Enabling Change is the first step in the Create the Movement phase of the Roadmap.
The AIM Leadership Roadmap helps leaders who have a new mandate, new team, or who need new ideas to lead with confidence, accelerate impact, and deliver results in their leadership role. In this article series, I’ll break down the steps you can take to inspire growth in your people and your organization and build your leadership legacy. Want all the info in one place right now? Jump to The Definitive Guide to Leading in a New Role.
Prefer to listen than read? The AIM Leadership Roadmap series podcast is available wherever you listen. Subscribe today.
Today’s topic is Enable Change. Step 7 in the AIM Leadership Roadmap.
Enabling Change is the first step in the Create the Movement phase of the Roadmap – with a focus on moving your organization from status quo to creating impactful change.
Enabling change will help you develop change champions out of change resistors and implement change that sticks.
Here are three actions to achieve this:
- Follow a change management roadmap – in my book Talking Change: Must-Have Conversations for Successful Leaders, I outline the Planning and Managing Conversations which provide a change management roadmap. These conversations, which include of number of questions to help create your change plan, ensure you identify the right timing, tools, people, processes, and communications to implement your change. The starting point is the Why Conversation – establishing the purpose for your change will guide your actions and enlist others in your goals. The What, When, and How Conversation will help you set your course to get from point A to point B. You will absolutely need to make adjustments along the way, but by following the questions and actions in the Planning and Managing Conversations, you’ll be on the right path to do change right the first time. Download your free PM’s Sure-Fire Guide to Managing Change for more ideas.
- Develop change-savvy leaders – if you are a leader in today’s organizations, you lead change. You need all your people leaders – supervisors, managers, directors, VPs, CXOs – to be change-savvy leaders. I often say ‘embrace change, lead better’. The more comfortable people are with change, the better they will be at leading others through change. The Self-Reflection Conversations in my book are a great starting point for uncovering your change leadership style and roadblocks. Gaining a better understanding of your own reactions to change and knowing people’s typical reactions to change, loss, and transition will make you a better leader. Developing change-savvy leaders will also help with all future changes, as they can be your sponsors and advocates to help lead change from the top.
- Create structure and habits to sustain change success – you need commitment to change, not just compliance. Change fails when people just go through the motions of whatever is new, the moment they have the opportunity to revert back to the old way of doing things – they will! Hence why you need structures and habits to sustain commitment so that people continue in the direction you are aiming to go. A great structure I often use in change initiatives is to create a champion network. These are your early adopters and some of your biggest dissenters. This network can help influence others to make change, be your eyes and ears at all levels in your organization, and bring you the feedback needed to adjust course where necessary. Download The 5 Steps to Build the Best Change Champion Network to find out more. You also need to positively reinforce your changes through performance management and goal setting, and create the habits of coaching and feedback to help people succeed in the new way. Lastly, it’s important to remove any of the old tools, processes, structures, or reminders – so that people can’t revert to the old way of doing things.
Taking these actions will help you fast-track change implementations, unstick stalled projects, and sustain your change success.
In the next article I’ll discuss how to Develop Leaders, to go from having talent gaps to building your talent pipeline.
Change Management Coaching and Courses
Do you need support to plan and manage large-scale change? Do you need to equip your people to embrace change and lead better? Find out more about my Change Management Coaching and Courses to help you achieve the following outcomes:
- Fast-track change implementations and unstick stalled projects
- Develop change-savvy leaders to lead everyday change
- Improve the change management capabilities in your organization
Connect with me today – jen@actionimpactmovement.com or book an intro call.