Preparing for Change

Just like changes require preparation, so do the people involved in them.  When changes are afoot, (and in any good organization, they are always coming), being ready for them makes them go a lot smoother and are much easier to take.

It’s not about bracing for the impact of change, it’s about embracing the needs for the change and the methods in which they are brought about.

First of all, understand that change isn’t a light switch; it is a chain of events that bring about an outcome that is different than it would be if everything stayed the same.  Each event within that chain requires the same dedication and understanding as the one before it and the one after.

What can you do to be ready and willing to accept the changes as they come?

Understand the changes – It is the responsibility of an organization to communicate what is going to change, how it’s going to change and why the changes are necessary.  Unless you have an understanding of these facts, change will be that ugly word we talked about earlier.  If you don’t understand them, or don’t feel like all of these are being addressed, ask someone.  You have the responsibility of making sure that you have this understanding.  If your organization fails to provide the information, don’t fail the organization by not taking it on yourself to ask questions.  Organizational changes are an organizational effort requiring everyone to hold everyone accountable. 

Don’t take it personally – Even if the upcoming changes are specific to your department or even your job, it isn’t personal.  Changing the way you do something, or what tools you use to do it, doesn’t mean you are doing it wrong.  You were trained to do it the way you are doing it and it wasn’t wrong then.  Change plans come about when something is determined to be a weak link in a system.  If it happens to be your area, it doesn’t make you the weak link.

Invest in the data – In good organizations, data drives change.  In other organizations, change is driven by data assumptions.  In either organization, data will need to be collected to validate the change and benchmark the results.  Many times, change plans come with an increased amount of data collection.  If you fall into the “other organizations” part, the starting data may be incomplete or missing entirely. 

Don’t look at providing more data as an additional task taking more time out of your already busy day, look at is as a means to an end.  Your efforts have the ability to decrease the amount of time a change process will take.  At some point, the data collection can be made more automated, but if you aren’t there yet, invest in the outcome of the process by providing the information necessary.

Trust the system – This might be the biggest issue that organizations face when developing and implementing change plans.  They are expecting that each member of the organization the changes affect will trust that the people planning, deploying and managing the change know what they are doing and that the methods they are using are sound.  The good news is that organizational change management is a thing.  You can even get educational certificates for it now.  That doesn’t mean that the people in your organization have one, or even need one for that matter.  What it does mean is that there is plenty of guidance and support for any organization when it comes to making changes properly. 

Trust that the change managers have the best interest of the business in mind when they make decisions, even if at first it seems like they are sending the business on a wild goose chase.  Trust that you will be provided with training and support when the changes take place because it will make the change managers look bad if they can’t make changes because they didn’t build in a training and support mechanism.  You may not get all of the information you need on the schedule you want, but there will always be someone to ask questions to along the way, even after they have gone on to the next project.

Be prepared – Yes, you have to prepare yourself.  Preparation is as much mental as it is physical and being mentally prepared for change is one of those things that often get overlooked.  Mental preparation will have the affect you desire it to have.  If you think positively about the upcoming changes and are willing to overlook some of the obstacles and pitfalls that accompany every change during its implementation, the odds are the change will go smoothly.  If on the other hand, you are certain that the changes will cause extra stress, extra tasks and at the end of them they won’t make a difference, often times that will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.  

The physical part of the preparation consists of cleaning things up.  If you know they are going to be changing the way you handle your Accounts Receivable, make every effort to get the old stuff cleaned up.  If the change is going to require new hardware, get your work area cleaned up so the transition will take less time.  The key to this part is making sure you have things cleaned up.  Going into a new system or process with a mess only makes it take a lot longer to get to where you want to be.