The month of May has passed us by and left us some inspirational articles, so let me catch you all up on what you’ve missed. These are among the best articles that I have read lately covering a variety of aspects of Change Managementaspects of Change Management, ranging from breaking change into small phases, the importance of training and how best to lead your team.
1. DRIVING CHANGE BEGINS HERE NOW
Mike Lehr gets us started this month with his incredible article on how to drive change and the key factors on how to make your change strategy work. I enjoyed how he breaks down the change process into stages and explains it perfectly using this simple graph.
Mike explains that the secret to making change succeed, is through breaking the change down into stages – rather than implementing all the change at once, rather try and break it into stages of change.
2. 3 Stages Of Successful Change Management
The bottom line of this article by Mark Murphy , is that a huge number of Changes fail due to failure to prepare your team for change. He makes the case that human beings are creatures of habit and most people fear the uncertainty of change, a claim which I feel holds much truth. Which is why it is so important to get the majority of the employees behind the change. Mark writes that the way to do this is to move from the present state to the future state by understanding the three stages he calls the “Why, Where, and How” of change.
Why Do We Need To Change? Where Is This Change Taking Us? And How Will We Get There?
If people understand these 3 fundamental aspects, they will be much more likely to support the change.
3. THE LINK BETWEEN INDUSTRIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY, ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT, AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Something a little different to my usual articles that I post, I came across this academic article by Steve Nguyen, PH.D. on the differences between Industrial Psychology, Organization Development and Change Management. Like the diagram below, it shows where Change Management fits into the Organizational Psychology hierarchy and where the different areas of responsibility overlap.
Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology
⬇︎
Organization Development (OD)
⬇︎
Change Management
A great read! Would highly recommend it!
4. To Win the Civil War, Lincoln Had to Change His Leadership
A great article by Vijay Govindarajan and Hylke Faber in the Harvard Business Review on leadership. I decided to take a slightly different lesson out of the article: There are times when you need to adapt your leadership style in order to succeed. If you are struggling to implement a change in your company, it may very well be that your style of leadership is not suited to the task at hand. You may be too soft or too harsh on the employees, my advice would be to analyse how you are approaching the situation and then adapt yourself accordingly to how your shortcomings.
Here are 3 wonderful tips from the article on the habits of great leaders:
1. They wisely manage the present, anchoring in purpose and values.
2. They selectively forget the past, letting go of old values, beliefs, and behaviors that no longer serve them or their organizations.
3. They purposefully create the future by adopting new aspirations, values, beliefs, and behaviors that enable a step-change in their leadership.
5. 10 Ways NOT to Do Change Management
Alexandra Levit shows us that forcing Change can often do more bad than good. Similar to this infographic that she used to illustrate the fact that sometimes, we are trying to implement the right system in the wrong way.
She gives us 10 wonderful lessons to learn, 10 ways not to do Change Management. The examples include trying to implement the change from the bottom up, instead of leading by example. Another great message to take from this article is that often management relies too heavily on logic and doesn’t place emphasis on the “passion, fire, and story” of the change, to get the employees motivated to buy-in to the change.
6. How to Be a Change Manager
My latest blog on the difference between being a leader and a boss. I illustrate the difference between being able to receive respect for being a good leader as opposed to receiving respect simply because of your given position. Know how to lead by example and to uplift those around you instead of inspiring fear in those below you.
Most importantly; know the differences between saying “Go!” and “Let’s Go!”
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