The actual drivers for change don\u2019t often make headlines.\u00a0 We talk about FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and we talk about hour tactics of communications and training programs, but to really understand change and how your employees will react, you need a better understanding of the change driver.\u00a0 ((This entire post was formulated after reading
\nhttp:\/\/www.change-management-blog.com\/2007\/02\/change-drivers.html))<\/p>\n
When I was in a sales organization, one of the jobs of the salespeople was to identify the \u201cpersonal win\u201d of each buyer.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t enough to have them understand the feature functionality or technology of the product.\u00a0 There had to be something in it for them.\u00a0 The same holds true for change management.\u00a0 Resistance to change comes from FUD and unless you can figure out the underlying change driver, you\u2019ll not be able to create true behavioral change.<\/p>\n
If you want to analyze change in organizations, a good idea might be to look at the change drivers – and how people feel about it. That is one of the first things I do in organizations – I let people brainstorm about the change drivers which they think are important and let them rank them, discuss about them, express their fear about them etc.<\/p>\n
Next time you are together with a group in an organization, just ask them a simple question such as “Who thinks that tougher environmental regulations are a threat to this organization? And who thinks they are a big opportunity?” Or “Who believes that the changing taste of our customers is the best what could have happened? And for whom is it the biggest nightmare?” This can already be a start of a dialogue which has the potential for a process which than in turn can shake and move the organization.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s say for example your change is to deploy a new health and welfare program.\u00a0 Employees in the old programs may have gotten used to it and not be pleased to go into a new process, have new physicians, and higher deductibles.\u00a0 But lets say your change driver is that the company didn\u2019t grow as fast over the last two years and you\u2019re trying to cut costs as much as possible.\u00a0 Employees will not be pleased to give up benefits just because you need to cut costs and obtain better profit margins.\u00a0 Instead, if the company has been hemorrhaging cash for the last three years and is just trying to stay afloat, your communications messages will be much different.\u00a0 In fact, you may not even focus on benefits as you\u2019ll want your employees to understand the overall environment and you\u2019ll be asking them for sacrifices beyond just their benefits \u2013 and you\u2019ll be asking them to reach deep and help the organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The actual drivers for change don\u2019t often make headlines.\u00a0 We talk about FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and we talk about hour tactics of communications and training programs, but to really understand change and how your employees will react, you need…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-change-management","category-communications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}