I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Mr. Josh Clymer, President of Relentless Improvement on the subject of Change Management. I thought the outline was interesting and something worth sharing.
The individual employees change process was analyzed during this presentation and I have it listed, in sequence, as follows:
Denial, Resistance, Exploration, Commitment
Of course, the time it takes to go through each stage is dependent on each individual as well as identifying the right strategy to help the person through it.
Top barriers that were identified stalling major change programs included (in order of most common):
- Senior Level Support
- Competing Resources
- Functional Boundary’s
- Lack of Change Skills
- Middle Management
- Long IT Lead Times
- Communication
- Employee Opposition
- Unrealistic Timetables
Although employee opposition/resistance is a key identified barrier, it wasn’t on the top, meaning that all the other “pegs” need to be in place for the transition to work.
With that, the factors that helped the most successful companies achieve their change goals were presented as follows:
- Good Communication
- Strong Mandate by Senior Management
- Setting up Intermediate Goals and Deadlines
- Having an “Adaptive” Plan
- Have access to Adequate Resources
- Demonstrating Urgency to Change
- Setting up Performance Measures
- Delivering Early, Tangible, Results
- Involving Customers and Suppliers Early
- Benchmarking Performance vs Competitors
As we have all heard, change is a constant and those that adapt are well out front. Referencing a recent LinkedIn article I had written with respect to Client Reviews, it’s the difference between being in a Proactive stance as opposed to Re-Active, playing catch-up.
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