A lot of daily challenges in business are because of unmanageable, over complicated, ineffective, or inefficient processes. These process create delays, challenges in communication, and ultimately cost the business a lot of money. Change management does NOT have to be overly complicated and difficult in order to be effective.
You want people to accept a new process and drive positive change??
Start with making it easier to follow the new updated process than it was to execute previously, while simultaneously addressing a pain point in the business.
Focusing on something that will make the business peoples lives easier will help to drive the change, by leveraging their intrinsic motivation to make their lives easier. It also helps to make it easier to follow the new process, than it is to avoid the new process..
In other words… make sure your processes:
- Adds VALUE for both the business, and the reports the data will be included in( if you don;t have this, you are dead in the water….
- Is not over engineered or too cumbersome or difficult to follow
- Does/ measures/ creates visibility where it is supposed to
- Does not involve multiple layers of reviews and approvals unless absolutely necessary- Keep It Simple!
- Does not create unnecessary bureaucracy- allowing too many areas to have a say in a process often makes accountability difficult to understand, which makes people uncomfortable, and often times creates more delays and bottlenecks.
- Has very directly defined roles and responsibilities, especially for decision making
- Has minimal hand-offs between groups
- Empower your employees and teams to make decisions to keep things moving forward
- Clearly defines limits on decision making authority and escalation routes if necessary
If you do all of this before you start thinking about the change management process of rolling out, training, and gaining acceptance for your new process, you will be light years ahead, and have a much higher chance of your change being accepted.
The biggest mistake you could possibly make in my opinion is to not get input and buy-in from the people that are actually going to be implementing the process, and making sure it is followed. Involve people early, and take their opinions into account. They often have the answers to extremely complicated problems already figured out, and just need to be LISTENED to, and to have their feedback requested.
Break the business change initiatives into manageable pieces, and you will be well on your way to positive changes…
- Listen to your stakeholders
- Don’t make it harder than it needs to be- Use the KISS principle-(K.I.S.S.- Keep It Simple Stupid!)
- Believe in your abilities to influence.
- Create Value by addressing business pain points…
Good Luck, and Happy Changing!
Cheers,
Tim