Achieved Strategies

I am utterly fascinated with how social technology is bringing people together.  The implications have growing importance for today and tomorrow’s change leaders.  Causing change requires a united group of people willing to hear, discuss, and even act on what is needed to make change happen.

We know though through history that most change efforts started by companies fail.  As a business discipline, organizational change management is relatively new.  But with each failure and success, practitioners and change leaders are learning what works and what doesn’t.

So here are four actions plucked from the lessons I’ve learned in designing and leading change programs. Keep in mind that these actions must be considered in the context of the desired change.

Take time to understand the current reality from employee and/or customer perspective

If a manager wants to usher in change to the business, she must be willing to go slow before going fast.  By slow I mean take time upfront to understand the current reality for employees and/or customers.  Survey employees, customers. Talk with them directly. Review recent survey results if available.  Do these things to learn how employees perceive the organization, opportunities for growth and contribution, relationship with their manager, etc.  Know the environment before you dive in and start talking about change. This can help you move faster.

Leverage social technology to connect and bring people and groups together

Popular social media tools like Twitter and Facebook are showing us how they unite people, despite geography.  The lessons translate into business.  We are learning to share information, share passion for a cause, gather information through online interactions.  A New Era change leader will leverage these lessons to communicate, get input on and ideas for problems.  The possibilities are growing on how social technology can be used to share instant updates, videos, even pictures relevant to change.  This will challenge the often-tedious review and approval cycle often associated with corporate communications.  This is good.

Plan field trips

A New Era change leader will spend less time behind the desk and in meetings discussing and planning change. He will take a team to observe how things are at other businesses that already implemented a similar change.  Why? It helps to reduce fear and anxiety that the change won’t work.  It allows people to ask others who’ve already gone through it how things went.

The red thread through these three ideas is this: connect with people.  Change programs dominated by pushing change down through the organization rarely worked. Piquing people’s curiosity, showing that you want to collaborate need to be part of the actions of today’s change leader.

Photo by grlben