Understanding the Circle of Change
The key part in understanding this
cycle is realizing it is a circle that has no beginning and no end. In effective organizations, change is a never
ending process. When you get to the end,
you start over. It is also cyclical in
the fact that what comes around goes around.
Negative forces can force changes within an organization if they are
allowed inside the circle. Organizations
that react instead of plan have the highest risk of outside forces causing a
breakdown in their structure as well as their business.
A circle remain strong as long as
all of the sides remain intact: as your
organization grows more effective in managing change, each of the sections of
the circle become stronger. The circle
of change is designed to repel any forces that you don’t want coming in. Keeping the circle intact is a product of
asserting the will of your organization over the strength of outside
forces. Protecting your territory comes
through developing consistency across all four of the areas of change and a
leadership group committed to being the guardians of their realm.
Process
– Processes
are a cornerstone to change. Updating,
improving or changing policies, processes and procedures are the initiation
points of change.
Change
comes from modifying behaviors.
Behaviors
are modified by changing the way people accomplish their tasks.
Accomplishment
comes from ensuring that people reach their goals.
Goals come
from a desired valuation of the effect of those changes.
All of these come from ensuring
that you have built a roadmap for people to follow. Those roadmaps are your written documentation
of what you want to do, who you want to do it, and where you want it to lead
you. Leaving out any of those steps
gives an incomplete process and leads to confusion.
The process part of change comes
from outlining exactly what you want your change to look like and then
providing everyone involved step by step instructions on how to get to where
you want to go. If you don’t lay out a
specific road map, you will spend much of your time spinning your wheels
wondering why your people can’t get where you want them to be. One of the most detrimental things you can do
within the change process is to make assumptions. Don’t assume that someone knows what you want
unless you put in writing exactly what it is.
On the other side, don’t assume you know what someone wants unless you
see in writing exactly what that is.
Within the change circle, all parties have the responsibility of asking
for clear direction no matter how “common sense” you may believe it to be.
An effective process is a step by
step map of how to accomplish a number of tasks leading to the desired end
result. The effectiveness of a process
depends on having checks and balances as well as management metrics built in to
judge it. Processes are reliant on each
of the steps for their continuity and overall effectiveness. Skipping steps, adding steps or doing them
out of order will render most process ineffective. All process should be built with the ability to
change or adapt to the business environment.
The people involved with controlling the process should be the only ones
allowed to change it.
People – Getting the people responsible for the work to be on
board with the changes can seem like a Herculean task at times. Change is about changing the mentality of the
people from why are we changing to what else can we change. The key to getting people to sign off on the
change process comes from support. The
support they need has two major components: Buy-In and Structure. Buy-in starts at the top and works its way
down. When anyone from the inside or
outside can see a commitment from the leadership to make changes, those people
get behind it. It isn’t so much about
talking about it as it is showing through your actions that the changes are
important. Structure is the other leg of
the ladder of change. People believe in
things they can see, feel and understand.
Structure is about giving them something tangible such as documented
processes, data driven benchmarks, attainable goals and written statements of
support and buy-in.
One of the worst things that can
happen is to underestimate the people.
Because someone has never changed doesn’t mean they are unwilling or
unable. It only means they haven’t had
an opportunity to do so. Change is just
as much about physical change as it is mental or psychological. There will always be those against making
changes. If you follow the process and
basic principles of change management, it will give you the opportunity to
determine which of the people want to do it and which ones don’t. Until you give them the opportunity and the
support, you won’t know what you have.
Culture – Culture is
a direct representation of Leadership.
Employees will assimilate to the prevalent culture, so it is imperative
that your culture is one of trust, empowerment and decisiveness. The mistake many companies make when it comes
to change management is believing that the culture will change because you want
it to. All changes come through effort,
resilience, consistency and discipline.
Culture change is a macro-change
which involves everybody from every level.
Like any other change, it is in a constant state of evolution and needs
to be tended to, reinforced and sometimes pampered. Defining and then re-defining your cultural
goals will be an integral part of any change implementation.
Culture change is probably the
hardest and most difficult to quantify of any changes an organization can
make. An effective change strategy for
corporate culture has to rely on a data driven action plan. Coming up with the data is not always an easy
task. Think about what defines your
current culture. One of the best ways to
start the task is to put out a survey to your employees. Ask them to rate certain areas of your
business and culture anonymously. When
they have done that, you will have a quantitative view of your business from
your employees’ perspective. This will
help lead you to some cultural change initiatives that you now have a baseline
to benchmark your changes against.
Product – In regards
to Products when it comes to the cycle of change, the product is the sum of the
other parts. If your organization makes
its living providing goods and services to a consumer base, those goods and
services are only a part of the product.
The sum of the product is your company, which when it comes to change
equates to the people, processes and culture.
Improving your product is the impetus for most changes. Understanding where your product needs to be
improved gives the basis for the change, and understanding how to improve it,
gives the guidance for the change. As
your product is the sum of the other three parts of the circle, it is where
everything starts and ends.
Looking at your product can be an
overwhelming task if you try to get everything changed at once. Remember, the change process is a marathon,
not a sprint, and there are infinite opportunities to keep the change cycle
going. Instead of trying to get
everything done at once, the best way to go about changing your product is to
pick pieces at a time.
Make yourself a list of what you
think needs to be changed. Rank that
list from highest need to lowest need with 1 being the highest. After you have done that, rank the same list
from easiest to hardest with 1 being the easiest. At this point you can both take an average of
the two lists and focus on the lowest numbers.
Another option would be to pick the two highest and the two easiest to
start. That will give you the
opportunity to work through the change process on some of the easier ones first
which will give you the potential for a quick win as well as giving your
organization some needed practice for the two most pressing needs you chose.
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