How to Prevent Change Management Failure

In order to survive change, set up  a system to what is broken. Remember what are you trying to achieve and why is that goal so important? How will the change benefit your organisation, people and processes?

After you set up your organisation’s big picture objective, you can benefit from clarifying what’s missing in the change management process as business leaders attempt to reach that goal. Knowledge of the usual missteps can better inform your change management strategy and set you in the right direction.

Set your change initiative up for success by avoiding these usual pitfalls.

Low level of internal buy in

Unless the team are actively behind you, unless the functional or business areas impacted by your change clearly own it and unless you have passionate supporters or internal champions at every level, your initiative is a zombie, not a living demonstration of a healthy ecosystem.  Set up change leaders early on to build internal support and have them help you with internal buy in.

Poor communication

The employees needs to feel the urgency of the situation. It needs to see why change should be made and if they are to be persuaded to play a role. They need to understand what will change look like for them. But, in all of that, the process can seem slow going. Yes, later there may be a moment of celebration and praise but for many it will mean work.

Avoid vague announcements and mandates for change and focus on clear, specific change communication.

Lack of measurement

Your change can’t be successful if you fail to define what success looks like. Set your KPIs (key performance indicators) and metrics so you know where you’re starting from, important moments you’re working towards and your end goal.

Not people focused

In doing so, companies a lot of the time forget that people are the intended targets of change.  They are the ones that make processes work. Many organisations spend so much time talking to themselves about the change that they fail to talk to the people who will be affected by it if their messages are to have an impact. Even the most scrupulously designed change processes can fail without specific attention to guiding people across the transition.

Inadequate training & onboarding

Training days are critical whenever you’re introducing new software to your tech stack or adapting departments and internal processes. Make sure that employees receive thorough, ongoing training during and after your new change implementation process.

Lack of momentum

Organisations a lot of the time make the mistake of easing up on the change initiative too soon. It’s important to keep enthusiasm and momentum for steps along the way, to keep moving forward to your ultimate goal. Learning from past mistakes provides historical references and examples of what not to do.

Tips to Manage Change Effectively

These best practises arise directly from our experience and should be stuck to during the change transition to make sure that change is a viable proposition. Highlighted below are six best practises when it comes to change management.

Create a sense of urgency

By the 8th step (‘Anchor the Changes’), you’ve gone through an 8 step Enhanced Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model, basically starting at the 3rd step (‘Creating a Vision for Change’) and framing it as ‘urgent and exciting! You need to demonstrate to those affected that it would help them be more productive and do the job better.

Roll out in phases

Pass out the phases of your initiative so your team isn’t faced with too much change at once. Small, gradual change is more accessible to adopt than important changes all at once. You will also want to start with a pilot test to a small audience, such as a department or subset. If you still have some issues to work out, do that before rolling out the change to a small group, then to a larger one and finally to the whole company.

Address resistance

Explain how the change will impact specific departments and individuals. You can prevent any resistance and help employees accept change by expressing and addressing any reluctance from the start.

Use a range of training methods

There would not be a diverse learning environment if everyone responded in a similar way to all forms of training methods and types of employee training formats. Make sure you provide an environment suitable for diverse learning styles across your end users and employee by including.

• Traditional instructor led training
• Online learning
• Videos
• In app guidance and on demand support.

Set up change leaders

Without internal buy in, your initiative is over before it even begins. Change leaders help motivate the entire team to push forward with the transformation. Your change leaders should be a cross section of the employee base within each department affected by the change. These leaders should be well liked across the company and can influence opinions.

Ask for feedback

One strategy for effective change management is to listen to your team. This will give you the recipe for doing change in the future better and will get your individual employees involved with the process.

How to Build a Change Management Plan

A change management plan guides you and your team throughout the transition. These six change management plan steps.

Create a change proposal;   This is your argument for why it should. Document the benefits, impact and reason for the change.

Identify change leaders;  Your public loyal users;  some that are your most vocal proponents of the change, again, normally your senior management and other stakeholder champions. Be sure to mix a range of roles on this change team.

Compose a change management communications plan;   This is your communication strategy for how you are going to communicate everything about the change to the people affected by the change.

Set change goals and KPIs;   This is how you measure the success (or failure) of different  integral parts of the change. Devise a plan to measure the impact with goals and KPIs tied to business goals and outcomes after the change is in place. Make these visible to everyone in the organisation to evangelise the project.

Invest in change management tools;   Stuff you will need to get your project off the ground. These tools many include employee training software and change management software.

Create a change management training roadmap;   This is the framework for how training will be administered. Individualised change training plans need to be developed jointly with department heads and the L&D team and contextualised to each role.