Real people management is getting your results with the people you have.

Assess your Change Process

In situations of changepeople tend to go through a succession of psychological phases. How can we ensure change management being successful and keep the individuals motivated (again)? How can we keep the transition phase as short as possible and get ASAP the contribution of all involved people?

Looking at change out of the perspective of the individual the following questions are probably important:

Why is this change important? What’s in for me?
How do these people know what the problems are? They haven’t even bothered to ask us.
Do they really think they can change the entire company at once?
How much of our time and their money will they sink into this dry hole?
(source: Harvard Business School Press, Managing Change and Transitions)

All these questions do not mean we do not have to change, but they prove we need the right angle, the right action steps to manage the change…does your change process respond to Kotter's eight-step model (see figure bellow). According Kotter your change project is at risk if your assessment on one of these points is negative.

KOTTER'S EIGHT-STEP MODEL

Did you...
1. ... establish a sense of urgency. Discussing today's competitive realities, looking at potential future scenarios. Increasing the 'felt-need' for change.
2. ... form a powerful guiding coalition. Assembling a powerful group of people who can work well together.
3. ... create a vision. Building a vision to guide the change effort together with strategies for achieving this.
4. ... communicate the vision. Kotter emphasizes the need to communicate at least 10 times the amount you expect to have to communicate. The vision and accompanying strategies and new behaviours need to be communicated in a variety of different ways.
The guiding coalition should be the first to role model new behaviours.
5. ... empower others to act on the vision. This step includes getting rid of obstacles to change such as unhelpful structures or systems. Allow people to experiment.
6. ... plan for and create short-term wins. Look for and advertise short-term visible improvements. Plan these in and reward people publicly for improvements.
7. ... consolidate improvements and produce still more change. Promote and reward those able to promote and work towards the vision. Energize the process of change with new projects, resources, change agents.
8. ... institutionalize new approaches. Ensure that everyone understands that the new behaviours lead to corporate success.
(Source: Kotter, Leading Change Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts, USA,1996)

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