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Tips for Effectively Facilitating Change in Your Organization

By Stephen Treacy posted 09-16-2019 15:47

  

The following is a gathering of a few key ideas that I have learned from my thirty-three years as an organization development consultant and educator. They are designed to promote discussion that increases your knowledge of this topic and give you useful insights. Whether you are a leader of change or a member of an organization undergoing change, I invite your ideas, questions and comments. This will enrich the learning for all of us!

Let’s Review What is True Regarding Change:

  • People support what they have had a part in creating.
  • Individuals will follow the lead of those they respect.
  • People are naturally resistive to changes in the status quo even though that status quo may not be totally desirable. Whatever you do must be designed to address this.
  • People want to be part of success.

What is Not True Regarding Change:

  • Popular statements that “seventy percent of change efforts fail.” My experience is that many leaders get caught up in this and become derailed from leading a positive change effort.
  • Much research has been done to attempt to verify the statement. To my knowledge it is not been confirmed by the research. Read more about this concept here.
  • It is hard to confirm since there is little or no definition of what defines success. In my own practice I have seen change efforts (those that I or others led) that “fail” but many unplanned worthwhile results came from it which are truly desirable. In some respects, that is success, but not such that was contemplated at the outset.


Tips about Leadership

When we talk about leadership related to change, we must consider two aspects:  leadership behaviors and leadership practices (structures etc.).

Leadership Behaviors

  • Model the way. Be very public and obvious about modeling the behaviors required of individuals to make the change successful. People will look for what leadership does for consistency to what they are asking the organization to do. If they don’t see consistency in behaviors and organization decision-making they are less likely to support the change.
  • Avoid using the term “driving change” and the thinking that goes with it. This creates resistance. Thinking of a change process as creating change or facilitating change is better.

Leadership Practices

  • Use a steering team to lead the change process. A steering team is the group of the leaders whose support (providing resources etc.) is essential. They also are the individuals whose groups or departments impact the change or are impacted by the change. Their job is not to do the change but rather ensure its success through setting the right policies and furnishing necessary resources. They must be involved, or the effort will not be supported adequately.
  • If the change is something that is the leaders’ idea, their job is to communicate with all stakeholders. Some ideas for useful communication items are:
    • What the change is, why you’re doing it and why now.
    • Invite Ideas for implementation methods.
    • Don’t invite suggestions for alternate approaches if you are set on what you want to create. It will only create resistance and resentment when the suggestions aren’t accepted.
  • If the change is something best created with inputs from the organization the use of a task team or large group interventions to make recommendations may be appropriate.  

 

Change Processes

A popular method, the gap analysis, as a change method does not work. The gap analysis (Fig 1) typifies how many approach change. In large part it doesn’t work well. The failures come in the actions needed to reach the desired state. This is often the culprit of change process failures and where resistance occurs (Fig 2).


Treacy_Fig_1.png
Gap_Analysis2_copy.png 

Two other approaches can be used. Both consider resistance in their make up:

  • The Beckhard-Harris Change Model (DxVxF>R) – Click here for a deeper analysis.
    • D represents dissatisfaction,
    • V represents vision and
    • F represents steps toward resistance reduction.
    • R represents resistance.
    • DxVxF must be greater than R or the change won’t happen.
  • Force Field Analysis: (Fig 3) is another way to plan a change effort. Its basic construct includes these steps:

Treacy_Fig_3.png


Exercise:

Try to work through this Force Field Analysis in your own organization. Here are the steps to work through the methodology:

  • Draw the field.
  • Identify the goals you are trying to meet and draw the status quo.
  • Draw and create driving forces – those factors that help the effort to be successful.
  • Select restraining forces – those factors that are obstacles to the success of the effort.
  • Brainstorm actions that remove or reduce the restraining forces, create a list.
  • Prioritize the list of actions, select one and then create an action plan.


Communication Processes

Must be multi leveraged i.e. using many different approaches to assess progress and lead the change. Possible methodologies include:

  • Repeated town hall type meetings by leadership to explain direction, provide updates and get progress feedback.
  • Newsletters providing the same information as the town hall type meeting.
  • Updates in staff/department meetings.
  • Periodic walk-throughs. A walk through is an interactive process where those familiar with the change share progress and get feedback. 

Last words

Remember this: the biggest enemy of change is resistance. An organization is like the human body – it resists changes to the core of its being just as the human body will resist changes such as a new heart or other device. All planning must recognize this, and efforts must be made to reduce it.

Get help from the outside. This can be someone from another part of your organization who has a fresh look and will see things you may miss. Retaining an internal or external source, experienced in change management, may be a worthwhile investment.

Finally, a reminder – this is a blog post. It is meant as a posting of a few main ideas with the invitation for questions and comments. Please join in the discussion with your ideas, opinions and questions to enrich the learning for all.

By Stephen Treacy
Consultant
The Treacy Group
"Stephen is an organization development and leadership coach who has presented and facilitated leadership trainings for Illinois ASBO members since 2005."
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10-31-2019 20:46

Stephen,

Great post.  Change Management is such an interesting topic and I'm excited that you put links in the post as the information can be too much for a sit down read.  Change Management was scary for me for so long, and if you have a large organization how do you change everyone?  Then I realized I really only need to change my team first.  This is a slower process for organizational change but sometimes slow is better.  Anyway there is some real meat in this post, thank you. Marcus