Here at netlogx, we believe that change is either forced upon you or you create it and make it work for you; either way, you have to excel at managing change to survive and thrive in a dangerous world. If you make change work for you, you can solve complex business problems.
But changes to your business, in turn, become changes for your employees and your customers. Nobody likes unexpected and unwelcome change, that much is clear. So how do you engage your people to get on board with change? How do you create a successful adoption of change within your organization?
I once worked with an organization that was in the process of replacing its organizational computer system. While working with them, I learned a lot about how to engage your employees, particularly at the associate level, to ensure success in change from top to bottom.
Here are my observations:
- Give Your Associates Decision-making Power
Our organization created a steering committee composed of representatives from each department. This committee was tasked with reviewing and approving deliverables, including the organizational vision, direction, and schedule.
- Engage Your Associates Early On
The steering committee’s first task was to review and procure an organization to conduct the planning of the future system implementation. This included reviewing and approving the procurement documentation, overseeing the procurement process, evaluating the potential organizations, and ultimately choosing the organization to assist in the planning of the future system implementation.
- Allow Your Associates’ Voices to Be Heard
While planning the future system and developing requirements, the steering committee designated associates from each department to contribute to process design and requirements elicitation. This provided each department with the ability to contribute toward planning the system to ultimately meet their needs and resolve their current problems. Where needed, additional requirements or details were added to address the needs of each department.
- Communicate Regularly
Throughout the system planning process, our organization conducted bi-weekly status meetings with the steering committee, conducted deliverable review meetings, posted project statuses on the internal shared site, and sent steering committee notifications on an ad hoc basis. These actions ensured that none of the key stakeholders were ever unaware of the status of the project and were able to share information with other associates as needed.
While change management is by no means an easy process, following these four rules of thumb have proven effective in managing change within other organizations and should serve as a foundation for yours.
netlogx can help your organization manage any organizational change effectively and efficiently. Contact us today.
