Change Readiness: The Foundation of Success
Business leaders spend much of their time developing strategies that require implementing changes across the organization. While mapping strategy is important, the inability to accomplish change can derail even the strongest strategic thinking. Organizations with great ideas that are not executed well are often left in the dust by “fast followers” who implement similar ideas and strategies more effectively.
How do you effectively lead change? After breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record, baseball great Roger Maris said, “You win not by chance, but by preparation.” The same principle applies today to any organization hoping to affect change and thrive.
Unfortunately, in their efforts to hit a home run quickly, many organizations bypass the necessary steps that must precede sweeping change. Change
The foundation for success is the organization’s willingness and readiness for change. Any attempts to bring change to a resistant company will be futile, no matter how smart the strategy.
Are you ready for change?
All experienced business leaders have seen both tremendous success and disappointing failures in change-driven initiatives. Based on our work with organizations across industries, Tatum has found that communicating the underlying rationale and using effective change management techniques will impact the resulting success or failure, but the odds improve when an organization is “ready for change.”
The first step toward determining if your organization is ready is by conducting a Change Effectiveness Review (CER). This is a fact-based process that evaluates your organization’s ability to deal with change and make an orderly and effective transformation.
The CER measures five key characteristics common to organizations that handle change successfully: organizational alignment, transparency, employee engagement, action orientation and accountability.
Organizational Alignment
Does your company have a mission statement? To achieve organizational alignment, your organization’s strategic goals must be mutually supported by company structure, roles, business priorities and metrics. Ensure your employees know the mission of the entire company, not just their individual job or departmental responsibilities. Also, ensure that company leaders are leading by example to accomplish the mission, or in other words, that they are “walking the talk.” If the entire organization understands and is working toward the company’s mission, then change efforts will be more successful.
Transparency
Transparency involves the ability to clearly and effectively communicate information internally and externally. This includes sharing what you have learned from past failures along with the results of key metrics and financials across your organization. For example, are you sharing your company’s financial information, both positive and negative? Do you communicate and celebrate successes? Do you have a formal way of
