Communicating Change Management:
Change Is The Same As It Always Was
By
Garrison Wynn
How can
management motivate people to listen?
By making sure they will benefit from what
is said!
A manager
during change is like a sea captain, they need to get their ship
together. We all realize change is inevitable.
Change itself is not an issue; it’s the resistance to change that
causes such problems.
The resistance is naturally
strong when we explain our great reform is based on doing more with
less. We tell our coworkers and even our bosses that the future is
based on being more productive with fewer resources. (I don’t know
about you, but I always dreamed the future would somehow involve
physically doing less with much more cool stuff.)
We can attempt to cultivate buy-in by
explaining how to be more productive and how to lessen the cost of
that productivity, ultimately enabling us to wrap our fingers around
that holy grail of business achievement: profitability. But let’s
get real. All signs might point to profitability as a logical
product of the changes being proposed, and yet logical humans need
to see how a change in process will make them look good before they
will give it their all.
Through our surveys of top professionals
who serve as change agents, Wynn Solutions has noticed a critical
first leg of the buy-in journey. (“Critical” and “first leg”? It
sounds like change is limping already!) We found that top
professionals who succeed in implementing change begin by tactfully
explaining that the more people focus on making change work, the
more value they have to the company.
Additionally, these professionals dealt
with the good-old-days syndrome that prevents some people from
creating their own future. You may have heard that to spread change
through an organization, you have to prove to key players that the
new way is at least as good as, if not better than, the old way. You
might think you need to provide some physical evidence (data) and a
couple of testimonials (people thought of as straight shooters
saying positive things about the changes) as well.
However, if you want people to see it’s
possible to succeed by doing more with less, you need to find or
create change agents who will massively benefit from the change and
who have an outstanding advocate network, great communication skills
and – above all – really big mouths.
Change is not the problem;
resistance to change is the problem.
The Gallup Institute study of eighty
thousand managers and over a million employees’ shows how
dramatically employee opinion can affect productivity. And while we
can't control much of the world changing around us, we can control
how we respond to how employees feel about a changing environment.
When things change, people are afraid they
will no longer be experts. They will have to learn the new way, and
no one wants to be a senior beginner. Our studies show that
to make change work, we have to prove to our key people that the
change means getting results better than (or at least equal to)
those achieved the old way, assure them that their experience has
value, and then get them to spread that message through the
organization.
Resistance
management
(Tactics for systematically managing resistance).
The
eight most common beliefs and reasons that people resist change:
1. There isn't any real need for the
change.
2. The change is going to make it harder
for them to meet their needs.
3. The risks seem to outweigh the
benefits.
4. They don't think they have the ability
to make the change.
5. They believe the change will fail.
6. Change process is being handled
improperly by management.
7. The change is inconsistent with their
values.
8. They believe those responsible for the
change can't be trusted.
Being prepared for the resistance
and making sure your solutions fit the existing culture are the keys
to making change work. It’s
important that the new way makes sense at all levels. A solution is
not viewed as valuable if it just compensates for a flaw in the
system.
What do
you get when you cross lassie with a pit-bull?
A dog that will rip
your leg off and then help you go find it.
What good is
that?
Read other articles and learn more
about
Garrison Wynn.
[Contact the author for permission to republish or reuse this article.]
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