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So, You Want to Be a Change Leader
You may have been selected by your executive to initiate and see through some change program in your organization. Or you may have decided that the time has come to make your mark by dusting off the cobwebs in your workplace. However your change role came about, you have a challenging task ahead of you.
Consider this sobering thought. In spite of the importance of successfully implementing workplace change for maintaining your business’s competitiveness, most change initiatives fail to deliver the expected organizational benefits. This failure occurs for a number of reasons:
• absence of a change champion or one who is too junior in the organization
• poor executive sponsorship or senior management support
• poor project management skills
• hope rested on a one-dimensional solution
• political infighting and turf wars
• poorly defined organizational objectives
• change team diverted to other projects
Do you recognize one or more of these in your organization from previous initiatives? You have probably experienced already one major cost of such failure. The cynical and burned out employees left behind only make the next change objective even more difficult to accomplish. It should come as no surprise that the fear of managing change and its impacts is a leading cause of anxiety in managers.
Your first step in becoming a successful change leader is fully understanding your organization and matching the initiative to your organization’s real needs. This means not just adopting the latest management fad. Recognize that bringing about useful and meaningful change is fundamentally about changing people’s behavior in certain desired ways. It is not primarily about installing a new system or rearranging the organizational structure. If people in the end do not behave and work differently, then the money and time spent in “doing stuff” is wasted.
You will see from the above list of reasons for failure that lack of technical expertise is not the main impediment to successful change. Leadership and management skills, such as visioning, prioritizing, planning, providing feedback and rewarding success, are key factors in any successful change initiative. Concentrate on these skills that will help you get people on board and to keep them on board for the life of the project and beyond. Get your mentor or a training consultant to perform an honest gap analysis on your skill set and then get the coaching or training that you need.
Whatever change program you are implementing, one key area in which you need to pay close attention is the identification and management of your change program stakeholders. A stakeholder is any person with an interest in the change process or the outcome of your proposed change. Be politically savvy. Your stakeholders will bring a mix of competing interests and will often act to further their own power, influence and survival. An added challenge for you as change leader is that such political maneuvering is often disguised as impartial and rational argument. Think about who are your major stakeholders. Think about what you will say to them to get each of them on side. When you have done that, write up a stakeholder communication plan and make sure you follow through.
Another essential activity you would do well to not neglect is setting clearly defined and measurable objectives. Goal setting done well engages stakeholders and commits them to the program. Other benefits include focusing effort to where it is important and providing a yardstick for measuring program success. Are your program’s goals fuzzy and hard to put a finger on, or are they specific and measurable? Do they link to the strategic objectives of your organization? Get all of the key stakeholders to work with you in devising the goals that will define the success of your program. Getting their input during the initial stages will give them a genuine “stake” in your program.
Fundamentally, it is people and not money or infrastructure that will make your organizational change happen. Change initiatives fail where roles and responsibilities are left unclear or not agreed. In organizations with a toxic performance culture, many employees and managers spend much of their time and effort in hiding from responsibility. What are the key roles and responsibilities for bringing about the needed change in your area? Have you identified the key tasks for each person belonging to each of the four key change role groups: Change Driver, Change Implementer, Change Enabler and Change Recipient? Selecting the right people for the right roles is also critically important. Find out all you can about selecting, leading and managing teams.
I mention teams here because no matter what your change program is about, most likely the people working in the various change roles will not be working in isolation. More and more, results can only be achieved through people working collaboratively – in teams. Are your teams of the optimal size of around five to eight members? Is each team being led by the right team leader? Do they have the necessary technical and interpersonal skills? One reason why teams are much more productive than individuals working in isolation is that team members leverage off each other’s strengths and compensate for each other’s weaknesses. So, do your teams have the right balance of natural working styles? There will be times when one or more of your teams get stuck. When they hit a brick wall, make sure that you have a strategy in place for moving them forward. As you have already guessed, a permanently stuck team leads to a permanently stuck change program.
All this talk about the value of teams highlights the importance of training in skilling up teams and bedding in change. Many organizations, however, fail to benefit from the resources spent on training. Soon after the training is completed, employees continue to cling on to the old way of doing things. Review how successfully your organization is using training to improve people capability. Ensure that your change program has a well-articulated training plan based on a thorough analysis of skill gaps. I said that successful change is about changing people’s behavior. So, make sure that your training programs focus on behavior change and are not simply about delivering the most content in the shortest possible time. To help bed in the new behaviors, budget and plan for lots of back in the workplace support. Change will not happen if your managers do not actively support the training. Make sure that they “walk the talk” and are not simply feigning approval in front of the executive.
Even if your training is well delivered and supported, a proportion of your employees, customers and suppliers will resist your change efforts. Unless you have a well thought out strategy for dealing with negative reactions, these resisters will wear your program down until it fizzles out or ends with a bang. Find out which of your resisters are actively fighting out in the open and which are working from the underground. Sometimes the reasons given for resisting change are a smokescreen. In these cases, you will need to do some digging to reveal the real reasons for the resistance. In some instances, resistance is a natural reaction to the proposed changes. Help these people work through the psychological process of denial, resistance and finally acceptance. Importantly, develop a strategy before implementation for identifying sources of resistance and for turning it around.
You have before you a huge task fraught with uncertainty, but filled with incredible opportunity. The above guide to being a triumphant change leader is not the last word on how to bring about successful organizational change. In fact, it is just the beginning for you. Read all you can about leading, coaching and influencing people through change. Your most important and rewarding lessons, though, will be learned as you apply your new found knowledge to your real-life change initiatives. I suspect that the most important lesson that you will learn is that to be successful your change program must not be your change program. I wish you well on your journey.
More infomation at WikipediaHow to Think More Clearly
The art of clear thinking is a learnable technique that will help you to sharpen your mind and allow you to cut through rhetoric and evaluate the reasoning (if any) behind the words.
To initiate this process, I want to show you six common fallacies, which blur accurate analysis of ideas.
Learn them and apply them every day.
Democratic fallacy
Unreliable reasoning that stems from the idea that the “majority opinion” is a source of truth and a reliable guide for action.
This is a very dodgy way to discover “Truth”
For example;
Imagine a passenger aircraft is having engine trouble.
Would it be right for the pilot to hold a vote as to whether they should attempt an emergency landing?
If not, why not?
Is the majority opinion in the office a reliable guide to intelligent action?
Can a million people be wrong?
Be careful if you are tempted to reinforce your argument with the cry “everyone else thinks so, too.”
Correlation-cause confusion
Correlation-Cause confusion is a common trap that people fall into. Just because two things occur at the same time does not necessarily mean that one caused the other.
It is a mistake to treat a correlation as a causal connection
If I put on my lucky ring, and I go out and find a ten pound note, did the ring cause it to happen?
If a new boss comes to work and the sales next month go down, what does it mean?
Getting personal
Getting personal is the mistake of dismissing an idea because of the person suggesting it.
Imagine an overweight scientist has done research to prove that exercise reduces the risk of heart disease.
You could be tempted to say, “What does he know? Look at the state of him!”
Or you could say “He should practice what he preaches” and dismiss the valuable idea.
Halo effect
Halo effect is the reverse of the above. It means that you give extra credibly to an idea because of the person.
For example Elvis Presley was asked whether he thought the Americans were right to be at war in Vietnam.
He wisely answers ” I don’t want to get into that. I am an entertainer. Ask me about my music”
I remember a radio programme asking agony-aunt Claire Raynor what she thought about the state of the criminal justice system in England and Wales.
What specialised knowledge does her opinion carry?
Separate ideas from the person proposing them and evaluated an idea as a “thing” in its own right. Determine if the idea can act as a guide to intelligent action.
Arbitrary assertion
Is an unsubstantiated statement of belief with no principle, reasoning or sensory evidence to support it.
It is a mistake to grant plausibility to an assertion simply because it is forcefully delivered or repeated.
Frequency and volume should never take the place of logic in your decision to accept an idea as true.
Napoleon once quipped “Repetition is my strongest argument” (and then lost 250,000 in his disastrous Russian campaign)
Equally, it follows that you should avoid trying to convince someone else by simply becoming louder and more passionate. Instead strive to make your reasoning inescapable.
Gamblers fallacy
Is the mistaken belief that your chances of winning increases the longer you play.
This is a false idea.
If you are doing the wrong thing it makes no difference how long you do it. It still will not work.
If your current plan has not been yielding any meaningful results, it will not change fortunes tomorrow.
* Change your ideas.
* Change the plan.
* Change the actions.
* The results must and will change.
Critical reasoning to develop clarity of thought will cause you to do three things:
You will:
* Listen more intently
* Ask more questions
* Think more before you make your decision
All of these will help you get better results
Four step formula for constructing an argument
1. Make sure that the reasons/evidence you offer are relevant to the conclusion. (Ensure your reasoning has no fallacies).
2. Is your conclusion the best based on the reasons or evidence? Ask, Is this conclusion justified.
3. If your conclusion is for some new action or policy, can the policy be carried out practically?
4. Consider the counter arguments that could weaken your position. Make sure you have accessed all relevant information.
Chris Farmer is the leader of The Corporate Coach Group, and a publichsed author in Business Coaching. His training courses through the Corporate Coach Group have helped hundreds of managers become immediatly more effective.
More infomation at WikipediaProject Management Training: Warning Signs That You Need One
When projects do not make it to deadlines, there are many things going on behind the scenes. As an accidental manager, you are tasked to keep the boat on an even keel with few resources and people. Project management training can help you man the ship effectively and take on more projects.
When Do You Need Project Management Training?
The boss has tossed you a small scale project, which turns out to be a titanic assignment for you because you do not have the skills to manage different capabilities and organize the whole show. Yet you take on the task hoping you pass muster and reap accolades for a job well done. You are one of the thousands of befuddled managers needing project management training.
Here is why you need project management training:
* You cannot produce a credible project plan
* Your project goes helter-skelter in different directions
* Your risk management techniques are outdated or implausible
* You cannot estimate work schedule confidently
* Your monitoring tools are inadequate or inapplicable
* You cannot run a motivated team
* You lack leadership skills
Can tell your boss no? Or do you take the project and hit the books because your boss expects you to effectively run a project with few people and resources, on a tight schedule, and get maximum results?
What Is Project Management Training?
The project management training educates project managers to foresee dangers that may derail project plans and activities. They should be able to minimize risks and solve problems head on to make sure that the project is completed successfully notwithstanding the risks. If you had the opportunity to have this training early on, no projects would be too big or difficult to handle.
The training also takes up management of IT skills when overseeing a project. This is a convenient and faster way to keep tabs of what is happening to all actors participating in the project. Instead of lugging journals, logbooks, and calendars, you log on to your PC and look at the worksheets of everybody to check how the work is going.
Knowing the IT part of project management training is just an aspect, but the bigger picture is effectively managing resources and meeting the project deadline because extended or delayed project activities incur more expenses, and the company loses revenues.
Why is the Project Management Training Important?
Projects, big or small, need a good manager to keep the project going on schedule. There is the competition to think about and the revenues to be earned from the project. During the course of the project, there will be slip ups or the project may go full steam ahead; a good manager will answer the following questions:
* What factors contributed to the success and failure of the project?
* What were the frequent problems that cropped up and why?
* How much resources were used and how were these used?
* Were resources available at the right time or not, and why?
* Were the skills required available and competent?
* What were the lessons learned?
* Were all aspects of project implementation documented accurately?
* Did management respond to issues quickly?
Project management training will help you see the big picture. The questions mentioned earlier are your guideposts to become an effective manager; hence, the training is important on two counts - career advancement and project success. Need you ask more?
Don’t pass up project management training. You can always get PMI exam prep to help you hurdle your PMI exam. Get more details from threeo.ca now.
More infomation at Wikipedia