One of the most common things I hear business owners say about improving their processes and procedures is that they fear the resistance they think will come from their team if they make too many changes. It is not changing itself their teams will resist, but the uncertainty that comes with poorly managed change.
In my experience, people don’t fear change as a concept. In fact, they welcome it. Humans have an innate need for change. We intrinsically know that through change we are challenged, we learn, we expand and we get better. We also know that a lack of change leads to stagnation. Living things grow, and without change, people will experience the slow demise of boredom, depression, ignorance and self-imposed limitation.
One of the greatest obstacles to business growth is the entrepreneur who is held to ransom by the fears of their staff. It may take some training to rise up as a leader, but once you do, you can champion the leadership development of your people! Stretch them into new learning and ask them to develop more effective ways of doing things. These are the people who will drive your business to the glorious heights of success you have been chasing since you started.
If it’s certain your team need to make things better in your workplace, give it to them! Work these following seven steps into every nook and cranny of your company culture to make the change in your daring team. Establishing a set approach to every change will make uncertainty certain. Your people will look forward to exploring the wide horizons of the great unknown if they are confident you are setting them up for success along the way.
Here are the 7 steps you need to navigate change in your business. They will work to smooth out the bumps of change every time in every situation.
1 Plan It:
Develop a well-organised plan of how all the pieces of your business change will fit together, and make sure this plan includes a clearly communicated timeline, as well as storage locations for the equipment and resources required.
2 Assign It:
Fit the living, breathing humans into the organisational systems you’ve made to structure the change. Decide what needs to be done by real people, and what can be done by technology systems, tools and devices.
3 Make It:
Implement the step-by-step change plan, taking care to go forward deliberately, strategically and collaboratively. Communication across every area of the process is paramount, so strategies to facilitate this must be strategically implemented.
4 Break It:
Test the way this new change works in your real-world business setting. Look for the parts that are broken because don’t get the job done, or they don’t serve the people affected by the system.
5 Fix It:
Fix the new process to make sure it will work every time, for every person, in any situation. You will know it’s a good process when it produces the same desired results every single time.
6 Correct It:
Schedule ongoing corrections and reviews for the new process to keep it all running smoothly and up to date. Workplace change is only effective in the long term when it is understood that all things need to evolve and improve over time.
7 Reward It:
The parts of your new system or process that are operated by humans need to have supervision built-in. Track their performance, giving them support where necessary, so you find opportunities for acknowledgement and reward.
Simple as that!!
