Whether you like it or not, businesses change all of the time. Mark Green, CEO at Change Rebellion, says business leaders need to stop viewing change as a process and start treating it as a cultural evolution. He looks at how to build long-term, in-house capability instead of ‘renting resilience’.
There aren’t many certainties in life, and far fewer in the corporate world – but one thing’s for sure: at some point your business will undergo a change.
It could be a huge shift, a merger, an acquisition or a restructure. It could be something smaller – but no less impactful on the people within the company whose jobs will fundamentally alter as a result.
Naturally, it’s important to get the process right when approaching any type of change management within a business. But what’s absolutely critical – the maker or breaker – is mindset.
Experience not exams
It is incredibly easy, especially with the world wide web at your fingertips, for anyone to take a short course and get a piece of paper which says they’re qualified in change management. Yet when you consider all of the variables, and all of the possible combination of factors which fall under the umbrella of ‘change’, how on earth can a quick online qualification prepare leaders to successfully navigate all of the possible scenarios they may face during the course of a company’s evolution?
No matter how shiny the certificate, the reality is that only a solid track record of overcoming change challenges, delivering successful projects and engaging impactfully with employees can truly enable a leader to be defined as a change management expert.
If you don’t have anyone within your organisation who has that level of knowledge and experience, then partnering with an external specialist can ensure you don’t fall into the pitfalls which can end up costing you time and money, as well as potentially driving up your staff turnover rate. These risks are very real: researchers Errida and Lotfi conclude well over 60% of change initiatives fail, and one in three CEOs state the predicted value of their project was never realised, according to KPMG.
Build internal capability
So, you’re in the right mindset when it comes to deploying experts to guide you through the change management process because you understand that it’s never a neat and tidy operation that can be mastered overnight.
The next question might be, how do you decide who to bring on board? As we’ve discovered, a shiny certificate does not a change management guru make. It’s important not to be dazzled by talk of theories, neuroscience and frameworks and instead focus on what’s being promised in terms of the real-life, tangible outputs.
Your mindset needs to be focused not just around the short-term goal of navigating the current change, but on ensuring your business has the internal capability to manage evolution long-term. The desirable outcome of working with external specialists should be around unlocking the level of understanding and skills needed for you to continue the growth process well after the initial project has ended, confident in the knowledge that your in-house team is more than capable of handling the challenges that arise. If you don’t achieve this goal, then you’re going to need to call on those external people again next time you’re undergoing a change and the next time and so on. Essentially: stop renting your resilience and start owning it.
People perspective
Notice that the focus when it comes to long-term change management capability is on empowering the people within your organisation to successfully oversee your continued evolution. That’s because your people’s skills, experience and motivation are what will drive your business going forward.
Currently, there may be a huge, almost unavoidable, noise around AI and the wonders of innovative technology. But part of adopting a change management mindset is looking past all of the hype and being able to hone in on what’s truly important. While you may well end up implementing new tech as part of the process, you’re not travelling anywhere without the right people truly on board with your vision.
Technology might be the spark, but people are always the fuel. Those who truly understand change management have been shouting from the sidelines for years, highlighting that it’s all about humans. Emotion, resistance, behaviour, trust. As advanced as AI is, it’s not going to hand in its resignation if it feels your employee engagement has been poor throughout a change process. It’s not going to vary its productivity levels depending on the working environment and company culture. And it’s certainly not going to tell other people about its experiences of working for you, potentially damaging your brand reputation along the way.
Yet engaging and support staff through transitions can and will make a difference: it’s widely known that a large percentage of projects fail due to lack of communication and engagement.
Once you shift your focus to how your teams feel about the impending changes, the suggestions they have for improvement and keeping them involved at every stage, you’ve cracked the hard part – choosing which tech you need or don’t need is a piece of cake compared to supporting real humans with real emotions.
Change management should never be about imposing a solution upon staff and hoping they go along with it. A fundamental shift in your business affects each and every person on the payroll, and until your mindset reflects the critical importance of the willingness of all of those people to join you on your change journey, you’re unlikely to ever see the kind of success (and return on investment) that you’re seeking.
Change management isn’t about rolling out a new process. It’s about fundamentally rethinking how we value, approach and embed change. Let’s do it properly. Together.
