Navigating change: A guide to successful organisational transformation
Implementing any major shift naturally stirs up uncertainty, making it vital that leaders upskill to be able to execute organisational change management with confidence.
Few of us find change easy, even when it’s to seize a new opportunity, embrace emerging technology or simply to improve the status quo.
“Many different factors precipitate change in organisations – from external things such as shifts in the economy and customer demand to internal things such as changes in senior leadership,” says Dr Belinda Allen, lecturer in the Department of Management & Marketing at the University of Melbourne.
“A lot of the time change is not planned, which adds complexity,” says Allen , who delivers the University of Melbourne’s online micro-credential Leading Change. Getting across the key issues of organisational change management and strategies to successfully lead through it puts you in a position to make even significant shifts a positive experience for all.
Prioritise great communication – and keep talking
The seeds for organisational change usually sprout in the executive team. Carefully tending their growth through the organisation seems obvious, but often this long game is neglected, which inevitably leads to problems.
“Organisations can make the mistake of a big song and dance at the start – announcing the change with lots of fanfare,” says Allen. “But then as the change goes along, that communication dissipates and people are left wondering, ‘what’s happening, when is it going to happen, has anything actually happened?’. Consistent communication is absolutely fundamental for effective change management.”
And it needs to run on a two-way channel. Top-down change management went out with Y2K and leaders adhering to old models will fail. Genuine consultation across the organisation will both engage employees and unearth fresh ideas about how to execute the change effectively.
Encouraging and managing that dialogue with internal and external stakeholders is a critical part of the change process and calls for specific skills around transformational leadership.
Build a coalition of the willing
Learn from the successes – and mistakes – of those who’ve gone before you and develop your understanding of key models for evaluating and implementing organisational change.
“Kurt Lewin’s three-stage change model is the original model for effective change management, developed in the 1940s,” says Allen. “Subsequent models have built on that, including Kotter’s 8 Steps for Leading Change.” The online short course Leading Change looks at those models, and others.
Allen says the common guidance is planning. “Before you attempt to change anything, you need to know how to create a sense of readiness for change in the organisation,” she says. “Getting your people involved is one of the most powerful things you can do in terms of minimising resistance to change. When people feel that they’ve had some input, they’re more likely to get on board and be committed to the change.”
Gaining a good understanding of the models lets you draw from them as needed to create the right framework for your own successful change management.
“Kotter talks about creating a coalition of the willing,” says Allen. “These are people who aren’t necessarily in leadership roles, but they’re either going to be significantly affected by the change or you’ve identified them as being predisposed to being energised by change. Bringing those people together to work on the design and the implementation of the change is highly effective. Change should never be the responsibility of a single individual – it’s much more likely to be successful when it’s team-based.”
Develop a change mindset
While plotting out change is the ideal, being forced to shift gears quickly is more common – and more difficult.
“Skilling yourself up and equipping yourself with strategies, tools and frameworks for successful change management will enhance your ability to deal with the unexpected curveballs that are thrown at us all these days,” says Allen.
It starts with analysing your organisation’s readiness for change. Assessing your company’s preparedness before change is mooted enables you to be more agile, assured and able to build trust.
“You need to understand your organisation’s capacity to implement change before you start,” says Allen. “In the course, we study how you make that assessment and the strategies you might use to enhance the existing levels of readiness for change.”
When leaders show that they are across all of this, it increases the probability of successful organisational change – which is a win-win. “When it’s done well, that has a positive impact on people’s preparedness to embrace future changes.”
Own up to missteps and celebrate small wins
On the flipside of effective change management is the chaotic company upheaval many of us have experienced in our working lives.
“If you mess up your organisational change, there are repercussions for future change efforts as well,” says Allen. “When the next proposed change comes along people, understandably, say, ‘Oh, here we go again – this will be a disaster, too!’. You get a heightened resistance to change.”
Knowing that change management is complex and difficult, the strategy for when it goes wrong is disarmingly simple. “You need to own up to it,” says Allen.
When you’re embarking on the next round – as you must – don’t pretend you’re going in with a blank slate. “Acknowledge mistakes and talk about how and why and how this change is going to be different.”
The ‘small wins’ strategy celebrates success and builds belief.
“Never try to do it all at once – break it up,” says Allen. “When people see small wins coming from organisational change, it builds momentum and motivation for you to implement the subsequent stages of the change. That’s far more effective. It’s also lower risk because if it isn’t successful, it’s contained. You can tweak it before you roll it out to the whole organisation.”
These strategies will set you – and your organisation – up for successful change management.
Create a fearless culture across your teams
A workplace culture where people feel listened to – even when they’re sharing bad news, unpopular opinions or risky ideas – underpins long-term success and talent retention.
Allen says leading to promote psychological safety across your organisation’s team is essential to creating such a culture. Achieving it delivers a more innovative, agile and respectful workplace.
“In 2012, Google embarked on a massive study analysing 180 teams from across the company,” says Allen. “It was called Project Aristotle and it found that the biggest differentiator between average and excellent teams at Google was psychological safety. It’s a workplace where I am valued for who I am, and not just on a good day, where I can be open and honest, and where we talk about failures as well as successes.”
This powerful study built on existing academic research supporting the value of ensuring psychological safety across an organisation, says Allen.
“It’s the sense that team members can speak up, particularly around things that possibly run counter to the accepted wisdom or dominant view, and that no one will ridicule or reject their opinion,” she explains.
“It also goes to a culture where people feel safe to put their hand up if they made a mistake without fear of some sort of retribution.”
This all adds up to motivated, engaged and high-performing teams – and a learning culture. “It promotes innovation, creativity and risk-taking,” says Allen, who takes learners through how to build psychological safety in depth in Leading Teams, another University of Melbourne online micro-credential.
Leaders who role model their own vulnerability and owning up to mistakes make other people feel more comfortable adopting that behaviour. “Leaders can sometimes create a bit of a positivity culture where they only want the good news,” says Allen. “It means people can be fearful of being the bearer of bad news, which often leads to mistakes being missed and problems escalating. Creating a culture where people feel that they can share things that aren’t going right early on is really beneficial.”
Share leadership throughout the organisation
When you truly lead your company as a team, you unlock the strengths of the entire squad. It’s known as shared leadership or distributed leadership. “At its heart, it’s the knowledge that leadership responsibilities are spread among multiple people,” says Allen.
“Bottlenecks can occur in organisations if a leader is adhering to a very traditional approach to leadership and controlling all of the decision making. It can mean there’s a significant time lag in getting stuff done and given the fast-paced environment that we all operate in these days, that’s highly problematic.”
Effective leaders practise next-generation delegation.
“There are so many different capabilities and skill sets needed to run an organisation these days and it’s unrealistic to expect that one person has them all. It’s up to leaders to identify the people who have strengths that they don’t have and make the best use of those by truly delegating that responsibility.”
Get ready to lead for change
The University of Melbourne’s online micro-credentials combine the flexibility of private study with the value of shared discussion with other learners, who come from a broad range of industries. Leading Change requires about 42 hours of study across four weeks, which is a similar time commitment to Leading Teams.
“We encourage learners to develop their self-awareness and self-reflection,” says Allen. “Often in sharing their experiences, either in our live webinars or via online discussions, they’ll have a real a-ha moment. Throughout these two short courses, we work through how to put the best organisational change strategies and team effectiveness models into practice.”
Are you eager to prepare yourself to lead your teams through change? The University of Melbourne’s micro-credentials in Leadership, management and change are ideal for busy professionals seeking future-focused leadership skills that build both individual and organisational success.