TL;DR: Rules of Change
You should hold these truths to be self-evident.
Welcome to TL;DR. This is where we take a post from The Technician’s MBA and summarise the key points in less than 1000 words. The main post will contain more information regarding the points we highlight, and perhaps more than we summarise here; however we want to give you a quick read that can help peak your interest for those times you where you only have a few minutes to spare.
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The Rules of Change
We are going to use the definitions outlined in a previous TL;DR and from the main article in this TL;DR; so if there are any unfamiliar terms you can check these to find them.
Here are some fundamental rules that I have learned and use as guiding principles regarding change and how to enact change.
The rules of change:
Businesses/People typically don’t like change; they will tolerate it if they believe it will be worth it in the end and they see progress to towards that goal.
If businesses/people experience minor setbacks or don’t see continual progress, they will question the value of the change.
If businesses/people do choose to change, lasting change happens slowly.
If businesses/people are forced to change, they will try to change back.
In times of stress, businesses/people will try to return to tried and tested methods or approaches assuming correlation implies causation.
These may seem fatalistic, but the more you think about them, the more you realise their accuracy. Take changing your current diet and exercise regime to lose weight:
You probably won’t like dieting or increasing exercise, but you’ll keep doing it if you see weight loss or changes in your body.
Then, one week your weight loss stagnates, or your the same exercise feels harder one week; you start to question if it’s even worth it.
If you try extreme diets or exercise plans that are not sustainable you will likely revert to your previous diet, but if you gradually change your diet and exercise regime you are more likely to maintain this lifestyle.
If you are forced to do it, you will try and sneak the things you enjoy and as soon as you are no longer forced to do it you probably won’t keep it up.
Finally, when you are stressed or something happens it is likely that you will revert to old habits and return to dieting when things normalise again.
How do I know this? Because I have experienced it myself, and I have seen others experience the same things. I could give you examples for smoking, drinking, cleaning, the list goes on; and the same is true for businesses.
This is why I mentioned earlier about breaking “Change Journeys” into smaller and more manageable steps. If you make your change journey a marathon with only one deliverable - reaching the “Change Goal” - you will experience “Change Fatigue”; breaking it down makes it easier to mitigate and manage.
In a future post we outline the example of changes in hybrid working brought about by the COVID-19 lockdowns and the impact of the 2023/24 economic downturn which follows this exact pattern.
Rules for enacting change
Be Compassionate: We need to realise that change is scary for some; people fear what they don’t understand, and fight what they fear - as an agent of change you are the embodiment of the change that they will fight.
Be Responsive: We need to be willing to change our plan to reflect the current circumstances and ensure we reach the goal we want to achieve.
Be Adaptable: We need to be prepared for resistance to the change we are wanting to enact, be sympathetic to their concerns, and adapt as necessary.
Be Prepared: We need to consider as many of the consequences that may arise from, and during, the change as possible and plan accordingly.
You can remember these rules for enacting change, because if you don’t your delivery of the change strategy will be CRAP (yes, this was intentional).
Now you might think that these rules are a load of crap, but I used to think that about all of change management before I realised its importance. The same holds true for these rules; the more you experience change in businesses, the more you will realise their value.
Out of all of them I would say the first is the most important. I said it in the subtitle for this post; the term “Change Management” will strike fear into the hearts of many. I think this is because they conflate change management with one particular type of change - the one that involves layoff and restructuring, when that is only one type of change that exists.
GTFYT
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Your Change Management Guide
Fair warning this is a long post with a lot of information within. The term Change Management scares many people when they hear it, and the length of this article may be intimidating; but once you are familiar with it you realise that done right, it shouldn’t be intimidating at all.