The only constant in life is change

Change is all around you. You can manage that change or let it manage you

Things are changing. It’s a different ballgame now. And status quo management won’t work. If you try to manage change the same way you’ve managed a stable routine situation, you’re going to have real problems. It’s time to switch gears. There are major challenges facing you.

How do you hang on to your good people?
How do you keep morale from dropping through the floor?

Most important, how do you get the results higher management expects of your work group?

The odds are you will be expected to get more done, maybe with fewer resources, in a shorter period of time. Is that fair or reasonable? Doesn’t matter. That’s what’s staring you in the face.

Productivity gets hammered from all sides. Your people may be upset, confused, or demoralized, but you still have to deliver results. And you have to protect the bottom line. Change is stressful. Times like these can get on your nerves. But it’s during the tough times that you have a chance to really grow, and to prove yourself. Here’s an opportunity for you to become a corporate hero.

The company really needs you now. And you will find that times of transition and change provide an opening for you to do some remarkable things with your part of the organization. Usually change is under-managed. People up and down the chain of command are frequently too resistive, too reactive, and too closely tied to their old management habits.

Following guidelines focuses on the specific management steps you can take to give a powerful performance during transition and change. Here’s how to manage change, instead of letting it manage you.

BE A CHANGE AGENT
Flexibility is one of the keys to being a good change agent

DON’T GIVE AWAY YOUR POWER

Don’t sit around waiting for permission. Instead, assume an active stance. If you wait for crystal clear signals from above regarding what you can and can’t do, your part of the organization is going to lose momentum. Empower yourself, “The best defense is a good offense”.

KEEP A POSITIVE ATTITUDE

Be upbeat, positive, and enthusiastic. Look at organizational change as a personal challenge. Seek out the opportunities that change presents.

GIVE YOUR TROOPS CLEAR CUT MARCHING ORDERS

Make sure that you give your people generous management directions. Frame out their demand and assignments in specific terms, rather than leaving things general and vague. Organizational change creates many distractions, so employees need “focusing” by management.

FOCUS ON SHORT RANGE OBJECTIVES

Concentrate on quarterly, monthly, and even weekly performance targets. Keep the spotlight on your short-term goals, and give employees generous feedback regarding progress that is being made toward goal achievement.

ESTABLISH CLEAR PRIORITIES

Those who make the most noise should not necessarily get the most attention. It’s easy for a manager to end up in a fire-fighting mode, getting side-tracked by low priority issues that chew up a lot of time and energy yet have little payoff.

Frequently employees seem to assume that the last assignment is the most important one, pursuing it at the expense of more meaningful tasks.

NAIL DOWN EACH PERSON’S JOB

Help each employee identify what the “critical few,” make-or-break aspects of the job really are.

PROMISE CHANG AND SELL IT (CAREFULLY)

Part of being a responsible manager is preparing your people for change. So promise change because that’s a promise you can keep. As part of the management team, you also are responsible for helping to “sell” the changes. Employees should be given a balanced viewpoint.

GET RESISTANCE TO CHANGE OUT IN THE OPEN

The main key to managing resistance effectively is to actually invite it. Get it out into the open. Then, at least, you are in a position to analyze it and work toward overcoming it. Up to a point, resistance isn’t necessarily bad. You might think of resistance to change as being sort of like body temperature, it can go too high or too low. When resistance is too high, there will be casualties – for example, people quit, productivity is crippled, and so forth. If resistance is virtually nonexistent, it may mean your organization is over stabilized and too complacent.

RAISE THE BAR

Make them stretch. Ask more of your employees. Why? Actually, it’s better for their mental health and for company morale if they are extremely busy and don’t have time on their hands to spend worrying about the future or romanticizing the past. The performance standards you set and the objectives you put before your people should be challenging but not unrealistic.

MOTIVATE TO THE HILT

Think of this shakeup as a new energy source that can be used to your advantage as a manager. If you harness this turbulence, you can channel it along productive lines and “torque up” the organization. “Job burnout” can become a problem. You have to be the spark plug. You have to serve as the cheerleader.


ENCOURANGE RISK TAKING AND INITIATIVE

Get the message across to everyone that you will be tolerant of mistakes, but intolerant of inertia. To put it differently, let people know that you don’t expect perfection, but you will require everyone to be independent thinking, decisive, and action oriented.

DON’T TRY TO COVER ALL THE BASES YOURSELF

First, it can keep you from spreading yourself too thin and becoming too scattered. Second, good delegation gives your employees a sense of involvement. Good delegation lets your employees feel a little more in control of circumstances and events.

CREATE A SUPPORTIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT

So concentrate on shaping employees’ behaviour, instead of grading people’s behaviour. Be a coach, not a judge or umpire. You should “catch people doing something right.”

“RIDE CLOSE HERD” ON TRANSITION AND CHANGE

In times of transition for people to make mistakes or let things slip through the cracks. So show better follow-up in general.

REBUILD MORALE

Make them feel valued. Help them develop a sense of belonging. Give them a “cause” that lends meaning to their day-to-day job routine. Employee attitudes and the overall work climate are important, for both tangible and intangible reasons.

PROVIDE ADDITIONAL JOB KNOW-HOW

Nobody likes to fail. They will more readily give up the old methodology and established practices if they have the know-how to do things the new way.

PASS OUT MORE “PSYCHOLOGICAL PAYCHECKS”

But there is no limit to the intangible rewards you can provide for subordinates. These “psychological pay-checks” require little effort on your part and cost the company nothing. They represent an excellent way for you to compensate your people for the extra effort required of them during times of transition and change.

“BEEF UP” COMMUNICATION EFFORTS

Good communication is a two-way street. Be a careful listener. Take more time with people. Be available. Ask more questions. Keep employees updated on a regular basis. Strive to be specific rather than vague, candid rather than guarded.

GO LOOKING FOR BAD NEWS

Make it easy for people to tell you those things you don’t necessarily want to hear. Don’t shoot messengers who carry bad news. Make it clear that the truth is welcome.

PROTECT QUALITY AND CUSTOMER SERVICE

Studies show that it costs five times as much to develop a new customer as it costs to keep an existing one. Make customer satisfaction the top priority. Things may be changing inside your company, but the need for satisfied customers never changes.

RE-RECRUIT YOUR GOOD PEOPLE

It’s the good swimmers who are most likely to jump ship. This can drain your work group of its most capable employees at the very time when you need good performers more than ever. Romance them. Tell them you want them. Make your winners feel important. It’s high risk management to assume that your key players are going to remain on the team just because they haven’t publicly announced that they plan to leave.

TAKE CARE OF THE “ME” ISSUES IN A HURRY

The longer your subordinates have to go without closure on these “me” issues, the more likely your work group will lose momentum. Get these questions answered in a hurry, so people can get on with business.

PLAY THE ROLE OF MANAGERIAL THERAPIST

Provide opportunities for people to ventilate. Allow some of your meetings to serve as “therapy sessions.” Instead of condemning employees or disallowing their feelings – instead of arguing, getting upset, or discounting their problems – let your people express themselves. It’s part of the “healing process.”

REDUCE THE LEVEL OF JOB STRESS

Make an effort to minimize surprises as much as possible. Give people advance notice of what’s coming. Bring some fun into the work environment to prevent things from getting depressingly serious (stress).

BE SUPPORTIVE OF HIGHER MANAGEMENT

Be keenly aware of your superior’s priorities, and adjust yours accordingly. Keep in mind that higher management can see things from a different perspective, and they usually have access to important information that you don’t have. This is not an argument for blind loyalty on your part, but rather for a willingness to give your superiors the benefit of the doubt.

Another aspect of being a good subordinate is having the guts to report problems to more senior management. Finally, be big enough to ask for help. You can be a better subordinate if you are not too proud, or too afraid, to let your boss know that you’re having trouble. Report the truth, all of the truth, instead of hiding your shortcomings or glossing over problems that are developing.

BE MORE THAN A MANAGER OR SUPERVISOR, BE A LEADER

It’s easy enough for the company to put you in charge to make you boss. They can give you a title as manager of this or supervisor of that. But the company can’t make you a leader. That’s up to you. Your job title is just a label. “Leader” is a reputation and you personally have to earn it.


Excerpts taken from The Handbook for Managing and Supervising Organizational Change
co-authored by Price Pritchett & Ron Pound.