Leading Change

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome. My name is Monica Tucker, and I'll be guiding you through the change management for leaders class today. Change management is a hot topic in the world as so many things are changing all the time in organizations, in our lives and in the world. We're in a place now where change is a constant, and in order to be a really truly effective leader in your organization, you're going to need to understand how to navigate through the emotional aspects of change , because everybody will be going through some emotional components of it as well as trying to understand how to now as a leader, guide people through that emotional process. My background is in change management. I had a career with KPMG Consulting and burying Point for about eight years, guiding large scale organisations through the change process. Now I teach the leadership on change management classes across the federal and commercial spaces here in Washington, D. C. I'm excited to bring this to you as an online class. It's I think the concepts are so relevant and so important in today's world that we're living in where so many things are happening so quickly with the advent of social media, 24 hour news cycles, information is at hyper speed these days. Anything that we change, the message gets out very quickly. The concern is that the impact on people is not always taken into account These days, change happens all the time, and we have to be nimble and adaptable enough to be able to respond to the changes that happen. But at in an organization, we have to also understand how to guide people through that process, knowing that there is going to be an impact emotional impact through that change. So in today's course, what will cover is the four stages of emotions that every single person will go through during a change process. And then the second thing will go through is how do you view as a leader? Have navigate through that change process, using a step by step example in case study, as well as a step by step process and how to move through that change? I'm looking forward to it. Let's get started 2. Curve of Change: So let's talk about the four stages of the change curve. All of these stages play out similarly across any change, whether it's a good change or bad change. And this is really modeled after Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who is an expert in the five stages of grief and even in the change management organizational development world. We model our stages of what people go through after the missed five stages of grief that Kubler Ross outlined. So the first stage here is what we talk about is denial. When we thought that talk about denial, we start looking at, um, the stage where people avoid any sort of issue. They really don't pay attention to what is going on. They may get an email about a certain topic, may just file it under full file folder and not really pay attention. They might pretend like nothing's happening and just go along with their day to day work, and they're really just not that engaged in Stage two resistance. They start fighting or fleeing the particular change Effort Fighting might look like gossip might be very strong resistance to the particular change in terms of argumentative, aggressive, not wanting to be involved in the change process or being very disagreeable in terms of what the change effort is, whereas the fleeing is where there's possibilities that the person is not paying attention and again staying more in that denial phase or starting rumors starting gossip starting to does not pay attention, not be involved so much in the work efforts. They don't want to be involved in the process. The third stage is exploration, and this is where we get to really focusing on, um, starting to sense that maybe this change isn't going away. And so maybe I need to start paying attention to what's going on in the organization. This could play out as starting to ask questions, starting to get involved in working groups, starting a, um, participate in the change effort to see really what is going on. And maybe maybe this will be OK. Um, and so they start participating a little bit in the work to try to see if there could be anything good in this in this process, recognizing that this change doesn't seem to be going away and the final stages commitment , this is where we start thinking through people who are fully engaged. They've gotten bought into the change process. They become very bought in and they understand that the the productivity goes up at this particular stage because they're fully bought and understand that this is the new way of operating in the organization and feel completely comfortable and confident that working together they could make this happen. 3. Curve of Change Exercise: Now that you've seen the curve of change, I want you to do a little exercise. Imagine any change that you're currently going through, whether it's in your organization or in your personal life, and I want you to think about where you are on the four stages of this curve. And I also want you to think about now people that you might be working with or who might be on your team or in your organization or in your life that are with going through this change with you and also imagine where they are on these four stages are they in Stage one Denial stage to resistance Stage three. Exploration or stage for commitment. As you think about yourself and the folks that are around you plot them on this chart and document where you think they might be on these four stages. The second thing I want you to do is actually to think about If you were leading these folks or really trying to influence them in a change effort, how would you move them through into Stage four Commitment because that's the ultimate goal is to get people committed and bought in and helping you move through this transition process to take a couple minutes, document your answers and we'll go from there 4. Leadership and Change: hello and welcome back. Now that you learned what the four stages of emotional process is for people going through a change, let's not talk about what does it take as a leader to actually navigate people through the change process? It takes a lot of skill and such an important thing for leaders. Thes days actually help people navigate through that process, even in a positive change in a perceived positive change, people will go through those four stages. So what can you dio? Let's just first get some statistics and understand what really positive change looks and feels like in an organization. The statistics show that 2/3 of change efforts fail 2/3. That means one in every three is succeeding, and that's a pretty low number now. The reason that changes failing in organizations is for one major reason have any ideas. Well, the biggest reason that change efforts fail. This is documented by John Qatar, one of the really famous names in the change field. He says that people start the process of change with the idea of implementing a certain change, a reorganization, a new boss, a new process, a new strategy, but what they don't take into account is ensuring that the people come along with the change. When I used to work at KPMG s, they used to say, Just build the technology and they will come. Maybe that's the case for some companies like Apple, but in our scenario, typically in organizations, there's a lot of resistance to change, and that's a normal part of the process. So we have to be a build in systems and tools to allow people to vent that frustration, come along through the stages and guide them through the emotional process of change. It also requires thinking about how do we make sure that the behaviors that people change in the process such that when they come into the organization, they actually feel that stepping into the organization, they can apply the skills of the new technology, the new process, the new strategy and that's the normal way of operating. That being said, we start focusing on the people. Leaders can really make an impact in organizations. There's lots of examples where change efforts have actually been implemented well, where the technology was actually introduced and through a step by step process of guiding and leaders through first, I'm getting a sense of what the process is and having them really creative strategy around it, helping the managers throughout the process Really guy be guided through that journey and then really using communications, training and other tools to ensure that people get enough information so that they want to come along with the process. I'm gonna walk you through a seven step process. It's gonna be the guide for how we can go through a change, and that's going to really help you as a leader, understand? And most important steps to elevating and ensuring the success of your change effort so that you don't become part of statistics of those that fail. Let's get 5. ADVANCE Model: welcome back. So let's talk about the leadership model that's necessary for leaders to progress and help their individuals, their employees through the change curve process. As we know now, many implementations have changed, do not succeed over 2/3 of them fail. So what can we do as leaders to ensure that we actually make process that we want to happen and be successful in the change that we're trying to implement? So we're gonna get introduce to you my model called Advanced Model. And as we're going through change, these are the top seven things that we need to think about as a leader in order to move the process through a healthy conclusion and really shift the behavior so that people are leveraging the change, Um, as the new behavior when they enter the organization. So the first step is adopting a guiding coalition. What does this mean? This means getting a good team together that you can actually bring together that will be champions for the process, and that can advance the change throughout the organization. So this could be a good mix of leaders and those who actually have influence in the organization that might not be specifically hierarchical leaders but can make the change happen. The second step is de developing an urgency for the change you have to make and sell the chain so that people understand why it's important, why they need to implement it and why they implicate to implement it. Now there's so much noise and organizations these days and in the world, and if we don't stick out with something that's really important and why it needs to happen , then people will start to stay in that denial phase or resistance because they're not seeing the urgency for why it needs to shift into something new. The third step is voicing the vision now. There were clear. We have to get clear on what the change really is. And as I used to talk, call it in our my KPMG days. We used to call it the case for change, and that really means what is the vision articulating the vision out to the organization, having them understand what it is, why it's important, what the benefits are when it's gonna be what it's going to happen and ideally, after some time, also what the impact of them is going to be as they get clear on the vision and that spread throughout the organization. They have some logic for why the change needs to happen. Step forest aggregate Implement your strategy plan and resource is now that you have a clear vision, you also have to get clear on the strategy plan. And who's going to do what? It's very important to start thinking through the details of the strategy and what how the implementation process will actually happen and plan it out before you start implementing. I know in our fast paced world we don't always have that time. But the more time and energy that you could spend up the up front planning and risk mitigation of anything that might happen along the way, the better off the implementation will be. The next step is after you started implementing the Strand strategy plan is noticed. The quick winds notice and articulate out to your organization. Often this happens in a pilot or a test process. We're starting to implement the change in small bite size chunks and then you can communicate back out to the organization what things are working. So people recognise that this change is actually happening and there's some positive benefits to it. Then six step is creating a culture for the change. Now that the change is starting to get implemented, ensuring that it lasts will happen through rewarding good behavior. Modeling the behavior that you want to see is the leaders so embodying the change that's actually going on in the organization and making sure that people understand that this change is going to happen on they could be open to coming along with change because you build trust and presence and authenticity in the organization and through the process. And finally, the last step is evaluate the progress, making sure that throughout this entire implementation of the change, not just at the end of the change process that you're evaluating and making sure that the implementation is happening in a way that employees are getting bought in their understanding, the need for change and there's they're willing and ready to adopt. The change one's as you're evaluating. If you notice anything that might not be working, that's where you can adjust and try to build in something new. So that's a seven set model called Advance, and it's a great tool to help leaders build and help their employees move through the change process 6. ADVANCE Model Exercise: Now that you know the steps of the advanced model, I want you to do a little exercise. Imagine a time that you've gone through a change in the recent past in your particular organization. Whether that was a new strategy, a new process being, um, implemented a new technology implementation, a new reorganization, a new product launch, whatever it is. And I want you to think through the steps of the advanced model. And again, those seven steps, starting with adopting a good and guiding coalition, developing an urgency for the change, voicing the vision, aggregating and implementing your strategy. Plan of resource is noticing quick winds, creating a culture for the change in evaluating the progress which of those were leveraged and that your change process, which of those were not leveraged. And why not? Do you think I would go back and really think through the process that that was implemented in your chip particular change process? And then now that you know the steps of the advanced model, second question is, how could you or your organization? What could you are organization have done differently now that you know the steps that could possibly lead to a good change process. Change can be hard as we know, so leveraging a model can be really helpful. Take a couple minutes and figure out what happened in your organization and leverage that advanced model. 7. Class Project using the ADVANCE Model: Welcome back. Now that you have learned the seven steps of the advanced model, you've actually applied it. Teoh change that you've gone through in the past. I want you to focus on a change that you might be leading or be a being a part of in your organization right now, whether it's you're getting a new leader, whether implementing a new strategy or a new technology, I really want you to think about the seven steps of this advanced model and think about how you can apply those seven steps in your organization as you move forward. And this is really your class project. If you can think about your change and really document what that is even documented here on the class page, that would be great. And then let me know. How did you focus on adopting a guiding coalition? How did you develop an urgency for that particular change? Right? How are you going to voice your vision into the organization so that people feel like they understand what is going on? And let me give you an example of how I was able to do this in my past experience back it. KPMG BearingPoint and even when I would do a change management consulting in the government these days. So when we've implemented a big technology program at a big, large scale government agency that had about 20,000 people that were guiding through organization, we're really started by harnessing a team adopting that guiding coalition of people that were partly the internal to the cloud of the government organization as well as partly are our client group that were able to come together and create a team that was going to lead this effort, for there's about 30 of US consultants and about 10 or 15 on the government side so that we could make sure that we could implement this accurately and appropriately and spread it out to those 20,000 stakeholders. We developed a sense of urgency because we were able to really sell that This was was an important technology that was going to help with the progress of safety and security and the organization and in the country, those government organization, as well as improve the speed and efficiency We voice the vision through, creating what we call it a case for change. At that particular time, the we realized that the current technology was not that effective. And so we created the case for change of what we needed to do was create a more effective and efficient technology that was also supporting the the security of the nation. We told them what the new process was. Those of more integrated technology solution were able to also tell them the timeline and when this was going to come out. So they had an idea of how, how and when it was going to impact. Then we work together to agree and implement the strategy and plan. We created a team dialogue where we could create a project plan and come together and document all the milestones dates. Resource is people that were going to be responsible so that we could really make sure that everybody was clear on what they needed to do when they need to do it. And we planned out for maybe six months to a year, not longer, if that's possible for you. That's also a way to start thinking through the steps and making sure that you can actually implement them. The next step was noticing the quick wins and this is where we were able to test in pilot some of the solutions by getting volunteers throughout the organization that we're able to practice. Give us input on the technology that we're creating, um, see demos and actually get trained on the tool to see if it was user friendly if it was applicable to the work that they were using and if it was something that they could actually implement. And they also gave us feedback when it was not that case, so that we could make changes along the way so that we could make it as effective of a tool as possible with riel live user information included in the process. We created a culture for change by having people that were bought into that process start adopting that change. Start leveraging the tool, um, as as quickly as possible and then also having them been champion for that process, to continue to other people by telling their friends helping support of mentor other people in the organization that might be going through that particular change of getting the new technology as part of their day to day work and really leveraging them as advocates for the solution to come forward and for the last up, evaluating the progress we were able. Teoh do focus groups and surveys and get qualitative and quantitative data throughout the process so that we were able to understand and know if are change. Management strategies were working as well as if the technology was being implemented in a way that people could understand. So now that we've heard about a real live examples that I have gone through, I want you to document for yourself change that you're going to lead or partake in and really document the seven steps of the advanced model and how you can lever to that in the work that you're going to do. Going forward. Thank you for participating. It's been a joy to be with you. And I look forward to hearing how you're using the advanced model. Thank you.