Leading and Managing Change

Page 2: How Does One Overcome Resistance to Change?

Change Factors for Success

1) Powerful Business Case. Having a powerful business case for the change is critical to success. This business case provides the rationale and communicates what is the "burning platform." The business case demonstrates that the cost of not changing is greater than the cost of changing. The business case is what helps those affected by the change to understand why this is being done to them. Understanding the reasons for the change helps to overcome denial and resistance and creates energy for action.

Barrier or Enabler? Is there a good business case for changing? If yes, then communicate it! If not, then build one! This might be a cost benefit analysis, data regarding the increasing number of clients you are losing each month, a benchmarking study about what the most successful people in the legal profession are doing, and so on.

2) Vision Clarity. John F. Kennedy said, "Vision illuminates the way and keeps everyone focused on the destination." A clear vision of what the change will look like presents a compelling picture, a destination of where you are going. The vision defines any new technology, people, and process requirements for the future and specifies expected changes in behavior.

Barrier or Enabler? If there is not a clear vision, people end up working toward different goals. This contributes to confusion, lost time, reworking of tasks, frustration, and so on. Communicating a clear vision means everyone could have blindfolds on and still end up at the same destination.

3) Change Leadership and Accountability. Any change initiative must have a clear leader who has the ultimate responsibility and accountability for the success or failure of the project. This means a visible and consistent demonstration of commitment to the initiative. The leadership team should include executive sponsors and "change agents" who will be those people executing the actual change at the tactical level.

Barrier or Enabler? Clearly, having no leader for the change is a barrier. More often, however, the barrier that truly inhibits success is having a clear leader who is ineffectual in exercising leadership to advance the initiative. This person is either too busy or not available to put in the time and energy that such dramatic change requires. Other doomed initiatives have leaders who do not command the respect of those within the organization or simply do not have a change management plan and are unable to successfully manage to completion.

4) Change-specific Communication. Communication is critical to many components of any change initiative. The primary goal of communication is to build stakeholder commitment to the change or future state vision, and to the organization's strategies. This CSF should outline the strategy, content, and delivery method for all communications targeted at key stakeholders. Generally, the communication plan is integrated with the business's overall communication approach. Communications are key to ensuring that all stakeholders understand the direction of the initiative, have expectations clearly articulated, and provide updates to all team members to create efficiencies and teamwork.

Barrier or Enabler? When it comes to communications, barriers and enablers need to be assessed from an infrastructure, cultural, and competency standpoint. For example, a fully enabled organization as it relates to communications has an integrated technology and telephony system that allows communications to occur rapidly and effectively to the entire organization. A large organization that doesn't have the ability to leave voicemails to all personnel has a technological barrier to effective communications. From a cultural standpoint, I consider communicating on an "as needed" basis to be a barrier to successful change. People will make up information where information is lacking. This is highly dangerous to a successful implementation when buy-in and support are so key. Communicating openly and often is a critical activity of any change initiative. Having someone with communications experience and skill is very important to drafting effective communications. A lack of this competency is a barrier that must be addressed prior to initiating the change effort.

5) Change Capability. When embarking upon a change, leaders need to consider their employees' capacity for change. This is most significant for an organization that has undergone rapid change over a short time. I talk about a "threshold of dysfunction" to explain change capability. When a situation occurs in which a person is using up more energy dealing with life's multiple challenges than he or she has in reserve, we begin to see dysfunctional behavior. The extreme of this concept is commonly referred to as "going postal." Most often, exceeding one's change capacity means resistance to more change, tardiness, attitude problems, and the like.

Barrier or Enabler? Too much change, change with no change management activities, or a history of failed change efforts are barriers to another initiative. An enabler would be a group of people who love new things and thrive on change.

6) Integrated Planning and Teams. A change effort needs to be well organized, with people in the right roles for their skill sets. It is important to have a "team" structure to the project, because most people still will need to do their old job as well as the new.

Barrier or Enabler? Enablers in this CFS would be high performance project teams; project management infrastructure and tools; and integrating the people, process, and technology components that the change will affect.

7) Stakeholder Commitment. Building stakeholder commitment is completely critical to any change effort. Stakeholder commitment builds individual and collective commitment to turn the vision into reality. It also assures that appropriate resources are available throughout the project and it mobilizes these resources at the right time. Commitment is critical if you want the stakeholders to be engaged with the change once it occurs, for example, using the new email system. Stakeholder commitment also is important during the process of changing. Without stakeholder input and buy-in, the change initiative can be delayed, undermined by resistors, built on bad information or data, and so on.

Barrier or Enabler? It is important to understand how the people affected by the change feel about it. If a lot of resistance is anticipated, then much has to be done to get stakeholders to understand the business case and vision for the effort. In the case of layoffs, for example, few people will feel commitment to losing their jobs; however, they can be committed to identifying what they need from the organization to help make this painful process go a little more smoothly, that is, severance pay, job search assistance, and resume writing skill building. Also, having a well-respected person on your side is a strong enabler and should be leveraged.

8) Aligned Performance and Culture. This CSF is about ensuring that the "Organizational Performance Levers" (OPLs) are aligned with the change that is taking place. These levers include: organization design, performance management, training and development, culture, staffing and deployment, leadership effectiveness, and communication. When putting in a new technology, for example, having no training causes a misalignment. Your training and development must account for this new technology.

Barrier or Enabler? A barrier occurs if the change effort requires many other organizational changes that have not been planned for or are too far in the future. This puts the effort at risk for not being sustainable long-term.

Page 4: Conclusion