will need to be sharp, and stay sharp, to keep their jobs. An organiztaion with more and more people flowing into and out of it will need to be radically different than today.

A current client of ours is working on a large project that requires a lot of consultants. A full time staff person spends over 80% of her time giving out and tracking computers that are given to consultants. Can you imagine if half of their workforce was contingent? If the task of managing assets is so cumbersome now, the process and technology implications of a 50% contingent workforce would be astounding.

We have several large clients that are working on becoming more “digitally enabled” in order to meet the needs of their customers. But with all we have heard from clients about embracing technology to meet the needs of future customers, we have not heard any talk at all about how to be more digitally enabled to meet the needs of their future workers. The shift to more temporary workers will change how an organization works with its people in profound ways.

Current technology certainly makes workers more “plug and play” ready. But it will need to make significant strides to meet the needs of a future more transient workforce.

Our clients will have to re-think how they manage people, how groups form and disband to tackle work, how people are on-boarded and rolled-off, how corporate cultures are built and maintained, how they attract and evaluate temporary workers.

They will also need to embrace technology and new digital technologies in an entirely new way. More digital maturity can help organizations build stronger connection to their staff… especially temporary staff. Not only allowing access, but also targeting communication, facilitating relationships between roles, connecting people to other people and ideas.

Organizations that will win with workers of the future will be more mobile, and will be more agile by providing more personalized or customized needs for each temporary worker. They will flex based on the work, the location, the worker, and the required interfaces with other people within the organization.

If you are thinking about where your organization will be in 20 years, think about your customers, your products, and your markets. The demands they place on your organization will certainly challenge you to change. But also think about your staff. You might be surprised at the magnitude of change that meeting their unique needs challenges you to also.

Organizational Muscles to Manage Change

May 8, 2012/0 Comments/in Change Management, Change Management Competency, Communication, Culture, Leaders/by admin

We have been working with several large organizations lately that are trying to build their internal ability to manage ongoing change. Change is the new normal for many organizations. Managing how people adapt and adopt change is something that many are seeing as a critical competency.

Change Management is the discipline of helping people in an organization get ready, willing, and able to work in new ways that are required by a change. Many leaders that see a long string of changes ahead of them are looking to build an internal Change Management competency. They, in effect, are trying to build their change muscles so that they can handle the seemingly endless series of changes headed for them.

Organizations that build a Change Management competency do a few things.

First, they foster leadership sponsorship for employing Change Management. Leaders at the highest levels know what Change Management is and why managing change will help them change more successfully. And they are committed to making Change Management a strong capability in the organization. They are willing to stand up in front of the effort, to put money where their mouth is, and walk the talk.

Second, these organizations use a common methodology and model for managing change. Having a common Change Management framework across the organization builds a common language that shapes the way people think and talk about change. A common model also introduces methods and tools that can help people in the organization actually do the work of managing change.

Third, organizations that have a Change Management competency have a broad based understanding of the value of Change Management throughout all levels of the organization. Everyone has a baseline understanding of why people make the difference between successful organizational change and unsuccessful change, and why managing change is important.

These organizations also each have a strong and capable Change Management team. A group of people in the organization who are focused on supporting the organization as they begin incorporating Change Management into their projects and change efforts helps the new practices take hold. The Change Management group has highly capable team members, clear roles and responsibilities, and an appropriate or organization structure.

Lastly, organizations that have a strong Change Management competency reinforce effectively managed change. When projects succeed because teams have helped people in the organization engage and adopt new work, they are celebrated and rewarded. Leaders eagerly to put effective changes in the limelight, and the organization learns what successful change looks like.

If you see change coming at your organization like a speeding train, don’t hide. Instead, develop a change management competency. That way, you can face change head-on now, and you will be ready for all of the changes to come in the future.