Effective change management is everything

John Kotter is a professor at Harvard whose career has been built on researching organisational change. His 8-step programme has been used successfully by all sorts of companies around the world and you could use it too with your company. I’ve summarised the programme but you could read more in his book called ‘The Heart of Change’.

1. Create a sense of urgency: help everyone see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately. This is no time for delay or debate! If it can be done today, do it today. And show them, don’t tell them. If you rely on logic and reason to convince people, you’re likely to be frustrated by the team’s response.
2. Pull together the guiding team: make sure there is a powerful group guiding the change – one that shares your credibility and sense of urgency. As a leader, you need to show enthusiasm and commitment, and to model trust and teamwork. Be aware of your own emotions at this stage – your body language will give it away if you are not truly enthusiastic and committed, even though you are saying the right words.
3. Develop a new vision and strategy: clarify how the future will be different from the past, and how you can make that future a reality. Show people what the future looks like in a way that engages their emotion. Spreadsheets and financial analysis won’t work – people need to see and feel what the future is going to be.
4. Communicate for understanding and buy-in: make sure as many people as possible understand and accept the new vision and the strategy. Keep communication simple and heartfelt. Give people a way to replace their anger or depression with another emotion like ‘excitement’ to buy in to. Remember what you learned years ago in Sales – people only buy 2 things: feelings and solutions. So when you’re communicating for buy-in, communicate the benefits, not the features.
5. Empowering others to act involves removing as many barriers as possible so that those who want to make the vision a reality can do so. Change cumbersome processes. Retrain staff to handle their new roles. Reward behaviour that matches what you’re looking for.
6. Produce short-term wins: create some visible, unambiguous successes as soon as possible – even if they seem small compared with the big vision. Come up with wins that create positive emotions, that you share with the whole team.
7. Don’t let up: press harder and faster after the first successes. Be relentless with initiating change after change until the vision is a reality.
8. Create a new culture: hold onto the new ways of behaving until they become strong enough to replace old traditions – don’t let people slide back into their old ways. Tell vivid stories over and over about the new organisation, not the old one. Continue to reward the behaviour you want. And as you come out of recession, employ new people who match your new culture.

I hope these few tips will help to get your surviving teams back on track. Hopefully they will help you to persuade your teams that rather than mourn the loss of the past, they can look forward to the birth of a new future.