What if…change was your opportunity for growth by Carole Spiers, World Authority on Corporate Stress (category: Business Growth & Consulting management)
Our guest business management consultant has some valuable business advice:
Change is the lifeblood of business, and will always drive it.
Those who doubt this are either too fearful of their position to focus on the true picture, or are lulled into believing in no-change because it is easier.
What are the 5 Keys to Effective Change?
Whether you’re facing a sudden crisis of change management, or planning a longer-term corporate evolution, keep the following checklist as the basis of your change-management policy as part of a good business growth strategy:
- Be the change
It was Gandhi who famously declared “We must be the change we want to see.” Now it’s up to you to symbolise the new system by your style and manner, and be a living, walking, breathing example of a bright future. - Understand the effects
Prove you can empathise with your team in their envy, confusion, bitterness, vulnerability and fear. That’s your best starting-point in helping them to fight down these negative responses. - Establish a culture of trust
Replace the ‘Us and Them’ mindset with a new spirit of ‘We’, and go on to build a culture of listening, debating and understanding, so removing one of the classic roots of conflict. - Interpret dialogue
Study the various theories of conversation, which can be profoundly illogical. Develop an ear for those unspoken words that may reveal important clues to intractable problems. - Reinforce corporate goals
Keep in mind the principal aims of the new changes in achieving corporate goals, and continue to assert these important strategies and the universal benefits they will yield (related topics: business growth strategy and strategy consulting).
The management of change is now a major ongoing responsibility throughout government, industry and the professions.
How will your employees react to change?
When any big change is announced at work, there will be almost as many different kinds of reaction as there are team-members. Your job as a leader is to handle these reactions in such a way as to keep the team together and performing, and in due course to perform better, thus validating the change.
It is to be expected that the older and longer-serving people may resent the change most. It disturbs the comfortable rut they’ve settled into. It may actually deprive them of specific rewards they were promised in exchange for long service. And being older, which usually means more conservative, they may simply be sceptical of the new system, and declare that no good will come of all this.
Another common reaction is apathy – a shrug of “so what?”, a suggestion that nothing really changes. It is possible to see this as a good stoical philosophy, a sign of the unflappable person who will survive anyhow. Or you could view it as the negative, cynical reflex of someone who is not really interested in what happens around him. In these cases, you need to try to establish which.
Thirdly, there are the ones who welcome the shake-up, either because it directly benefits their category, or because they are the sort of people who naturally embrace the new, and thrive on challenge. These are your allies in the new regime, and they should be encouraged to air their views to those who are feeling less positive about the future.
Where – and how – do you focus support?
Some people are simply never going to fit into a new system, and there is no intervention that will change this.
Others are already on-board and feeling positive about it. They do not need help, just normal encouragement, something you might receive as part of business advice from your business management consultant.
You need to reserve your support for the ones in-between – probably quite a sizeable group. These are the ones who are undecided, and possibly at risk of being influenced by more negative opinions. One good way to start is to ask them straight-out “Tell us frankly where you think we’re going wrong?”. This concentrates their mind fully on the problem, perhaps for the first time, and forces them to identify the elements of the crisis in plain words.
The ensuing debate may move some way towards a solution. Or it may reveal a grievance that you didn’t know about, and which might be resolved without much difficulty. This group, with its confused mindset, is also the one most likely to be experiencing stress, and you should be willing to apply workplace stress diagnosis and management, possibly with the help of specialist professional counsellors. Among the likely symptoms may be unexpected mood changes, with increased irritability or anger, a general slide in standards, such as poor timekeeping or absenteeism, and lowered morale and negative comments about the situation in general.
What is the professional challenge for HR staff
The handling of corporate change is a major test for those who have to plan it, supervise it, sell it, and come out on the other side with a team intact. It places great demands on your leadership qualities, your communications skills, your imagination, and your gift for making rapport with different human types.
For more information about Carole visit www.carolespiersgroup.com
Related topics: Business management consultant, business growth, change management, good business advice, business help, business consultancy.
