Step 1 – Describing the change
Step 1 comes after the Discovery process. I have my Discovery ‘Questions’ down to about 30 questions now and that is something else I will be talking about later on.
In this stage we give a clear description of the change/s in terms that help people evaluate its scale & value
- Short, sharp and focused What, Where, When, Who and Why/Why-now with a sense of dissatisfaction with the current and urgency from the chief Change Champion/s
- Give a clear outline of what will Start, Stop, Continue
- Have experienced, trusted managers and front line supervisors describe the How
- Use terms that enable effective understanding and evaluation of what the change means to and for everyone involved
- Provide straightforward benefits for customers, the organization, employees and colleagues
- Put the change into context with other related and unrelated changes underway and give a sense of relative priority and expectation.
What interests me is the way we need to negotiate an acceptance of the impact of change process itself. People are dealing with so much that they cannot just add another set of tasks to their workload. It means we need to slice and dice the communications, training and support much more. It also means we have to make a contract with the users which spells out the commitments and deliverables. Strong benefits and a hefty dose of sponsorship are not enough to persuade users to give their time and energy to a change. How are you dealing with this aspect of change management?
