How
to Make Change Stick
Takeaways
“If you’re
going to win, and keep on winning, you have to recognize that change is
continuous and is never done.” Jack Welch
How to Make Change Stick
What it Means
A change
initiative is an effort to permanently implement new behaviors and set a strong
foundation for the next project. With every change initiative (large or small),
the potential exists that the organization will revert back to old habits after
the initiative is completed. Effective change leaders take proactive steps to
ensure their initiatives endure the test of time.
Why it Matters
·
Effective
change initiatives must be designed to institute sustainable improvement
·
Letting
an organization revert to old habits nullifies all the work done by the project
team
·
Well-executed
change initiatives make it easy for an organization to embrace new behaviors
“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the
vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
Jack Welch
Action Plan
How to Make Change Stick
Independent
of the size of your change initiative, there is always the risk that the
organization will soon forget the new processes and revert to the old habits.
The activities that follow will:
·
Help
you “mistake proof” your new processes, supporting sustainable change
·
Show
you how to analyze external drivers that support or restrain your changes
Your Starting Point
This
activity invites you to think about your organization’s current level of
support for change, which will help you implement sustainable solutions.
Learning from what worked and didn’t work in past initiatives can increase your
chances for sustainable, long-term change.
1.
Is
my organization used to embracing change and modifying behaviors?
2.
Have
past change initiatives taken hold and endured the test of time?
3.
Thinking
about the more successful initiatives, how did they make change sustainable?
4.
What
are the key risks that could undermine the implemented changes?
Quick Wins for Managing Change
Every organization
has a different culture, so you will need to adapt your approach based on what
works in your environment. Some organizations are very top-down driven, so
enlisting key leaders to drive the initiative long-term is the right approach.
Other organizations tend to rely on clearly documented Standard Operating
Procedures, so focusing on documentation may be the best option there.
The
following four simple activities can be a great support as you begin to plan how
to make your change initiative stick. The goal is to clearly understand what
challenges (and temptations) the people closest to the change face, so that you
can implement permanent solutions.
1.
Gather a cross-functional group of
people that will execute the new processes after the change initiative is
complete:
·
What
are the biggest challenges they face?
·
Which
part of the new process presents the steepest learning curve?
·
Are
there activities from the old processes that people would like to revert to?
2.
Following the brainstorming
session, review their notes and create a prioritized list of key risks to the
continued use of the new process.
3.
Start brainstorming ways you can
mitigate or eliminate these risks, so that the new process has a stronger
likelihood of being permanently implemented. You will likely recognize two or
three major ones, focus on these first.
4.
Reconvene your cross-functional
group to agree on how and when to implement these initial solutions.
Reinforcing the New Behaviors
In this
module I describe “burning the boats,” which is a guaranteed way to prevent the
organization from reverting to old habits. This tactic is all about eliminating
the “former way,” so that users simply cannot
go back to old habits even if they chose to. For example, if you are migrating
from an old IT system to a new one, you can just switch off access to the old
system.
Effective change leaders invest
time to understand key causes that could contribute to the organization
reverting back and put in place steps, tools and a support system to avoid that
threat.
In many
change initiatives, however, the transition is not simply “black and white.”
This is where “mistake proofing” can help you. The goal is to redirect the behavior of a user back to
a new way. The tactics used for this are the same for all regardless of whether
they consciously or unconsciously tried to go back to the
old behavior.
The main
reason you need to have a disciplined process to manage this is because you
cannot be watching over people’s shoulders all the time. It’s human nature to
be a creature of habit, so it’s just a matter of time before someone will try
to revert back to the old ways. In the next steps, you will find techniques to
help you prevent that.
Mistake Proofing
Your goal as a change leader is to
ensure the new behaviors you implemented remain in place even after you have on
to your next challenge.
There are
five ways you can accomplish mistake proofing:
1. Eliminate
temptation
Look
at opportunities where a user would be tempted to go back to the old process
and try to eliminate those instances. If you have moved the organization from
paper records to digital ones, prevent paper files from re-entering the
process. You may need to create a new process at the front end to scan incoming
paper, so that you immediately convert it to a digital copy.
2. Remind
users about the new way
People
can just forget: they return from vacation or they are immersed in their work
and all of a sudden they are using the old process again. Keep reminding them
about the new way. When driving a car from mainland Europe to the UK (where
they drive on the left side of the road), motorists are greeted with multiple
signs at each intersection reminding them to “Keep left.” When the new habit
takes over, you should not need to remind people something has changed, but for
a while at first, you definitely will.
3. Invest
in training
The
better that users understand the new process and system, the easier they will
switch over. Don’t just limit yourself to classroom training: provide “cheat
sheets” or any type of job aide that can help users.
4. Collect
a pipeline of improvements
Don’t
just stop with your first improvement. Start collecting immediately a list of
incremental improvements to be made. If the organization sees that their input
is valued, they will embrace the new way and keep engaged to make it even
better.
5. Collect
data and flag variation
Since
you know some users WILL revert back to old habits, see if automation can help
you collect data and flag as soon as possible variations. The sooner you can
correct undesired behavior, the lower the risk to your initiative.
Identifying,
Supporting and Restraining Forces
Proactively
managing forces that prevent change from sticking is vital for the long-term
success of your initiative. As part of any initiative, there will be events and
drivers which help support the change and others that will push the
organization towards old habits.
Effective Change
Agents always stay on top of the forces that are supporting the adoption of the
new initiative and proactively manage the forces that are risks of reverting to
old behaviors.
One
tool to help determine what is supporting new habits and what is driving
resistance to change is force-field analysis. This tool has its best use when resistance
is being encountered and much of the initiative is complete. The benefit of
this analysis is the visual representation of which types of internal and
external drivers are supporting or restraining your new model.
For
instance, positive customer feedback is a great enabler as an external force.
On the other hand, if the initiative was aimed at eliminating paper records and
some associates are still maintaining paper files that is an internal
restrainer.
To
perform this analysis for your initiative, bring your team together and work
through this exercise.
·
Divide
a chart in half.
·
On
the left, have your team list things that are driving change forward.
·
On
the right, list things that are holding back or restraining change. Include
both internal forces like employee behaviors and actions as well as external
forces, such as other projects or customer reactions.
·
Remember
to involve the entire team, because what one person might consider an enabler
of change, another might consider a restraint of change.
·
Rank
the items so you can see what is doing the most to drive change forward and
what is doing the most to hold it back.
For those
forces restraining change, develop a plan to lessen or eliminate them.
Sometimes you just need to tweak a new process or increase the amount of
training to mitigate restrainers. The easier you make it for the organization
to embrace the new behaviors, the less likely they will revert to old habits.
Game Pages
How to Make Changes Stick
Your Starting Point
Mistake Proofing My New Process
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Tactic
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My Ideas
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1.
Eliminate
temptation
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2.
Remind
users about the new way
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3.
Invest
in training
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4.
Collect
a pipeline of improvements
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5.
Collect
data and flag variation
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Force Field Analysis
Enablers Restrainers
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