Five Golden Rules of Effective Change Efforts: People

Ashley Harshak, Deanne Aguirre, and Anna Brown, leading organizational change experts at Booz & Company, offers five indispensable factors that make the greatest difference in fostering behaviors that are needed for successful transformations.

Underlying these five pointers is a heavy emphasis and importance of people in this equation of reaping the benefits of change efforts. Change is, at the heart of it, a people process, and people are creatures that are hardwired to defy resistance of status quo and adoption of new mind-sets and behaviors. Companies often overlook the people-oriented change process prior to rolling out a change management initiative. It is no wonder why two third of organizations grind to a half because of their failure to produce for hoped-for results. A successful business transformation efforts must capture the hearts and minds of people who need to operate differently to deliver the desired results.

What is Change Management? 
Harshak suggests that change management is both a capability and a set of interventions that deliver the people-oriented side of change effort. The main target of the change efforts are geared toward employees in all level of hierarchy. It helps embed desired behaviors to sustain the longevity  of the success of change efforts.

Five Golden Rules:
1. Understand and spell out the impact of the change on people. 
A clear-eyed assessment of the impact on its various employee groups is a pre-requisite to such a transformation efforts. This means identifying the type and scale of changes affecting each segment of employees. More importantly, this assessment allows team members to define what the change means to them personally.

A well-known global energy firm did exactly that when it produced a change impact analysis with a “heat map” illustrating the intensity of change for each group of employees, and a detailed description of the changes each role would need to deliver. As a result, the leadership team was able to focus and redirect the transformation program to address the challenges facing those in the roles most affected. Moreover, project teams identified areas of potential overlap and conflict in the impact of various initiatives. Finally, the analysis informed the plans and sequencing of the overall transformation program and became the basis for communications with managers. In cascade fashion, managers received the message from their supervisors and then delivered it to their teams.

2. Build an emotional and rational case for change. 

I often noticed already during my first day at work, making a rational case for change is done systematically and with great success. However, only few initiatives appeal to the people's emotional core. In actuality, it is the people's emotions where the strength of the real transformation lies. Therefore, the communication of such changes need to be targeted to each segment of the workforce and allow a two-way medium for interpreting the change. If you ask an employee to follow a creative way of doing work, you need to make a strong emotional case for the change so they become genuinely committed to the transformation. By providing every details of what will change - and what won't into the presentation allows leaders to paint a vivid picture for what the change means for the employees personally, not only why it benefits the business. 

3. Ensure that the entire leadership team is a role model for the change.

Senior leaders must be not only 'on top' of the change program, but also 'in front' of it by modelling the new behaviors they ask asking for their people to adopt and holding one another accountable for the initiative's success. Only by walking the talk, employees will take the new change seriously. 

An aligned and committed leadership team is the foundation for any major corporate undertaking. When executives lead by example, the impact can be profound. One senior director found that it was only after he introduced ongoing performance discussions with his direct reports that his team started to hold similar sessions with their own direct reports. This requires consistent attention, but that level of engagement will make the difference between success and failure.

4. Mobilize your people to 'own' and accelerate the change. 

The fact of the matter is most change efforts are done "to" employees, not implemented "with" them or "by" them. Although a formal structure and system is in place to pushing behavior change from the top, an informal culture left isolated may dig in its heels. Jon Katzenbach, calls the informal organization - the network of peer-to-peer interactions - vital for encouraging and motivating such desired change in behaviors. A delicate balance between the formal organization and informal organization must be in order. 

5. Embed the change in the fabric of the organization. 

Most change initiatives' sponsors declare victory prematurely, diverting leadership, commitment, and focus from the ongoing effort. To embed the changes, there should moments of discussion acknowledging the lessons learned. Also by investigating into how to engage and involve employees over the long term and how to institutionalize best practices to capture the full benefit of this change .


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