If the trials of the last year and a half have taught us anything, it’s that the concept of “steady-state management” is a convenient myth. The belief that we can keep doing what we’re doing—even if we’re quite successful at it—and continue chugging right along was demolished during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In areas big (supply chain, real estate) and small (friend groups), our lives were completely upended, with tens of millions of businesses and families struggling to gain their footing in a radically changed world. Doubt this? Just ask any Walmart shopper trying to hunt down a ten-pack of toilet paper in April 2020.
The lesson we can take from the pandemic or any other huge disruption is that all businesses, whether they are in the midst of an overhaul or scrambling to respond to a random market shock, need to have an effective change management strategy.
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What Is Change Management?
Different people and organizations define it differently, obviously, but here’s what we’ve settled on at Navalent: change management is the systematic and holistic work of defining and pursuing what is “next.” It’s important to note that it’s a set of practices that can be applied in different situations, not an explicit set of instructions.
The challenge of change management is to effectively motivate the people and organizational factors that will both drive and obstruct change throughout the organization. Ultimately, the goal of change management is to ensure everyone in an organization is ready, willing, and able to appropriately perform their role in what’s “next.”
Importantly, here’s what organizational change management is NOT:
- Just training
- Communicating something, especially in a one-to-many format, and expecting it to sink in
- Focused on changing procedures instead of people
- Focused solely on an “end-result”
- Being vague/ambiguous in an attempt to avoid a harsher reality
- Following a plan and dragging staff through it
Call-out/Tip
Before embarking on a change initiative, it’s crucially important to define what you hope to accomplish. This is no time for hazy pronouncements (“We’re going to revolutionize the pitchfork industry”); concrete goals make much better friends (“We’re going to expand our sales territory by 30 percent within the next two years”).
How to Manage Change without Losing Your Mind—Or Your Employees
Just like management in general, change management is hard. Humans are homeostasis-seeking machines that love predictability. When we feel out of control, things can go downhill.
Fear takes over:1 “I fear being excluded.” “I fear not being able to be successful.” “I fear being taken advantage of.” While these thought processes may be irrational, just knowing this often isn’t enough to put one at ease.
What can help? Action.
With that in mind, here are the four elements of a successful management model.
1. Leadership of change
For employees to internalize an openness to change, it has to be modeled from the top to the bottom. Senior executives must show their commitment to managing change through their actions. But that’s not to say words aren’t important.
Who wants to devote weeks or months to something no one seems to really care about or believe in? Not me. And probably not you. So before asking peers and followers to make such a pledge, leaders must be able to convince people—with sincerity and honesty—that they are engaged in an important, exciting, and worthwhile mission.
The bedrock of this is articulating a compelling vision. It’s important to point out here that compelling ≠ grandiose. Too many leaders think speaking in extravagant language
- confers authority; and
- inspires their followers.
It won’t. Your employees, some of whom have been wallowing in cynicism for years, can smell BS a mile away. An actual purpose-driven future might not be as sexy, but it will give followers, even jaded ones, something to hold on to.
For a good example of what I mean, think of the Best Buy slogan: “Enriching lives through technology.” It may not make the heart leap, but it’s realistic—and achievable.
2. Building Commitment to the Change
Motivating followers can be challenging during “normal” operations. Pumping them up during a period of transition can feel excruciating. Followers often develop anxiety or feel uncertain about their actions because they are told to start doing their jobs differently, yet the company reward system lags behind and remains pegged to old standards and objectives.
One way to get followers motivated—and by extension, committed to change—is to design transition-related tasks in a way that fosters participation. Few things breed success like participation.
First, participation fuels a sense of ownership. Rather than perceiving change as something that someone else is doing to them, employees will see it as something they have a hand in creating. If someone is imposing the change on them, they derive a sense of power from derailing it; if they feel ownership, they get a sense of accomplishment from making it work.
Second, participation builds understanding. People working through a change are much more likely to digest important messages, whether positive or negative. And few activities boost understanding more than having to explain changes to peers later on. Thousands of studies show that we learn best through teaching.2
Third, participants may have some good ideas. Unlikely as it might seem to the original crafters of the change initiative, others in the organization have different perspectives and insightful ideas that can actually improve upon the original plan.
3. Adhering to an Honest Scope of Change
Okay, you may be saying to yourself, I got this. I can model good change management leadership and create incentives for employee participation. Time to blow the old company up! I appreciate your enthusiasm, but a note of caution: moving too fast too quickly can make things worse.
As painful as it may be—and in my experience, it can be deeply painful!—you need to have an honest reckoning about where your business is, and how close (or far) it is from where you want it to be, post-transition.
Too often, excited managers rush head-first into a change initiative, only to realize they needed twice the resources and triple the time.
As you hash out the scope of the change, there are three essential things to consider:
- Breadth of impact (internal and external)
- Degree of complexity
- Degree of departure from the past
Whether it’s flying or bringing a new product to market, everyone wants to get where they’re going fast and cheap. But there are always trade-offs. A change with a broad scope will most likely require a good amount of time, and trying to shortcut things prematurely, tempting though it may be, isn’t the answer.
Quote
Men make plans, and God laughs.
4. Managing Mechanics of Transition
“Mechanics” can be thought of as a fancy term for planning. Successful transitions take time and effort—do your employees have both to spare? If you want to make sure things get done without putting too much stress on your core business, you need to have an integrated plan for people who still have day jobs.
To that end, beware of “spraying”—tasking followers with way too many responsibilities. The predictable result will be confusion and chaos, as they try frantically to tackle one assignment after the next, unable to focus long enough to do a decent job.
You do this by ensuring that your change plan is documented (that is, officially laid out); holistic, in the sense that it is tailored to the needs of each task; and clarifies what leaders are responsible for what aspects of the plan. Here are steps you can take to ensure your mechanics are sound:
- Charter transition teams: assign people to transition leadership roles
- Build the plan: detail high-level objectives that account for ALL the work required
- Engage the organization: enthusiastically but honestly communicate goals and expectations to employees
- Monitor progress: identify milestones and key checkpoints—and how they will be assessed
There you have it. Change may be inevitable and sometimes scary, but you don’t need to be helpless in the face of it. With inspired leadership, motivated employees, and effective planning, you’ll be ready to say, “Bring it on!”
2 For example, see this 2018 article, “The learning benefits of teaching: A retrieval practice hypothesis,” in a 2018 issue of the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.3410).