Change or Chance (part 10) Institute the Change

So Far

You’ve created a sense of urgency.

You’ve built a guiding coalition (GC).

You’ve formed a strategic vision (SV)

You’ve evolved a hybrid organisational structure with your hierarchy now running alongside your creative network (CN).

You’ve recruited your enthusiastic Volunteer Army (VA) to innovate towards the change vision and you’re continuously communicating for stakeholder buy-in

You’ve enabled action by removing barriers.

You’re generating and celebrating short-term, and now long-term wins.

You’re sustaining acceleration (and momentum) for your change.

You’re nearly there, or are you?

What Next?

Well, there are a few more things we need to cover, not least instituting (“institutionalising”) the change.

It’s really easy (and a frequent occurrence) for change initiatives to run out of steam even as they are approaching the strategic goal, as we discussed in part 9.

It Takes Time

Your change program will, necessarily, take time (months, sometimes years) to be fully realised, and having diligently followed all the steps above, your need and desire is for the change to be sustainable, otherwise what was/is the point?

And that IS the point.

Sustainability

Your change MUST be sustainable and actually BE sustained, and that means ensuring that your organisation’s culture and systems are adapted to the new normal.

There is little point in working through the complexity and investment of generating a strategic vision and then allowing your organisation to default or drift back to the old status-quo.

The Language of Change

The new practices and procedures, the new language (and there will be one) reflecting the change, need to become an intrinsic part of your organisational fabric.

The leadership (and remember, we now recognise leadership at all levels) needs to consistently stand behind and champion the change.

Measure Before, During, After

The full value may not be visible in some leading or even some trailing indicators but if it’s working as intended, there will be metrics that will show the advances and the realisation of the fruits of the opportunity taken.

Take the Holistic View.

For example, how are your engagement scores looking (before and after)?  If your communications have been effective throughout, there should be no surprises here.

Keep the Dialogue Going

What’s your stakeholders’/consumers’ feedback – what more needs to be done?

Clearly, continuing and effective dialogue with your people, including the resisters, remains an essential element of embedding change.

Emergent Outcomes

How have you capitalised upon the emergent outcomes?

What has been missed, if anything.

The need for gross-error checking is constant.

Is your hierarchy and creative network communicating optimally?  If not, why not?

Your AAR

What lessons have been learned in your after-action review?

Has your organisational culture really adopted the new change?

…and remember, your next change initiatives may already be underway!

Institute your change to sustain it.

Next, we look at “principles”.

#change #transformation #leadership