Manage Resistance to Change, Avoid these Mistakes

I emphasised several critical elements for successful change initiatives:

• Understanding the "Why": It's crucial to clearly define what needs to change and why. This involves analysing market needs and aligning with organisational goals.

• Working Backwards: Start with desired outcomes and work backwards to determine necessary steps, whether they involve technology, operations, mindset shifts, or all of the above.

• Inspiring Vision: I shared examples of powerful vision statements from Netflix ("To entertain the world") and Tesla ("Accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy") that drive transformative change, exploring why they work, and how we can do something similar.

Essential Qualities

I emphasised several critical attributes that make an effective change leader:

• Visionary Thinking: The ability to not simply inherit a vision, but to develop and articulate your own.

• Translation: Transforming broad visions into actionable, meaningful plans for team members to buy into and make relevant to them.

• Organisation: Effectively managing time and resources. All are limited and prioritising them is key.

• Extraordinary People Skills: Understanding and communicating effectively with various stakeholders in a way that’s meaningful to them as individuals or groups.

• Diplomacy: Navigating challenging conversations and delivering difficult news when necessary.

• Think big, act small: While keeping the grand vision in mind, focusing on actionable daily and weekly steps to get there is less appealing but incrementally helps to turn vision into reality.

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I shared my approach to creating a robust change strategy:

• Vision First: Clearly define what you're trying to achieve and for whom.

• Identify Obstacles: Anticipate internal and external factors that could impede success.

• Consider Culture: Take into account the organisation's culture and the needs of the user base.

• Assess Skills: Determine the skills needed during and after the change process.

• Future Focus: Envision the "brave new world" while maintaining an element of realism.

What I learned from a previous software platform upgrade for 1,000’s of users.

• Leveraging Expertise: Assembling a team with working knowledge of the systems and deep understanding of user pain points.

• Thorough Analysis: Conducting a comprehensive review of current problems and how the new solution would address them.

• Setting Realistic Expectations: Communicating that the change would bring significant improvements while acknowledging it wouldn't be perfect immediately.

• Building Advocacy: Identifying and engaging key individuals on the ground to advocate and act as change ‘champions’.

• Peer-to-Peer Communication: Empowering advocates to communicate with their colleagues in relatable terms.

• Embracing Skeptics: Converting skeptical team members into advocates, listening to and addressing their concerns to strengthen the change message.

Key strategies for managing and mitigating resistance to change:

• Create a compelling narrative: Develop a story that articulates the current situation, why it's unacceptable, and how the change will improve things for coworkers, users, customers.

• Multiple communication channels: Share the change message through various mediums like social channels, emails, and videos to cater to different preferences. Use multiple available channels for internal comms.

• Repeat, repeat, repeat: Communicate the change multiple times and in different ways to ensure it resonates and is fully understood. Sometimes, more is more!

• Recognise the change curve: Understand that people go through stages of denial, anger, frustration, realisation, and acceptance during change. Take this into account during interactions.

• Implement a "holding place": Create a transitional space or phase that helps people let go of the old and prepare for the new, building camaraderie in the process.

• Involve people in the change: Ask for input and help in specifying the new solution to increase buy-in and ownership.

• Address resistance openly: Encourage skeptics to voice their concerns and work to convert them into advocates.

• Focus on the journey: Emphasise that change is a process and that you're working together to make improvements. It’s not being done “to” them, but rather “with” them.

• Allow time for adaptation: Recognise that acceptance takes time and provide support throughout the transition.

Example metrics and approaches to measure the performance of an initiative. Relevance differs depending on the type of change:

• Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): Establish clear objectives and measurable key results at the outset of the program.

• User base growth: Track increases in user adoption, for example, from 5% to 10%.

• Customer/user surveys: Gather feedback from those who have experienced both the old and new systems.

• Advocates: Measure the number of strong supporters and/or referrals generated.

• Operating cost reduction: Assess if target cost reductions are trending in the right direction.

• Business case achievement: Evaluate how well the program meets its initial business case objectives, such as return on investment (ROI). Often, business cases are written to fund changes but not enough time is spent after the change to check that expected benefits are being realised.

• Team and capability growth: Assess improvements in team skills and organisational capabilities.

• Efficiency improvements: Determine if the change has made processes more productive and efficient.

Discussing the possible future of change management and overall product delivery:

• Smaller, iterative changes: Work is being segmented into smaller chunks, allowing for quicker and more iterative delivery.

• Closer alignment with operations: Change teams are working more closely with operational teams, allowing for greater cohesion and continuous improvement.

• Self-disruption: Successful organisations will proactively disrupt themselves to stay ahead, as exemplified by Apple thinking ahead and phasing out the iPod in favour of the iPhone, even though the iPod was thriving.

• Change as a core business function: Organisations should integrate change management into their core operations, treating it as an essential part of staying competitive and thriving.

• Increased agility: Companies will need to become more agile to respond quickly to market changes and emerging technologies.