Top 7 Strategies for Change in an Organization

Here are seven tips regarding change within any organization. Whether it's preparing for a change, dealing with the circumstances or developing the appropriate strategies, these can help you understand the importance of change within an organization.

1. If you want and need the people in the organization to but into what you are doing, don't decide what to change and how to change it without giving them an opportunity to have their input. What we need are "stakeholders," not those who are just passive observers to what's going on.
   
   
2. Resistance isn't an indication that something is wrong with what you are trying to change. It is an indication that something is happening. It is a good sign! If you treat everything you see as resistance, you can be wrong. It may be a lack of understanding of what you are doing as opposed to not liking what you are doing. The remedies for each are quite different. You will learn many important things from resistance, which will make your implementation planning go a lot smoother.
   
   
3. Culture eats change for breakfast! If your change will impact "how we do things around here," the odds are the culture change will be a bigger project than the original change. Your three options are: 1) change the change 2) change the culture, or 3) prepare to fail.
   
   
4. The most important word in the language of change is TRUST. Without it, you will only get what looks like change on the surface while underneath things remain the same. When you don't have time to make lengthy explanations about why you are doing what you are doing, only TRUST will carry the day.
   
   
5. The perceived level of commitment of the person at the top of the organization will have more to do with your success or failure than anything else. Test to find out what that perception is. The commitment may be there but poorly communicated, so make sure it's there and well communicated.
   
   
6. Pain drives change! In most organizations, nothing changes until the pain of doing it the way we currently are gets high enough so that it can no longer be tolerated. You are in the "pain management" business when you're in the change business.
   
   
7. Given the option of listening to the rhetoric or following the reward system in the organization, people will follow the reward system every single time. The rhetoric and the reward system must line up.

Jim Hunt, Principal James W. Hunt & Associates The "Change II" Management Consulting Firm Web address: www.jameswhunt.com 1-800-780-8763

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