Implement Organizational Change for Best Buy-In & Adoption
The best approach to implement organizational change is to take a more incremental, sequenced approach. A compounding, continuous improvement approach to change management can make the transition easier for everyone else involved. Big bang approaches are very hard, come with unrealistic expectations, and inhibit adoption and sustainment for the long term.
An incremental, sequenced approach to change is more digestible for the employees, easier to implement, and has a better chance of creating a self-managed and sustained way of working. This, in turn, makes it easier to continuously improve and make changes iteratively in the future.
It’s how people best learn a lot of information. This approach also makes adjustments to each smaller change easier. Making it a healthy competition among team members and celebrate all the smaller successes along the way.
Think back to your school days and how you learned.
In school, they never threw a big change on you and said learn it all or else. They gave you the vision of what you will learn by the end of the year. Then they start with base concepts (information for initial changes). They then had you study, practice what you learn, and reviewed it with you. Then they moved on to the next level of information, learning, practicing, and reviewing along the way. The good news? You usually don’t get tested every week in your adult life!
This is essentially the way Agile works, using smaller increments of change with retrospectives along the way to review and course-correct.
A Successful Method For Organizational Change
People respond to receiving information this way because they can assimilate it easier. It reduces the shock, allows them to learn and practice with a lot less stress. That’s why you hear organizations portraying major organizational changes as journeys. It’s less threatening, less overwhelming, and makes it sound less intimidating than portraying change as a big bang event.
This can seem contrary to the way employees want information about changes. Many times you have to protect employees from themselves. They will always want as much information as possible when an organization announces upcoming changes. Employees will want absolute clarity of the leadership vision for the change. But you can’t provide all the answers right away and it will actually overwhelm them and increase resistance. If you give them a strong vision of the future state and a roadmap showing incremental and sequenced changes within a realistic time period, as well as how you will support and guide them they will feel less overwhelmed and be more open to the change process.