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Identify a change leader who has organizational change management
experience. Look for people who have helped with
mergers and acquisitions or significant business process changes.
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Have a clear vision and
concrete plan. The organization's
senior leadership must remain involved with any major change initiative, and change
management staff must step up early to understand management's vision.
-
Align with the change,
and be ready to support it. Change management teams
must spread supporters and change agents around the organization and groom them
to be advocates for change.
-
Develop training and
informational activities to support the business process change. Change management teams can alleviate some of the anxiety created
by change by sharing detailed plans via learning activities that will help
employees prepare for their new roles.
-
Communicate the change
message. Communicate,
communicate, communicate. You need to help employees through the change and
try to connect it to something employees care about.
-
Execute the change
management plans. From our research,
we learned that if the project manager and change manager work separately and don't
collaborate, the change management initiative will likely fail.
-
Celebrate short-term
successes. Establish milestones
along the way and celebrate with rewards, recognition and praise. Supervisors
should recognize the work of their individual direct reports and executives
should continuously communicate progress and publicly recognize people who have
made special efforts.
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Align your process improvement methodology with change management. Teams must take time to align
process improvement methodologies with selected change management approaches so
that key milestones link with key activities in change management.
-
Check the pulse of the
organization through continuous feedback data. Compliance audits demonstrate who is engaging in the new
process, but employees should also give feedback through online surveys, focus
groups and informal discussions held with stakeholders and supporters.
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Be focused and
disciplined and stay the course to sustain the new culture. Business change management must be constant and sustained through
continual reinforcement.
CLAIRE SCHOOLEY is a senior analyst at
Forrester Research. She will be keynoting at Forrester's Business Process Forum, September 22-23, 2011 in Boston, MA.
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