Implementing successful and sustainable change is tough, strategic change initiatives fail two thirds\u00a0of the time in North American business (Kotter, 1996, and McKinsey, 2009).\u00a0 How can your organization succeed?\u00a0 You can succeed by making change personal!\u00a0 Remember, performance is personal before it is organizational.\u00a0 This is another one of those \u201cBetter Business Basics\u201d and a matter of common business sense; but most of the time it just doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
Many organizations start with a plan for their change initiative, communicate it to their leadership team, tell the organization to watch for it, set some goals and measures, and incorporate\u00a0the goals in their team and department objectives.\u00a0 Then the change dies and the leadership team wonders why.\u00a0 The answer; the change was never translated into personal action!<\/p>\n
If change is not embraced by the people in your organization (including your customers and vendors) it will fail.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because performance is personal before it is organizational.\u00a0 If your people do not understand the change initiative, buy into it, and integrate it into their daily activities, it will not work.<\/p>\n
There is a natural human resistance to change because it involves moving out of a comfort zone.\u00a0 Consequently planned change won\u2019t be translated into personal action because people are skeptical, don\u2019t understand why, don\u2019t see the need, and don\u2019t know what\u2019s in it for them.<\/p>\n
So how do you make change personal?\u00a0 Define, communicate, delegate and track it using the \u201cexpectations approach.\u201d\u00a0 We usually get the organization\u2019s side of change, define and communicate, pretty well.\u00a0 Where we fail is in putting the personal side of change, communicate, delegate, and track, into play.<\/p>\n
First, define<\/strong> the change in terms of broad categories of activity to which everyone in the organization can relate, and specific results that benefit the organization and its people.<\/p>\n Second, communicate<\/strong>\u00a0the change initiative, and include the message that leadership will be expecting everyone to participate by defining specific expectations of each other necessary to carry out the change.<\/p>\n Third, communicate more<\/strong>, and here is where things start to get personal by focusing on the individual\u00a0working relationships in the workplace.\u00a0 Have each person on the leadership team identify\u00a0specific expectations of each other as to\u00a0what they must do to successfully implement the change.\u00a0 Make sure the expectations are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time and budget bounded, and ethical.\u00a0 Make sure they are recorded.\u00a0 Have each leader discuss his or her expectations with the partner who will execute the expectation, and make sure each accepts accountability for each other\u2019s expectation.\u00a0 This helps to create a productive relationship and integrate the change into the business at the leadership level.<\/p>\n Fourth, delegate<\/strong> by carrying the above process to each leader\u2019s direct reports, peers, and business partners throughout the organization or at least those teams that are considered key players in the change initiative.\u00a0 Ensure the people are delegated not only the responsibility for, but also the accountability for, and the authority to execute each expectation.\u00a0 In this way each person owns the expectations that others have of him or her.\u00a0 This step integrates the change throughout the organization as it becomes a part of each person’s work responsibilities and commitments.<\/p>\n Fifth, track<\/strong>\u00a0the results of each expectation.\u00a0 This means each person holding accountable the person who agreed to the expectation for completing and reporting completion.\u00a0 Accountability can be a scary thing to many people who haven\u2019t truly experienced it on the job.\u00a0 On the other hand, the expectations approach opens this challenge between leaders and their direct reports from a business rather than a personal perspective and serves to foster improved communications between them.<\/p>\n The expectations approach makes change personal by pushing accountability for implementing change throughout the organization in a way that people can understand the reasons for and expected results from the change, and buy into it.\u00a0 We\u2019ve found it one of the most effective ways of implementing successful and sustainable change in organizations.\u00a0 The side benefits of this approach are that it improves accountability throughout the organization, and encourages creation and development of productive relationships between people, leading to improved organizational performance.<\/p>\n We have successfully employed this approach in Fortune 500 companies and family owned businesses, from new selling strategies to management transitions.\u00a0 It works in for-profit and non-profit organizations from large to small, and it also works in government organizations (it\u2019s been used in the British Navy by its developer, John Machin).<\/p>\n If all this sounds complicated, it is, because, as we at The Performance Suite, formerly PDS Group LTD, believe, \u201cchange is hard and real change is real hard!\u201d\u00a0 If you want to be successful at change, you have to be prepared\u00a0to tackle the hard part of change \u2013 making it personal.\u00a0 But that\u2019s OK, because we at TPS and our North American consulting partners at IMC and The Crispian Advantage can help and, we have an \u201capp\u201d for that!\u00a0 Check us out at www.pdsgrp.net\/alex.html<\/a> and www.pdsgrp.net\/Resources\/ALEX%20Intro%20-%2023.pdf<\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Implementing successful and sustainable change is tough, strategic change initiatives fail two thirds\u00a0of the time in North American business (Kotter, 1996, and McKinsey, 2009).\u00a0 How can your organization succeed?\u00a0 You can succeed by making change personal!\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[10,11,14,16,19,22,35,36],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcoassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}