Change or Be Changed  

By Dr Chris Barclay (Founder & Director Evolve 8 Coaching)

“ZOOM” use to be, what children shouted while they raced around the garden. 

“TEAMS” use to be, Liverpool and Manchester City (and many other great onesJ).

This has all changed! Change often seems uncontrollable, however change management is how we control and realise the benefits of changes we want/need.     

Now is a time of change, like no other in our lifetime. It is tough but we absolutely will get through this together, by doing the right things. 

In difficult times, a good change management strategy is incredibly powerful.   

A change management plan enables individuals, teams and companies to manage the toughest challenges. Evolve8 Coaching love helping make organisational change happen, through our change management training. Our team of expert coaches have successfully enabled change across the globe.    

In this article we share perspective on our change management process and hope it is helpful. Good luck making your ideas and dreams a reality, with a robust change management strategy (and let us know if you would like some helpJ).   

START AND END WITH WHY 

Why you want or need to make a change is a very important question. If you struggle to answer this question, you should not change anything! 

The why you want to make a change, provides purpose, drives clarity, engages others and reduces the chance of doing something you later regret. The why must be fully consistent with your beliefs, values and ethics. Others will only believe and buy into your change, if the why is explained, understandable and ethical. Ideally the why should engage and motivate others and even if they do not like it, they understand why it’s needed. If you would like some help thinking about your why, please read Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” and Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. These books will provide enabling insights.      

Q. What changes do you want to make and why?  

COCREATION CRITICAL 

Fantastic news, a decorator offers to paint your entire house for free (and you are delighted). The decorator explains he will choose a variety of bright colours and you don’t get any input on the choices. This started as something you wanted but now you are concerned and unhappy! Change can often begin with something which organisations don’t see the need for or don’t want. We all want and value our point of view being asked for and listened to (but we don’t need others to agree with us). Cocreation is a powerful technique for defining and delivering successful change.        

Q. Where can you use cocreation to engage and motivate others?  

ACKNOWLEDGE CHALLENGES  

In a desire to make a successful change its easy to fall into the trap of only focussing on the positives (ignoring and not discussing the challenges or potential downsides). This is a mistake! We must give time for our people to share their initial concerns, worries and frustrations. Importantly, management must listen and be genuinely empathetic to concerns. This input will help strengthen managements approach, employee engagement and it’s not about agreeing with concerns and changing the plan. Depending on the magnitude of the change, the time needed to move beyond this stage varies. 

Q. How can you acknowledge challenges and concerns others have? 

MOTIVATING ENABLERS   

Successful change requires compelling “reasons for”. Reasons for, connect the change to something which is important to us and which we want. Reasons for, are personal and come in all shapes and sizes as our motivators are different. To deliver change which goes beyond compliance to engagement, we must understand our peoples start point and offer tailored motivating enablers for the change.          

Q. What motivating enablers would help your team on change?

CRYSTAL CLEAR COMMUNICATION   

Communication must always be crystal clear, consistent and succinct. 

Evolve8 run engaging bespoke change management workshops which use the help of Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and autopilots, to bring to life the change you wantJ.   

It is important in these challenging times that we make the changes we need and want for future happiness and success. Please get in touch if your team are interested in, Change Management workshop webinar.  info@Evolve8coaching.com