Andrew Badham 2021-07-14 16:06:59
Change is the great constant. Whether it happens gradually and inconspicuously, or all at once, change happens, and organisations must then adapt. Sometimes, we adapt without realising we’re making a significant change; we slightly adjust our processes as the world around us changes and, after a while, we realise we are doing business quite differently than before. This incremental adaption happens naturally and, for adapting to slowly changing environments, it can work. But sometimes, change happens faster than we can gradually adapt to it.
It’s at this point that we need a plan and, when it comes to change management, any plan is better than no plan (Prosci, 2020). The reason planning is so critical in change management is that there are so many aspects to an organisation that need to change together. Take working remotely for example. Many organisations suddenly had to make the change to working remotely. While that change could seem simple at face value – just do what you do but from home – in reality it came with a whole set of changes to meetings, logistics, team bonding, IT support, IT security, and a plethora of other factors I’ve forgotten to mention.
And that’s kind of the point: we forget just how many working parts there are to an organisation. When we forget those aspects of an organisation during a change process, they lag behind and interfere with a successful adaption. On the other hand, the more aspects of our business we can account for, the more successful the adaption will be.
A good plan will take into account as much of the business as possible, but it goes further than that: a plan also helps to set out a clear goal of what the change process should achieve. If we know what the business should achieve in the change process, we are more likely to take actions to achieve it. That may sound fairly obvious but remember that not all change is anticipated. When surprise changes occur, we need to take that step back to consider what objectives we would like to now achieve. Essentially, we are proactively acting as opposed to mindlessly reacting to the change.
An added bonus of setting clear goals is that it’s easier to see when we don’t live up to them. If we see that we are not meeting clear objectives, we can always adapt; whereas, if we haven’t defined those objectives, we don’t have a clear idea of how we’re doing.
Lastly, a good plan should focus on the who element. Who is responsible for implementing change, communicating change, and following through on change? The answer is everyone. With any significant change to a business, almost everyone will have to do their jobs differently. So, a good plan will account for changes to employees at every level to help and ensure that they are equipped to work in the change and onboard with the plan.
That is essentially the formula for long-term success. If employees have a sense of ownership, if they feel they agree with the direction of the company, they are more likely to keep performing through change. That doesn’t happen by accident. People are naturally averse to change; we like to do what we’ve always done. Convincing employees that they should change how they work takes a degree of emotional intelligence and, more importantly, a plan of communication.
There is much more that can be said on the details of how to create these plans, what they should include and how they should be executed; that’s why we have a whole course dedicated to it. The important thing to remember is that even a bad plan is better than no plan.