Leading Change

Moving your team in the right direction

Leading change is a vital aspect of leadership, requiring dynamic, focused action. Without these skills, proactive change will fail – or fail even to get started.

The first step to managing change is to be open and have reliable information at. Even if the change is unwelcome, people at least feel confident that the leader knows what they are doing and have some faith in their professionalism and expertise. This is a basic level of trust – trusting the competence and capability of those in charge. The second essential is for people to truly believe that you – the leader – have their interests at heart and that they can trust you to do the best you can to take care of them during the change. All too many executives treat changes – such as redundancy – as a process. Also, the aspects of the process are often led by legal requirements instead of any human considerations.

Businesses are often constrained by traditional boundaries. This is further reinforced by individuals’ own experiences that can lead people to think in rigid, conventional or increasingly outdated terms. Leading change is about being flexible, overcoming the boundaries and achieving results that benefit customers and the business. Leading change is not just about finding the right approach but also about the pace at which it is implemented. Often, achieving rapid change is as important as the content of the change process itself. Ideas may be great, but, if they are too slow to market, they may not work.

Leading change is not just about finding the right approach but also about the pace at which it is implemented. This toolkit explains how.  

Length: 10 pages

Contents: 

The Benefits

Action Checklist: Leading Change

• Establish a sense of urgency
• Create the guiding coalition
• Develop a vision and strategy
• Communicate the change vision
• Empower broad-based action
• Generate short-term wins
• Consolidate gains and produce more change
• Anchor new approaches in the organization’s culture

Avoiding Problems – this includes avoiding potential pitfalls by identifying and prioritizing the barriers that need to be overcome, and finding new and creative ways to enhance performance. Dos and Don’ts Key Questions

Things You Can Do

• Help people to effect change
• Communicate a sensible vision to employees
• Ensure that the system does not hamper the vision for change
• Understand the need for training and development
• Ensure that the organization’s systems are in line with the new vision
• Confront problems
• Find ideas for improvements
• Encourage a questioning approach
• Help others to embrace change
• Listen to customers
• Generate ideas that benefit customers Initiate an improvement project
• Challenge assumptions Initiate change

Further Action

Further Information

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