Step 3 - Strategy for Change
| The first job for the change team is to
understand what the change involves, and why it is happening. They then need to tackle
three areas - |
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1. The timetable for change
- how quickly will the change be introduced? Specifically, will there be a
pilot/transition period for people to get used to the change. (NB there is a considerable
difference between a trial period to see if a change will work, and a transition period to
help people into a change. Both are appropriate, but the change team and the leadership
need to be totally clear on the purpose of any trial or transition period.) This decision
will be influenced by the degree of resistance anticipated.
2. The degree that people will be involved in the change process:
For some changes, the change team should aim for complete transparency - the process of
introducing the change is so well managed, that the organisation barely notices. In this
case the organisation should still be told of the change and the reasons for it to avoid
feeling manipulated.
3. Identifying learning that can be taken from
previous experiences within the organisation, or from similar changes introduced
elsewhere. Whilst we need to be careful of mapping the issues of one particular situation
onto another, there are many more similarities between situations than we often give
credit for!
If the change team is being sponsored by a management group or a leadership team, the
proposed strategy for introducing the change should be agreed with them.
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