Top 5 lessons if you are managing change in an organisation

I am a big fan of continuous improvement, and when you aren't interested in making the same mistakes twice you can become quite frustrated when people are decide to do what's crazy. That's right, they keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. The definition of insanity according to Einstein - and trust me there are a lot of insane people out there!

Through all of the different change I have managed early in my career, you get to know the traps for new players. Those 'gotcha's' that you don't need to learn more than once. No matter how experienced you are every time you introduce change into an organisation, you learn lessons. If you aren't capturing them then you are missing out on a great opportunity to support your organisation to change and adapt faster.

Here are my top 5 lessons (although this may change again) on what NOT to do when managing change:

1) Thinking you should be the voice of the change - not the leaders. Leaders owning and speaking to the change is one of the fundamentals for success. Early in my career, I would present to teams, even train teams. Sure my outcomes were good, however when the penny dropped that I should have been working with the leaders and having them play a more critical and visible role, then the results were even better. Make sure you factor in time to engage with the leaders of the change. No matter what size and level of impact your change has, leadership must be involved and vocal - leading from the front.

2) If you are the one managing the change in your organisation, base your impact assessment on an accurate assessment of 'current state'. What I mean by this, is that just because a documented process exists it doesn't mean that everyone follows it or does the existing process the same way.  If you don't engage the people who are doing the process currently, you will not be putting together the appropriate change activities. You will underestimate the level of support required and you learn a really hard lesson when it goes live.

3) If the impacted people aren't getting involved in the solution, you will be stuck in embedding the change until the end of time and NEVER achieve the outcome you would like. I have never worked on a change where I haven't advocated and insisted that any user testing involves those who use the system. Even my change plans and impacts assessments have been reviewed by representatives of the groups the change is impacting. You will ALWAYS get a better outcome this way. 

4) Your communications need to be engaging, real and authentic to resonate with those who are impacted. It's not about what the leader wants to 'sell'  it's about how to create 'buy in' from the audience. I am sure you have sat in presentations where you felt spoken at or spoken to. And I am sure you have also had an experience where someone has spoken with you, and you were ready to follow them anywhere as it felt like they were talking directly to you. The difference will be a leader who is acknowledging your situation, referring to examples that you really understand, referencing pain points you experience day to day and then showing you how it will all be different. If you don't have real world communication, you will get sub par results every time.

5) Scale the change activities and communications in line with the impact and to the appropriate groups. Don't waste effort and potentially 'over engineer' a change plan if the impact is small and just to a targeted group. How to ensure you assess change thoroughly but not overestimate the impact is a delicate balance. There is nothing worse than an operational change where it is over communicated to audiences who don't need to know about it. At the other end of the scale is having a transformative change which no-one knows about. So be sure to scale accordingly and in perspective of organisational priorities.

I am sure there are many other lessons that I can list, but if these are 5 are kept in mind you will be at least one step ahead of everyone else.