How to Support Change in Your Organization

Doing nothing is not an Option

Strictly speaking, the subtitle for this article is not entirely accurate since doing nothing is an option; it’s just not likely to be a very good one for almost all situations where change is occurring. Indeed I am sure most of you will have heard a variation of ‘Standing still is really going backwards’, the point being of course that whilst you are standing still, all your competitors are continuing to move forwards.

Why is change so significant, and what conditions do we need to create for organisational change to be successful?

On the demand side, customers and their needs and desires are continually evolving, for example from bricks and mortar shopping to online, from relying on product advice and information from sales staff and assistants to using specialist review sites and social media platforms to gain a deeper understanding of a particular product or service. Additionally, customers have recognized that product vendors and service suppliers often know things that they (the customer) do not know, and so have come to rely upon or even demand supplier assistance in determining the right solution components to purchase – particularly where their challenge is a complex one.

To cope with these behavioral changes, sales organizations have had to adapt their approach. On the supply side, as manufacturing and has moved off-shore and become more complex, organisations had to devise new ways to monitor stocks and manage ‘lean manufacture’ techniques. Let’s take a look at how this can be achieved.

The rise of customer data platforms has enabled organisations to track, measure and record the number of touch points along the customer journey, from initial contact to post-sales follow-up. These changes allow organisations to adjust purchasing decisions to market conditions more accurately, improve the user experience for their customers, and tailor marketing campaigns to meet the specific needs of niche customer segments.

What conditions need to be in place for successful change?

You could argue that this depends on what changes you are trying to achieve, but there are some core principles that will apply across most instances. Our recommendation is to start by defining what you are trying to achieve and what the internal and external drivers are for this initiative. Identifying motivation is often the key to the development of a successful strategy, and a successful change manager needs to develop and deliver their own PR campaign. Communication, to win hearts and minds is essential for successful organisational change because it’s people who change, not organisations,

If possible, include senior leaders as active and visible sponsors of the change. The power of their authority will lend credibility to the messages you are transmitting and is likely to help with faster and easier acceptance of those messages. Their involvement can help prevent resistance from taking root early in the change project lifecycle.

One hint here is to try to make your request to senior authorities something that is not too onerous or time-consuming for the senior stakeholder and is something that they can understand and quantify in their own heads. In other words make sure that your request is as simple as possible for them to fulfill, and that they know exactly what it is you are asking for so that they will feel OK about saying “yes” to it…

Involvement from the leadership team can also help impacted employees understand and accept the “why” behind the change. This strategy can also defuse resistance that can adversely impact the benefits in various ways later in the project.

One of the most significant causes of failure in technology implementations is poor communication. Making people aware of the reasons and need for change, especially among the most affected groups is a critical component for preparing the ground internally. People need to adjust emotionally to change, and providing clarity around both what the change is and why it will be occurring can really help them in this process.

Once you have recognised the need to change and identified what impact this change will have, you will need to determine how best to support that change through the business. Whether it’s introducing a new production workflow, a unique user experience interface on your website which generates the need for quicker response times and actions, or how teams communicate internally, your staff will need support and training to successfully implement new skills and behaviors and to become productive in them as quickly as possible…

Interventions need to be designed and scheduled ahead of time, their efficacy tested, and staff enrolled. These preparations will not only help to remove uncertainty but will increase the speed of adoption. Don’t underestimate the power of the status quo! Homeostasis is the natural inclination of any creature toward equilibrium and away from change; the inbuilt assumption that, even if the current situation is causing problems, the prospect of change will inevitably cause worry and stress, and if possible, should be avoided. This natural inclination to cling to existing norms (ie resistance to change) will need to be overcome. Research into the neuroscience of leadership by David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz has offered some interesting insights and potential remedies. Such insights may equip whoever is helming the project, be that the customer success manager or an internal manager, with the tools to deliver success. The research found that:

• Organisational change can be difficult to accept because it provokes sensations of physiological discomfort, so staff resistance may be more than just a knee-jerk reaction.

• Change initiatives based on the carrot and the stick approach rarely succeed in the long run.

• Expectation shapes reality; people’s preconceptions can significantly impact what they perceive or expect.

• Repeated, purposeful, and focused attention, in the form of tailored interventions, can lead to long-lasting personal evolution.

As an example, think about learning to drive. Those first lessons can be difficult and stressful as you are confronted with new experiences and processes.

As you grow accustomed, things start to ease, and you become more comfortable; before you know it, you are driving without being consciously aware of doing so. Then perhaps a change occurs, such as that you travel to another country where you must now change your current habits and drive on the other side of the road. Because your current ways of doing things no longer work, it becomes very easy at this point for the anxiety and stress to return. Put simply, trying to change any ‘hard-wired’ habits is difficult, and the key is understanding that individuals can have differing ‘mental maps’ of the same situation, which can directly influence their behavior.

A negative mental map of a change project will see only difficulty and trouble, while their colleague with a positive mental map may see opportunity rather than difficulty, even though both of them are observing and/or undergoing exactly the same change…

Large-scale changes in behavior require a similarly large-scale change in mental maps. Achieving this requires bespoke interventions, which allow people to motivate themselves, in effect, to change their attitudes and expectations more quickly and dramatically than they usually would.

This can be achieved by cultivating moments of ‘insight’ into how their working lives will be improved (or transformed if you’re feeling expansive) by the change project. Successful change is about placing people at the center of the project, as we discussed earlier, it’s people that change not organisations.

Begin by identifying the cause of the problem (Point A), then go on to determine what needs to change to address the issue, and finally what needs to be done to arrive at a successful outcome (Point B).

It is about mapping out what needs to be done to get from A to B, assigning roles and responsibilities with realistic deadlines, carrying out a training needs analysis, and designing appropriate and targeted training and support interventions.

Next, make sure you have identified the groups that will be impacted by the changes (directly and indirectly). Once grouped by types and levels of change, these impacted users can be communicated to. For each group, devise a communications strategy that fully explains what is happening and why, and that reassures them that their concerns have been heard and addressed.

One final point – keep in mind that most of the time, people can detect the difference between genuine interest and sincere concern for their own and the company’s ongoing welfare, and a more cynical effort to persuade them to do something that is not in fact in their own interests. Wherever possible be as honest and open as you can be about the situation, and use logical arguments to show the value of the change in its best light.

By following the above advice we hope you will be best positioned to make a positive impact on managing change within your own and your customers’ organizations. For more training on topics related to customer success management and for full certification programs to become qualified as a CSM please do visit our website at practicalcsm.com.