Leading IT Transformation – Workshop 7 (Change Leadership)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Leading IT Transformation is provided by Ms. Drabenstadt MBA BBA Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 24 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Ms. Drabenstadt is a Certified Learning Provider (CLP) at Appleton Greene and she has experience in Information Technology, Information Governance, Compliance and Audit. She has achieved an MBA, and BBA. She has industry experience within the following sectors: Technology; Insurance and Financial Services. She has had commercial experience within the following countries: United States of America, Canada, Australia, India, Trinidad, and Jamaica. Her program will initially be available in the following cities: Madison WI; Minneapolis MN; Chicago IL; Atlanta GA and Denver CO. Her personal achievements include: Developed Trusted IT-Business Relationship; Delivered Increased Business Value/Time; Decreased IT Costs; Re-tooled IT Staff; Increased IT Employee Morale. Her service skills incorporate: IT transformation leadership; process improvement; change management; program management and information governance.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
Every new initiative requires good leadership. IT transformation is a challenging task and undergoing such a huge change in an organization requires efficient change leadership. Change leadership is a very important factor in deciding how successful and sustainable the transformation will be. Employees are often skeptical about, and even resistant to, change. Good change leadership is able to influence them positively and build enthusiasm. They generally use personal advocacy and a compelling vision to motivate others and build a robust platform for change. Change leaders are the ones who initiate the process. When they see an opportunity for improvement, they make a compelling business case and communicate the same to the employees. Only when employees see a common gain that benefits everyone in the organization will they be more engaged in the process and a good change leader understands this. After this, the change leader builds strategies for change and lays out a clear action plan that is communicated to all levels. Employees understand what they are working towards. The change leader also addresses questions and concerns to ensure that everyone is on the same page and the common goals, as well as success, are defined from the very beginning. Lastly, executing this strategy is the most challenging part for a change leader. Assigning the right people to the right tasks, breaking down big projects into smaller more attainable goals, developing metrics to measure progress and success, but at the same time trusting employees’ capabilities and giving them enough freedom to make decisions within their capacity is what execution requires. A good change leader is able to execute the transformation plan with minimum friction.
Objectives
01. Sense of Urgency: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Compelling Change Story: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Employee Reaction: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Vision and Values: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Communication is Key: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Training Programs: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Company Culture: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Visualize the Journey: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Measure the Change: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Create Wins: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Align Performance Management: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. Sense of Urgency: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Compelling Change Story: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Employee Reaction: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Vision and Values: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Communication is Key: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Training Programs: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Company Culture: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Visualize the Journey: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Measure the Change: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Create Wins: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. Align Performance Management: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Sense of Urgency.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Compelling Change Story.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Employee Reaction.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Vision and Values.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Communication is Key.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Training Programs.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Company Culture.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Visualize the Journey.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Measure the Change.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Create Wins.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Align Performance Management.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Lookout for Inconsistencies.
Introduction
The Role of Change Leadership is Changing
Previously, when we heard the term ‘Change Leadership,’ we used to think of it as a skill designated for a select few, such as Top Management or Change Managers. However, in today’s fast-paced and disruptive corporate climate, this is no longer the case.
A lack of change leadership as a competency across the board, from individual contributors to management, has lately been discovered to be one of the main frustrations and obstacles typically faced while adopting new ideas or changes. One component was always most important in every successful or unsuccessful project; it came down to ‘Change Leadership.’
Change is happening at an accelerated rate in today’s disruptive business climate, requiring us to respond faster and better than ever before, especially when it comes to IT transformation. This can only happen if we are empowered and equipped with the change leadership competencies and mentality to navigate change in our spheres of influence nimbly and effectively.
Many contributors fail to take responsibility for their role in successfully leading and driving towards the intended objectives for their jobs, projects, or the company because they assume that the leadership position is strictly reserved only for the ‘leader.’
However that is no longer the case; the capacity to lead and respond to change is now a key competence required of any leader, innovator, manager, project manager, change practitioner, or team member who wishes to make a meaningful difference in their career or business.
What is Change Leadership?
For many years, Higgs and Rowland’s definition of change leadership has been the most popular: “Change leadership is the ability to influence and enthuse others through personal advocacy, vision and drive, and to access resources to build a solid platform for change“.While this is a great definition, in today’s VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) world, where change is fast-paced, constantly disrupted by advancing technology, and a complex socio-economic environment, we need a definition that best describes our new paradigm and the critical role of change leadership that transcends ‘position’ and ‘title.’ This shift in paradigm, as well as the key competencies required of change leaders, are encapsulated in the following definition:
“Change Leadership is the ability to influence and inspire action in others, and respond with vision and agility during periods of growth, disruption or uncertainty to bring about the needed change.”
(Yvonne Ruke Akpoveta)
Change leadership necessitates the ability to be imaginative and forward-thinking, as well as the agility and responsiveness to our ever-changing corporate environment.
As a Change Leader in IT transformation, you’ll need to be able to do things like:
• Influence and lead people, including peers and other leaders.Anticipate and respond to change with agility
• Collaborate with others and communicate effectively
• Demonstrate empathy and build trust with others by putting people first.
• Maintain momentum and remain focused in the face of adversity.
• Keep the team and coworkers engaged and empowered by bringing them together.
• Identify and overcome change hurdles while keeping the overall picture in mind.
• Willingness to take chances and be original, creative, and decisive
• Establish a vision and enlist the help of others.
How to Be a Successful Change Leader
Great Change Leaders Focus on People & Process
One of the most difficult challenges that modern businesses confront is implementing successful change. In our fast-changing environment, the strategic need to change is often clear: our firm will not prosper or last unless we do things differently.
At its most basic level, change leadership entails collaborating to develop a shared understanding of the changes needed to carry out the strategy, as well as the best ways to do them. Despite the resources invested in developing change management systems, however, change management research has repeatedly shown that organizational change initiatives fail more often than they succeed.
We all know that strong leadership is critical to change’s success. However, it’s critical to recognize the distinctions in change leadership between successful and unsuccessful change initiatives. That’s why The CCL (Center for Creative Leadership) recently conducted a survey in which 275 top executives were asked to reflect on successful and unsuccessful change initiatives.
The purpose was to define “change-capable leadership,” identify the core leadership abilities required for change, and get a deeper understanding of leadership behaviors that may contribute to change failures.
The executives polled were all members of The CCL’s Leadership at the Peak program, which is designed for executives with more than 15 years of managing experience, accountability for 500 or more employees, and decision-making authority on top management teams. They were all seasoned leaders.
Nine important leadership characteristics of effective change efforts and change-capable leaders were discovered in the study. The nine change competences are further grouped into three categories: “the 3 C’s of change,” “leading the process,” and “leading the people.”
The 3 C’s of Change Leadership
Three components, according to the researchers, create the crucial link between the process and the people aspects of change. Effective change leadership is defined by these three C’s:
1. Communicate.
Unsuccessful leaders were more concerned with the “what” of the change. The “what” and the “why” were clearly articulated by successful leaders. Leaders who defined the initiative’s objective and tied it to the company’s values, as well as the benefits, increased buy-in and urgency for the change.
2. Collaborate.
It is vital to bring individuals together to plan and implement change. Successful leaders crossed boundaries, pushed staff to break out of their silos, and refused to allow unhealthy competition to exist. Employees were also involved in decision-making early on, which strengthened their commitment to change. Unsuccessful change leaders failed to include employees in the change process early and often.
3. Commit.
Leaders that were successful made sure that their own attitudes and practices supported change as well. Change is challenging, but great leaders were resilient and persistent, as well as willing to venture outside their comfort zones. They also invested more of their personal time in the reform endeavor and concentrated on the larger picture. Unsuccessful leaders were frustrated with a lack of outcomes, failed to adjust to obstacles, and voiced negativity.
How to Be an Effective Change Leader
Leading IT transformation isn’t something that happens by itself. From start to conclusion, effective leaders guide the process. The following are the three essential competencies required to lead the process:
• Initiate. Effective change leaders begin by presenting the case for the change they seek after recognizing the need for it. This can entail assessing the corporate environment, comprehending the change’s purpose, creating a clear vision and intended outcome, and determining a common goal. Unsuccessful leaders claim they didn’t devote enough time to these efforts in order to achieve a shared understanding of the goal. Find out more about the issues that organizations encounter when adopting change.
• Strategize. Priorities, timeframes, tasks, structures, habits, and resources were all part of the strategy and action plan devised by successful leaders. They identified what would change as well as what would remain unchanged. Leaders who didn’t succeed stated they didn’t listen carefully enough to questions and concerns, and they didn’t define success from the start.
• Execute. One of the most essential things a leader can do is translate plan into action. Successful change leaders in our study focused on putting key people in critical roles (or removing them, in some cases). They also broke down large undertakings into minor triumphs to gain early momentum. They also created metrics and monitoring tools to track their success. Unsuccessful change leaders have a tendency to micromanage, become engrossed in implementation minutiae, and lose sight of the big picture.
Remember that when businesses evolve through time, stability and change must coexist – this is a polarity to manage, not a problem to solve. Recognize both poles at the same time to help your company reach its greatest potential.
When change leaders discover the “both/and” sweet spot, they may convey the change effort in a way that others will accept.
Leading People Through Change
While formal change processes may be well known, too many leaders overlook the crucial human element of change. The most successful change leaders spent time involving everyone involved in the change and remembering that people need time to adapt to change, no matter how fast-paced the project was.
They know how to deal with change fatigue and urge people to embrace it. They also have these three key attributes of a leader:
• Support. Leaders who removed barriers to staff success defined successful IT transformation efforts. Personal hurdles, such as shattered egos and a sense of betrayal, as well as professional barriers, such as the time and resources required to implement a change plan, are examples. Employees didn’t have the support they required for the change because leaders of failed change were only focused on results.
• Sway. Influence is about acquiring not just compliance, but also the commitment to change that is required. It’s also about identifying the key change agents and articulating what “buy-in” from each stakeholder means in terms of achieving a successful outcome. Effective change leaders defined and articulated their vision of effective change to important stakeholders, such as board members, C-suite executives, clients, and others. Unsuccessful leaders said they would prefer avoid influencing specific stakeholders than try to persuade them.
• Learn. Finally, effective change leaders never thought they knew everything. They asked a lot of questions and got a lot of input, both formal and informal. They were able to make constant adjustments as a result of the input and feedback. Leaders that failed to make successful changes didn’t ask as many questions or acquire correct data, leaving them without the information they needed to make necessary modifications along the road.
Finally, change leaders must acknowledge that leading people through complex change is tough, and that all changes, including favorable ones, have a cost. Employees, like leaders, can be depleted by change.
As a result, successful change leadership necessitates a high level of resilience. People who are resilient are better able to deal with the stress, uncertainty, and setbacks that come with change. Leaders must develop their own reserves to support their mental and physical health, and they may help others face change in a healthy and sustainable manner by learning and sharing leadership resilience methods.
Change Management vs. Change Leadership – What’s the Difference?
People frequently ask about the distinction between “change management” and “change leadership,” and whether it is merely a semantic distinction. These concepts should not be used interchangeably. The difference between the two is actually fairly substantial. Most people use the word “change management” to refer to a collection of basic tools or structures designed to keep any change endeavor under control. Often, the goal is to keep the distractions and effects of the shift to a minimum. On the other hand, change leadership is concerned with the driving forces, visions, and procedures that drive large-scale transformation.
Between what is currently recognized as “change management” and what we have been calling “change leadership” for some time, there is a basic and significant distinction. The world essentially uses change management, which is a set of processes, tools, and mechanisms designed to ensure that when you try to make some changes, A, they don’t spiral out of control, and B, the number of problems associated with them—you know, rebellion among the ranks, cash bleeding that you can’t afford—doesn’t occur. As a result, it’s a method of bringing about a significant shift while keeping it under control in some ways. Change leadership is more closely associated with giving the entire change process a boost, making it run faster, smarter, and more efficiently. As a result, it’s more connected with large-scale transformations. Smaller adjustments are more commonly linked with change management—at least when it works successfully.
It’s not simply semantics if you look around the world today and talk to people. Because that’s what they do, everyone talks about managing change and change management. When you examine all of the tools, you’ll notice that they’re all attempting to move things along while minimizing disturbances, i.e., keeping things under control. It’s about ensuring that change is done efficiently so that you don’t go over budget—another aspect of control. It’s done with internal change management groups, external consultants who are adept at it, and change management training. It’s done with task forces whose sole purpose is to move this thing forward while keeping it under control. It’s done through various kinds of relationships dubbed “executive sponsors,” in which the executive sponsor keeps an eye on the proceedings to ensure that everything runs well.
Change leadership, on the other hand, is fundamentally different—a it’s vehicle. It’s more about the sense of urgency. It’s more about large groups of people who want to make a difference. It’s all about huge ideas. It’s all about empowering a large number of people. Change leadership has the potential to throw things out of balance. When you have a 1,000 horsepower engine, you don’t have the same level of control over making sure everything goes the way you want it to at the moment you want it to. Of course, you want a highly trained driver and a fantastic vehicle to ensure that your risks are kept to a minimum. It is, nevertheless, fundamentally distinct.
As we all know, the globe currently discusses, considers, and implements change management. As we all know, the world doesn’t do much change leadership because change leadership is associated with bigger leaps, with windows of opportunity that are coming at us faster, staying open for less time, and bigger hazards and bullets coming at us faster, so you really have to make a bigger leap at a faster speed. Change leadership will be a major problem in the future, and the reality that nearly no one is very adept at it is, well, evident.
10 Change Leadership Strategies That Are Backed By Science
Researchers have only lately been able to look at the brain using technology like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see what happens when we face a substantial organizational change.
For example, the basal ganglia, a region of the brain, controls much of our habits, including many of our work routines. Because these habitual repeating tasks become hard wired, we don’t have to give them any conscious attention, they require significantly less mental energy to complete. So it’s no surprise that the way we’ve always done things feels not only right, but also wonderful.
Change jolts us out of our rut by stimulating the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that controls our perception and impulse control. However, the prefrontal cortex is also connected to the amygdala, which is the brain’s fear circuitry and regulates our freeze, fight, or flight response. The amygdala link kicks into high gear when the prefrontal brain is overloaded with complicated and unfamiliar thoughts. All of the negative emotions that change leaders detect in their teams, such as worry, fear, melancholy, sadness, weariness, and rage, are the result (and often in themselves).
But, while research can help us understand our negative reactions to change, it can also provide insights on how to help people deal with change:
1. First of all, make the change familiar. When you show individuals two photographs of themselves, one that is an exact portrayal and the other that is a reverse image, they will prefer the second since it is the image they see every day in the mirror. To advance a new or difficult topic, a lot of repetition is required. Continually discussing change and focusing on essential elements will allow the novel to become more familiar and less terrifying over time.
2. Allow people to effect change. No one loves change that is forced upon them; but, most individuals respond positively to change that they initiate, and brain science explains why. As understanding develops and the brain begins to establish new and complicated connections, a person’s brain scan shows a huge amount of activity at the time they choose to change. The brain releases a burst of neurotransmitters like adrenaline when people solve problems on their own, and this natural high gets positively associated with the transformation experience.
3. Make your communication more straightforward. Don’t try to cram everything you know about the shift into one large piece, as tempting as it may be. Your duty is to assist individuals make sense of complexity by distilling it down to two or three key objectives that they can grasp.
4. Don’t sugarcoat the truth. Your brain is constantly on the lookout for signs of impending danger. When too optimistic outcomes or unrealistic expectations are revealed (as they almost always are), your brain cortex goes into high alert, searching for more evidence of deception and causing the primitive brain to respond with feelings of dread.
5. Encourage others to pay attention. In the brain, the act of paying attention causes chemical and physical changes. Attention, in fact, is what is constantly altering brain structures. The phrase attention density refers to the amount of time spent paying attention to a single mental experience. The higher the attention density, the more concentrated one is on a single concept. Long-term desired behavior is facilitated by high attention density. Now, one technique to get people to pay attention is to present fresh ideas in a variety of attention-getting formats. A story, a game, an experience, a comedic skit, a metaphor, an image, or even a song can all be used to tell a story.
6. Don’t undervalue the power of feelings. According to neurologist and author Antonio Damasio, the amygdala, which generates emotions, is so firmly tied to the core of our conscious brain that no one makes decisions based solely on reasoning. Damasio’s research shows that unconscious mental processes drive our decision-making, and rational reasoning is actually only a way to excuse emotional decisions. As a result, when leaders declare change, they must go beyond reasoning and facts and appeal to the audience’s emotions.
7. Also, keep in mind that emotions are contagious. Emotions, like the common cold, are literally contagious. Simply being in the same room with someone can cause you to “catch” an emotion. When the leader is angry or despondent, negativity can spread like a virus to the rest of the team, impacting attitudes and diminishing energy levels. On the other hand, positive and optimistic leaders are more likely to energise their entire team.
8. Pay attention to your body language. Your verbal meaning is lost when your body language does not match your words. Colgate University neuroscientists use electroencephalograph (EEG) machines to measure “event related potentials” – brain waves that create peaks and troughs – to explore the impact of gestures. When subjects are presented gestures that contradict what is spoken, one of these valleys happens. When people listen to incomprehensible words, they experience the same brain wave dip. So, if you say you’re open to recommendations for implementing change yet cross your arms in a “closed” gesture while talking about “openness,” you’re literally making no sense. People will believe what they see rather than what you say if they are forced to.
9. Provide people with a solid basis. A perception of stability can be maintained in a continually changing organization when instability must be accepted as unavoidable. The leader’s job is to bring stability to the organization by honoring its history, outlining present triumphs and difficulties, and casting a compelling vision for the future. And when I say “vision,” I’m not referring to a business mission statement with bullet points. I’m referring to a well-articulated, emotionally charged, and all-encompassing picture of the organization’s goals.
10. Make the most of the strength of inclusive partnerships. Researchers discovered that when someone feels excluded, there is equivalent activity in the brain region involved in the “suffering” component of pain using (fMRI) technology. In other words, the sensation of being excluded triggers the same type of brain response that physical pain does. The new pillars of change leadership place a premium on inclusive and collaborative connections. The foundation for organizational success is social networks, which are those linkages among individuals that are founded on mutual trust, shared work experiences, and personal connections. Anything you can do as a leader to foster these mutually beneficial relationships will improve your team’s and organization’s preparation for change.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Sense of Urgency
“Sense of urgency is not the natural state of affairs. It has to be created and recreated.”- John Kotter from his book “A sense of Urgency”
At any level, leading IT transformation necessitates the ability to instill a sense of urgency. An environment that may motivate and focus the team on a daily basis. Only in this environment does digital transformation become a necessary and urgent shift.
Why is it necessary to create a sense of urgency?
“Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value”. – Jim Rohn
It will provide the initial impetus to get things moving, as well as maintain the momentum for IT transformation.
To establish a sense of urgency, who should you collaborate with?
Ideally, you should start with the top leadership and work your way down from there. This is only conceivable if your firm is now experiencing a tornado-like condition. Realistically, you’ll have to deal with early adopters at all levels, including senior management.
What Is the Importance of Change Urgency?
What is the significance of urgency in a transformation effort? Because real organizational change cannot occur without the agreement of the impacted stakeholders, urgency is critical. This is why the first step leaders must take to achieve management and employee collaboration is to create a sense of urgency for needed change.
Leaders generate a feeling of urgency by selling the value of a future state to organizational stakeholders while also making the status quo a risky place to stay. In effect, top leaders craft a convincing narrative that explains to stakeholders why the organization’s existing status is not in their best interests.
This is frequently accomplished by candid discussions about current market and competitive realities, the disclosure of pertinent financial and customer data, and the discussion of possibilities and crises confronting the company. Communication is essential, and messaging regarding the urgent need for change must be straightforward. A phony sense of urgency will soon be exposed for what it is, dooming a reform effort to mediocrity.
The organization recognizes the importance of change and recognizes that it is no longer a choice.
How to Instill a Sense of Importance in Your Team
There are various methods that leaders can take to instill a feeling of urgency among their management, employees, and other stakeholders.
• Demonstrating the seriousness of leadership commitment to the impending shift by reducing visible waste;
• Informing the organization of negative news;
• Requiring managers and staff to speak directly with dissatisfied suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders on a frequent basis in order to understand their issues;
• Disseminating data within the organization that supports the need for change; and
• Assuring that organizational decisions and management actions are aligned with change communications (walk the talk).
The first step leaders must take to lead a transformation initiative and win the participation of required stakeholders is to establish a feeling of urgency. It necessitates open and honest communication that instills a sense of urgency rather than despair. Leaders considerably enhance their chances of securing the commitment of organizational stakeholders for a necessary change endeavor by painting a captivating picture of a desirable future as well as the dangers of accepting the status quo.
Chapter 2: Compelling Change Story
Telling Employees Is Not Enough. Explain Why Organizational Changes Are Coming
Begin the change leadership process by identifying a compelling and clear reason for the change.
Too many change initiatives fall short of their goals due to a lack of foundations – a clear and compelling reason for the change that is understood and accepted.
Change leadership includes developing a compelling change story, presenting it to people, and ensuring continual communication and participation.
However, there are some hazards to avoid in order to get the intended effect in practice.
There Are Two Styles Of Change Stories
In companies, there are two sorts of transformation stories that are routinely told. The first is the “good to great” tale, which goes something like this:
We’re operating below industry standards and need to drastically modify in order to survive. By maximizing our current assets and earning the right to grow, we can become a top-quartile performance in our industry.
Both of these stories appear to be intuitively logical, yet they fail to have the impact that management desires far too often. When managers and employees are asked what inspires them the most in their work, they are evenly split between five types of effect, according to research by a number of notable thinkers in the social sciences:
1. Social impact — for example, community building and resource stewardship
2. Customer impact – for example, delivering superior service.
3. The company’s and its shareholders’ impact
4. Effect on the working group – for example, fostering a caring workplace
5. The impact on “me” personally — my career advancement, income, and bonus
It requires more than statistics and figures to align your organization around IT change. Here’s how the power of storytelling can help you get people to commit.
One of the most difficult leadership challenges is getting an organization to align around IT transformation. To accomplish this, you’ll need to employ the single most effective weapon for persuasion: storytelling.
What makes storytelling so powerful? Because stories are how humans learnt survival skills, the human brain is programmed to pay close attention to them. We’ve been genetically programmed to seek out stories, particularly if the story has certain structural traits that indicate it has survival significance.
Use stories if you want people to pay attention as well as be open to change. Your IT transformation presentation should be a compelling story that inspires people to say, “I need to do something new; I need to act,” with enough conviction to overcome their fear of change.
What characteristics distinguish an engaging IT transformation story?
Let’s start with a definition of what a story isn’t: A story isn’t a list of things you’re going to do, no matter how daring or important they are. A story isn’t a budget or a resource plan. Even if it is presented in a dramatic manner and includes a gorgeous screen design and a long list of features, a story is not a fantastic vision for an app.
A story is a series of incidents, real or invented, told in a logical order. Furthermore, a story has a specific framework that makes that series of incidents meaningful to our genetic “story-seeking” programming.
Chapter 3: Employee Reaction
In business, change is unavoidable, but it doesn’t make it any simpler to deal with. Organizational change can cause stress and worry in many individuals, affecting their job performance. Businesses must anticipate the types of reactions their employees may have in order to comfort them and help them focus on the business’s performance in order to undertake large-scale changes successfully and remain competitive.
Putting Up a Fight Against Change
Resistance is one of the most natural responses to change. It’s natural for employees to be apprehensive about trying a new technique or taking on a new position. Employees may have new bosses or team members as a result of organizational changes, or they may be working in a completely new area of the business with a focus they are unfamiliar with. As a result, they may prefer that things stay the same.
According to the Harvard Business Review, about a third of employees who encounter organizational transformation are unaware of why the change is taking place. Employees have no genuine knowledge of how the change will affect them if businesses do not explain their vision for the organizational transformation and the benefits to the company. This contributes to their initial apprehension when learning about impending organizational change.
What would you do if you were asked to change your job? Do you accept it right away? Change is often resisted, despite the fact that it appears to be sensible and unavoidable.
It’s never easy to accept something.
Employees’ reactions to organizational change must be monitored by change leaders. The success of a change program is determined by how change leaders handle employee reactions and emotions.
On a theoretical level, the Kubler Ross Change Curve is one of the most useful frameworks for explaining employee reactions to organizational change. While experiencing change, a person goes through five stages of emotions, according to this model: denial, anger, bargaining, despair, and acceptance.
We must also consider what change practitioners go through when speaking with employees about change. These may differ from theoretical models, but their practical value makes them equally significant.
Chapter 4: Vision and Values
During times of change, change leaders must rely on the organization’s values to drive performance. The principles of a firm should serve as the foundation for why it exists, how it makes decisions, and what its ultimate mission is. They must be genuine and specific in order to strike a chord with the team.
So, what exactly does values-based leadership entail? Essentially, this entails leading the team and evaluating performance – both yours and the team’s – in terms of the organization’s values rather than specific metrics and milestones. Managers must still monitor and hold team members accountable for their contributions to mission success, but values-based evaluations cannot be overlooked.
Many organizations will succeed for years without ever properly defining – and writing down – its goal, vision, values, and reason for being. All great organizations, however, must define these things at some time if they are to continue on their upward trajectory.
Once an organization’s values have been identified, they should be used to guide performance evaluations at both the team and individual levels. This is especially true when an organization is undergoing a transformation. While traditional performance measurements should not be abandoned, values-based leadership is essential when new behaviors must be learned.
In addition, value-based performance evaluation methods must be implemented. If the team is required to learn new skills and adapt to organizational and cultural changes, the team’s definition of “excellent performance” must be revised. New HR mechanisms and performance review systems can be helpful in improving or modifying a company’s culture. There will be issues if big changes are made but the team is still judged on old measures.
Beliefs-based leadership also necessitates the ongoing communication of those values at every opportunity. Every time a person is publicly recognized in a company meeting, and every time a coach makes a mistake.
Values-based hiring is also critical for maintaining a company’s culture. Evaluating prospective applicants solely on their technical abilities can have disastrous consequences. When things don’t work out, it will cost the organization twice as much to replace that individual.
The bottom line is that values-based leadership increases the likelihood of alignment with the company’s mission and vision, allowing the specifics to fall into place more easily.
Chapter 5: Communication is Key
When It Comes To Change Management, Communication Is Essential
To react favorably to change is against human nature
Because change forces people out of their comfort zones, it is against human nature to react positively to it. What has been your experience with people’s reactions to changes at work? Resistance is a common reaction. Management’s greatest efforts to push change throughout the business are frequently thwarted by such resistance. It can even happen when managers are good communicators and participate actively in the process.
When change projects fail, it’s usually due to a lack of good management communication. However, that isn’t always the case. It’s not only about what management says when it comes to communication; it’s also about how employees listen.
You’re starting to prepare your organization for the transition from the current state, or practice, to the future state by developing the communication phase. Business leaders must produce communications that outline the organization’s written beliefs and values at this time. Leaders will begin to set the tone for behavioral and performance standards as a result of this. The following must be identified in these fundamental messages:
The transformational change in its nature
Why is my company changing its business practices, and why is this change necessary?
The transition from the present state to the future state
Our company’s analytical and technical thinkers need to know how we expect to get from point a to point b so that they can connect the dots in their mental picture of business today.
What part of the change process will i play?
Many people in your company are creative and eager to share their ideas and suggestions for improvement. These are the free thinkers, the movers and shakers, and the people we know we can count on to get things done on a regular basis. This is our first chance to acknowledge these people so that we can start putting together the change team.
Where is the opposition to change located?
Our early communications must include a technique for identifying potential change resistance channels. Good communication, unlike the practice of passing on information, is two-way communication. We must seek input from others as we inform them of our approach and the need for change. This will allow us to better understand how our message was received.
What Effect Will The Change Have On Me?
This is an age-old question, and it’s also one of the most crucial signals to get people in your company to want to do something different. The employee’s direct supervisor has the most impact over what individuals hear and respond to at all levels of the organization. Direct supervisors are the most effective at explaining position changes, changes to systems or tools that the employee utilizes on a daily basis, and even changes to pay, benefits, or time off because of their relationship with the worker.
After you’ve created a key message, put it to the test with your staff. Do this on a one-on-one basis or at select staff gatherings. Make careful to gather the reactions of some of the employees you think will be the most difficult to persuade. Solicit their suggestions for how the message, or parts of the message, could be improved. Allowing these employees to influence the message will achieve two goals: first, it will strengthen your message, making it more likely to be effective; and second, it will make your fiercest critics feel more involved in the communication process, potentially leading to their recruitment as messengers.
Follow up once the communication cycle has ended. It should be structured in such a way that you can record both how your message was taken emotionally and how well it was understood. If the audit results aren’t satisfactory, you might wish to try a new round of communications.
Communication Is Crucial
When it comes to raising the level of understanding in your organization, communication is crucial. Using many platforms or mediums to express the same message is the key to effective communication. And you’ll almost certainly have to repeat the message three to six times before it’s heard and understood.
Chapter 6: Training Programs
Employee Change Preparation
Wouldn’t it be amazing if, when a major shift occurs, you could not only educate people for change, but also develop change advocates? You’ll be able to ensure that your staff understand and are invested in the change at your firm with excellent change management training.
You might be perplexed as to how this works. There are three main components to the finest change management training:
1. A Communication Plan – How will you inform your employees about a forthcoming change? A simple email isn’t going to cut it for major adjustments. It’s critical to consider the change and how best to communicate it to staff. This could entail a staged approach, scheduling team meetings, and enlisting the help of executives. Take some time to consider the implications of the change and how to keep your colleagues from being surprised or experiencing issues.
2. A Change Leadership Toolkit – Change leaders set the tone for the transformation. Everyone will be watching them to see how they are feeling. A good change management training program gives leaders the tools they need to lead their teams through change. It equips them with the tools they need to answer inquiries from their teams, deal with team members’ resistance, foster empathy, and set a great example for the rest of the company.
3. A Productivity-Maintaining Strategy – Although change might be disruptive, it does not have to bring everything to a standstill. So that you don’t lose revenues while working toward change, training should include how to cope with potential diversions and hurdles while you execute change. Maintaining this level of consistency can make your staff feel more safe in the middle of all the change.
Change Management That Sticks
After the change has been implemented, training should continue. Sustainment training, as we all know, may help training stick by reinforcing concepts acquired. Change management training, on the other hand, can take on a variety of forms.
Here are a few suggestions to ensure that your modification lasts.
Use micro-learnings: After employees have completed their change management training, use fast quizzes or mini-eLearning courses to reinforce what they’ve learned.
Make a support system: Create a network for team members to connect, discuss the shift and any challenges they’ve encountered, and work through issues with their leaders.
Check in with teams: After they’ve completed their training, urge them to develop goals for how they’ll deal with change effectively. Check up with them at 30, 60, and 90 days after the program to make sure they’re still on track.
Taking Action
Rather than being afraid of change, embrace it with a solid plan in place. “A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there” John Assaraf once stated. Changes that move you in the proper way can help you grow your company’s potential.
Chapter 7: Company Culture
Corporate Culture Is A Crucial Component Of Change Management
Any change in a company is difficult, but altering culture is possibly the most difficult. This is due to at least two factors:
1. Culture is a nebulous notion – How can culture be changed if there is no solid method to define or measure it?
2. Culture symbolizes collective norms and behaviors – Changing one person’s behavior is difficult enough; how can you change an entire organization’s conduct?
Change leaders, on the other hand, must address cultural change if they are to establish high-performing organizations.
Over Time, An Organization’s Culture Develops
People are at ease with the current corporate culture. A substantial event must usually occur for people to consider culture transformation. A world-shaking event, such as the flaming platform. People must feel the situation before they would buy in. People will not consider anything until they are convinced that there is a genuine problem that must be solved.
Even so, recognizing that organizational culture is to blame and taking efforts to change it is a difficult process. Change can happen when people in an organization realize that their existing organizational culture needs to change in order to support the organization’s success and advancement.
Changing An Organization’s Culture Involves Several Major Steps
In order to change an organization’s culture, there are four essential stages to take:
1. An organization must first comprehend its current culture, or how things are currently, before it can change it.
2. Once you’ve figured out your current organizational culture, you’ll need to figure out where you want to go, what your strategic orientation should be, and what your organizational culture should look like to achieve success. What is the organization’s future vision, and how will the culture have to evolve in order to achieve that vision? Questions like these must be answered by your management team:
• What are the most important values you’d like to see reflected in the culture of your company?
• Is your current organizational culture compatible with these values? Do they still exist? Why not, if not?
3. However, understanding the intended corporate culture is insufficient. Organizations must devise strategies to ensure that the intended corporate culture is realized.
4. Finally, in order to build the desired organizational culture, individuals in the organization must decide to change their behavior. This is the most difficult phase in changing a culture.
Important elements in transforming an organization’s culture
Other factors to consider while changing an organization’s culture are:
• Create value and belief statements – organize employee focus groups by department to put the mission, vision, and values into words that explain how they affect each person’s job.
• Guarantee that all employees are kept informed about the corporate culture transformation process to ensure commitment and success. It’s vital to tell staff what’s expected of them if you want to change the culture of your company.
• Review organizational structure – it may be required to change the company’s physical structure to match it with the desired organizational culture.
• Rethink your approach to incentives and recognition – you’ll probably need to tweak your incentive system to encourage the behaviors that will help you achieve your desired organizational culture.
• Review all work systems to ensure that they are consistent with the intended culture, including employee promotions, pay practices, performance management, and staff selection.
It takes time to change an organization’s culture
It’s difficult to get corporate culture right. It’s a changing target that means different things to different people. It is the consequence of action and reaction, and it grows and evolves over time. Every interaction has a lingering influence.
Chapter 8: Visualize the Journey
There are a variety of reasons why transformation attempts within organizations fail, ranging from change weariness to a lack of clear goals. Because the risks of failure are so high, your change management strategy must be executed flawlessly the first time. As a result, it’s a good idea to include visuals like infographics, charts, and graphs while creating your transformation strategy.
Creating a shared vision of what the future will look like is a major success factor in transformation initiatives. Visualizing the envisioned target state is a strong tool for leading the change team through the process. In this Course Manual, we’ll look at how visualizing change visions may help businesses and teams navigate change.
What are the benefits of visualisations?
The visualisation of the envisioned target state, first and foremost, generates a shared and common understanding of the future among the members of the change or leadership team. The change vision is immediately embedded in the thoughts of the change team with this technique.
Furthermore, having a shared vision of the desired future state allows organizations to consider what needs to be altered and how the change process might be shaped.
“Creating a shared and common understanding of the future among the members of the change or leadership team is made possible by visualizing the envisioned target state.”
Using photos and sketches to visualize the desired outcome makes the future more tangible. It motivates people and encourages them to participate in the change process. The younger generation, in particular, looks for purpose in transformation activities. Images and sketches aid in comprehending what the future holds and why it is critical to make a difference.
Where can you employ visualised visions?
Whether you’re starting an agile transformation, optimizing a business process, or in the middle of a digital transformation, having a visual representation of the desired end state is critical to making the change happen. This method has proven to be particularly useful and successful in business transformations where the desired state was unfamiliar to the company.
What role do visualisations have in the production of visions?
The target state is visually recorded
Visualizations can be employed at different stages of a transformation project. This strategy can be used right away when conducting interviews with change teams or stakeholders. By capturing the thoughts for the desired future state in drawings, the future begins to take shape even before the interviews begin. We begin to create a tangible representation of the future state by using pictures to reflect the thoughts with the interviewee, and we also avoid potential misconceptions at an early stage.
Workshops on Vision
During vision workshops with smaller or larger groups, seeing the target state is a very effective technique. You could begin by sketching a rough outline of the desired target state based on the findings of the interviews. This mannequin will be used as a conversation point to help shape the future state. These straw-man vision charts turn into wooden-man vision drawings in follow-up workshops. Pilot implementations of new processes, structures, methods, tools, and so on can normally begin at this point because the vision is mature enough to be put into practice.
Storytelling as a means of communicating the vision
Vision workshops frequently produce shared visions that are used to communicate the vision to a larger audience and stakeholders that were not involved in the vision building process. A image, drawing, chart, or other visual aid allows the change team to explain the story behind the vision, as well as perhaps a charming anecdote about how the vision came to be. This will help the audience connect with the vision and feel like they are a part of the change process.
Chapter 9: Measure the Change
Many change leaders are perfectly content to claim that change management is all about attitudes, behaviors, and sentiments, and that we can’t measure them. This concept of ‘soft’ change management extends to topics like leadership and employee engagement, which are difficult to measure and track. Is it true, however, that because something is more difficult to quantify and less black and white, it has less value?
“If you can’t measure it you can’t improve it” Peter Drucker
The reality that data currently dominates our environment is the ‘why’ underlying a lot of industrial transformation in our day and age. Everything that is changing in our world revolves on data. Because we are more reliant on the internet for information, the data generated through our digital interactions in our daily lives is now driving change. Alexa, Amazon’s home assistant, can identify our voices and tell us what we want to know. We can be recognized by street cameras. As a result of our Google usage, we get better-targeted adverts and product promotions. As a result of our Facebook usage, advertisers are able to have a detailed insight of our tastes and lifestyles, and they may target us with advertisements for things we might be interested in (according to Facebook data and algorithms).
So, since our environment is surrounded by data, why aren’t we monitoring it when it comes to change management? Let’s take a look at what we’re measuring and what we’re not.
These are some of the most frequent methods for measuring change in projects:
1. Surveys of change readiness
Change readiness surveys are typically online surveys sent by a project owner to determine how different stakeholder groups feel about the change at various points during the project. It could take the shape of a Likert scale or just plain text. The majority of the findings are summed up in a numerical scale indicating the group’s readiness for change. To assess stakeholder readiness for change, a simple SurveyMonkey could be used. ChangeTracking (now part of Accenture) is a comprehensive online application that tracks stakeholder groups’ preparedness for change throughout the initiative.
2. Surveys of training evaluation
These assessments are typically based on participant satisfaction in a variety of areas, including content, instructor effectiveness, and usefulness. These surveys are usually paper-based in a face-to-face training format to increase the completion rate. Ratings can be filled by the user at the end of the session or afterward for online or virtual training.
3. Metrics for communication
The ‘hit rate,’ or the number of users/audience who view the article/material/page, is one approach to measure communications. This may be easily measured using Google Analytics, which counts not only the number of views per page, but also viewership by time of day/week, as well as demographic information such as gender and geographic location of the audience.
4. Employee perceptions and culture surveys
Some firms track employee feelings or culture over time, and these surveys frequently include questions about change. Short surveys with a Likert scale and fewer open-ended questions seeking qualitative input are common. These surveys are a “catch-all” measure because they are often sent across the entire organization and may not be relevant to specific programs.
5. Change heatmaps
To map out the amount to which different business units are influenced by change, some businesses create change heatmaps on excel spreadsheets. This artifact refers to the quantity of change that has occurred, and it frequently leads to concerns about the company’s ability to ‘handle/digest’ change. The difficulty with most heatmaps is that they are typically categorized and assessed by the artifact’s designer (or a small group of people making judgements), making them biased. In a decision-making forum, data based on a single person’s perspective does not carry as much weight.
Chapter 10: Create Wins
How Might Success Be Used To Support Change?
When faced with a difficult mountain to climb, it is generally preferable to divide it into molehills.
The greatest way to break down large change management difficulties into smaller ones with specific, attainable goals is to break them down into smaller ones. Otherwise, it can be so daunting that solutions appear unreachable; as a result, individuals frequently postpone solving them or create single, grand initiatives that fail.
Breaking Down Big Challenges Into A Succession Of Smaller Phases
Breaking down such difficulties into a series of smaller actions, all leading to the same end objective, decreases anxiety, clarifies direction, and raises the likelihood of early success, building support for greater action.
Small Victories Can Have A Big Impact On Shaping The Culture Of A Business
Small wins must be achieved on a regular basis by teams and individuals working on complex problems. Because setbacks are so common in truly important tasks, people feel discouraged unless they can point to some significant progress every day, even if it’s very tiny and consists of nothing more than extracting lessons from the day’s failures.
The Concept Of Whales Versus Dolphins In Terms Of Organizational Change
The concept of “whales vs. dolphins” is breaking down major undertakings into a succession of small steps or phases, similar to how dolphins breathe. Each level provides verifiable rewards and acknowledges achievement.
Four Crucial Goals Are Served By Short-Term Victories
1. Wins give change leaders feedback on the viability of their visions and methods.
2. Winning gives individuals who have worked hard to attain a goal a pat on the back and an emotional boost.
3. Victories instill confidence in the work, enticing people who have not yet volunteered to participate.
4. Victories deprive cynics of their power.
This method propels the fulfillment of long-term objectives. Stanford University professor Bob Sutton claims in his book “Good Boss, Bad Boss” that:
“Big, hairy, audacious, goals are not only daunting, but they are usually too obvious and too broad to provide useful guidance for day-to-day work”.
In his book “Little Bets,” author Peter Sims emphasizes the necessity of incremental goal-setting.
To celebrate changes and provide positive reinforcement, empower staff to act on the change as quickly as feasible. Reward short-term gains.
Many businesses will go through significant transformation at some point in their existence.
Everyone wants to be a winner, but the reality is that in today’s competitive business world, almost every firm, if not all, will undergo significant transformation at some point throughout its existence.
Even when things are rough and the proverbial has hit the fan, and losing seems to be the only option, the ability to feel like a winner may make a significant difference to the bottom line. Last but not least, if you want something to grow, remember to throw champagne on it.
Pour Champagne On It When It Comes To Organizational Reform
Taking the time to savor the moment
People do not believe in a new direction when it comes to leadership because they suspend their disbelief. They believe because they see behavior, action, and results that lead them to believe the program is effective.
Organizational change programs can be time-consuming and difficult. As a result, it’s vital to recognize and celebrate achievements once they’ve been reached.
Taking time to celebrate is vital because it recognizes people’s efforts, promotes morale, maintains momentum, and dispels doubt about the change attempt.
Celebrate your accomplishments as well as anything you’d like to see happen again. Little wins — what had worked, how they had delighted their clients, and how they had solved challenges.
Success Feeds On Itself
Small triumphs instill confidence, in part because outsiders begin to notice and offer favorable feedback, resulting in even more determination to keep trying. When it comes to transformation, large successes are the culmination of many small victories.
High performance and success are not the outcome of a single cause or a combination of factors. The environment in which you work has a significant impact on your outcomes.
Chapter 11: Align Performance Management
Change Management Necessitates The Presence Of Leader Alignment And Clarity
Despite the fact that change leadership is in full swing across all industries, many executives are unprepared to act on and operationalize the demands of change in order to minimize company damage. Preparedness starts at the top for many organizations, which implies that leadership – at all levels – must have total clarity in purpose and focus, as well as alignment in IT performance and resolution goals.
Unfortunately, many organizations are hesitant to change because internal politics make reaching consensus across all levels of leadership difficult — even when change is critical. This is why many businesses lose momentum unwittingly by failing to adjust quickly enough, enabling the market and competitors to pass them by. As a result, valuable time is wasted, resources are applied, and money is spent without achieving the desired results in order to remain competitive, keep clients happy, and keep staff motivated.
• What does operational and financial success look like, and how does this benefit our employees and customers?
• What problem is our goal seeking to address for the industry we serve, and how can we increase our ability to achieve more than we have in the past – so that the company can stay competitive, become more lucrative, and/or gain market leadership?
• What resources and connections are required to meet our objectives, establish long-term success, and have a big impact in our industry?
It’s easy for change agents to claim that they need to improve and invest in bettering their processes (either because the marketplace is telling them to or because they need to be proactive before circumstances force their hand). Without a strategy, change is essentially substitution rather than evolution. Simply put, you can have a great idea, but if you don’t have the correct strategy and execution, you’ll make very little, if any, progress. When leaders fall into this trap, they are being irresponsible, and their credibility suffers as a result. Their motives are questioned, and doubts about their capabilities and know-how begin to loom.
So, what exactly do the terms “clarity” and “alignment” imply?
For instance, when leadership can break through silos across functional/departmental areas to inspire and operationalize diversity of thinking. The organization may become more collaborative and motivate innovative teams to tackle challenges and uncover opportunities together – regardless of hierarchy or position – by cross-pollinating ideas and values.
This incident exemplifies the need of a teamwork spirit, and without it, nothing else matters. This level of clarity instills in every employee the expectation that only those who are willing to work as part of a team belong in the business and match the culture that is being developed. You can push each other and put your principles to the test together, but acting alone and without regard for the team is not an option.
Is everyone in your company aware of the company’s workplace culture, if you think about it through this lens? Do they have the mindset and attitude that each employee and its leaders are expected to have in order to support the company’s mission? Many businesses lack clarity due to leadership misalignment, making it difficult to properly express expectations for all parties involved. This is why operational silos persist, pushing firms and their workers to manage change.
When a company’s leadership teams represent disjointed, disparate components – rather than a convergence of intelligence and know-how that is in sync and firmly integrated – it’s impossible to have clarity and coherence.
When change leaders across the organization are unwilling to share their intellectual capital for the sake of a healthier whole, management becomes a struggle. In other words, instead of sharing their accomplishments and insights with others to build the intellectual capital base of the company – so that it may more effectively grow and compete — leaders cling on to the intelligence that has defined their success – sometimes revealing a hidden goal.
When the leadership lacks openness, it is impossible to create an environment of clarity and alignment. How can a company be more inventive and competitive in the marketplace if preserving hidden objectives takes precedence over creating momentum for the mission’s collective good?
Chapter 12: Lookout for Inconsistencies
In today’s economic world, consistency has a limit. Change is in the air, whether it’s because the markets are swinging wildly, the business’s fate is unknown, or changes in technology imply the organization is transforming.
In a crisis, the leader must strike a balance between being both adaptive and responsive, making decisions, and disseminating information as needed. One of the major impediments to organizational change is a lack of consistency.
The most important thing is to consider all of the variables and make changes that are in the best interests of team members and the organization, all while keeping an eye on the checkpoints and benchmarks that assure business continuity.
“We’re still doing this, but now it’s going to look like that,” you can say to your staff. A 90-minute Zoom session might replace the 2-hour Monday morning team meeting. Daily roundtable meetings may now be replaced with a succession of brief Slack messages from home offices. Overtime chances that were formerly plentiful may now be a lottery system that employees must sign up for.
The goal remains the same: to reach income targets while maintaining the status quo; but, how you get there will differ. You can’t, however, expect that staff will be able to make these changes on their own. They require assistance and training to ensure that everyone is on board.
Some of the things we do aren’t productive in the first place, which is a risk of leadership in general. Consider that 2-hour Monday team meeting. Can you get the same job done in a quarter the time with a more condensed call? The answer is almost certainly yes.
How You Present Yourself Is Important
During times of transition and adversity, it’s a good idea to reevaluate and reset the value-added activities we’ve done in the past. However, it’s also critical to remain cool, confident, and express that you have a clear idea of where you want to go as a group or as an organization.
Be aware that if you arrive in a drastically different manner than usual, you may be received with bewildered and anxious workers. However, if you take the time to analyze your feelings about any approaching change before speaking with your team, you’ll be in a better frame of mind. And this relaxes your team members, allowing them to listen to your message and accept the adjustments.
Your Feelings Do Not Change With Change
We’ve all experienced cognitive dissonance at some point in our lives. In theory, you support organizational change, but you anticipate increased workload and stressed-out team members in the near future.
While change may benefit the organization in the long run, the labor it necessitates will not necessarily be enjoyable in the short term. Progress might halt and issues can occur if the gap between the perceived benefits of the change and the actual labor required to implement it is too large or too protracted.
In the grand scheme of things, your feelings are important, but how you communicate about welcome or unwelcome changes is even more important. Talk about your feelings and encourage your teammates to do the same. If left unaddressed, inconsistencies between hoped-for benefits and lived reality would fester and develop scepticism, undermining the change. Then, match your communication with expectations to ensure that consumers have the most consistent experience possible with their expectations and actual outcomes.
Curriculum
Leading IT Transformation – Workshop 7 – Change Leadership
- Sense of Urgency
- Compelling Change Story
- Employee Reaction
- Vision and Values
- Communication is Key
- Training Programs
- Company Culture
- Visualize the Journey
- Measure the Change
- Create Wins
- Align Performance Management
- Lookout for Inconsistencies
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.
Study environment
You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.
Study tools & rules
Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.
Successful distance-learning
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.
Self-assessment
Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.
Accepting responsibility as a student
Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.
Planning
By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.
Management
Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.
Study objectives & tasks
The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.
Study forecast
As a guide, the Appleton Greene Leading IT Transformation corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.
Performance management
It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.
With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.
With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.
Keeping in touch
You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.
Work colleagues and family
You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.
Making it relevant
The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.
Distance-learning check-list
Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportunities as you may need to re-submit project studies until they meet with the required standard. Consequently the only reason that you should really fail (CLP) is if you do not do the work. It makes no difference to us whether a student takes 12 months or 18 months to complete the program, what matters is that in all cases the same quality standard will have been achieved.
Support Process
Please forward all of your future emails to the designated (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit email address that has been provided and please do not duplicate or copy your emails to other AGC email accounts as this will just cause unnecessary administration. Please note that emails are always answered as quickly as possible but you will need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails during busy periods, because emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. You will also need to allow a period of up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Please therefore kindly allow for this within your time planning. All communications are managed online via email because it enables tutorial service support managers to review other communications which have been received before responding and it ensures that there is a copy of all communications retained on file for future reference. All communications will be stored within your personal (CLP) study file here at Appleton Greene throughout your designated study period. If you need any assistance or clarification at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email and remember that we are here to help. If you have any questions, please list and number your questions succinctly and you can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each and every query.
Time Management
It takes approximately 1 Year to complete the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program, incorporating 12 x 6-hour monthly workshops. Each student will also need to contribute approximately 4 hours per week over 1 Year of their personal time. Students can study from home or work at their own pace and are responsible for managing their own study plan. There are no formal examinations and students are evaluated and assessed based upon their project study submissions, together with the quality of their internal analysis and supporting documents. They can contribute more time towards study when they have the time to do so and can contribute less time when they are busy. All students tend to be in full time employment while studying and the Leading IT Transformation program is purposely designed to accommodate this, so there is plenty of flexibility in terms of time management. It makes no difference to us at Appleton Greene, whether individuals take 12-18 months to complete this program. What matters is that in all cases the same standard of quality will have been achieved with the standard and bespoke programs that have been developed.
Distance Learning Guide
The distance learning guide should be your first port of call when starting your training program. It will help you when you are planning how and when to study, how to create the right environment and how to establish the right frame of mind. If you can lay the foundations properly during the planning stage, then it will contribute to your enjoyment and productivity while training later. The guide helps to change your lifestyle in order to accommodate time for study and to cultivate good study habits. It helps you to chart your progress so that you can measure your performance and achieve your goals. It explains the tools that you will need for study and how to make them work. It also explains how to translate academic theory into practical reality. Spend some time now working through your distance learning guide and make sure that you have firm foundations in place so that you can make the most of your distance learning program. There is no requirement for you to attend training workshops or classes at Appleton Greene offices. The entire program is undertaken online, program course manuals and project studies are administered via the Appleton Greene web site and via email, so you are able to study at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office as long as you have a computer and access to the internet.
How To Study
The how to study guide provides students with a clear understanding of the Appleton Greene facilitation via distance learning training methods and enables students to obtain a clear overview of the training program content. It enables students to understand the step-by-step training methods used by Appleton Greene and how course manuals are integrated with project studies. It explains the research and development that is required and the need to provide evidence and references to support your statements. It also enables students to understand precisely what will be required of them in order to achieve a pass with merit and a pass with distinction for individual project studies and provides useful guidance on how to be innovative and creative when developing your Unique Program Proposition (UPP).
Tutorial Support
Tutorial support for the Appleton Greene Leading IT Transformation corporate training program is provided online either through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP), or via email. All tutorial support requests are facilitated by a designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They are responsible for deciding which professor or tutor is the most appropriate option relating to the support required and then the tutorial support request is forwarded onto them. Once the professor or tutor has completed the tutorial support request and answered any questions that have been asked, this communication is then returned to the student via email by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). This enables all tutorial support, between students, professors and tutors, to be facilitated by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM) efficiently and securely through the email account. You will therefore need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general support queries and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because all tutorial support requests are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Consequently you need to put some thought into the management of your tutorial support procedure in order to ensure that your study plan is feasible and to obtain the maximum possible benefit from tutorial support during your period of study. Please retain copies of your tutorial support emails for future reference. Please ensure that ALL of your tutorial support emails are set out using the format as suggested within your guide to tutorial support. Your tutorial support emails need to be referenced clearly to the specific part of the course manual or project study which you are working on at any given time. You also need to list and number any questions that you would like to ask, up to a maximum of five questions within each tutorial support email. Remember the more specific you can be with your questions the more specific your answers will be too and this will help you to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or duplication. The guide to tutorial support is intended to help you to understand how and when to use support in order to ensure that you get the most out of your training program. Appleton Greene training programs are designed to enable you to do things for yourself. They provide you with a structure or a framework and we use tutorial support to facilitate students while they practically implement what they learn. In other words, we are enabling students to do things for themselves. The benefits of distance learning via facilitation are considerable and are much more sustainable in the long-term than traditional short-term knowledge sharing programs. Consequently you should learn how and when to use tutorial support so that you can maximize the benefits from your learning experience with Appleton Greene. This guide describes the purpose of each training function and how to use them and how to use tutorial support in relation to each aspect of the training program. It also provides useful tips and guidance with regard to best practice.
Tutorial Support Tips
Students are often unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. This Tip List will help you to understand more about how to achieve the most from using tutorial support. Refer to it regularly to ensure that you are continuing to use the service properly. Tutorial support is critical to the success of your training experience, but it is important to understand when and how to use it in order to maximize the benefit that you receive. It is no coincidence that those students who succeed are those that learn how to be positive, proactive and productive when using tutorial support.
Be positive and friendly with your tutorial support emails
Remember that if you forward an email to the tutorial support unit, you are dealing with real people. “Do unto others as you would expect others to do unto you”. If you are positive, complimentary and generally friendly in your emails, you will generate a similar response in return. This will be more enjoyable, productive and rewarding for you in the long-term.
Think about the impression that you want to create
Every time that you communicate, you create an impression, which can be either positive or negative, so put some thought into the impression that you want to create. Remember that copies of all tutorial support emails are stored electronically and tutors will always refer to prior correspondence before responding to any current emails. Over a period of time, a general opinion will be arrived at in relation to your character, attitude and ability. Try to manage your own frustrations, mood swings and temperament professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Demonstrating frustration or a lack of patience is a weakness and will be interpreted as such. The good thing about communicating in writing, is that you will have the time to consider your content carefully, you can review it and proof-read it before sending your email to Appleton Greene and this should help you to communicate more professionally, consistently and to avoid any unnecessary knee-jerk reactions to individual situations as and when they may arise. Please also remember that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit will not just be responsible for evaluating and assessing the quality of your work, they will also be responsible for providing recommendations to other learning providers and to client contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network, so do be in control of your own emotions and try to create a good impression.
Remember that quality is preferred to quantity
Please remember that when you send an email to the tutorial support team, you are not using Twitter or Text Messaging. Try not to forward an email every time that you have a thought. This will not prove to be productive either for you or for the tutorial support team. Take time to prepare your communications properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a business colleague and make a list of queries that you are likely to have and then incorporate them within one email, say once every month, so that the tutorial support team can understand more about context, application and your methodology for study. Get yourself into a consistent routine with your tutorial support requests and use the tutorial support template provided with ALL of your emails. The (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit will not spoon-feed you with information. They need to be able to evaluate and assess your tutorial support requests carefully and professionally.
Be specific about your questions in order to receive specific answers
Try not to write essays by thinking as you are writing tutorial support emails. The tutorial support unit can be unclear about what in fact you are asking, or what you are looking to achieve. Be specific about asking questions that you want answers to. Number your questions. You will then receive specific answers to each and every question. This is the main purpose of tutorial support via email.
Keep a record of your tutorial support emails
It is important that you keep a record of all tutorial support emails that are forwarded to you. You can then refer to them when necessary and it avoids any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Individual training workshops or telephone support
Please be advised that Appleton Greene does not provide separate or individual tutorial support meetings, workshops, or provide telephone support for individual students. Appleton Greene is an equal opportunities learning and service provider and we are therefore understandably bound to treat all students equally. We cannot therefore broker special financial or study arrangements with individual students regardless of the circumstances. All tutorial support is provided online and this enables Appleton Greene to keep a record of all communications between students, professors and tutors on file for future reference, in accordance with our quality management procedure and your terms and conditions of enrolment. All tutorial support is provided online via email because it enables us to have time to consider support content carefully, it ensures that you receive a considered and detailed response to your queries. You can number questions that you would like to ask, which relate to things that you do not understand or where clarification may be required. You can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each individual query. You will also then have a record of these communications and of all tutorial support, which has been provided to you. This makes tutorial support administration more productive by avoiding any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Tutorial Support Email Format
You should use this tutorial support format if you need to request clarification or assistance while studying with your training program. Please note that ALL of your tutorial support request emails should use the same format. You should therefore set up a standard email template, which you can then use as and when you need to. Emails that are forwarded to Appleton Greene, which do not use the following format, may be rejected and returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. A detailed response will then be forwarded to you via email usually within 20 business days of receipt for general support queries and 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Your tutorial support request, together with the corresponding TSU reply, will then be saved and stored within your electronic TSU file at Appleton Greene for future reference.
Subject line of your email
Please insert: Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date), within the subject line of your email.
Main body of your email
Please insert:
1. Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request
2. Your Full Name
3. Date of TS request
4. Preferred email address
5. Backup email address
6. Course manual page name or number (reference)
7. Project study page name or number (reference)
Subject of enquiry
Please insert a maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Briefly outline the subject matter of your inquiry, or what your questions relate to.
Question 1
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 3
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 4
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 5
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Please note that a maximum of 5 questions is permitted with each individual tutorial support request email.
Procedure
* List the questions that you want to ask first, then re-arrange them in order of priority. Make sure that you reference them, where necessary, to the course manuals or project studies.
* Make sure that you are specific about your questions and number them. Try to plan the content within your emails to make sure that it is relevant.
* Make sure that your tutorial support emails are set out correctly, using the Tutorial Support Email Format provided here.
* Save a copy of your email and incorporate the date sent after the subject title. Keep your tutorial support emails within the same file and in date order for easy reference.
* Allow up to 20 business days for a response to general tutorial support emails and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because detailed individual responses will be made in all cases and tutorial support emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received.
* Emails can and do get lost. So if you have not received a reply within the appropriate time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit to be sure that it has been received but do not forward reminders unless the appropriate time has elapsed.
* When you receive a reply, save it immediately featuring the date of receipt after the subject heading for easy reference. In most cases the tutorial support unit replies to your questions individually, so you will have a record of the questions that you asked as well as the answers offered. With project studies however, separate emails are usually forwarded by the tutorial support unit, so do keep a record of your own original emails as well.
* Remember to be positive and friendly in your emails. You are dealing with real people who will respond to the same things that you respond to.
* Try not to repeat questions that have already been asked in previous emails. If this happens the tutorial support unit will probably just refer you to the appropriate answers that have already been provided within previous emails.
* If you lose your tutorial support email records you can write to Appleton Greene to receive a copy of your tutorial support file, but a separate administration charge may be levied for this service.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you to plan a task list for getting started so that you can be clear about your direction and your priorities in relation to your training program. It is also a good way to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team.
Planning your study environment
Your study conditions are of great importance and will have a direct effect on how much you enjoy your training program. Consider how much space you will have, whether it is comfortable and private and whether you are likely to be disturbed. The study tools and facilities at your disposal are also important to the success of your distance-learning experience. Your tutorial support unit can help with useful tips and guidance, regardless of your starting position. It is important to get this right before you start working on your training program.
Planning your program objectives
It is important that you have a clear list of study objectives, in order of priority, before you start working on your training program. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance here to ensure that your study objectives have been afforded due consideration and priority.
Planning how and when to study
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. This approach is designed to let you study efficiently away from the traditional classroom environment. It is important however, that you plan how and when to study, so that you are making the most of your natural attributes, strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance and useful tips to ensure that you are playing to your strengths.
Planning your study tasks
You should have a clear understanding of the study tasks that you should be undertaking and the priority associated with each task. These tasks should also be integrated with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and the guide to tutorial support for students should help you here, but if you need any clarification or assistance, please contact your tutorial support unit.
Planning your time
You will need to allocate specific times during your calendar when you intend to study if you are to have a realistic chance of completing your program on time. You are responsible for planning and managing your own study time, so it is important that you are successful with this. Your tutorial support unit can help you with this if your time plan is not working.
Keeping in touch
Consistency is the key here. If you communicate too frequently in short bursts, or too infrequently with no pattern, then your management ability with your studies will be questioned, both by you and by your tutorial support unit. It is obvious when a student is in control and when one is not and this will depend how able you are at sticking with your study plan. Inconsistency invariably leads to in-completion.
Charting your progress
Your tutorial support team can help you to chart your own study progress. Refer to your distance learning guide for further details.
Making it work
To succeed, all that you will need to do is apply yourself to undertaking your training program and interpreting it correctly. Success or failure lies in your hands and your hands alone, so be sure that you have a strategy for making it work. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can guide you through the process of program planning, development and implementation.
Reading methods
Interpretation is often unique to the individual but it can be improved and even quantified by implementing consistent interpretation methods. Interpretation can be affected by outside interference such as family members, TV, or the Internet, or simply by other thoughts which are demanding priority in our minds. One thing that can improve our productivity is using recognized reading methods. This helps us to focus and to be more structured when reading information for reasons of importance, rather than relaxation.
Speed reading
When reading through course manuals for the first time, subconsciously set your reading speed to be just fast enough that you cannot dwell on individual words or tables. With practice, you should be able to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You will not achieve much in the way of a detailed understanding, but your brain will retain a useful overview. This overview will be important later on and will enable you to keep individual issues in perspective with a more generic picture because speed reading appeals to the memory part of the brain. Do not worry about what you do or do not remember at this stage.
Content reading
Once you have speed read everything, you can then start work in earnest. You now need to read a particular section of your course manual thoroughly, by making detailed notes while you read. This process is called Content Reading and it will help to consolidate your understanding and interpretation of the information that has been provided.
Making structured notes on the course manuals
When you are content reading, you should be making detailed notes, which are both structured and informative. Make these notes in a MS Word document on your computer, because you can then amend and update these as and when you deem it to be necessary. List your notes under three headings: 1. Interpretation – 2. Questions – 3. Tasks. The purpose of the 1st section is to clarify your interpretation by writing it down. The purpose of the 2nd section is to list any questions that the issue raises for you. The purpose of the 3rd section is to list any tasks that you should undertake as a result. Anyone who has graduated with a business-related degree should already be familiar with this process.
Organizing structured notes separately
You should then transfer your notes to a separate study notebook, preferably one that enables easy referencing, such as a MS Word Document, a MS Excel Spreadsheet, a MS Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. Transferring your notes allows you to have the opportunity of cross-checking and verifying them, which assists considerably with understanding and interpretation. You will also find that the better you are at doing this, the more chance you will have of ensuring that you achieve your study objectives.
Question your understanding
Do challenge your understanding. Explain things to yourself in your own words by writing things down.
Clarifying your understanding
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your understanding.
Question your interpretation
Do challenge your interpretation. Qualify your interpretation by writing it down.
Clarifying your interpretation
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your interpretation.
Qualification Requirements
The student will need to successfully complete the project study and all of the exercises relating to the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program, achieving a pass with merit or distinction in each case, in order to qualify as an Accredited Leading IT Transformation Specialist (ALITTS). All monthly workshops need to be tried and tested within your company. These project studies can be completed in your own time and at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office. There are no formal examinations, assessment is based upon the successful completion of the project studies. They are called project studies because, unlike case studies, these projects are not theoretical, they incorporate real program processes that need to be properly researched and developed. The project studies assist us in measuring your understanding and interpretation of the training program and enable us to assess qualification merits. All of the project studies are based entirely upon the content within the training program and they enable you to integrate what you have learnt into your corporate training practice.
Leading IT Transformation – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Customer Service – 10%
E-business – 05%
Finance – 10%
Globalization – 10%
Human Resources – 10%
Information Technology – 10%
Legal – 05%
Management – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Production – 10%
Education – 05%
Logistics – 05%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
Online Article
Vitaliy Zhovtyuk,
Medium.com,
Aug 7, 2018.
“Digital Transformation & Change Management: How to Be Ready
Is your company ready for the digital transformation? If your business wants to survive in a highly competitive environment and prosper in the long-term, it must transform and adapt to the growing expectations of customers and technological changes in society.
Digital transformation stimulates the companies to choose the right technology as well as find out what no longer works and should be replaced or updated. It’s a big deal for management to elevate productivity and embrace technological advancement to bring impactful results in business operations.
Getting down to any project always seems challenging. And digital transformation is not an exception. The very nature of these process means significant changes are coming. When done right, it fundamentally modifies the way your organization works and handles challenges. And it’s not only about installing new software. First of all, digitalization is reorganization of how you do things and how people cooperate with one another.
Performing digital transformation right is critical. The research shows that companies doing the digital transformation in a proper manner win market share while others have a negative ROI for their investments.
To implement digital transformation successfully, it’s wise to rely on a managerial discipline called change management.
Change management should transform
The evolution of change management as a discipline has been related to technology-driven developments and transformation in large corporations. Nowadays, as more and more companies make the most of digitalization, the role of change management needs also to be improved to meet new challenges. These issues involve deeper and broader human impact connected with digitalization, and the use of implementation methods such as user experience and design thinking.
According to Neil Kinson from Redwood Software, there is only one main problem of change management — there aren’t many practices when it comes to digital transformation. In fact, there is a standard scheme for change management which begins with the C-suite and get down through all levels of management.
But digital transformation requires another algorithm. This process doesn’t have the track record. Besides, the change it can bring in is enormous.
So how can you implement a digital transformation strategy within your company? We’ve created a list of the best change management practices to think about when embarking on a digital transformation journey.
Put first things first
Previously, change management for technology used to be applied at the last stage. In other words, the focus was on the process of implementing the technology, and then on the influence this process had on the people. Only after the evaluation of this impacts, a change management plan tends to be composed.
In the era of digitalization, change management has come to the fore. Today, having a conversation with people about the future changes is a top practice before performing any aspect of digital transformation.
The main idea of that is to increase loyalty around everything that is about to happen and get people excited about your digital transformation plan.
Build C-suite support from the very beginning
Getting support from the top is significant for changes to be realized down the track. For businesses that are faced with difficulties in the new digital world, it might be easier to build support that for those that succeed. In fact, companies feeling an impact of the current climate are already ready for it. On the other hand, those organizations that don’t consider its effect may be more resistant to new changes.
To get management on board, change managers should understand the business pain points and provide practical solutions. The transformation can be implemented step by step. There is no need to make a dramatic modification that will turn a company on its head. This gives employees an opportunity to adjust to the change and consider it as a good thing, rather than a challenge.
Understand the technology deeply
One of the most critical stages of any digital technology implementation is explaining to employees how this transformation is going to change the way they work and ensuring that they can continue doing their jobs.
That’s when technology advisors come in handy. They can provide the team members with various training programs to help them gain a better understanding of the new processes.
Create a game plan
Planning is a vital step to digital transformation. Nevertheless, you need to be agile with plans.
There is always a risk to become very strict about holding to a plan, especially when you spend hours working on creating a detailed one. But digital transformation required flexibility. So if the future developments signal that change is needed, don’t be afraid to reconsider your plans. Otherwise, you may find yourself spending a significant amount of time on something that is not usable anymore.
Realize the changes in company culture
The study shows that company culture tends to fall behind process and technology when it comes to digital readiness. But digital transformation should always influence how business operates on a cultural level.
If done right, digitalization brings transparency and motives working in a collaborative function. And it doesn’t always come easy. Thus, change management for digital transformation also includes creating a dialogue about not only the technology but also the modifications of processes in different teams.
If you don’t want to get a lot of naysayers, initiate some honest conversations about what future is waiting ahead and give employees an opportunity to express their worries honestly. It’s up to change managers to make sure that all changes are perceived as an excellent environment for innovation.
Final word
No doubt, digital transformation is a complex task for change managers and employees from top to bottom. It should be implemented gradually after strategic planning. You need to have a clear vision for the end-stage to get every member of your team moving in the same direction. Even so, there must always be a place for flexibility.
Make a cultural change and education aspects of transformation a highlight of your plan. It’s significant to guarantee that everyone in the company is on board. To consider the digital transformation as a good thing, employees have to be aware of all the changes it brings. So don’t forget to explain any improvements in your vision during the process.”
Online Article
“Change Management: The Key to Successful Digital Transformations”,
By James Davidson,
CMSWire.com
July 30, 2018
Companies of all types and sizes are investing heavily in the digitization of their business models. Driven by the changing consumer expectations that B2C digital juggernauts like Uber, Netflix and Amazon have created, many companies are investing in reimagining their business. To achieve relevance in what is being called the Fourth Industrial Revolution — the convergence of offline and digital, mobile, artificial intelligence, social and cloud — companies must be more customer focused, agile, lean and interactive.
Any digital transformation includes the following core ingredients:
• Strategy — aligning vision, customer experience, processes and technology.
• User-Centered Design — mobile first and personalized.
• Agility in Delivery — iterative and adaptable.
• Integration of Software, Platforms and Technology — choosing environments and products that harmonize.
• Data, Analytics and Insights — constant feedback loop.
• Product Design Mindset in Execution — minimal viable product and fail-fast mentality.
Despite knowledge of the integral elements of a successful digital transformation, a recent survey by Couchbase uncovered a nearly 90 percent failure rate by CIOs and technology leaders who have tried to execute digital transformation initiatives.
Researchers at McKinsey unpacked this trend in another way, ultimately highlighting the critical part change management plays in driving successful outcomes. However, they also found that most change management efforts fail because outdated models and change techniques are fundamentally misaligned with today’s dynamic business environment.
I have successfully applied the following change management approach both as a leader at a Fortune 500 company and as a consultant implementing large digital programs within Fortune 1000 companies. After you read this article, let’s talk about what has worked for you and what you’ll try next.
Invest in Change Management, Early and Often
As my definition of change management may differ from yours, for the purposes of this article let’s use the Prosci definition: “the process, tools and techniques to manage the people side of change to achieve a required business outcome.”
Also, as every organization that delivers digital programs has an implementation methodology, I will be using that of my company, “The 7Summits Way” (pictured below), to talk about the application of change management techniques throughout the implementation lifecycle of a digital transformation initiative. The elements can easily be pieced out and applied to whatever methodology your organization prefers.
The Stages of Digital Change Management
1. Prepare
Change management should be at the center of your digital transformation vision and “art of the possible” thinking. To garner the necessary support, leaders are often laser-focused in this phase on business intelligence and securing funding and resources against their grand plan. What is frequently missed is laying the right foundation for driving change from the start. Key change management activities here should include:
1. Developing a digital transformation charter that articulates your business goals and the strategies to achieve these goals.
2. Identifying executive stakeholders and functional change agents. They will be key to removing roadblocks and creating advocacy, if brought in early.
3. Creating or aligning with a center of excellence (COE) to manage all digital transformation efforts and the governance structure.
4. Maintaining a change backlog to start tracking and mitigating risks (e.g. end user adoption, employee resistance, retirement of legacy processes, etc.).
Your change goals during the Prepare phase are to create visibility for your program, activate change advocates, and document your biggest and most immediate risks.
2. Define
The Define phase typically involves selecting desired business outcomes, uncovering audience value through journey mapping, defining requirements, designing the user experience and solution elements, and documenting your execution roadmap. These are all key inputs to your change plan. Additional change management activities during the Define phase should include:
• Holding regular steering meetings with your COE stakeholders, impacted functional leaders and change agents to refine your vision and plan.
• Conducting an organizational readiness assessment that covers: team structure and sponsorship, governance, adoption, measurement and communication.
• Hosting change management workshops that take inputs from your strategy (vision, objectives, KPIs, requirements, research, personas) and uncover insights, strategies and tactics needed to drive your change across your project lifecycle. These typically fall into categories such as: steering, resistance management, training, coaching plans, user feedback and measurement, content strategy and communications.
Your change goal during the Define phase is to identify key tactics that will drive your intended change by your target audiences and in what order (pre-launch, at launch, post-launch) they will be most impactful.
3. Design
Design is the phase in which the digital transformation blueprint is finalized. Wireframes, interactive prototypes, proof of concepts, high fidelity designs, solution architecture charts, integration mapping, and data modeling help bring the vision to life for a broader set of stakeholders. From a change perspective, this phase is when the inputs from the previous phases are formed into a plan that will inform your Build phase. Key activities should include:
• Solidifying change team role definitions, workstreams and RACI.
• Resolving business process impacts identified during requirements gathering.
• Defining a measurement plan, including tangible KPIs.
• Developing a content strategy and plan.
• Designing a training plan that includes one to one, one to many and self-based learning.
• Drafting a communication plan that builds excitement.
Your change goal during the Design phase is to activate your change workstreams to create their tactical work plans and schedules.
4. Build and Verify
While highly differentiated from a development perspective, the Build and Verify stages can be grouped when considering impactful change management approaches. Build and Verify is when your digital transformation becomes real as developers execute against your product backlog. This is also where change management fortitude begins to flounder.
Progress is easy to measure in terms of the development of working code, so the more intangible elements are often de-prioritized. Typically, in digital transformations destined for failure, leaders entering the Verify phase begin to organize a change management workstream. Successful organizations, on the other hand, merge their project management tools, combining requirements and user stories with the previously defined change management plans and tasks. Having one project management environment inclusive of requirements and business tasks forces collaboration and discussion between change leads, project managers, and developers. Change management activities should be included in the same planning sessions, reviews, and daily stand-ups as development items.
Key change activities at this point should include:
• Sequencing change management tasks and deliverables.
• Importing sequenced and assigned change management tasks into a shared project management environment.
• Meeting regularly with product teams and developers to align change efforts with development realities.
• Performing iterative development and quality assurance of all deliverables.
• Holding feedback sessions to ensure your plan is relevant and resonating.
• Monitoring and addressing the change backlog.
• Executing pre-launch activities.
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Online Article
“Why digital transformation demands a change in leadership mindset
By Nancy Giordano,
The Enterprisers Project,
October 15, 2021.
Conventional leadership principles were not designed for the demands of digital transformation. Interestingly, we don’t need to change what we think as much as how we think.
Recently a key retail executive forecast that their industry will change more in the next five years than it has in the past fifty. Another executive believes society will change more in the next fifty years than it has in the last three hundred. A recent headline declared that, “We are approaching the fastest, deepest, most consequential technological disruption in history”, and Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Director of Engineering and co-Founder of Singularity University, has said that there will be fourteen internet size revolutions in the next decade. Whichever way you look at it, things are shifting… fast.
When you speak with the visionaries and entrepreneurs actually building the solutions of tomorrow, from on-demand retail to vertical farms, and ask how far into this new era we are, almost universally the reply is: “only one percent”. Imagine then, where we will be ten years from now? How about 50?
Major industries, from medicine to energy to travel to entertainment, are radically transforming, putting pressure on others such as manufacturing, construction, transportation, finance, education…frankly, all of it. What an extraordinary opportunity this presents.
How to enable better decision-making
To do so, however, we need to cultivate the mindset, capacities, and internal compass that enable much more sustainable and powerful decision-making. Through years of work helping organizations and teams embrace and build a thriving future, I have come to clearly appreciate that we don’t need to change what we think as much as we must change how we think.
Our conventional version of leadership – the traditional one practiced de facto in most organizations today – was built to fit the demands of the Industrial Revolution. It is ill-equipped for the challenges of our increasingly digital and transforming world. Leaders have been taught to think and operate in centralized, siloed, hierarchical structures, to focus on efficiency and predictability in order to scale reliable, consistent delivery of products and services.
However, as we rapidly accelerate toward what I call the First Productivity Revolution, we must ditch the 20th century playbook and old style of leadership that we’re used to, and instead adapt to today’s mandate for breakthrough, responsive thinking by practicing Leadering; a dynamic and inclusive form of leading that instead focuses on building new, more expansive practices committed to human-centric innovation, regenerative solutions, and the creation of long-term value.
Why? Well aside from losing relevance, applying old mindsets to new, exponentially more potent technologies can create damage at a scale we never considered. The consequences of twenty-first-century mistakes will be even more difficult to clean up than the twentieth-century ones we are dealing with now.
So how can we get better at discerning what is necessary evolution versus what we fear are business-ending decisions? By thinking differently, we can use the power of these advances to build a better, safer, more inclusive “next”. To enable radical change, we need radical solutions. Accepting radical solutions requires a radical openness of mind… and heart.
A new mindset in action
We need to shift to a mindset framed by audacity and ingenuity as well as by compassion and humility; the innovations and technologies of the future will demand nothing less.
Examples of this leadership mindset in action might be extending benefits to full-time contract workers, experimenting with a four-day work week, or integrating mindfulness practices into your ways of working.
We are standing in a unique moment in time in which we have huge opportunities to impact our world in far-reaching ways. If we are only around one percent of the way into this next economic, technological and cultural evolution in productivity – and many of the things we thought we couldn’t do we’re realizing we can – let’s dive in and create the future we really want. For example, where we don’t just discuss “future of work” in terms of how many feet we sit from one another, but instead we make it possible to integrate well-being and family with our unique abilities to contribute and create value. Now is the time to put care and curiosity into action and build a future we are really proud of. For everyone.”
https://enterprisersproject.com
Conference Paper
“A Framework for Managing Change Leadership in a Digital Transformation Environment
By Christoffels, Mervyn,
European Conference on Management, Leadership & Governance;
Kidmore End, (Nov 2019).
Abstract:
Digital business transformation is disrupting businesses in every industry by breaking down barriers between people, businesses and things, as by breaking these barriers, they can create new products and services, and find more efficient ways of doing business. Digital transformation involves the reshaping of the very context and structure of organisations – which has implications for leadership practice and theory regarding leaders’ abilities, capabilities and how they implement this change. Organisations tend to consider successful managers for these initiatives; however, a successful management career is not the same as leading an effective group, team or organisation. This is because the personality characteristics, motives and behaviours that predict career success differ from those that predict leading an effective team or organisation. This implies that successful change leaders influence organisations by creating an environment for teams to be motivated and involved.
The central challenge for change leaders is to improve success in the detection, assessment and exploitation of ICT-related innovation opportunities. The leadership skills required can be seen to comprise a set of competencies which an individual in the digital economy requires to initiate and guide innovation utilising ICT. A leader in such a setting must communicate effectively with the teams, and fully understand the tools for supporting decision optimisation. This requires not only profound, leading-edge ICT exploitation skills, but also mature business skills, as well as skills in communication and organisation. These ICT-mediated environments are now impacting the way we understand leadership, as early researchers have observed a co-evolution between technology and leadership – which they labelled eLeadership. Not only has technology impacted upon leadership, but leadership itself may be transformed, due to its impact with technology. This phenomenon has motivated this study to develop a framework for eLeadership capabilities required in digital transformation initiatives, with a holistic view of the organisation and its environment, where it can be viewed as a dynamic system in which eLeadership contributes to reaching the organisational goals.
Headnote
Digital business transformation is disrupting businesses in every industry by breaking down barriers between people, businesses and things, as by breaking these barriers, they can create new products and services, and find more efficient ways of doing business. Digital transformation involves the reshaping of the very context and structure of organisations – which has implications for leadership practice and theory regarding leaders’ abilities, capabilities and how they implement this change. Organisations tend to consider successful managers for these initiatives; however, a successful management career is not the same as leading an effective group, team or organisation. This is because the personality characteristics, motives and behaviours that predict career success differ from those that predict leading an effective team or organisation. This implies that successful change leaders influence organisations by creating an environment for teams to be motivated and involved. The central challenge for change leaders is to improve success in the detection, assessment and exploitation of ICT-related innovation opportunities. The leadership skills required can be seen to comprise a set of competencies which an individual in the digital economy requires to initiate and guide innovation utilising ICT. A leader in such a setting must communicate effectively with the teams, and fully understand the tools for supporting decision optimisation. This requires not only profound, leading-edge ICT exploitation skills, but also mature business skills, as well as skills in communication and organisation. These ICT-mediated environments are now impacting the way we understand leadership, as early researchers have observed a co-evolution between technology and leadership – which they labelled eLeadership. Not only has technology impacted upon leadership, but leadership itself may be transformed, due to its impact with technology. This phenomenon has motivated this study to develop a framework for eLeadership capabilities required in digital transformation initiatives, with a holistic view of the organisation and its environment, where it can be viewed as a dynamic system in which eLeadership contributes to reaching the organisational goals.
1. Introduction and Background
Digital business transformation is disrupting businesses in every industry by breaking down barriers between people, businesses and things. By breaking down these barriers, businesses are able to create new products and services, and find more efficient ways of doing business (Schwertner, 2017). Digitisation forms a significant part of possibly the largest worldwide trend, Industry 4.0, and threatens to entirely transform organisations and current business models (Von Leipzig, Gamp, Manz, Schöttl, Ohlhausen, Oosthuizen & Palm, 2017).
According to Hinings, Gegenhuber, Royston and Greenwood (2018), numerous scholars argue that there is a need for new theories in this age of digital innovation and digital transformation, because innovation processes themselves are subject to digitisation. The argument is that accepted theories of innovation are no longer applicable (Nambisan, Lyytinen, Majchrzak & Song, 2017; Svahn, Mathiassen & Lindgren, 2017; Yoo, Boland, Lyytinen & Majchrzak, 2012). Nambisan et al. (2017:223) state that “there is a critical need for novel theorizing on digital innovation management” that deals more adequately with the rapidly changing nature of innovation processes in a digital world”. Eustace and Martins (2014) state that in today’s changing technological landscape, organisations, leaders and employees are presented with a multitude of challenges and opportunities. They go on to argue that harnessing the opportunities and addressing the challenges is going to require strong leadership and highquality relationships between employees and leaders, so that they can work together to find appropriate solutions. The world is in a leadership crisis; despite the vast body of literature on leadership, it remains one of the most misunderstood of business phenomena (Gandolfi & Stone, 2016). Following on from the background, the following hypotheses were identified, and will be tested empirically in this research:
• H01: eLeadership competencies significantly impact on the outcome of a digital transformation initiative.
• H1: eLeadership competencies do not significantly impact on the outcome of a digital transformation initiative.
• H02: The management of organisational factors – i.e. values, culture and resistance to change, by the change leader, positively influences the outcome of a digital transformation change initiative.
• H2: The management of organisational factors – i.e. values, culture and resistance to change, by the change leader, negatively influences the outcome of a digital transformation change initiative.
In view of the abovementioned hypotheses, the following research questions are posed:
Research questions with regard to the literature review:
• How are eLeadership competencies conceptualised in the literature?
• How are organisational factors – i.e. values, culture and resistance to change, conceptualised in the literature?
• How is digital transformation conceptualised in the literature?
• Is there a theoretical relationship between eLeadership, digital transformation initiatives and organisational factors?
• Do eLeadership competencies influence digital transformation initiatives?
• Based on the literature review, can a theoretical model of eLeadership and organisational factors be developed based upon theoretical relationships between constructs?
Research questions with regard to the empirical study:
• What is the nature of the empirical relationship between eLeadership and digital transformation initiatives within a digital transformation environment?
• Do eLeadership competencies predict the outcome of a digital transformation change initiative?
• Do the eLeadership competencies have an impact on the organisational factors and digital transformation change?
• Does eLeadership differ from traditional leadership within a digital transformation environment?
• What recommendations for future research, based upon the findings, can be proposed for the field of organisational psychology with regard to eLeadership competency?
• What recommendations can be made to employees regarding the selection of change leaders within a digital transformation environment?”
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Course Manuals 1-12
Course Manual 1: Sense of Urgency
You cannot create urgency without effectively communicating to your team why change is necessary.
Creating a sense of urgency alerts the organization that change must occur
The first phase in the IT transformation change leadership process is to create a sense of urgency.
Organizations are undergoing massive change and transformation as a result of rapidly changing technologies and global competition.
People and organizations stay in their comfort zones because of their resistance to change and fear of the unknown. Breaking away from the shackles of complacency is difficult and takes time and effort.
Does change leadership need a sense of urgency? A burning platform?
The first mistake in change leadership is not emphasizing the seriousness of the situation. Failure to instill a strong feeling of urgency causes a change movement to fizzle out before it even gets off the ground.
The first step in breaking free from this is to instill a genuine sense of urgency without creating an emergency. Breaking free from complacency is difficult since it is ingrained. Due to prior successes and the lack of a clear crisis on the horizon, organizations are unable to see the need for change.
Failure to create urgency allows people to remain comfortable
People will remain comfortable if there is no sense of urgency, and they will not perceive the need to contribute to the program. No one believes the change is imminent, thus resistance is great. People will not consider anything until they are convinced that there is a genuine problem that must be solved. At the same time, management must be able to motivate people by telling a compelling change story.
Standing on a burning platform. Creating a sense of urgency
Even Nokia’s CEO, Stephen Elop, admits that the company has lost its grasp on the bleeding edge of mobile technology. In an eye-catching internal memo, he refers to Nokia as “standing on a burning platform.”
A man on a burning oil platform
In a leaked internal memo, Apple CEO Stephen Elop compares the company’s current situation to a man standing on a burning oil platform, unsure whether to jump. He bemoans wasted chances and highlights the company’s current strategic problems. The “Burning Platform” message from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, which bemoans squandered opportunities and highlights various strategic difficulties for the company, can be accessed by clicking the link below.
Managing change in today’s organizations is becoming increasingly difficult. Doing it well, on the other hand, is the new requirement.
When a firm isn’t keeping up with today’s technology breakthroughs, the top executives are often aware of the situation. Despite this, no changes are made, and no IT transformation is initiated. What is the reason for this? There is no sense of urgency in a number of cases, no sense that not only something needs to happen, but that it needs to happen right now.
What if you’re not the only one who is concerned about the competition’s adoption of new technologies? When you feel like you’re the only one who’s upset by old business processes and cumbersome software? Worse, everyone is bothered, but no one is taking action.
It’s possible that your company is lacking in a sense of urgency. Everyone understands that IT transformation is required to remain relevant, but it does not appear to be a top priority. Nothing happens as a result. So, how can you instill a feeling of urgency in order for IT transformation to take place?
Make sure they understand the situation
People’s minds are where change begins. And, let’s face it, at the pinnacle of a company. These are the people whose palms begin to sweat anytime they see someone using Windows Vista, and who quiver at the sight of a competitor successfully implementing yet another new technology — despite the fact that their company’s technology hasn’t been changed in years.
It’s entirely likely that others haven’t seen things the same way you have, if at all. Are they even aware of the changes that are taking place around them? Or, more accurately, the absence of change within the organization? Are they, above all, aware of the importance of digital transformation? First and foremost, you must determine whether others have witnessed what you have witnessed. If they’re already taking action, or if they’re burying their heads in the sand. Or if they were fully unaware. If that’s the case, educate them.
Explain the consequences
What will happen if nothing happens at all? And when is it going to happen? Create tension by presenting realistic possibilities of what will occur if nothing is done quickly. Use tangible examples, such as projections based on figures and real facts, or similar companies that have neglected the inevitable. Take a look at Blockbuster, for example. You can’t anymore, that’s right. It’s an excellent example of a corporation that utterly neglected digital improvements and ultimately failed as a result. Give them a schedule for when these repercussions will occur, as well as when any changes to avoid them should begin.
Here are some examples of questions you could ask to gain permission for your desired change:
• What are the hazards to your safety if you don’t make a change?
• What are the hidden costs that you eliminate when you change?
• How will this affect various departments and people’s jobs?
• How will this change affect the expenses of licensing, consulting, and maintenance?
Keep in mind that you’re looking for urgency rather than emergency. You should take a tough but gentle approach here; you don’t want to cause panic. Because panic triggers panic responses. It’s the difference between fire-proofing a structure and pressing the sprinkler button while it’s on fire; the first is an investment that will pay off in the future, while the second is a panic reaction that, while effective, will only last a few minutes. After that, you’re still left with the charred remains.
Provide a solution – and a way to get there
Consequences are crucial to understand, but they may not always be enough to get people in the correct attitude to initiate change. Emphasizing what will go wrong may have the opposite effect. It’s called cognitive dissonance: people don’t like the situation, don’t want to hear about it, and believe it’ll be too painful to cope with, so they push it to the back of their minds and pretend it doesn’t exist.
As previously said, change occurs in the mind. It’s largely about feeling, and not only unpleasant emotions. Give people a picture of a better future, not just a vision of impending catastrophe. Motivate people with a vision of how things could be better — the carrot on the stick, if you will – and a plan to get there. Don’t worry – you don’t need to prepare a detailed step-by-step plan as long as you have a general notion of what the change would entail. Taking actions is less intimidating if you have a rough notion of what they will entail.
Showing examples of people who have done it successfully is always a smart idea. Why not display rivals who have successfully implemented change? Nothing can stoke the urge to change like witnessing competitors do so (and succeeding at it). From Walmart to local care facilities for the elderly, there are many examples of companies that have effectively digitally transitioned.
Do your part to help
Participate in the solution. Not only should you encourage people to change, but you should also offer to help them change. That doesn’t mean you have to take on the entire project; instead, figure out how you can help and volunteer. Isn’t it true that having more hands helps to ease the load?
Change is difficult to accept, especially when it isn’t even on people’s minds. It can be scary to motivate change from the bottom up, but don’t let that deter you. Because if it’s necessary, it’ll be necessary, and everyone will benefit in the end.
Case study: IBM and Text100 Australia used a content-driven approach to make a case to Australian organisations.
Objective
IBM commissioned original research from the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research as part of its thought leadership strategy to support the company’s ongoing Smarter Planet project (NIEIR). The influence of prior thought leadership campaigns in 2012 was built upon in this study. The NIEIR study was supposed to be the centerpiece of a content-rich, fully integrated communications and marketing campaign aimed at instilling corporate urgency in the area of digital transformation. IBM looked at the impact of prior reports by looking at meta-research, IBM customer and market insights, and fresh research from IBM’s global Institute of Business Value. The goal was to create a content-driven thought leadership platform that would help define what Australian businesses should measure themselves against in order to succeed.
Strategy
The strategy was to create a content-led integrated campaign that would create a sense of urgency around digital transformation and provide IBM with a “burning platform” to lead an action-oriented industry movement, which included: 1) the creation of an IBM and NIEIR report – Reinventing Australian Enterprises for the Digital Economy – that paints a clear picture of the financial benefits of digital transformation at an enterprise and sector level through e-commerce; 2) the creation of an IBM and NIEIR report – Reinventing 2) Using the new report to create momentum for action and change across IBM’s whole business via a fully integrated campaign that targets employees, clients, prospects, government, industry, media, and bloggers.
Results
The campaign’s results aren’t public, however the work detailed here received Business-to-Business Campaign of the Year at the PRWeek Asia Awards.
Course Manual 2: Compelling Change Story
Management need to be able to tell a change story
Management must be able to deliver a change story that encompasses all five motivators for employees. They can thereby release enormous amounts of energy that would otherwise remain dormant within the organization.
People must first feel the situation before leaders can gain buy-in. People will not consider anything until they are convinced that there is a genuine problem that must be solved.
Storytelling an important part of change leadership
What do stories have to do with change management
When it comes to driving organizational transformation, storytelling can be a useful tool.
Storytelling is not a new concept. Our forefathers sat around the fire and told stories long before we had books and newspapers, telephones and telegraphs, and the internet. We’re tale consumers, not storytellers.
Using narrative to change the culture of an organization. For leaders attempting to deal with rapid change, storytelling can be a beneficial tool.
Many managers place too much emphasis on management and not enough on leadership.
This is due to the fact that managers are taught to use management tools, of which there are several. Leadership, on the other hand, is difficult to teach because it is based on a variety of human characteristics. In addition, compared to the large number of management tools accessible, the manager has few leadership tools. Storytelling is one of the few – and most successful – methods.
Leaders must be able to utilize stories to inspire their people to achieve greater heights than they previously imagined.
Using stories to drive change
Let’s have a look at an example of employee engagement and business growth:
It was May of last year, and controller Peter Smith was going through the data from product supply manufacturing. All of the figures were trending in the right direction. Except for one thing. The expenses of the lids for the buckets in which we have the product had been rising for the past few years, and the costs had now risen to more than 5 million Dollars.
Peter was undecided about what he should do. He considered simply letting it go because he had so many other things to accomplish and figured the production men understood what they were doing. On the other hand, it was in keeping with the new finance policy of adding value to everything, so Peter went to the plant, put on an overall, and worked for one day. People were skeptical at first, believing he was snooping about, but they soon realized that he was there to enhance the firm.
After that, he phoned the unit’s manager, Bob Hanson, and informed him of his findings and inquired as to why the lids were not washed rather than thrown away. Bob Hanson told him that washing was impossible and that the cost was insignificant in comparison to the other expenses. After a few months, Peter notices that the cost of the lids is rising, so he contacts Bob again, and Bob responds in the same way — albeit with a somewhat annoyed tone of voice.
Peter was invited to Bob’s management meeting for the second time barely a month ago. Peter makes the decision to make one last try to cut the lids’ expenses. He contacts a friend in the factory and requests that all of the cup lids be collected for one week. By the end of the week, Peter has gathered two full sacks of lids, which he brings to the management meeting and places on the table, saying:
“This is what you toss away every week, and it’s growing by the month.” I strongly advise you to take action.”
“Peter, you’re a hell of a stubborn guy,” Bob remarks. Thank you for contributing to the success of our company.”
They started recycling the cups in Bob’s apartment, and the annual costs were lowered from 5 million Dollars to 1 million Dollars.
what exactly makes an effective story
This type of story is told practically every day by good change leaders. They tell stories that “cast” oneself and their organizations as change agents rather than status defenders. You cannot erase anxiety, eliminate uncertainty, or escape the threat of change for your firm as a leader. However, by creating a compelling story, you may make the most of these emotional navigational stakes.
Organizational culture management can be aided by the use of stories.
So, what is it that creates a good story? A tale is a vehicle that allows facts to be placed in an emotional context. In a tale, the material does not just sit there like it would in a list or a data dump. Instead, it’s designed to pique your listener’s interest and entice them to take action.
Computers remember facts and figures, but individuals do not. All of the crucial details, data, and analytics are more successfully emotionalized and processed by the listener when they’re incorporated in a tale – and they become substantially more actionable, according to memory research.
One of the great mysteries of true influence is that stories allow people to make their own decisions. Persuasion, bribery, or charismatic appeal are all push strategies; stories are a pull approach, according to Anette Simmons, author of “The Story Factor.”
People do not believe in a new direction when it comes to change because they suspend their disbelief. They believe because they witness behavior, action, and results that convince them to believe the IT program is effective.
Building a story-based IT transformation pitch
Here are seven tactics to assist you pitch for IT change using a storytelling approach:
Step 1: Create the story’s setting.
Describe the current situation as follows: “We have a loyal customer base.” However, during the last few years, that viewership has shrunk, and our revenues have suffered.” Provide data to back up your point of view.
Step 2: Describe the issue and the villain.
“Digital disruptors like [insert your company’s competitor] are providing a more innovative experience for our customers.” Include the following examples: “They’re not showing any signs of slowing down.” In fact, it’s becoming worse.” Information about competitors should be shared.
Step 3: Write a summary of the burning platform and a frightening image of its present trajectory.
“We will continue to lose market share to these competitors unless we do something really different.” While we have introduced several new products with incremental enhancements, they do not appear to be sufficient to combat these industry disruptors.” Give examples and statistics from the recent past.
You want your viewers to be uneasy at this point – the situation appears hopeless. What will the Rebellion’s response be? What exactly do they require? A strategy! “What can we do?” you want your audience to beg. This is the best way to get a head start on your strategy’s specifics.
Step 4: Make a bold plan public.
This is where you explain how you’ll go from point A to point B. Make a plan, whether it’s for a new content management system, an app upgrade, additional personalization, or increased search engine marketing spending.
When you structure your pitch like a story, your audience will be on the edge of their seats, eager to hear how you’ll solve the dreadful problem you’ve depicted.
Include specifics. You’ll have your audience on the edge of their seats, wanting to hear these details since that’s how you’ll solve the dreadful problem you’ve outlined. You’ll lose your audience if you just start with the plan: Plans are tedious. Saving the universe strategies provided in the framework of a story are fascinating.
Allow your audience to take part in this thrilling experience. Explain what is now holding you back — budget, politics, technology, alignment – as part of the drama. And show them how they can contribute to the plan’s success — show them how to be the hero who makes it all happen.
Step 5: Use layered stories
You must show evidence that your method will work even after you’ve explained how to stop the threat.
Customer behavior, which is influenced by their experiences, is a major driver of business performance. Customers will respond in a specific way that corresponds with your business goals if the organization takes certain measures, according to your strategy.
Consider employing a nested story if your audience is still doubtful. A nested story is just a story within a story in which you drop into another story, finish it, and then return to the original story to finish it.
Consider the following scenario: your pitch includes the tale of your organization, its obstacles, and a strategy for overcoming them. Add another tale or stories that illustrate your strategy in action before you finish that one. Each one highlights a distinct type of consumer, their objectives, the issues that brought them to your brand, and how you provide them with a positive experience – in other words, how your firm assists them in executing their plan.
The drama of the story creates interest, but the point of the story is to illustrate the strategy in action. Help the audience understand why the strategy will lead to customers buying more, telling their friends, or whatever the objective of a given story is.
Nested stories create suspense. When you are in the middle of a story and you interrupt it with a new story, your audience will focus on what it can learn from the new story while they wait for the old story to complete. They have two reasons to pay attention.
Step 6: Invite the audience to take part in the creative process.
Storytelling is effective because it elicits emotion, and most people make decisions based on their emotions. They are, nevertheless, critical thinkers who will attempt to rationalize their choices.
Because you can’t predict how the story will end, your audience may wonder, “What if our competitors do X?” “What if customers aren’t as quick to answer as we’d like?” “What if our technical architecture can’t manage the scale?” or “What if our technical architecture isn’t up to the task?”
Responding to spontaneous concerns properly will increase your credibility because it demonstrates that you have mastered the subject matter rather than simply memorized an impressive presentation.
Your task at this point is to explain how the tale will respond to these twists and turns. This is the moment to gather all of the data, statistics, and other stories that support your strategy. Responding to spontaneous concerns properly will increase your credibility because it demonstrates that you have mastered the subject matter rather than simply memorized an impressive presentation.
Of course, you won’t have an answer for everything, and you won’t be assured that every aspect of the plan will go off without a hitch. Be upbeat but truthful. Remind your audience that there are always options for improvement and that the repercussions of inaction are far worse than the risk of a flawed strategy.
You may also utilize this as an opportunity to make the audience “co-authors” of the story, allowing you to tap into their expertise and improve their sense of ownership. What do they think a decent fallback plan should be if a section of the strategy doesn’t go as planned? Encourage collaboration and conversation.
Step 7: Make certain the finale is satisfying.
Emotionally fulfilling endings are a hallmark of good fiction. Review what it’s all about and describe what triumph means on a corporate and personal level once the Q&A is over.
Rocky Balboa, for example, was a heavyweight champion who not only earned money and fame, but also inspired people all over the world. That is the definition of triumph on a higher level. Saving jobs, satisfying customers, or staying faithful to the company’s founders’ vision could all be examples of higher-level victories.
Every strategy entails some level of risk. If you want your employees to come to work every day motivated to make your story a reality, they must be able to see and feel the win on the other side of that risk, as well as be inspired by what it means for themselves, their families, their company, their customers, and the world. Whether freeing the galaxy from tyranny or effectively restructuring your firm to survive in a digital world, triumph should elicit genuine emotional responses.
Case Study
Consider that your company has set a lofty goal and assessed its performance—what it does to improve financial and operational outcomes for its stakeholders—and health—how well it collaborates to achieve its goals.
So, how can you mobilize the entire organization, from senior management to frontline staff, using these insights? As the chief human resources officer (CHRO) of a prominent heavy goods manufacturing summed it up: “How do we change how the organization does things, and how do we persuade the rest of the executive team to buy in?”
Building unanimity on priorities is important to a transformation’s success. Executives who choose initiatives that aren’t well linked with their goals risk running the transformation into a snag.
Making the right decisions, on the other hand, might yield huge benefits. According to McKinsey research, senior leadership teams that agree on their change story and share it with the rest of the business have a six-fold boost in the likelihood of the transformation succeeding.
Convince yourself that your company’s transition is a good idea.
Companies can unify on priorities and translate them into a focused, coherent transformation plan and change story by following three phases.
Get a sense of what’s important to everyone.
Many businesses track their performance on a regular basis. An assessment of organizational health, on the other hand, provides senior management with a quantitative and qualitative fact based on how well an organization is performing in comparison to its performance goals. “Once we acquired the data, it was critical for our leadership team to properly grasp the results,” the CHRO said.
Leadership should foster an open conversation among executives about which priority practices—the six to ten management practices that matter the most given the strategic context—can help the firm enhance its performance and health.
Leadership should be involved.
Senior leadership must involve managers in the development of an implementation plan. Multiple action-planning workshops can facilitate this collaboration by introducing the enterprise-wide performance and health objective, identifying essential behavior and mind-set modifications for each prioritized practice, and developing action plans with owners, next actions, and dates. Leaders must have a thorough understanding of the priorities, as well as the mental and behavioral shifts that go along with them, because they will be expected to model them.
Executives and managers can weigh in on critical implementation decisions like how goals and messages will be cascaded through the organization, timing, leadership roles, meeting cadence, accountability, and communication through these workshops—and what happens outside of them to keep the transformation momentum going.
1. Develop a shift narrative.
“Stories comprise the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s inventory,” according to Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner. In a performance change, stories become even more important because they are a key vehicle for motivating employees and creating a shared sense of purpose. The most effective change stories show all employees how their job contributes to the organization’s overarching vision.
Building momentum for a shift requires a storyteller’s enthusiasm for and commitment to the change story. Companies effectively create a “band and choir” that can communicate and amplify the change story at scale by incorporating a broader range of leaders in the process of constructing a change narrative.
Following these three approaches, the previously stated heavy products manufacturer noticed immediate results: top-level managers became more interested and confident in highlighting culture and behaviors to frontline staff. Within two years, the company was able to move from the bottom to the second quartile in terms of organizational performance thanks to the action planning and implementation. Increased revenue growth, improved financial performance, and fewer safety accidents accompanied this development.
Course Manual 3: Employee Reaction
Let’s look at some frequent reactions and see what tactics can be used when dealing with them.
Confusion and self consciousness
Employees’ initial reaction is Confusion. They are uneasy about the prospect of change.
What makes them feel this way?
The intended change may necessitate them changing their working method or collaborating with a different team or boss. What will take place? All of these ideas cause them to be confused.
Employees are self-conscious, and they are unfamiliar with the new working style. These feelings cause resistance to change, which, if not addressed, can derail the entire change endeavor.
What is the most effective strategy to handle these natural reactions? Managers and change leaders must first understand their employees’ natural reactions and feelings. They should be forceful and aware of the issue. They should concentrate on explaining why changes are occurring and creating a shared vision of change among employees.
Anger
Employees become annoyed when they feel let down. They frequently restrict their minds from perceiving the personal benefits of change and instead concentrate solely on what they may have to give up. They may be concerned about losing their jobs, as well as their prestige and position within the firm.
How should change managers and leaders handle employee rage?
Change managers and leaders must be prepared to deal with negative feelings. Rather than reacting and conveying personal benefits to employees, they should allow them to vent their frustrations. They should explain how the benefits of the intended change outweigh the potential loss once this period has passed.
Disbelief
It’s difficult to convince yourself that you can change. Employees frequently believe that they are unable to learn new skills and that they are unsuitable for new roles or working methods. Although it is natural to think this way, a constant state of doubt is detrimental and hinders transformation efforts.
What should managers and change leaders do in the face of such skepticism?
Managers and leaders should provide their staff with as much support as possible in order to help them cope with sentiments of disbelief. They should provide opportunity for employees to develop their skills. They should also hold one-on-one meetings with employees to encourage them to learn new skills that will benefit them as well as the company.
Stress
Even when employees agree to the assignment and begin learning new skills, methodologies, and processes, it is not a simple endeavor. Learning new tasks and items can be extremely frustrating due to the inconvenience, and employees may feel anxious and under pressure.
Although the changeover period is brief, it causes employees to experience additional stress and strain.
What is the best way for change leaders and managers to deal with such stress and pressure in their teams?
Timelines should be flexible and realistic for change leaders and managers. They should be prepared to make changes to their work schedules. They should listen to their team on a regular basis so that they are completely aware of individual and group issues. They should also be proactive in their search for solutions.
Excitement
Despite the difficulties and concerns that come with uncertain change, some employees are happy and eager to take on the challenge. They are open to change and are willing to adapt to new methods of working by swiftly learning new abilities and adapting to new ways of working. Employees with this personality type are early adopters of change and are more likely to benefit from change imitation.
What are the best ways for managers and change leaders to take advantage of these favorable attitudes?
Early adopters of change should be tasked with informing their peers about the positive aspects and benefits of change. They are change agents that can easily persuade their colleagues to overcome their negative emotions. This method is effective, and they are more effective in communication than leaders.
Disappointment
After a long period of struggling to adjust to change, some employees revert to old habits. They lose faith in change and become dissatisfied because they are unable to experience the positive aspects of it. They are no longer rewarded, and they no longer see change as helpful to them.
How can change managers and leaders prevent team members from developing negative feelings?
Managers and leaders must be steadfast in their commitment to making change a part of the company’s culture. If change is becoming part of the culture and systems are being replaced and enhanced quickly, team members are less likely to feel disappointed. To maintain positive until the final aim of change is accomplished, early achievement of change should be acknowledged and appreciated.
Employees may be afraid for Their Job Security
Fear of losing one’s job is one of the most common human emotions to change in the workplace. Downsizing and rightsizing are examples of organizational change. When a company goes through a merger or acquisition, it’s possible that some positions will become redundant. Employees fear losing their employment as a result of this type of organizational shift. Being laid off is stressful since the individual has no idea what their career prospects are.
Leaders may not have all of the answers employees require to relieve their worries in many circumstances of organizational change. It’s critical to be open and honest with your employees, according to Harvard Business Review. If there’s a chance that some employees will lose their jobs as a result of the organizational change, don’t state there’s no possibility anyone will lose their job. Tell your employees that you’re still working out the details and that you appreciate how difficult it is to deal with uncertainty. Promise them honesty and that you’ll get back to them as soon as you have further information.
Creating Rumors About Organizational Change
Employees who don’t have all of the facts start to develop and spread stories about the company’s future. They might hear parts of the change plan and then fill in the details based on what they know. While discussing these changes with coworkers, facts may become rumors, which can lead to increased anxiety and tension.
It’s vital to communicate efficiently with employees in order to avoid the business rumor mill. Setting expectations for change at the start of the plan is recommended by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health. If your organization is just getting started with the changes, for example, schedule a company meeting to go over the details and answer questions. When employees receive all of the information they require, they are less prone to spread misinformation. For the organizational transition, you can provide orientations or training.
Doubting the Leadership’s Vision
Employees may have reservations when they hear about upcoming organizational changes. Some may object to the company’s new direction, while others may believe that the changes will jeopardize the work they have already completed. Because they don’t fully trust in the strategy, employees may lose faith in firm leadership during periods of transformation.
The Harvard Business Review suggests that firm leaders be upskilled before and during periods of transition so that they are secure in their ability to direct the organization. To make the greatest decisions for the company’s future and build trust in the workforce, business leaders must excel in areas such as change management, automation, design thinking, and other areas connected to organizational change.
Stressed and Angry About the Inconvenience
Employees may become frustrated and tense when they learn new work processes and systems or navigate a new location. The addition of additional tasks or new elements to learn may seem inconvenient. This may need them to work longer hours and work on weekends in order to keep up with their regular workload. Even though the transition is just brief, it can nevertheless cause a lot of bad emotions.
According to Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, employers may need to offer adjustments for employees during periods of organizational transition. This may entail adjusting deliverables’ aims or expectations, with the knowledge that staff must concentrate on learning their new positions. Furthermore, managers and business leaders must remind employees that this transition is not an inconvenience, but an opportunity for them to gain new skills and advance in other areas of the company.
Employees should be included as much as possible in the change management plan, according to Harvard Business Review. This will assist them in not just comprehending the change, but also in taking ownership of it. This is especially beneficial for employees who are undecided. Asking for comments on specific areas of the organizational change, holding frequent town hall style meetings, and bringing in subject matter experts to help construct the change management strategy are all examples of ways to involve employees.
How to Reduce Negative Responses to Change
Communication is essential for eliciting more favorable responses from employees. According to the Harvard Business Review, creating a change story and tying all messages to it is a good idea. This consistency in messaging reassures employees and gives them a sense of security during a difficult moment. It’s also critical to explain how the change would benefit employees in particular. Employees may be more accepting of change if they grasp the benefits and how they relate to their role.
Workplace Strategies for Mental Health proposes that the organization’s pre-change successes be recognized as well. The messaging about future change can sometimes be so negative that it overshadows all of the previous work. Long-term employees may feel rejected or disheartened as a result of this. It’s critical to acknowledge the organization’s achievements thus far and tie them to future changes. This will encourage people to be excited about the organizational change rather than resentful of it.
Course Manual 4: Vision and Values
A leader’s vision and values are the most powerful instruments for transforming an organization or team. People at all levels of the business are guided by vision and values, which show them what they need to focus on and how to behave.
• A vision gives you direction. A vision is a description of what the organization must become in order to be successful in the future.
• Values indicate how we should act in order to achieve the goal. It demonstrates what is most important in the company.
What is a vision
A vision is a concise, all-encompassing ‘picture’ of an organization in the future.
A vision is a statement of what you want to accomplish in the future. It’s the culmination of a strategic planning process.
A vision’s benefits
When people work together to create a dream or vision, they have the following advantages:
• A greater knowledge of the environment in which they will be operating in the future.
• A clearer picture of what the company needs to be in the future to succeed in that climate.
• A common aim or desire that can be used to foster teamwork and resolve conflict.
• A more focused attention on the few things that truly important. This keeps a company from squandering time and money by attempting to achieve too much.
• A tool for determining what needs to be changed in the future. An organization takes two ‘photographs’ when creating a vision. The internal analysis depicts the organization as it currently exists. The vision depicts the ideal organization of the future as a ‘picture.’ The difference between the two ‘photographs’ indicates what has to be altered in the organization.
A vision is the most critical starting point for any change process in any organization undertaking big transformation.
Too many changes have left many organizations befuddled and overwhelmed. Government legislation, growing global rivalry, the adoption of new technology, the pursuit of new markets, cost-cutting constraints, and lean manufacturing are just a few of the many changes that organizations are being asked to make. Trying to change too much at once causes organizations to ‘burn out’ or lose focus. A well-thought-out visioning process can assist the company in integrating all of its change initiatives into a single, seemingly straightforward change process.
A comprehensive vision aids an organization’s decision-making process. Every decision is simply put to the test in relation to the vision. As a result, leaders are more confident in decentralizing decision-making. A shared vision ensures that everyone is working in the same direction.
A vision gives you a way to track your progress. It shows the organization’s ‘before and after’ picture. It also gives a logical framework for divisions and departments to set their objectives.
A shared vision serves as a strategy for preventing conflict between different functional areas, organizations, and hierarchical levels, which is common. The method the vision is formed, the knowledge gained during the process, and the final result all contribute to dispute resolution.
Creating a vision is a one-of-a-kind strategy to transformation and empowerment. Those who participate in the visioning process learn about business, society, the future, change, and themselves in a way that benefits not only teams but also individuals.
While this Course Manual focuses on organizational visions, visions are also frequently employed at the team and individual levels.
By comparing everything you accomplish to your vision, you can focus on what actually important.
What do we mean by values?
Values describe the HOW, or how we shall conduct toward one another and our stakeholders in order to achieve our objectives. Understanding our own personal values, as well as those of others, makes it easier to:
• Be aware of each other’s actions.
• Be tolerant of one another’s differences.
• Have faith in one another.
Any culture reform initiative must begin with values.
Benefits of values
Sharing principles is a great approach to bring people together. When individuals or groups develop a set of values, they gain advantages such as:
• Conflict resolution
• Establishing a foundation of trust.
• Creating a code of conduct that can be used to manage team dynamics.
If the organization’s or team’s leaders follow the new code of conduct regularly, the trust and energy they generate among their followers will astound them.
The culture of an organization can be transformed by values.
Developing a new set of corporate values is one technique to start changing an organization’s culture. The organization then communicates, rolls out, or cascades these principles throughout the organization to every team and employee.
If the values roll-out process is effectively designed, it may be a strong tool for changing the behaviors and habits of every employee and manager, resulting in a shift in company culture.
How to Create a Powerful Vision for Change
You’ll need a change vision if you’re part of an organization that’s seeking to implement a major change, whether it’s a new IT system or a new go-to-market strategy. This is a visual representation of what the organization will look like when significant changes have been done, as well as the opportunities that will be available to them. It serves to encourage people and is necessary for every successful change initiative.
A change vision is distinct from a corporate vision. Both are critical, but anyone who wants to successfully implement a large-scale change in their company must grasp how they vary. In the video below, I walk you through the process and offer some specific advice on how to create an effective change vision.
Every effective large-scale change I’ve seen has a change vision as part of it. And what it implies is a depiction of what we’ll look like after we’ve done the adjustments on whatever dimensions we’ve decided on. And if we look like that, we’ll be able to seize, grab, and take advantage of some significant opportunities over here that are a result of changes occurring in this increasingly fast-paced globe.
The dimensions on which a change vision can speak; whether it’s about the procedures we employ, the kind of people we have, or the technology we use, it can vary widely depending on the nature of the change you believe you need to make to capitalize on some significant opportunity.
A excellent change vision is one that is simple for others to comprehend. It can be written in a half-page, communicated in 60 seconds, is both intellectually sound and emotionally appealing, and it’s something that can be understood by a wide range of people who will eventually have to change—whether it’s a secretary or an executive, someone from Germany or the United States. Which makes it simple to communicate, and to communicate in such a way that people will “understand it” if you do, and will buy into it if you do it well.
That isn’t always the same as a generic corporate vision. A general corporate vision is what you believe you need to look like in the future on some key dimensions in order to succeed. It’s not about one large-scale shift in particular; it’s about the future. And, more often than not, that image depicts eternal beliefs or ideas, as well as timeless behavior, which helps firms prosper. One feature of that timeless behavior, for example, is increasingly the acceptance of change itself.
That could be a part of the way you’re doing things right now, and it could be a part of the vision you have for the future, even if you’re going to (for example) hire thousands of people who aren’t like that, and even if you’re going to be operating in different countries with different national cultures. That is still our objective, and we will continue to preserve this capacity and practice for embracing change that we have now.
However, this refers to the organization as a whole, rather than a single large-scale shift in IT, go-to-market strategy, or whatever. Obviously, they must be aligned; if one is travelling in this direction and the other is going in this direction, it will not function. But they’re not the same, and they’re both critical.
Case Study
Vision, Mission & Values: A Practical Case Study
“In my last blog, ‘Vision, mission and values: what are they and do we really need them?’, I talked about the important role that a clearly articulated vision, mission and values statement plays in engaging your people (and also your customers for that matter).
If you want your employees to enjoy working in and care about the business as much as you do, you need to share your vision and mission with them and, just as importantly, they need to understand your values in how things get done.
About 18 months ago, one of our clients went through a turbulent time in their business following the loss of a key client, and several redundancies unfortunately resulted. Unsurprisingly, this caused a shockwave amongst the team, not least because the company had only experienced steady and sustained growth since it was formed some years before. The shock and disengagement played out in the performance of the team as a whole and also in the behaviours of a number of employees.
Rather than letting the rot set in, the Senior Leadership Team immediately recognised they had to do something if they were to get the business back on its feet and take everyone with them. They’ve done various things over the last year or so, but the first exercise they carried out was a review of their vision, mission and values statement as they felt it no longer reflected what they wanted to achieve for the future and how things should be done.
They invited several people from across the business, from shop floor to management, to participate in an Away Day, during which they considered and debated as a group what the updated statements should look like. Before the event, the participants were asked to get feedback from their colleagues and bring this along for discussion and inclusion.
At the end of the process and with the involvement of their people, the business had a fully refreshed vision, mission and values statement. But then what?
The statement was advertised in all the obvious places: the company website, intranet and notice boards, but this simply wasn’t enough. The SLT understood that if they wanted their people to buy into and deliver the vision, mission and values, a lot more work was needed to incorporate them into the day-to-day operations of the business.
A number of activities followed, one of which was a Team Values Day, where every employee participated in a group event focused on sharing the new values and setting the standards of behaviour and performance that were expected going forward. The event was also used as an opportunity to get different work groups together (this rarely happened but has since continued) and have some fun away from the daily grind.
Part of the Team Values Day included asking the groups to think about each of the company values and how they could be positively demonstrated in the workplace. In turn, this feedback was used to create a “Behaviours Charter”, which has since been adopted into day to day people management practices to encourage open and honest conversations about employee conduct. The Charter has also been incorporated into the Performance Review Process, with employees being held as much accountable for their behaviour as much as their work performance.
The Recruitment Process has since had an overhaul, with the inclusion of values-based questions in each and every interview, which hold as much importance in assessing the candidates’ work ethic as their technical capability.
In the monthly Newsletter, each member of the SLT provide a business update in relation to their own division and use this as an opportunity to recognise when someone has demonstrated one or more of the values in carrying out their work. Employees are also encouraged to nominate their colleagues for a “shout out” in the Newsletter when they’ve gone above and beyond in providing help and support to others.
When I recently spoke to one of the Directors, she reported that, although there’s still plenty more work to do and it’s a continual process, the most rewarding outcome for the SLT so far has been hearing their people refer to the vision, mission and values in their everyday conversations. It seems like a lightbulb has been switched on and the team has finally adopted them as part of working life.”
– Guardian Online
Course Manual 5: Communication is Key
10 Ways To Move Forward Together As A Team During Times Of Change
Whether by design or as a result of a catastrophe, times of transformation will put a company’s resilience, confidence, and culture to the test. Many individuals resist change because it undermines their feeling of security, so getting them on board and moving in a new path would necessitate not only more frequent but also more intelligent interactions.
Keep these recommended practices in mind when you develop your communication plan if you’re a leader leading your organization in a new direction:
1. Take the lead in the story. People fill in the gaps themselves when there is a lack of knowledge, and they usually paint things in the worst possible light. Stay ahead of the “grapevine” and set the tone and topic by speaking early and regularly.
2. Tell them what you’re about to tell them, then repeat the process. A message transmitted does not always imply that it has been received. People typically need to hear information several times before it sinks in or they believe it to be true. To guarantee that critical points are heard, repeat them frequently, even within the same presentation.
3. A sequence of promises kept builds trust. Even within established teams, times of major upheaval necessitate the formation of new trusting relationships. Make sure that promises made in communications aimed at the future are kept, and that promises kept in communications aimed at the past are celebrated.
4. Make yourself apparent at the helm. In times of change, the senior leader serves as a “canary in the coal mine” for the entire organization. It’s more crucial than ever to be visible in charge of the ship and to lead with confidence.
5. Keep Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in mind. At the end of the day, your employees are all human beings seeking security first and foremost. Don’t forget to address their concerns about their professions, roles, how changes may affect them, and where they fit in the new future during times of change.
6. Maintain momentum by recognizing and applauding small victories along the road. Employees’ fears of change fade with each step forward on a new road and each achievement that comes with it. When you can, make a point of recognizing, highlighting, and celebrating minor and huge victories.
7. Make sure your leadership team understands and follows the playbook. Employees must receive the same messages from your executives as they do from the leader. Variation breeds confusion, whereas consistency breeds confidence. The greatest teams write down their purpose, vision, strategy, values, and so on, and even build regular scripts for talking about them, so they can communicate the material consistently and confidently.
8. Create listening stations and reply honestly. Communication is two-way, and knowing what’s on employees’ minds allows leaders to anticipate rather than react to employee issues. If you can create “listening posts” like brown bag meetings, feedback loops, or other means, you’ll be able to predict what’s starting to “trend” in the thoughts of your employees and stay ahead of the messaging before it gets in front of you.
9. Make yourself available. In times of transition, the soft stuff is crucial. Not only does a new path necessitate employee trust, communication, and support, but it also necessitates stronger leadership guidance to support the numerous “course corrections” that will be required with new ways of working.
10. Share your vision with them, but keep them focused on the road map. Every great journey starts with a few tiny stages, and assisting employees in identifying the next steps cuts the journey down into smaller, more manageable chunks. Then, keeping the end goal in mind, each step adds to the overall momentum toward accomplishing the goal.
At the end of the day, if you’re guiding them to a better place, they’ll follow you. You’ll all get there together if you paint the picture, explain why, and show them how.
Case Study: How to Communicate Change to Employees
Effective communication is your ace in the hole if your firm is undergoing a shift.
It isn’t only about informing your workers. It’s critical to include them in the process and listen to their concerns. As a result, many businesses are switching to conversational communication instead of hierarchical, top-down communication.
Slido turned to one of its customers, Irwin Mitchell, a pioneering law firm focused on digital transformation, to learn how firms interact during times of transition.
Iain Hodgson, their Internal Communications Manager, shared how communication training helped them start a conversation with their staff. Here’s how it goes.
Giving employees a voice helps to break down barriers.
Irwin Mitchell is a full-service law company with offices across the United Kingdom and over 2,800 workers. They’re changing how they supply legal services and support their workers at work to stay ahead of the curve.
In this process, the internal communications team is crucial. It assists coworkers in comprehending the approach while keeping supervisors up to date.
With so much change happening in the company, it was critical for management to understand how their employees reacted and to guarantee that employee voices were heard.
“As part of this transformation, we’re always striving to have an effective blend of cascade and conversation. So instead of our senior leaders giving a message that trickles down the organization, our recent annual plan roadshows were about engaging in conversation right across Irwin Mitchell.”
But, in order to get there, they had to deal with two issues.
“First, we wanted to ensure we had a way for colleagues to quickly share opinions and allow leaders to respond in real time,” explained Iain.
“Second, we wanted to ensure that those who weren’t comfortable standing up to ask questions still had a way to express themselves, no matter who they were.”
During roadshow events, establishing a two-way conversation
Irwin Mitchell organized a series of internal roadshows to convey the firm’s ambitious ambitions with its employees, with Executive Board members visiting all of the offices.
Each event began with a member of the Executive Board presenting the new approach to the staff. The business’s Regional Managing Partners (local executives) then described what it meant to the others in the room.
They used Q&A and live polls to help people talk about the proposals.
“Using an interaction app gave our people the opportunity to ask questions and get clarification. It also helped us see how our developing strategy resonated with the local teams.”
They communicated the modifications in three different ways. The communications software assisted Irwin Mitchell in achieving three primary goals during the roadshow:
Allow people to ask questions of the leaders in a live Q&A session.
During each roadshow session, there was a live Q&A session where employees could ask management questions regarding the company’s improvements.
“using a business communication app empowers people who aren’t necessarily comfortable to stand up and ask a question to get their voice heard,” noted Iain. “It also allows us to respond right there and then. This makes the conversation feel more energized and interactive.”
Leaders don’t always have all the answers, like with any transformation program. Irwin Mitchell’s executives, on the other hand, didn’t shy away from any form of query.
“We didn’t moderate the questions so nothing was hidden behind a filter, unlike more traditional events where comms teams would pre-vet questions. If we didn’t have an answer, we were honest about that.”
Collect real-time feedback that leads to a live conversation
The leadership team also presented work on developing the Irwin Mitchell brand as part of the roadshow. To see how people reacted to the proposals, they used fast live polls.
“It allowed us to get instant feedback from our employees across the country and discuss their reactions. This was especially powerful for the executive team as it also meant they could explore the ‘why’ behind our people’s reactions.”
The Board broadcasted the results live on presentation screens to ensure transparency.
“With live polls, you can’t hide behind a curtain and only display the good stuff,” explained Iain. “People can quickly see what everyone else in the room is feeling. And that engenders trust.”
Recognize the issues that employees are passionate about.
The crew analyzed the acquired data in the analytics at the end of each event. “The app is great because we don’t need to write down people’s questions. It’s all in the system, ready to be extracted.”
It wasn’t only about acquiring data, as Iain pointed out. “It made the whole process more efficient, as we could compare what questions were being asked across the country – and the response of our people to our brand development.”
They were able to identify the hot issues in each location as a result of this. “These insights helped us develop content and prepare more detailed relevant information as the roadshows progressed – learning and developing content on the go,” explained Iain.
The communication session also helped to guarantee that no questions were overlooked. “If we didn’t have an answer, we downloaded the questions and asked the right people in the business to follow up afterward.”
“This has helped us give colleagues the opportunity to share their views and respond in real-time. It supports us in building trust and gives us vital insights that will help us to continuously improve.”
Course Manual 6: Training Programs
Why Training Is Essential In Change Leadership
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft
Most of us are creatures of habit and comfort in our personal and professional lives. As severe as the quote may appear, it contains truth: we are afraid of change. In terms of technology, the global economy, and the business climate, 2022 is a year of rapid development. These changes are affecting how businesses operate in order to avoid being left behind.
The organizational culture responds to changes in workplace methods, structures, and systems. Planned programs can help with organizational change by ensuring that your employees are guided through the process. Training is, of course, an important part of a smooth transfer.
In this course manual, we will explore the reasons why training is essential in change leadership.
1. Training increases the rate of change management success.
The grim reality is that about 70% of transformation programs fail. Why? Negative staff attitudes and ineffective managerial behavior are frequently blamed for change management failures. According to statistics, 33% of management conduct is anti-change, while 39% of employees are opposed to change. Because managers define workplace behavioral standards, it’s crucial that they embrace change and set the best example and tone for how change is accepted by their teams. You should provide eLearning training to your staff on how to be the best advocates for change while providing adequate assistance to team members as part of your IT Transformation process. Providing refresher training to ensure staff are working constructively and productively during times of change can also be beneficial.
2. Training helps maintain visibility and encourage belonging.
According to a recent research, only 40% of corporate employees were aware of their company’s aims, strategies, and tactics. This business data is just the tip of the iceberg; key aspects like views, beliefs, values, and shared assumptions may be hidden beneath the surface, leaving employees with even less visibility into how the company they work for operates. A sense of belonging is essential for workplace engagement, and this comes from an awareness of the organization’s surroundings. Your company should provide thorough introduction training that clearly communicates your goal, vision, values, and strategies, as well as regular refresher chances to ensure that they are remembered and integrated into everyday operations.
3. Training promotes employee engagement.
Did you know that highly engaged employees are 87 percent less likely than their disengaged colleagues to leave their companies? This figure emphasizes the significance of incorporating employees in the change management process. Managers should be taught how to deliver the change message to their teams in small increments, then collect feedback from individuals and use it to impact change.
Effectively managing organizational change will considerably reduce associated fear and hostility, as well as put a halt to the rumor mill. Your managers will be prepared to support their staff as they adjust to change and learn new methods of doing things while remaining confident in the process if they have been trained.
Change leadership has become a catch-all term for most organizational issues, to the point where it has lost its true meaning in some instances. It’s the process of preparing and enabling people to successfully adapt change in order to achieve organizational success.
Companies have traditionally utilized change management to help individuals, teams, and the entire business adapt by employing strategies to re-direct resource use and other modes of operation that dramatically restructure a firm or organization. Traditionally, there are numerous change management models (such as Kotter’s 8-step model, Lewin’s model, ADKAR model, and so on) that serve as a step-by-step roadmap to a successful organizational shift. All of these models have a training and development phase in common.
1. Determine specific training needs first
The cornerstone of change management is training. People should obtain timely and suitable training in order to effectively bring about change and gain adaptable and buildable abilities. Based on the skills, knowledge, and attitudes required to accomplish the change, each employee will design training requirements.
The training needs assessment survey, a diagnostic technique for identifying what training is required, is a good tool for creating these requirements. This survey collects information in order to determine how individuals and organizations can grow in order to achieve their goals and objectives. More importantly, this survey should be undertaken not just for the personnel and their technical skills, but also for the managers and supervisors—if they require training to explain and manage the change.
2. Incorporate communication into training plans
Change management initiatives may fail if there is insufficient information about future transitions. The change leader must develop a communication strategy that focuses on communicating the specific changes that will occur in the organization. In these communications, the context of the change, as well as how employees participate in and influence its success or failure, is frequently disregarded.
Messages must be deliberate and well-considered. Depending on the target, each message regarding the change must be packaged and created differently, whether to raise awareness or to encourage future action and cooperation. It’s also important to think about the time of such communications and the communication channels through which they’ll be delivered. This involves training for change enablers in communication (managers, supervisors, team leaders, etc.) Only proper business communication training can ensure successful delivery of these messages and implementation of the communication plan.
3. Select more accessible training solutions
Handouts, equipment, rental fees, and trainer time are typical costs for internal seminars and training programs. Travel, accommodation, and registration fees must all be budgeted for when sending people to external programs. All of these scenarios take days, if not months, to plan and would require individuals to temporarily abandon their jobs.
Many programs, fortunately, may be accessed online or via mobile devices. Employees can participate in training without having to worry about piled or delayed work by taking use of these training packages that can be accessible at any time of day. In addition, the company can reduce its logistical costs.
The corporate landscape, as well as the economy in general, is evolving at a breakneck speed. Organizations must do all necessary to adapt to these changes in the most effective and efficient manner possible, and they must be strategic in their application of the solutions and technologies currently accessible to them.
Tips for change management training
Use these tips to implement or take part in change management training with your organization:
Stress the importance of change
Any factor that obstructs the implementation process, such as workers or systems, is referred to as resistance to change. Understanding why change is essential or vital might assist people in becoming more open to the process. By emphasizing the importance of change to team members, you may reduce resistance and ensure a smoother transition.
Understand the vision
Most organizations change because their executives have a different vision for the future or for the company’s success than what can be achieved on the current route. People can better comprehend what they’re striving toward if they learn how to share this vision and interpret it in the context of change and development. This could make the change management process go more smoothly for them.
Consider the persuasion
Change is most successful when it receives buy-in from employees at all levels of management. Consider what elements might influence people’s willingness to embrace or “buy into” a suggested change. This data can be used to create training modules and other persuasive materials. Connect the proposed changes to your mission statement to demonstrate how they will benefit the entire firm.
Communicate
During change management training, share as much information as you think is suitable. The amount of information required varies depending on the sort of change, the existing circumstances, and the specific needs of the organization. Strike a balance between being clear and succinct, so that employees aren’t overburdened with information. Also, instead of guessing about possible scenarios, only explain what you know. As new information and updates become available, provide them.
Be flexible
Change management training, like changes and procedures, can evolve over time. If you discover that one method isn’t performing as expected, or that it contradicts fresh knowledge about your update, change the modules to better match the current path. This can assist you in providing your staff with the highest quality training and most precise practices.
Provide refresher training
You can provide refresher seminars during and after the transition process, even after the initial rounds of change management training. These additional courses can ensure that leadership is constructively and productively guiding teams through the change process. It also gives you the chance to make changes or adjustments to prior modules.
Course Manual 7: Company Culture
What Is the Definition of Organizational Culture?
Culture is defined as a set of common values (what we care about), beliefs (what we believe to be true), and behavioral norms (how we do things). Organizational cultures exist to synchronize effort, foster shared sensemaking, promote predictability, and codify organizational learning about what works and what doesn’t.
We intuitively understand the importance of a good culture to a company’s overall health and competitiveness. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” says a popular quote attributed to Peter Drucker.
The worst-laid strategy and organizational development plans are thwarted by the incorrect culture. While leaders have been frequently reminded that people and culture are critical determinants of success and failure, they haven’t always embraced the necessity to be proactive in fostering the types of cultures that will enable their plans to succeed.
It can be difficult for leaders to get a good look at culture. Senior executives, like fish out of water, may become too acclimated to their own cultural ideas. Newcomers and front-line workers can assist in identifying cultural ideas and practices that are deeply knit into the social fabric of the company.
The way leaders engage their culture may make or break any transformation project. Culture, on the other hand, differs from other business themes in that it is implicit rather than explicit, emotive rather than intellectual — which can make it difficult to work with, but also powerful.
Organizations that are successful in transforming today’s digital disruption into something that works for them rather than against them should concentrate on their culture, leadership, and change management strategies.
Harnessing culture to deliver results
The way people think and behave determines a company’s identity — the capabilities and practices that identify it and make it effective. Deeply ingrained cultural effects change more slowly than market forces, yet consistency in an organization’s culture, strategy, and operating model can make it more appealing to employees and consumers while also driving business value. Organizations that figure out which behaviors embedded in their culture can be used to accelerate the changes they want – and find ways to counterbalance and diminish other elements of the culture that are holding them back – can initiate, accelerate, and sustain beneficial change with less effort, time, and expense, and with better results overall.
As the world recovers from the COVID-19 epidemic, business executives must create the groundwork for their companies to prosper in a new environment. The pandemic has expedited three sorts of transformations that are affecting every industry: the adoption of digital technologies, the development of new business models, and the deployment of new working methods. Most businesses are currently undergoing one or more of these transformations. Businesses that aren’t adapting rapidly enough, whether because they ignored the signs or because they haven’t adapted quickly enough, risk becoming outdated.
While most executives appreciate the importance of transformation, they are significantly less aware of the critical link between business transformation and culture change. Companies can’t fully enjoy the benefits of digital transformation, adopt new business models, or implement new ways of working unless they support changes in organizational behavior and norms. Companies who focused on culture were five times more likely than those that didn’t to achieve breakthrough results in their digital transformation programs, according to a recent study by Boston Consulting Group.
The Importance of Leadership in Organizational Culture Change
Every employee contributes to the process of changing organizational culture, but change leaders are the ones who can make or break it; the decisions they make have a cascading effect on employee recruitment, engagement, and performance, all of which have a significant impact on a company’s performance.
Employees’ trust in senior leadership is the most significant differential between the winners and the rest of the list applicants, according to CultureIQ data from the 2015 Top Company Cultures program. Leadership establishes the foundation of company culture by defining the organization’s objective and empowering employees to achieve it. It also plays a key role in modifying it when it is necessary.
It’s one thing to say it; it’s another to do it. It’s one thing to read about it; it’s another to watch it in action.
Leadership as a Tool for Changing Organizational Culture
Culture is made up of three levels, each of which is represented by an iceberg in this illustration:
• The way things are done is surrounded by behaviors, systems, policies, and processes.
• Leadership establishes ideals, goals, beliefs, and aspirations.
• Behavior is guided by underlying assumptions.
When it comes to creating organizational change, change leaders play a crucial role in establishing the tone for what is acceptable within a company by leveraging their behavior. Culture enters the debate the moment you start a business. You’re focusing on developing a core team and applying what you value to your hiring methods in the early stages. Leaders have a responsibility to help define, teach, live, measure, and reward the culture they wish to establish as they progress from the early phases.
It’s up to the founders and CEOs when a company expands — especially in startups — to demonstrate alignment between the firm’s beliefs and the behaviors that the leadership team reinforces when changing corporate culture.
How you reward employees also plays a role in leading organizational change. What behavior are you really reinforcing if you say you encourage teamwork yet pay bonuses for individual performance? What message are you sending if you say you want to treat your team with respect and encourage innovation, but it takes a long time for anyone to start something new?
Your company’s leadership determines whether what it believes, what it says, and what employees see are all in sync. And it’s up to leaders to put in place various techniques that correspond to the organizational culture change you’re attempting.
The CEO of CommonBond, for example, believes in open communication and truthful responses. While they could have easily announced a “open doors policy” and stood back to see whether anyone took him up on it, they chose to put that value into action. Every Friday, they sits down for a “Ask Me Anything” session with employees, during which they can ask questions and receive direct answers from the CEO. If open communication is a priority for your company, initiatives like this demonstrate that openness and sharing are more than just slogans – they’re habits you model.
Companies that have not yet begun their transformation journeys can benefit from focusing on culture change. A transformational culture is built on an adaptive culture. It also aids firms in overcoming cultural dispersion caused by incomplete acquisition integration or a legacy of global expansion.
Leaders must also recognize that culture is fluid, and that even if they do nothing to influence it, change will occur in their organizations. In the last year, employee values, mindsets, and behaviors have changed dramatically. These changes may or may not be what your organization need, or they may not be occurring at the appropriate rate.
As a result, leaders must take proactive steps to create the correct culture now in order to avoid the need to modify culture later as a result of large-scale organizational change.
What Culture Changes Are Necessary to Support Transformation?
Because every company is distinct, executives must adapt to the unique circumstances in which they operate. However, we notice a high degree of consistency in the cultural factors needed to realize the full potential of organizational transitions, whether digital or driven by new business models or methods of working.
We’ve identified seven components of adaptive culture that we frequently witness in firms that have effectively transitioned, at the risk of promoting a “one best method.”
What Is the Best Way to Change Culture?
What should you do if your company’s culture needs to change? The first step is to acknowledge that changing culture is difficult. It’s difficult enough to change one’s own behaviors, let alone the habits of thousands of people. Cultural standards have become strongly embedded in many firms over many years, if not decades. While some employees may welcome change, others may regard present practices as essential to the company’s success. Why bother if there isn’t a genuine “burning platform” pushing change?
Consider the scenario of a CEO of a financial services organization who began on a culture transformation that went well at first but then hit some barriers. In a constantly changing industry, the business was a prominent player. The game’s rules were changing in fundamental ways. Adapting to quick growth and development into new markets put a strain on some company units as well.
The business lacked the customer focus, innovation, and nimbleness in execution required to continue success, according to the CEO, who had been elevated from inside. The remedy appeared simple: change the culture.
As a result, they enlisted the help of their executive team to tackle culture change. They created a compelling set of leadership principles and supporting behaviors to describe the desired culture. Then they committed to changing their teamwork practices to reflect it. They were generally successful in acting as role models for the intended culture by being deliberate in their activities.
To promote the new leadership principles, the team also launched an aggressive communication effort. They cascaded the desired culture down through the organization through a series of individual, team, and large-group talks.
Despite all of their efforts, the CEO and their staff could tell that the new culture was not “catching” in the company after a few months. It became evident why after considerable investigation. While the leadership team was dedicated to the shift, the rest of the company was still judged and rewarded according to previous cultural standards, such as demands for perfection in new products. As a result, there was an understandable lack of excitement among middle managers, which led to confusion among their subordinates.
The issue came down to a question of incentives. The leadership principles and supporting behaviors were not entrenched in the performance management and reward systems that would reinforce them as part of the change management process. Recognizing the problem, the leadership team embarked on a systematic effort to integrate the new culture into goal-setting and people-management processes. Managers were better able to comprehend why and how they needed to shift their focus and priorities, as well as the implications of not doing so. Managers were incentivized to act differently, hire differently, and build new competencies by aligning people processes with the desired culture.
Principles for culture change that will increase your chances of success
Recognize that culture is not something that can be delegated. Senior leaders, like the CEO and their staff in the previous example, must be the face and voice of culture change. Change attempts are likely to fail if senior leadership does not sincerely and genuinely support the intended culture reform. To encourage even the most subtle cultural shifts, senior leadership must align, balance, empower, articulate, communicate, and demonstrate their own growth and development.
Begin with the why. Failure to engage key stakeholders and ensure that they understand why change is important can sabotage change initiatives. When people don’t comprehend the reason for change, anxiety, cynicism, and resistance will eventually rise. Even if you’ve done an excellent job explaining why digital transformation is necessary, you still need to justify the (sometimes tough) supporting culture changes and their impact on individuals and teams. This is an area where the CEO and her team should have done a better job. They realized in retrospect that they had not spent enough time communicating the need for change.
Define the cultural values and behaviors that you want to influence. The CEO and the team recognized that establishing a clear vision of the intended future state is an important first step in cultural transformation. From the front lines to the executive suite, and across all units and geographies, the desired culture must be defined in a way that is both explicit and flexible enough to shape and influence an organization’s performance. Start by establishing the desired front-line culture, then work backwards to determine the supporting and reinforcing forces (leadership, organizational structures, and procedures). Make sure to gather feedback from front-line employees about what they value and how culture affects their ability to perform at their best.
Participate in discussions and solicit feedback. Acceptance, if not total devotion, is engendered by more inclusiveness. People prefer to take ownership of the things they contribute to make. The path to reaching every employee is to form “culture coalitions” and networks of enthusiastic, highly engaged culture champions. And that’s what it takes to instill new cultural standards across a company. Front-line managers and workers who push for change make up these employee networks. As part of a complete change management approach, the CEO and the staff did an outstanding job in this area.
Construct a link to the intended future culture. No company wants to overlook the cultural characteristics that have propelled it to success. The CEO of a financial services organization recognized the importance of preserving parts of the company culture, such as teamwork. However, if the company was to compete successfully in an industry that was becoming more customer-centric, dynamic, and data-driven, other deeply established components of the culture had to shift. The goal is to think of the transition as constructing a bridge from the past to the future by identifying and leveraging components of the existing culture. The legacy culture’s enduring strengths must be recognized and incorporated into the future culture.
Construct a culture road map. The future path must be visually displayed, and every function, division, and discipline within the organization must be represented, for the intended cultural transformations to become a reality. Active, on-going communication is a critical enabler. Extensive communication tactics that invite people at all levels of the business to hear, interpret, and clarify the cultural implications of their positions can help to accelerate the cultural shifts.
In all organizational structures, reinforce the desired culture. In the example situation, it was this region that led the cultural transformation initiative to halt. Leadership did not pay enough attention to the numerous ways in which incentives needed to change in order to reinforce the desired culture. A substantial focus on behavior change is a need for success. Leaders must guarantee that incentives reinforce desired actions. It is not enough to try to mold attitudes or build and communicate a set of principles. All major systems must be updated to encourage the appropriate behaviors in order to support the intended culture. To drive the desired culture, all of the major people processes — hiring, evaluation, performance management, and development — must be carefully examined and consistently modified.
Reward the budding culture as soon as possible. It’s critical to equip managers and leaders with the tools they need to recognize and reward employees who go above and beyond. Leaders must pay attention when employees break through boundaries, take chances to work together in new ways, and begin to live the desired culture. Employees love just-in-time creative and personal acknowledgment, which helps to speed the adoption of new behaviors. If carried out regularly, these behaviors will swiftly instill the perception that a new culture is “genuine,” and that “the way we’ve always done things” will no longer be the case.
Finally, understand that culture transformation is a marathon rather than a sprint. People are more likely to be excited about such change attempts if they are involved in the early stages of establishing the desired culture, as they are with most new things. The job, on the other hand, will need to be suitably resourced in the long run. Culture change projects can take anywhere from 18 to 36 months, depending on their scope and depth. It’s critical to track progress and celebrate victories along the road.
Cultural transition is extremely difficult. However, by following a success model, enlisting the correct executive support, guaranteeing the right clarity and focus, and identifying and rewarding desired behaviors, successfully shifting your organization’s culture is not only conceivable, but very likely.
Course Manual 8: Visualize the Journey
Why Are Images And Video Content More Memorable To Us? (Infographic)
Tell a tale if you want someone to remember your message in a presentation, an article, or a report.
Storytelling engages our brains far more than a list of facts; it’s simpler for us to recall stories because our brains don’t distinguish between an event we’re reading about and one that is actually happening. While we’ve discussed the value of storytelling in prior course manuals, there’s one additional element that can help you make your message even stronger: visuals. This is because images bring to storytelling something that text cannot: speed.
Visuals are processed 60,000 times quicker than text, according to study conducted by 3M, the company of Post-it Notes, which means you can construct a picture for your audience far faster with an actual picture. It’s no wonder, then, that tweets with graphics are 94 percent more likely to be retweeted than tweets without images, according to HubSpot’s social media analyst Dan Zarrella.
Adding photos to your tweets isn’t the only way to get in on the visual activity, according to design firm Ethos3. Here are three visual aids that will help you connect with your audience even more quickly:
1. Presentations
According to the Social Science Research Network, 65 percent of people are visual learners, thus visual content is one of the best methods to get the idea across. Using SlideShare or other similar applications, you may embed slideshows in presentations, on your website, or in social media.
2. Videos
Videos can be used for a variety of purposes, from persuading purchasers that your product is worthwhile to learning a new skill. YouTube alone receives over 1 billion unique visits every month and has turned ordinary individuals into celebrities.
In fact, according to Forrester Research, if your material incorporates video, it’s 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google results.
3. Infographics
Infographics are a great method to visualize data and information. For a long time, graphic data presentation has been demonstrated to be beneficial.
According to the New Yorker, Abraham Lincoln referred to a map that “bore the marks of much service” on several occasions. This three-foot parchment was more than simply a map of the southern states; it also recorded the number of slaves who lived in each county and served as a constant source of reflection for the President.
We’re noticing a huge increase in the number of people looking for information graphics–infographics–these days. Searches for these tools have surged 25 times in the last five years.
Improve your visualization skills to become a more visionary change leader
According to research conducted by Medium.com, one talent stands out – by far — as the most prevalent area for improvement among thousands of leaders: their ability to sell a vision to colleagues. Over half of the leaders they evaluated struggled to display visionary leadership, a higher percentage of insufficiency than for any other leadership characteristic. Leaders are continually unable to effectively depict a compelling image of the future in such a way that others are inspired to join them on a difficult path toward a new corporate reality. Most change leaders might improve in this area since it demands them to synthesize and explain ambiguous, complicated business concepts into a clear route forward.
Simply describing a direction in words is no longer sufficient; change leaders must translate words into visual concepts in order for their messages to be understood, vivid, and memorable.
However, despite the fact that information visualization is a critical leadership talent for balancing company complexity and clear, engaging message, it is not yet a natural strength for many executives. It is, however, a technique that is not only very effective and widely applicable, but also one that can be learned.
Visualization as a Crucial Leader Skill Has Arrived
As a skill for change leaders at all levels, visualization has never been more important. Not only because of the growing amount of data that leaders are being asked to process and apply to make decisions — data that is far too large to read through and that requires incredibly well-honed and quickly-triggered visual and perceptual abilities — but also because the evidence for visualization’s superior impact can no longer be ignored.
Visualization’s advantages over more traditional and prevalent modes of communication in corporate contexts, such as incomprehensible tables of figures and interminable lists of bulleted text, are rapidly accumulating research. Unique, visually represented data is significantly more persuasive and memorable to an audience, as well as more successful in driving high-quality management decisions. Visualization increases attention to, agreement with, and recall of business strategies, even when expressing complicated business concepts like strategic direction.
The Wall Street Journal’s powerful work showing the impact of vaccines on infectious diseases, Hans Rosling’s 215 years of data on the relationship between country income and life expectancy, and Neil Halloran’s captivating video on World War II’s staggering death toll are just a few examples of information visualization’s power to move an audience. Companies and government agencies have taken notice, incorporating visualization techniques into advertising, business trend summaries, and yearly reports. DataUSA.io, a newly created service, now provides access to an unusually broad range of graphical federal datasets.
How Can Change Leaders Sharpen Their Visualization Skills?
Change leaders with data visualization abilities will be more effective in exploring the data they use to make workplace decisions, explaining and educating others, and engaging their employees in the information they are presented with. Employees from varied backgrounds are brought together around a single vision of the future, and their thoughts are drawn in to gather input and encourage commitment to the course of action. Leaders can also utilize visualization to present compelling tales about transformation, financial patterns, organizational structures, and comparisons among corporate units or employee groupings.
Business executives must constantly adapt and improve their abilities in the tools and approaches that will help them synthesize these massive mountains of data into actionable insights in an information-rich world. Leaders’ capacity to examine and make sense of data will be driven by visualization skills, which will significantly improve their competency and effectiveness when communicating data-driven messages — about strategy, trends, and the urgent need for change — to others.
Visual storytelling abilities are both highly developable and quite valuable. Leaders who master visual storytelling can make their communications more captivating, memorable, and engaging for the entire range of employees and business stakeholders they need to influence.
Using images to motivate your team
It might be difficult to hold our attention once we have mastered a subject or idea. We prefer to disregard what we believe we already know in order to save time and cognitive resources. People can “unstick” their attitudes and ideas with new pictures, allowing them to think in new ways.
When you find several ways to deliver the same information, the power of repetition is increased even more. That’s because humans learn by building new knowledge on top of their existing knowledge.
Do you want to get people to reconsider how they do their jobs? Do you want to encourage innovation and growth in your company? Find more appealing ways to present what may appear to be old ideas to disrupt the habits of thought that are suffocating growth.
Why should leaders include infographics in their change management toolkit?
Using infographics to underline key aspects of your IT strategy can provide significant long-term benefits.
Infographics, on the other hand, are more than just colors and pictures. The infographics supporting your change campaign must be well-organized, explicit, based on shared terminology, and simple to grasp in order to be effective in their messaging.
Let’s look at some real-life instances to see how it’s done.
Example 1:
This image is vibrant, well-organized, and appealing. The images utilized improve information retention and recall by strengthening visual associations with the categories being discussed.
Example 2:
The National Institutes of Health of the United States of America uses this graphic. It has a wealth of material that is structured into a series of questions. Using an infographic like this to answer frequently asked topics is a terrific idea.
The use of iconography in this infographic earns it extra points. The consistent usage of icons is a visual technique to contribute to the earlier-mentioned shared language. These icons can be used in documents and other forms of media to reinforce consistent messaging and reduce cognitive load.
Example 3:
Data in its raw form is a) difficult to read, b) difficult to interpret, and c) tedious. Data visualizations are an effective change management tool for assisting individuals in comprehending what data is saying us about our company. Because of its basic style and ease of usage, this graphic is a wonderful example.
You can identify the many types of data described in the graph at a glance, making it easier to grasp the graphic’s essential points quickly. These data-driven visualizations can be a terrific way to illustrate your staff how the changes you’re making are enhancing productivity or revenues throughout a change attempt.
Example 4:
Your staff can use decision trees to cut through the clutter and make well-informed judgments. These job aids are helpful for reinforcing processes and giving employees the ability to make their own judgments.
Employees will have a framework to assist them through uncertainty, improve their performance, and increase productivity if they create a basic decision-making structure based on yes or no questions.
Course Manual 9: Measure the Change
Change benefit tracking
There are a variety of initiative-specific measures in addition to standard change management measures that focus on the actual outcome and benefit of the change with the purpose of measuring how far the change has progressed. This can be seen in the following examples:
• Rates of system usage
• Cost-cutting
• Increased revenue
• Quickness of transactions
• Efficiency of the process
• Decision-making speed
• Rate of customer satisfaction
• Productivity of employees
• Instances of non-compliance with the process
Change management measures that aren’t dependent on initiatives
Change leadership assessment and change maturity assessment are two more metrics that are utilized in an organizational vs. initiative-specific context. These two topics will be discussed in the following section.
Change leadership assessment
Changefirst’s David Miller identified three types of change leaders:
1. The initiative’s sponsor, whose job it is to see it through from start to finish. This necessitates the ability to mobilize and motivate others, as well as the ability to create a strong network of sponsors and effectively communicate with diverse stakeholder groups.
2. The influencer’s job is to use their network and influence to market the effort and get it the momentum it needs to succeed.
According to Changefirst, there are four sorts of influencers:
a) Proponents who excel at promoting and advocating for the change’s benefits
b) Connectors who can bring individuals from different parts of the organization together to support the change.
c) Controllers, such as administrators and operations employees, who have control over access to information and individuals.
d) Technically trustworthy experts who are regarded as such by others in the organization
3. The change agent is tasked with assisting the overall change in a variety of ways, including any promotional activities, gauging different portions of the company on the change, and influencing up, down, and sideways across the organization to ensure a successful change outcome.
While there isn’t a single industry standard tool for evaluating change leadership talents and capabilities, there are a few that exist. Changefirst, as well as other smaller consulting businesses, offer a variety of change leadership assessment methods. The Change Capacity Evaluation, a self-assessment comprising the major areas of Goal Attainment, Flexibility, Decision Making, and Relationship Building, is one of ChangeTracking’s most comprehensive change leadership assessment tools.
Pagon & Banutal (2008) identified the following core competencies as being critical in change leadership:
• Goal attainment
• Assessing organizational culture and climate
• Change implementation
• Motivating and influencing others
• Adaptability
• Stakeholder management
• Collaboration
• Build organizational capacity and capability for change
• Maneuvering around organizational politics
Change maturity assessment
Organizations are rapidly realizing that managing change initiative by initiative will no longer suffice since it prevents learning and progress. Initiatives come and go, and organizations that rely on contractor change managers frequently discover that their capacity to manage change as a whole does not improve much over time.
The goal of a change maturity evaluation is to improve change competence across the business in several aspects, such as project change management and change leadership. Conducting a change maturity assessment has the purpose of identifying areas where a capacity gap may exist and, as a result, enabling organized planning to bridge that gap.
On the market, there are two major change maturity assessment methodologies. The first is by Prosci, and the second is by the Change Management Institute.
A comprehensive model of Change Management Measures
Many change management measures are illustrated in this diagram along two axes: one representing the various phases of the initiative lifecycle, and the other representing the various organizational levels of project, company, and enterprise in which change management measurements fall.
Project level measures
1. ‘Plan’ phase
The team is discovering and scoping what the project entails and what the change is throughout this phase of the project. As a result, the details aren’t completely clear at the start of the phase. The scope becomes much obvious later in the phase, and the team begins to determine what activities will be required to accomplish the change.
• The project’s complexity is determined by the change complexity assessment. It considers how many people would be affected, how big the impact might be, how many business units might be affected, whether various systems and processes might be affected, and so forth.
• Change the costs of resourcing. The cost of the change management stream of work is necessary during the project planning phase. Contractors, communication campaigns, learning costs, travel costs, and administration costs are just a few examples.
• Prior to and during a transition, a change readiness assessment is generally undertaken. Typically, several stakeholder groups are asked the same set of questions to assess their readiness for change.
2. ‘Execute’ phase
One of the most important aspects of the transition is the execute phase. Activities are in full swing, and the project team is hard at work iterating and re-iterating adjustments to ensure that the project’s objectives are met.
• Tracking communication and engagement. The ability to effectively engage stakeholders in the change process is crucial. Engagement can be measured in a variety of methods, including stakeholder interviews, surveys, and communication readership rates.
• Keeping track of what you’re learning. Measuring learning is important since it shows how far new abilities and skills have been learned as a result of learning interventions. Course examinations or quizzes, as well as course evaluations, are common metrics. On-the-job performance can also be used to track learning outcomes and how well knowledge is implemented in the workplace.
• The assessment of change readiness is still important to keep track of during the project’s execution phase.
3. ‘Realise’ phase
The project’s change has ‘gone live,’ and the majority of the project’s operations have been finished. It is expected that the ‘change’ will occur during this phase, and that the advantages will then be recorded and quantified.
• The amount to which the targeted benefits and outcomes have been attained is measured and tracked by change benefit tracking. Some of these indicators may be ‘hard’ quantitative indicators, while others may be’soft’ behavioral indicators.
Business level measures
Business level measures assess if the company has the necessary ability, capacity, and preparedness to adapt to change.
• Change heatmaps can help you see which parts of your business are being impacted the most by a single project or a series of projects. The power of the change heatmap lies in showing which parts of the business are most impacted, as well as comparing relative affects across firms. As the number of change initiatives grows, the complexity of the change grows as well. When confronted with this dilemma, businesses must progress from employing Excel spreadsheets to more complex data visualization technologies to enhance data-driven decision-making.
• A sponsor readiness/capability assessment can be a useful tool for identifying any gaps in the sponsor’s capabilities so that support can be provided. A change initiative’s success or failure is determined on the strength and effectiveness of its sponsor. The sponsor’s early involvement and assistance are crucial.
• Capability assessment for change champions. Within the corporate network, change champions or change agents are key ‘nodes’ for driving and supporting change. A lot of change champions are only assigned to one initiative at a time. Having a network of business-focused change champions means that their capabilities can be built over time and that they can assist several initiatives rather than just one. Assessing and supporting the ability of change champions would also result in greater change results.
• Change leadership and change maturity assessment.
• Change capacity assessment.
In a situation where major change is occurring at the same time, careful planning and sequencing of change to balance existing capacity is vital. In the measurement process, there are numerous characteristics of change capacity that should be highlighted:
1. Different components of a company may have varying levels of change capacity. Those portions of the organization that have stronger change capability, and potentially better change leadership, are frequently able to receive and digest more changes than those sections of the business that do not.
2. Some businesses are more time-sensitive than others, necessitating a more detailed assessment of their change capacity. Staff capacity at call centers, for example, is frequently measured in minutes. As a result, in order to properly plan for their change capacity, the implications of change must be defined and stated in a precise, time-bound context, allowing for effective resourcing planning ahead of time.
3. To assess the business’s change tolerance or change saturation level, thorough measurement along with operational input is required. It’s possible, for example, that a portion of the business saw significant change effect last month as a result of numerous concurrent efforts. The operational indicators showed that there was some influence on customer happiness and productivity, as well as unfavorable employee feelings about too much change. This could indicate that the level of change tolerance has been exceeded. With the correct measurement of change effect levels for that portion of the business, previous lessons may be used to plan for this volume of change the next time it occurs. To track change capability, use measurement and data visualization tools like the Change Compass.
Enterprise level change measures
Many of the business unit-level measures are still applicable at the company level. The focus is on comparing across different business units to get a sense of what each element of the business is going through and whether the overall picture is in line with the organization’s aims and strategic direction. Typical queries include, for example:
• Is it unexpected that one aspect of the company is changing dramatically while another is not?
• Is there a reason why one business unit is concentrating on a few major changes while others are dealing with a bigger number of changes, each with a smaller impact?
• Is the overall rate of change optimal in terms of strategic goals? Is it necessary to accelerate or slow down?
• What is the procedure for managing, reporting on, and making choices about enterprise-wide change, priority, sequencing, and benefit realization?
• Is there a business unit that can manage change more effectively, more quickly, and with better results? How can internal best practices be used by other business units?
Some enterprise-level change measures, as shown in the Change Management Measures diagram, include:
• Change capacity assessment – Do the change capacity restrictions of one business unit imply that we won’t be able to implement a vital strategy in the period allotted? How can we increase capacity? More resources, such as personnel or initiative money, more time, or more talent to lead initiatives are all examples of ways to increase capacity.
• Change maturity assessment – The problem at the enterprise level is the organization’s overall change maturity. How do we put in place enterprise-wide interventions to increase change maturity through programs, networks, and exchanges like:
– Programs to help businesses adapt to change
– Change analytics and measurement tools for businesses
– Methodology for Organizational Change
– Change champions in the enterprise
• Impact map of strategy – Change management does not have to be solely focused on project execution or business unit competence. It can also show value at the corporate level by concentrating on strategy implementation (which by definition is change). The impact of various strategies on different business units can be illustrated to help stakeholders understand which efforts within which strategic intent have an impact on which business units.
This data visualization artifact can be useful for business leaders and strategic planning functions since it shows how various strategies are affecting business units visually. This aids planners in better understanding the effects of strategy execution, potential risks and opportunities, and balancing change pace with strategy goals at different periods in time.
• Predictive indicators for company performance – We began this post by discussing how data is all around us and how we can use it to better manage change. It is feasible to determine any relationships with operational business metrics such as customer satisfaction, service availability, and so on using quantitative data on change impact. Given projected change impacts, predictive reporting can be used to forecast performance indicator changes for those business metrics where there is a significant association.
You can see an example of this in the graph below, where historical data is used to construct correlations and so estimate future influence on company KPIs. The customer contact center (CCC) is the topic of this example, which uses the crucial business indicator of average handling time (AHT) as an example.
This type of predictive performance forecasting is especially useful for businesses who are undergoing major change and want to know how that change will affect their bottom line. By displaying the influence on business KPIs, the importance of change management is brought to the forefront of the decision-making process. This type of measuring and reporting tool is being developed at The Change Compass. Change management is on the verge of becoming a critical business-driving role (versus a standard back-office function).
Change may be measured, and this article has detailed several operational and strategic methods in which change measurement can be useful. Data and analytics are required for the majority of corporate tasks. Human Resources, for example, is reliant on information about employees and pay. The effectiveness of channels and campaigns cannot be measured in marketing. Everything in information technology is measured, from system utilization to cost to efficiency. It’s past time for us to start using data to better visualize change and make better business decisions.
Case Study
In many firms, measuring the people side of change is becoming an expectation, if not a mandate. For their initiatives, 40% of Prosci research participants said they need to report on change management effectiveness. Measurements are typically reported to project sponsors, general leadership, and project (and program) workers.
Measuring change management used to be a difficult and elusive task. And, while change management measurement varies from project to project, measurement basics are emerging. Prosci’s thorough study illuminates how to develop a comprehensive measurement plan.
Practitioners were asked about their overall experience with measuring change management variables to gain insight into change management measurement and metrics. They were also questioned about the measurement frameworks they employ. In a series of research spanning over a decade, practitioners were asked the following questions:
• “Did you measure the effectiveness of your change management effort in support of the project?”
• “Did you measure whether the change was occurring at the individual level?”
• “Did you have to report on change management effectiveness of the project?”
• “How did you demonstrate the value-add of applying change management on the project?”
• “How did you measure the overall outcome of applying change management?”
Change Management and Reporting Is Becoming More Popular
Trends in how to measure change management effectiveness have emerged as a result of the Prosci research. Your measuring plan should assess at the highest level.
• You’ve been assigned with conducting change management efforts.
• At both the individual and organizational levels, the outcomes of those actions
We’ll look at three different types of measurement: organizational performance, individual performance, and change management performance.
It’s critical to get stakeholders’ buy-in on the measures in each category early on in a project. The project sponsor, project team, and change management team should work together to decide which metrics are most important for the project, as well as develop a data collection and review schedule. You should then keep track of those metrics throughout the project and adjust your change management strategy as needed to guarantee that the project’s goals are met. The actual measure utilized in each category varies greatly depending on the project. Participants in the study, on the other hand, said they use some standard criteria.
Measuring Organizational Performance
Organizational performance is the first category of measurement. These metrics are linked to the project’s ability to achieve the organization’s goals. “Did the initiative provide what was expected?” should be answered by organizational performance measures. Here are some examples of organizational performance measurements provided by research participants:
• Improvements in performance
• Observance of the project plan
• Preparedness for business and change
• Measuring project KPIs
• Realization of benefits and return on investment
• Keeping to the schedule
• Quickness of execution
Measuring Individual Performance
Individual performance is the next measurement category. These indicators show how far people affected by the change have progressed on their change journeys. Individual progress can be a leading indicator of overall project success because the individual is the unit of change.
Individual employee measures are widely employed by change management practitioners when proving change management effectiveness, according to our research. Many of these indicators show where employees are in the transformation process and how far along they are. Surveys, testing, assessments, observation, and performance evaluations are some of the ways used to collect these data. In our study, we discovered the following individual performance metrics:
• Metrics for adoption
• Reports on usage and utilization
• Reports on compliance and adherence
• Measures of proficiency
• Measures of employee involvement, buy-in, and participation
• Employee opinions
• Logs for issues, compliance, and errors
• Calls to the help desk and requests for assistance
• Change is becoming more and more visible, and people are becoming more aware of it.
• Observations of a shift in behavior
• The outcomes of the employee readiness evaluation
• Results of an employee satisfaction survey
• Surveys based on the ADKAR® Model
Measuring Change Management Performance
Change management performance is the final category for evaluation. The KPIs in this category are associated with the change management team’s actual activity. While monitoring these efforts is beneficial, the other two outcome-oriented categories of individual and project performance are required to assess whether or not the change management activities are successful. Participants in the study used the following performance metrics to evaluate change management:
• Keeping track of whether or not change management activities were carried out as planned.
• Training evaluations and effectiveness evaluations
• Numbers of participants and attendees at training
• Deliveries of communication
• Effectiveness of communication
• Improvements in performance
• Progress and sticking to the plan
• Preparedness for business and change
• Measuring project KPIs
• Realization of benefits and return on investment
• Keeping to the schedule
• Quickness of execution
Change Management Activity Effectiveness
Finally, participants evaluated their progress by keeping track of their change management efforts. Those actions are included in all organized change management initiatives, regardless of the type of change, making these metrics applicable for every change program.
• Monitoring of change management activities that are carried out in accordance with the plan
• Training evaluations and effectiveness evaluations
• Numbers of participants and attendees at training
• Deliveries of communication
• Effectiveness of communication
Course Manual 10: Create Wins
The Power of Small Wins
Making advancement in meaningful work is the most significant factor that can improve inner work life.
The power of progress is inherent in human nature, but few change leaders recognize it or know how to use it to motivate employees. In truth, work motivation has long been a source of contention. According to a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review, some managers believe that acknowledgment for good performance is the most essential factor in motivating employees, while others believe that tangible incentives are more vital. Others emphasized the importance of interpersonal support, while others believed that setting clear goals was the key. Surprisingly, just a small percentage of the managers we polled ranked progress first.
The progress principle has clear consequences for where you should focus your efforts if you are a manager. It implies that you have more control on your employees’ well-being, drive, and creative output than you may realize. The key to properly managing people and their work is to understand what serves to stimulate and nurture progress—and what serves to stifle it.
We’ll talk about the power of progress and how change leaders may use it in this course manual. We explain how a progress-oriented mindset translates into specific managerial activities and present a checklist to help make these habits a habit.
If you start an IT transformation initiative for your company, you’ll find a few ardent supporters who will stick with you no matter how long it takes. For everyone else, though, the initiative must deliver demonstrable performance improvements along the way, demonstrating that it is driving your company in the correct direction.
It’s a big risk for change leaders to get caught up in the excitement of a new vision and neglect to manage the existing reality for the rest of the team. A fundamental level of trust in the vision is required by key executives and a substantial number of employees. Real data proves that the changes are working and that the IT transformation effort is not hurting the firm in the long run. Skeptics and change skeptics require even more evidence (in the form of data) to support or at the very least remain neutral on the attempt. A lack of focus on short-term results results in a lack of (data-backed) evidence that the vision is beneficial to the company. The vision will lack the credibility it requires to be sustained in the long run if it is not backed up by evidence.
Despite the importance of short-term triumphs for the vision’s long-term success, achieving these tiny, measurable victories in a short period of time can be challenging!
Here are four reasons why this may be challenging:
• Middle management or other stakeholders may try to push the agenda back or change it (to goals that are more relevant for them, rather than for achieving short-term wins)
• Even if they are assisting the primary transformation effort, these projects can slow it down since it takes longer to identify smaller goals, track them, and have them acknowledged than it does to focus entirely on the larger vision.
• The data that can indicate these tiny performance improvements is not typically tracked by an organization’s business information systems.
• They almost never happen unless someone is actively overseeing performance improvements.
The Value of Short-term wins
Before we go any further, let’s define what “short-term wins” means:
A win is any measurable, unambiguous performance improvement that aids the company in moving toward the overall change goal — this can include actions taken, lessons learned, procedures improved, and new behavior displayed – as long as the win is data-measurable.
A short-term win is one that occurs every 6-18 months after a reform attempt begins.
“How can we target, then produce, unequivocal performance improvements within 6-18 months?” the guiding coalition should be asking as soon as it begins to define the vision.
The organization obtains a body of data that conveys the tale of its change in validated, quantified, and qualifiable terms as a result of short-term victories.
Short-term Wins Have Five Characteristics
1. Visible: a huge number of people can see whether or not the victory is genuine.
2. Tangible: little argument over whether it was successful
3. Relevant: explicitly linked to the effort of change
4. Meaningful: people inside and outside the organization enjoy the outcomes, in addition to the team celebrating the victory.
5. Scalable: able to be replicated or adapted by others in order for them to achieve their own short-term goals.
Examples of short-term wins:
• A re-engineering project that promises cost savings in 12 months and actually delivers.
• The product development period is cut in half, from ten to three months, thanks to a reorganization.
• Early absorption of a purchase is lauded in the business press.
Examples of non-short-term wins:
• A “excellent meeting” with a lot of consensus and enthusiasm
• A fresh product concept
• An effective means of disseminating information about the vision
The Timing of Short-term Wins
• For small businesses or minor departments of larger businesses, the first win must be achieved within six months.
• For large companies, the first win must be achieved within 18 months.
• This indicates that, even if the transformation effort is still in its early phases, this Stage (Stage 6) must deliver measurable outcomes!
6 Benefits of Short-term Wins
1. Demonstrate that the sacrifices are worthwhile.
Short-term wins provide vital reinforcement for a transformation endeavor by demonstrating that sacrifices are paying off; this encourages additional individuals to sacrifice, which strengthens the company.
2. Set goals for change agents and recognize them with positive feedback.
When objectives are met, leadership can take a much-needed break to relax, celebrate, and thank those who helped make the effort possible.
3. Assist in fine-tuning vision.
The process of achieving short-term wins allows the leading coalition to put its vision to the test. This accomplishes three goals:
• Assists the coalition in making necessary adjustments to its vision.
• Identifies issues that would otherwise have been discovered far too late.
• Provides concrete information on the vision’s potential.
4. Discredit cynics and change skeptics.
Short-term wins make it much more difficult for people to “take cheap shots” at the leadership team or the vision; instead, they encourage feedback and discussion of real issues that arise because they demonstrate that the vision is serious.
5. Ensure that your managers are on board.
Investors, executives, and managers support visible outcomes, and without their backing, the vision would be jeopardized.
6. Build momentum
Short-term wins will convert skeptics into supporters in the vision, and reluctant supporters into active participants, and so on. This kind of momentum is crucial for giving the organization the energy it needs to finish Stage 7.
Making Short-term Wins Happen
Sometimes a transformation endeavor is fortunate and obvious outcomes emerge, but most of the time, unless they are planned for, they do not occur.
Why aren’t short-term wins anticipated? The three most common reasons are as follows:
1. Lack of time or attention: people don’t plan enough for these wins because they’re overwhelmed, the urgency isn’t strong enough, or the vision isn’t clear enough for them to do so.
2. Wrong belief: It’s a prevalent misconception that you can’t make substantial change while also delivering short-term outcomes. Many businesses are prevented from preparing for short-term successes that also advance the larger transformation endeavor due to the assumption that there is a trade-off between short and long-term achievements.
3. Insufficient management: Without good managers (whose duty it is to plan, organize, and control for results), short-term wins will either not happen, or will be in low supply, preventing the transformation from moving forward.
How to Plan for Short-term wins
The steering coalition should do three things to plan for short-term wins throughout the vision formulation process and thereafter:
1. Look for areas of opportunity (projects for performance improvement)
2. Create clear operating budget targets and plans.
3. Examine these projects on a regular basis.
A Pro and a Con of Focusing on Short-term Wins
Pro: More pressure isn’t always a bad thing; it might assist maintain a sense of urgency (esp. if the success of the main change effort is not yet in sight). Everything becomes more difficult to achieve as the level of urgency decreases.
Con: Short-term victories put people under more stress. Pressure isn’t always associated with urgency; it can also result in tension and tiredness.
How to overcome this con: Successful change leaders must constantly communicate their vision and strategies, reminding people that their sense of urgency is linked to forward progress: “This is what we’re trying to do, and this is why it’s so important; without these short-term wins, we could lose everything.” Employees’ motivation is rekindled by such communications, which offer meaning to the challenges they encounter.
Perhaps most essential, leaders should aim for short-term wins because they allow everyone to take a breather, rejoice, and be recognized for their efforts. At the end of the day, a company should improve people’s lives, including (and perhaps mainly) the lives of its employees.
Case Study
What is the most effective technique to encourage innovative thinking within organizations? The stories of world-famous artists include important clues. Ordinary scientists, marketers, programmers, and other unsung knowledge workers, whose jobs demand creative output on a daily basis, turn out to have more in common with legendary inventors than most managers think. The workday events that elicit their emotions, motivate them, and shape their perceptions are essentially the same.
The Double Helix, a 1968 book by James Watson about discovering the structure of DNA, details the roller coaster of emotions he and Francis Crick felt as their work progressed and setbacks occurred, eventually earning them the Nobel Prize. Watson and Crick found some severe faults in their first attempt to develop a DNA model after the enthusiasm of their first try. “Our first minutes with the models…weren’t joyous,” Watson says. “A shape began to emerge which brought back our spirits,” says the narrator. When they demonstrated their “breakthrough” to colleagues, however, they discovered that their model was flawed. Then came a period of doubt and waning motivation. When the duo eventually had their big break, and their peers praised it, they were overjoyed, Watson wrote, “My morale skyrocketed, for I suspected that we now had the answer to the riddle.” Watson and Crick were so enthralled by their achievement that they nearly lived in the lab, attempting to finish the project.
Watson and Crick’s emotions were largely dictated by their progress—or lack thereof—during these occasions. They discovered a strikingly comparable phenomenon in their recent research on creative activity inside firms. They uncovered the progress principle through an in-depth examination of knowledge workers’ diaries: progress in meaningful work is the single most important factor in boosting emotions, motivation, and perceptions during the workday. The more often people feel like they’re making progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run. Whether they’re attempting to answer a large scientific puzzle or simply producing a high-quality product or service, modest victories can make a big impact in how people feel and perform.
Course Manual 11: Align Performance Management
Establishing Employee Performance Management Alignment
Alignment is essential for both corporate and individual success, but achieving it takes a complete commitment to progress.
Organizational alignment: that desirable state in which the entire firm is working together to achieve business goals is one of the most difficult tasks for any corporation. However, just like a car’s tires, if one piece isn’t aligned with the others, the vehicle won’t move forward. And, unlike a car, achieving perfect alignment in an organization requires more than tweaking with a few critical components. Instead, attaining alignment necessitates a top-to-bottom transition in which leadership communicates goals and expectations and everyone knows what is expected of them and what they must do to move the business forward.
Interestingly, at times of crisis, companies are more prone to align. Employees band together in panic mode and work together to help the organization overcome the difficulties when faced with uncertainty and a huge obstacle. Organizations don’t have to wait for a catastrophe to establish alignment, and they shouldn’t. Each employee can get a sense of ownership and accountability by taking the correct proactive actions to create strategic priorities throughout the organization, resulting in an energized entity with a clear and consistent vision.
Why Is Alignment Required?
According to McKinsey & Co. researchers, a company’s organizational performance management and financial performance are inextricably linked. And, because labor is often a company’s major investment, financial success is contingent on employee productivity exceeding the cost of wage. The organization will get a return on its personnel investment by establishing a situation in which each employee is working to their full potential as an individual contributor and as a member of the group.
However, while money may be the criterion by which a company assesses its performance, the same cannot be said for employees. Compensation isn’t enough to keep a high level of performance going. That is why businesses devote enormous efforts to attracting and retaining top employees, as well as providing continual training and motivation. Ensuring that employees realize the importance of their contributions and taking the necessary steps to keep them motivated is critical to alignment.
Alignment in Six Steps
There are various changes that must occur before a firm can reap the benefits of having a completely aligned workforce. Alignment does not happen immediately, as it does with any big IT organizational reform; it takes time and full commitment from leadership. While the modifications that must be made and the end result will differ from one company to the next, the following pointers can assist any company in achieving enterprise-wide alignment:
1. Set Goals That Are Achievable
Well-defined, realistic goals should be developed in such a way that they don’t have to be updated and examined each quarter in order to achieve alignment. Once relevant, employee-specific goals are established, they serve as a blueprint for the coming year, providing a strong sense of direction throughout the firm. Furthermore, work should be reviewed on a regular basis to verify progress and determine whether or not corrective action is required.
2. Maintain a regular monitoring schedule
Regular monitoring and discussion of everyday accomplishments should be part of a well-executed performance management strategy. Variations from the goals should be minor, and if they are, the goals should be recalculated. Employees, especially top performers who want to be rewarded when their performance indicators are reached, will be more engaged and motivated if they progress toward their goals.
3. Link Learning to Performance
Employees are able to enhance their skill set and achieve personal and professional goals when firms relate learning to performance. Employees will gain a better understanding of the company’s priorities and how their abilities will assist them achieve them.
4. Make certain that you have strong leadership
To achieve alignment, you’ll need strong leadership who can devise a strategy and sell it to the rest of the company. A good leader who takes the time to learn everything there is to know about the firm has a better chance of coming up with a plan that everyone can agree on.
5. Combine formal and informal learning
The management of employee performance and formal learning must be linked and aligned with organizational goals. If the two are kept separate, learning will remain reactive, and performance management will be reduced to a yearly review. Organizational growth, transformation, and productivity can all be accelerated when these elements are combined.
6. Make Use of the Correct Software
Many world-class firms have utilized people management software to steer the evolution of the aligned workplace, and it may play a vital role in attaining alignment. The infrastructure required to support a high-performance workplace can be provided through learning and other talent management systems.
A High-Performance Team
Attracting, developing, and retaining the personnel needed to satisfy current demands—as well as being prepared for future challenges—is the goal of talent management. The establishment of a strong link between these HR processes and business results is ensured by ensuring alignment throughout the firm. However, in order to achieve real alignment, the company must create a talent management strategy that links its broader strategic objectives to employee performance management.
It will be far more difficult to construct a high-performing workforce capable of meeting those goals if leadership is unable to produce a clear roadmap that can be shared and accepted throughout the firm. Only by having strong leaders in place at the top who are capable of clearly articulating goals and expectations, as well as providing staff with continual learning opportunities to extend and strengthen their skill sets, will alignment be achieved. Once these characteristics are in place, the firm will benefit from a more efficient workforce that works together to overcome obstacles and achieve crucial goals.
What is the importance of strategic alignment in enterprise change planning?
When it comes to change management, why should you bother with strategic alignment? Because you can point to several project wins, you know change management works for your company. Employees value change management, according to surveys. And your organization’s change team is ready and willing to take it to the next level. However, before you start working on improving your change management skills, be sure your efforts are aligned with your organization’s goals.
Ready, aim, fire—in that order
Many companies make significant progress with change over time without ever reaching the tipping point where they shift gears and begin to develop change management as a competency. That’s because project-based change management and competence building are two distinct methods that require separate strategies. To make a successful shift, you must first align your thinking around your goals, change maturity, enterprise change strategy, development plan, and many other factors. You can’t aim because you don’t have a target if you don’t have this.
Beginning with a strategic intent allows you to:
1. Define your goals.
What is your compelling “why” for enhancing your ability to change? Is your company aware of the links and distinctions between project-based and enterprise-level change? Have you defined your intended state for the future? Your efforts will be misaligned if your change leaders, leadership, and others are misaligned.
2. Determine your level of maturity.
What is the current state of your company? In each of the five capability areas, where do you stand? Perhaps you’ve successfully socialized change management, have excellent application and competencies, but are lacking in leadership and standards. At least, that’s what you think. The only way to accurately inform your plans is to measure your precise progress and maturity in each of these critical areas.
3. Learn about Prosci’s ECM Strategy Map.
This is the framework for putting up a successful enterprise change management (ECM) strategy. Understanding the relevance of five aspects in your entire strategy: leadership, process, project, structure, and skill, you may better comprehend this research-based method. Depending on your organization’s objectives, each area demands a different level of attention.
4. Make a plan for your company’s distinct approach.
Creating specific plans and techniques for each of the five areas described above, as well as developing your own ECM Strategy Map, will enable you to make strategic decisions. This also aids in the development of specific approaches for getting started, gaining traction, and maintaining change capability. As a consequence, you’ll have a precise and specific planning document that you may use to track your progress in the future.
5. Determine what actions should be taken.
What steps do you plan to take in the near future? How does your monthly schedule look? When and by whom will certain actions be carried out? Strategic alignment allows you to gather and organize specific action items into a single list, prioritize them, and allocate them to others.
6. Make a communication strategy.
What is your compelling “why” for enhancing your organization’s transition capability? Strategic alignment emphasizes the necessity of communicating about change management and enterprise change management within your company and assists you in developing important messaging, talking points, and elevator speeches to share with others.
Plan and prepare to build change capability
For many firms, organizational agility has become a strategic necessity. Change is more complex, cross-functional, and unpredictable than it has ever been. Planning is a critical initial step in ensuring that your strategy clearly matches with your goals and unique needs as you commit to establishing change capacity in your business or restarting a misguided endeavor. You and your company will be able to move forward with confidence as a result of this.
Course Manual 12: Lookout for Inconsistencies
Inconsistent behavior in the workplace is a silent killer. People are confused by inconsistency from leaders, which erodes trust, produces fear, and can lead to a type of learned inertia in which the employee, paralyzed by uncertainty, just avoids or shuts down interactions with the offending management.
What causes this to happen? What role does inconsistency play? We don’t start out with the intention of keeping our staff guessing, do we?
The harsh reality is that we are frequently unaware that our actions are viewed as inconsistent. It doesn’t help that we work in a fishbowl, where everyone can watch everything we do.
Furthermore, we may be unaware of the consequences of our inadvertent inconsistencies. Here are 6 tips to assist you overcome any predisposition toward inconsistency.
Put your priorities on a pedestal
Inconsistent messaging on strategies, vision, and goals will cause additional doubt and confusion for an organization (organizational priorities). When you act inconsistently at work in relation to your personal priorities, such as your professed principles, personal purpose, or planned legacy, the same thing happens.
Putting these priorities on a pedestal and constantly filtering decisions and actions relative to these priorities is what many refer to as demonstrating critical consistency. To strengthen your determination, you may need to launch a personal campaign. It may take some work to quit trying to please everyone and to remember not to always let the last word in your ear stay in your ear.
Camera in the corner
This is a simple activity to help you detect inconsistencies in your own behavior. Consider that every time you provide instructions, make a decision, or engage with someone in a certain situation, a camera in the corner of the room is recording you. Later viewings of the video should not reveal a slew of inconsistencies; the world should see you operating in accordance with your views, actions, tactics, and objectives.
Think see-say
When creating a commercial, it’s vital that the words trying to communicate in each frame match what the picture is trying to communicate, i.e., the see and the say match, or misunderstanding may arise; after all, you only have thirty seconds to get your message across.
As a change leader, you are in the same boat. People will grow confused and tune out if our observable actions do not always match up with our words. In a similar vein, a brand that fails to deliver on its promises will never be purchased again. Change leaders who don’t do what they claim they’ll do will never have people believe in them, their decisions, or their path again.
Mind your mood swings & impulses
Inconsistent moods result in hesitant employees, and might even lead to fear if the mood becomes outright hostile. Of course, different temperatures are permitted on different days for everyone. It’s about being conscious of the height and depth of the peaks and troughs, as well as acknowledging when you’re not your regular self. When someone’s bad moods appear on a regular basis, others may avoid or overly agree with them, surrendering and nodding in an attempt to avert an outburst.
Acting on impulse, whether favorably or negatively, can sometimes lead to tense circumstances. When you praise someone loudly and openly when it isn’t your regular way of doing things, it can generate suspicion. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be positive, but you may need to explain why you’re doing it right now and reconcile why it’s different from how you generally handle similar situations. Impulsive outbursts of negativity, on the other hand, might cause anxiety and self-doubt.
Same situation, different treatment doesn’t work
People will recall if comparable events resulted in different outcomes, and if managers interpret rules and policies in different ways to achieve their own goals; these discrepancies may even raise questions about honesty. This need for disciplined behavior should not be confused with the need for open-mindedness, the need to respond to new evidence, or the need to adapt your leadership behavior to changing circumstances.
It’s more about the necessity to increase your situational awareness and be conscious of the consistency of your habits and actions. Employees want to be treated fairly, not fairly inconsistently, in the same way that you would want to be treated fairly. Favoritism, as well as punishment that is not equally applied, will breed resentment.
Put repeatable processes in place
You shouldn’t let your hectic schedule or overbooked days influence your decision-making. You should also avoid allowing such elements to create an environment where inconsistency is a natural by-product of rushed acts. Implement a structured decision-making and activity approach to combat this issue.
How to Avoid Common Mistakes in Change Leadership
Despite the fact that periodic culture shifts and restructurings have become the norm in most businesses, several studies show that many change leaders still don’t get change projects properly.
Hopefully, things will change, because the quantity and pace of such attempts isn’t going to slow down anytime soon, according to the findings of a global survey to be issued in February 2022 by Prosci, a change management training company. Approximately 86 percent of the 1,778 change leaders polled anticipate an increase in the number of change projects in their firms over the next two years. Around 55% believe the number of these transitions will greatly grow.
Susie Patterson, head of research and development at Prosci in Fort Collins, Colorado, says that rapid and frequent change is already exhausting many staff. According to Patterson, whose organization has been conducting bi-annual benchmark studies on change management since 1998, 73 percent of those questioned believe their businesses are near, at, or past the threshold of “change saturation,” when they can no longer absorb any more. This is an increase from 59 percent a decade ago.
According to Patterson, when leaders take a more thoughtful, methodical approach, their initiatives are more likely to succeed, resulting in better advantages for their companies and higher employee engagement.
Stay Involved
Here are some tips for helping your strategies succeed:
Don’t announce the project and then disappear. “The No. 1 mistake that sponsors make is to not stay active and visible throughout the life of the project,” Patterson says. “They will kick off the project and then move on to something else.”
A strong and effective sponsor, according to research, can make or break any program. According to Prosci’s two-decade research, it’s the most important factor in the success of change programs.
“Senior leaders can’t abdicate that responsibility or delegate it down, even though it’s very tempting because they don’t have a lot of time,” she says.
Address the emotional impact of the proposed changes. Executives tend to talk about these efforts using cold, hard facts and figures. What’s the impact on the bottom line? How much revenue growth can the organization expect?
But those things mean little to employees tasked with implementing the changes. “Too often (leaders are) communicating internally the way they would to investors … and that just doesn’t work,” says Micah Alpern, senior principal in the leadership, change and organization practice at A.T. Kearney in Chicago.
Discuss the emotional aspects of the situation as well. Will the proposed changes make it easier for staff to do their jobs? Will employees be able to pick up new skills?
“You have to think about what’s important to employees, and if you can do that, you will get more people on board [and] the change will move faster because there won’t be as much friction, as much resistance from employees against the change,” Alpern says.
Explain why the change is needed. Leaders often communicate the “what” and “how” of change but neglect to share the rationale behind it. “It’s easy to jump over the ‘why,’ ” Patterson says. “The why is essential. It’s the first step in understanding the change process for any individual.”
According to Prosci research, people want to know the organizational reasons for the change—and they want to hear them directly from senior executives.
“It’s common for organizations to try to jump straight to training,” Patterson says. But if employees don’t first understand the reason for the change, they’ll sit in the back of the training room and tune out.
“The remedy to that is spending the time upfront, communicating and sharing those reasons why … and also equipping managers to help people build their desire for a change.”
Model the Change
If you don’t change, don’t expect others to. To put it another way, model the conduct you want to see in others. “Your leaders better be doing it 24/7 because all eyes are on the leaders if you want to develop a culture built on innovation,” says the author. According to Dean Anderson, CEO and founder of Being First Inc., a change strategy firm in Durango, Colo., “that’s how people know how to behave.” “If you’re going to move toward openness and collaboration, you’d better make sure your CEOs reflect it.” Because CEOs have been operating in a different manner for so long, this could take a tremendous amount of effort.
Anderson asks senior leaders to attend a four-day offsite leadership modeling training course before assisting a company client with a big culture transformation.
“They need to be aware of what they’re doing before they can change behavior. It’s the first step in the personal change process,” he says. “If they don’t go through the personal change, then under stress, they’ll default to the old way of doing things,” and employees will follow suit.
Communicate early and often. Leaders frequently communicate in a one-way, top-down manner, reaching staff only after important choices have been taken. However, while members of the management team may have had months to consider the material before accepting it, they frequently fail to provide staff with the same opportunity.
“The earlier you engage them, the earlier they work through it. So, by the time you get to implementation stage, they’re on board,” Anderson says.
A 2016 McKinsey Global Survey found that failure to involve front-line employees and their managers was a main reason that some transformations failed and others succeeded.
Be Realistic
Don’t try to do too much. It’s easy to underestimate the amount of work it takes to conduct change initiatives. Make sure you plan out how employees will be able to maintain day-to-day operations while implementing new products or processes.
“The same people who keep the trains running are trying to get out in front of the train to lay down new track,” Anderson says.
To avoid change saturation, a small but growing number of companies are taking a company-wide strategy and using portfolio management approaches to coordinate all of the changes that are going place. Patterson suggests that the first stage, which is more difficult than it appears, is to keep track of the projects already underway. Do they have an impact on the same employees? What are the deadlines for implementation?
Then decide on a priority list. Is it possible to stagger the rollouts such that the same groups aren’t affected at the same time? Or do you want to get rid of some programs to make room for more important projects? Finally, Patterson proposes creating a mechanism for determining which planned projects the organization will commit to in the future.
While 73 percent of change leaders say they are near, at or past saturation, only 41 percent are following the holistic strategy and managing change within portfolios as experts recommend, according to the Prosci survey results. So, there’s a huge gap. But those who do approach the issue broadly are getting better results.
“Senior leaders have the ability and the responsibility to look at the whole picture,” Patterson says.
Workshop Exercises
Change Leadership Exercises
01. Sense of Urgency: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
02. Compelling Change Story: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
03. Employee Reaction: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
04. Vision and Values: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
05. Communication is Key: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
06. Training Programs: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
07. Company Culture: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
08. Visualize the Journey: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
09. Measure the Change: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
10. Create Wins: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
11. Align Performance Management: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
SWOT & MOST Analysis Exercises
01. Undertake a detailed SWOT Analysis in order to identify your department’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats in relation to each of the 12 Change Leadership processes featured above. Undertake this task together with your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
02. Develop a detailed MOST Analysis in order to establish your department’s: Mission; Objectives; Strategies and Tasks in relation to Change Leadership. Undertake this task together with all of your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) – Customer Service
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) – E-Business
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) – Finance
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) – Globalization
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) – Human Resources
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) – Information Technology
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) – Legal
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) – Management
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) – Marketing
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) – Production
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) – Logistics
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) – Education
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Change Leadership process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Sense of Urgency
02. Compelling Change Story
03. Employee Reaction
04. Vision and Values
05. Communication is Key
06. Training Programs
07. Company Culture
08. Visualize the Journey
09. Measure the Change
10. Create Wins
11. Align Performance Management
12. Lookout for Inconsistencies
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Program Benefits
Information Technology
- Agile IT processes
- Improved value delivery
- Decreased defects
- Continuous improvement
- Modernized infrastructure
- Re-tooled staff
- Increased morale
- IT Business partnership
- Meaningful metrics
- Effective sourcing
Management
- Decreased costs
- Aligned strategies
- Servant leadership
- Clarified priorities
- Improved effectiveness
- Improved transparency
- Reduced risk
- Measurable results
- Satisfied customers
- Vendor partnerships
Human Resources
- Empowered teams
- Servant leaders
- Re-tooled staff
- Improved teamwork
- Enhanced collaboration
- Improved performance
- Reduced turnover
- Improved loyalty
- Leadership development
- Employee development
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
If you have any questions or if you would like to arrange a Client Telephone Conference (CTC) to discuss this particular Unique Consulting Service Proposition (UCSP) in more detail, please CLICK HERE.