Tool 20. MANAGING & LEVERAGING CHANGE

About This Tool

Change Management has gradually become one of those terms that turns more people off than not. One reason is that it has been over-used to the point that people get numb when they hear it. Another reason is that it's been vastly over-sold as a solution by people who don't fully realize what it takes to make change succeed.

Change is a process that requires a sustained commitment over time. It might take many months, and most likely years, to know if the effort was successful. That's one of the reasons it's so difficult. Patience runs out, other priorities pop up, players change roles, and momentum wanes. Keeping a change initiative alive is no small task. Ask anyone if they know of a successful change effort, and they might be able to give you an example. Ask them if they know of any failed change efforts, and you'll likely get several examples.

Such individual change efforts are challenging enough. It's a far greater challenge to help an organization build a core capability around change. That is, not only knowing how to manage it, but using it as a competitive weapon by creating change in areas that are to the company's advantage. Managing change, and building a core capability around change, are related - but different - challenges. This tool spends some time on both.

Using This Tool

Business and thought leaders agree that a key component of any change undertaking is to have a model for guiding the organization through it. This tool is based on several actual success stories and distills those experiences into the following eight-step model:

1. Leading the Change Effort
2. Creating Shared Need and Urgency
3. Creating and Communicating the Vision
4. Mobilizing Commitment
5. Using Structures and Systems
6. Creating and Tracking Progress
7. Building Long-Term Momentum
8. Building a Change Capability

The eight steps are further broken down into specific actions. The steps and actions are fairly comprehensive so the tool can be used for planning, leading, training, implementing or monitoring change. It's not necessary that an organization excel at every single action, or even include every one of them in its process. But each action should at least be considered, and experience shows the more that are addressed, the more successful the effort will be.

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