One of my professional development goals for this year is to handle a change management process. So let’s dig into change management.

When do I need change management?

As a manager, you’ll need to leverage change management skills any time something new happens. It’s a matter of degrees, where some changes are small and others are considerably larger, but change management will be helpful whether you’re setting a new goal, adopting new technology, or completely pivoting the business.

How do I prepare?

Before your change management process, make sure you can answer these questions:

Why are we changing?

Your team should have a good understanding of market trends, what the competition is up to, how is technology influencing what is possible, and other external factors that could necessitate a change.

How do we need to change?

Based on you and your team’s understanding of what’s happening out in the world, that will inform what sort of change needs to happen and how.

Things to watch out for

Are you too focused internally?

When you get into change management and you’re thinking about why the change needs to happen, don’t be so shortsighted that you only think internally. The worst way to think about it is “because my boss said so.” It’s important to think about what was possible when the decisions were originally made, and what is possible now that we’re going into a change management process. In my case, a lot of decisions were made in an era where my function’s work was very manual, and the most automation we did without software developers were spreadsheet equations. Now that we’re deep into the age of AI and the technology and available tools are maturing, we need to think about what that means for the way we work, how teams interact, how fast we can deliver customer value, etc. The question is very broad, given that the fundamental way we work has changed and “what is possible” is changing rapidly.

I have conversations with friends in other industries that are all feeling the ground shift under them, but the larger more established companies will be slower to adapt. For smaller teams, we can adapt faster, and that is a strategic advantage. A well handled change management process could mean being months ahead of competitors in terms of adopting new technology, reducing costs, and significantly improving the leverage of the function within the company.

Are you too complacent?

Is your team stuck in its ways? Do you answer most questions around your processes like “well that’s how we’ve always done it”? In these situations, you may be holding back your team from changing for the better. Just because everything is working fine right now, doesn’t mean the team isn’t vulnerable to disruption by changes in the company, changes in the competition, or changes in available technology.

Are the right people involved?

Who are the team members who will champion this change? Who is influential with other members of the team? If you identify key stakeholders, you can meet with them and lay the groundwork for the change. Discuss the change in depth with this team to identify the main concerns or blockers, so that you can address them and build Active Commitment with this group.

Wrapping Up

At this point, you’re almost ready to start putting together the plan. Next week we’ll go over data collection and discuss the insights you can gather before you put together your pitch.