Leading Change Within Your Organization

Leading Change. Every organization will institute a change, some companies change all of the time in order to attempt to improve. Not all of these changes work. Some fail because they are not well thought out, others fail because they are not well executed.
The need for change can come about for a number of reasons. Two basic originations are: the business recognizes the need for change in order to improve or be competitive, an employee recognizes that a change is needed in order to make his/her department better or more productive. In either case, if you are ever tasked to make change happen in your organization you should be aware of the many intricacies involved and learn to address them in order for the change to happen and for your own success.

Leading Change:

1. Recognize and understand the need for change.
2. Understand the ramifications of the change throughout the business.
3. Understand the people affected by the change (some people will have more work, some people may lose internal power, some people will perceive the move as detrimental to their personal interests, etc...).
4. Obtain buy-in from the business with defined milestones and dates.
5. Gather a straw man for the change to understand how it will affect the business, how it will be implimented and who the players will be in the execution of the change.
6. Prepare an "elevator speech" in order to quickly convey what the change is, why the change is, who will be affected and how you will measure it.
7. Communicate the change across the company.
8. Allow an avenue for employees to provide feedback about the change and give them an opportunity to improve the process or complain about it.
9. Set up metrics to measure the effectiveness of BOTH the change and it's implementation.
10. Follow through on the change providing progress on the change throughout the business.