The economy changes, technology changes, your workload changes, and your customer base changes. No matter how much you wish you could stay in the same sweet spot indefinitely, it’s a given that your small business is changing all the time. Whether you are a business owner or an HR manager, you need to be ready to adapt to change so you can stay competitive in today’s economic and technological landscape. Change management is the process that can help you and your small or medium-sized business navigate change effectively.
Without a good change management plan in place, businesses fail. In fact, research shows that 70% of change management efforts fail. Reasons for failure vary. Some businesses lack a clearly defined strategy, while others follow a plan that is too rigid and inflexible. Some business leaders fail to provide effective communication to their team, and then have no plans to deal with resistance. You can prevent your business from becoming just another statistic by ensuring your change management plan is up-to-date and ready to navigate our times of great change. As a leader of your small business, learn your seven key responsibilities to help your company adapt to change.
Communicating the need for change and what you expect to happen during the change process helps paint the picture you want your stakeholders to see. A strong narrative helps others understand your reasons for changing your business, and it can effectively address the uncertainty and resistance that is sure to crop up among your employees, customers, and other stakeholders.
When announcing any type of change within the business, you need to ensure others have a way to communicate back to you. Building a two-way communication channel could involve:
When emotional responses hit you hard, you can manage them better by empathizing with the people who are anxious about the upcoming changes and reassuring them that all changes will continue to be communicated as they happen. The fact that you are keeping your employees and customers informed goes a long way to alleviating worries.
Part of your communication should be a clear, well-defined vision statement of your change strategy. An effective vision statement lets others know the purpose for the change, why the change adds value to the business, and how you see the future of the business. MindTool’s Pyramid of Purpose can help you create an effective change strategy, beginning with your vision, then clearly defining your goals and objectives, creating a list of actions you will take, and finally defining who needs to know about your strategy.
It’s important to integrate your change strategy into your business’s existing vision and goals. Your change strategy should not be a separate project. Instead, make sure it encompasses every aspect of your organization. This helps ensure that your change strategy is aligned with your business goals, so everyone is working toward common goals throughout the change implementation.
Do not make the mistake of ignoring the people side of change. Leaders need to recognize how people struggle with changes in the business. Any type of change will make an impact on employees, vendors, customers, and other stakeholders. If you can address the real issues that these people are facing as you make changes to the business, you can cultivate an atmosphere of support rather than resistance.
Furthermore, when stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process that goes along with change, they feel included and necessary. Consider using the 5 D’s of Change:
Leadership during a business change is not just about making the plan happen. It’s also about being a model for your teams to follow. As a leader, you have the power to create a positive work environment that inspires others to embrace the future. To lead change by example, practice these behaviors:
“Change cannot be put on people. The best way to instill change is to do it with them. Create it with them.” ~ Lisa Bodell
Change is going to take resources. You need to allocate time to execute your change strategy, technology to make it happen smoothly across all levels of your organization, people to lead the way, people to perform the new tasks, and money to support the change. Employees may be worried that the new changes will mean more work than they can handle or cuts to the budget that they rely on to complete their tasks. You can alleviate these worries by ensuring all the resources are in place and ready for the change to happen.
To ensure all your resources are ready for your strategy, lead from the top down. This means your leadership should be on-board with the changes and fully aware of what is going to happen and how change will be accomplished. Encourage them to make their teams aware of the changes, preparing them for disruption. This micro-leadership can help your business maintain momentum as you implement your plan.
You will also need to lead the change from the bottom up. Foster a culture of collaboration by empowering employees to drive the change. When you involve everyone in your strategy, you are likely to gain more respect and a willingness to make the strategy work.
As you implement your change strategy, you need to keep a close eye on how it is working. Monitor your strategy’s impact by tracking KPIs. When you know what worked and what didn’t work, you can adjust your strategy. Key metrics to track include:
Feedback loops are another way to help you guide the change you desire. Collect feedback, analyze it, act on it, and follow up to ensure it produced the result you expected.
Successful change management does not happen all at once. It happens bit by bit as you adjust and finetune your plan. When you have a system in place for iteration and improvement, you can adapt changes in a sustainable way. The iterative process can include a cycle of tracking, getting feedback, making adjustments, and refining your plan.
As your business changes and grows, so should your leadership team. Create a leadership growth plan that is personalized to your company to help you manage change. To build a leadership growth plan:
As you grow your leadership team, stay focused with SMART goals, using various types of feedback mechanisms, and providing ongoing support to your team throughout the process.
A well-designed leadership development plan can provide your business with leaders that have the targeted skills you need to effectively implement change. It can also boost the confidence of your existing leadership team, as it provides the entire team with balance and better focus.
When you treat change leadership as a skill that can be learned, not a task that must be accomplished, you can dig into the learning experiences that you need to make change effective. From communicating clearly and honestly to your stakeholders to allocating resources to tracking the impact of your change efforts, you have an ongoing responsibility during the change process.
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