Making Change Stick 

Getting your strategy right

Change in many circumstances can emote different feelings in a group of colleagues that ranges from excitement to fear. On such occasions we have to be mindful of the predominant group sentiment as it is the majority group sentiment that can mask outlying feelings around a change proposal.

1. Does everyone understand what we’re looking to achieve?
Saying it once in a meeting is not enough, have you validated that your colleagues understand and have interpreted your message correctly? Also consider how your team leaders share the message with junior staff members. Each department will face some of the same and different challenges, you must frame your message to your audience. Failure to frame the narrative for your audience will limit your audience engagement and understanding of your change proposal.

2. Is everyone really on board?
After proposing a change initiative to a group of people, it important that you speak with the key influences/decision makers. The dialog that is opened with others must be two-way and be held in a safe space. Failure to provide a safe forum for those that you need to make change happen could lead to resistance, delays and worse an eventual reversion back to the old ways. To ensure everyone is on board make sure the objectives and the end goal are clear.

3. Keeping up momentum.
Once you commence your change journey, it is important to set out milestones to track progress. Tracking progress can happen on multiple levels:

Senior management monthly meetings
- These meetings determine overall progress and where resource needs to be applied.

Team lead meetings
- Ensure that team leaders are on board and are reiterating your message.

Open door policy
- Let everyone involved feel that they can come to you should they have a question.

Go to the staff
- Do not expect staff to always come to you, go to them. Whilst an open door policy will attract some individuals, some may still not feel able to enter.

4. Creating milestones.
Where do you want to be and by when? Do not set the task and leave those “doing” to complete it. Plan to have checks at regular intervals to ensure you are on task and on time. Failure to schedule regular meetings will likely lead to change delay or puts change at risk of deviation. As the change lead, it is your responsibility to map out the journey to make it feel both achievable by being the exemplar and to be able to be seen as part of the “doing” process. Failure of the change leader to adopt new behaviours will mean that others will feel they can be exempted from following the new ways of doing. 

5. A framework for change success with DICE.
Change will never be easy, as humans we tend to resist change particularly when we are not seeing value in the change or that it requires additional effort. However there are frameworks that can help with deploying change and making it stick. Sirkin et al. (2005) proposed the used of DICE which stands for, Duration, Integrity, Commitment and Effort. Sirkin et al. (2005) argued that without the four DICE factors in place, change is less likely to be achieved.

Duration (D) Can be the total duration of short projects, or the time between two milestones on longer projects.

Team Performance Integrity (I) Marks the project team's ability to perform successfully, the specific emphasis here is on the ability of the project lead. Commitment.
 
Commitment (C) requires two levels of support
C1 observable backing from the sponsor and senior management for the change
C2 support from those who are impacted by the change

Effort (E) What level of effort will it require to implement the changes to go above and beyond business as usual? 

If you’re experiencing resistance to change in your organisation, VP Consulting are here to help facilitate change. We can support with:

1) Breaking down the change process and setting a timetable.

2) Helping to reframe the narrative for the resistant person or group.

3) Building two-way communication to understand change resistance.

Let us help get your team onboard

Questions, comments and requests are always welcome, click on Get In Touch below to send an enquiries.