When planning change interventions it is key to understand the boarder seasonal and community context in which you are delivering the change. Whenever planning activities on your change calendar there are a range of key dates to block out:

• Seasonal holidays (Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Bank holidays)
• Key holidays periods for carers: school breaks (where staff may be taking leave)
• In addition to this there may be holidays relevant to the communities that you serve. Community events and special holidays.
• Peak times for organisation activities: Renewal times for policies, regular sales events where staff are otherwise pre-occupied.

Timing the change interventions when they are most effective is critical. During the times which aren't optimal activity should be kept to a minimum if they are unable to be actually rescheduled another time.  If you are unsure of the organisations activities to be able to identify these peak periods it is best to ask and map them out. 

What h...

I considered calling this article 'Why Benefits belong to the Change Manager' but I could hear the hiss from Change Manager's who would challenge the word 'belong'. Of course they would be right, as any Benefit outlined in a project brief should be assigned an owner from the business. However, benefits are most critical to a Change Manager's role in any project, as they help explain the reason why the project has been funded in the first place. They are a measure of the effectiveness of what is being delivered, and a Change Managers purpose is to create a plan that is focused on creating the right environment and behaviours to achieve that level of effectiveness.

Any Change Manager worth their salt, therefore, is focused on influencing solutions where possible, to make sure any deliverables are user friendly. Measuring success based on successful delivery only is a thing of the past for high performing organisations, the focus now is on realising the Benefits.

Theory vs Practice when...

If your organisation has fast paced, frequent change or is undergoing transformational change, it is important to increase the level and frequency of communication. This is to directly mitigate the risk of decreased engagement and thus decreased productivity and performance in times of great change.

If critical business decisions have not been made, and there is no news to tell staff about the major changes, taking time to communicate that exact message will in fact place a sense of certainty in the minds of those who are feeling anxious.

'What is happening?'

'Oh they haven't made a decision yet but expect that they will know next week'

'OK let's see'.

The interesting thing is that many leaders will also be feeling anxious as well and potentially feeling the pressure. This then often results in leaders second guessing themselves about what to communicate.

When leaders are in the space of uncertainty about whether to communicate or not, I always advise them that consistency in tim...

Effective stakeholder management is critical for success of any initiative and smooth delivery of any project. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter what your end product is if you are 'burning' your stakeholders through lack of involvement or shutting them out. Every time you are delivering something new into your organisation or you are running a project, effective stakeholder management is a MUST!

Here are the three fail-safe strategies to put into place when working on projects or working with teams across an organisation to deliver an outcome:

1) Take the time to make sure you are involving the right people. This may sound silly but if you haven't taken the time to note down exactly who you consider your stakeholders to be, you need to put a pen to paper or finger to your keyboard right now and get to it.

Why? Often we forget who we need to involve or who need to know about your initiative. This results in complaints or 'white-anting' your initiative.  Listing out who sh...

The challenges that we face with communication in our day to day lives also applies within our organisations. We now carry our mobile phones around and sometimes laptops in a effort to be paperless. This means that people are often less 'present' to conversations and are continually distracted. The challenges just seem to mount up when looking to create communications that cut's through the noise.

Here are some of the reasons that the communications 'gets lost': 

* Staff don't have time to read all of the emails

* The communication channels aren't effective, being too cluttered and the communication isn't clear

* They don't have the time to 'connect the dots'.

So messages need to be consistently communicated, in a number of ways and in a clear and creative way. Here are some tips to creating communication with cut through:

Consistency: Stay on message. This is critical to any successful change. Consistently messaging and having your Sponsorship model correct is also critical. If ...

There are a number of principles that underly effective change management. The following principles are easy to outline but harder to put into place consistently depending on the leadership approach and the culture of the organisation in which you work. I said hard but not impossible so bear this in mind. Typically in most customer centric organisations which link strongly the Employees ---> Customer ---->Financial outcomes, these principles are easier to align to.

However as a Change facilitator it is important to state the principles that you are working to, and here are some I would recommend you could align your practices to, to enable the best outcomes for your change strategies:

1. Respect to be shown to all. This is critical. At times where emotions run high with large transformational change, this principle can be forgotten. If all are staff and customers are treated equally and with respect, better outcomes are achieved even if the change has negative impacts. Have respect a...

One of my early posts was about getting back to the fundamentals. 

I really enjoyed reading it again, and I think its a good reminder that when things get hectic it is good to get back to basics.

Read the post here.

So you want to explore a career in change? Do you consider yourself to be a 'people person?' Here are five questions you should reflect on before taking the leap:

1. How resilient are you in the face of adversity? In lots of organisations change is not understood or mature as a function. So it can be a hard slog affecting change, influencing and coaching stakeholders on why you are even in the organisation to begin with. Project Managers may challenge you and your professional guidance may be flat out rejected. So you need to be tough, resilient and measured with your approach. 

2. How empathetic are you? The more you can walk a mile in someone else's shoes the better a change manager you will be. If you are simply wanting to tell people what to do, maybe pursue training or another profession. Having compassion and empathy will ensure you take the right approach when people resist the change.

3. Are you willing to learn about yourself to better understand how to facilitate the chang...

Now this may not be a term used world wide, but in Australia a 'whinger' is someone who will complain about something endlessly. In the world of change, a whinger can be your best asset.

Someone who objects to the change provides a number of opportunities to anyone willing to listen:

1) They challenge your 'why'. Sometimes we try to 'sell' a change into the business and sometimes the 'why' isn't hitting the mark. You want your 'why' to engage hearts and minds. You soon know if that isn't the case when there is a 'tough crowd'. Your 'why' just needs to be better.

2) They tell you whether your detailed impact assessment is accurate. If you listen well enough to someone who is objecting to the change you will realise that you may not have assessed all of the impacts accurately. You may even want to engage the most vocal person in the room to better understand those impacts.

3) Often they can also be your biggest advocate. I can't tell you how many times the so called 'trouble maker' e...

As humans our default setting is to tell others what to do. It makes us feel good, gives us that 'hit' of significance that we need. When I made the leap from Uni to working in a corporate environment I couldn't wait to share of my 'expertise' (oh it makes me cringe now to think of it). I was young, inexperienced but enthusiastic and form day one I started my 'real world' learning.

Then you continue in your career, and I think it was in my late 20's when I realised that there were better ways to do things. I realised the more I listened, the better the products and projects were that I delivered. So I thought to myself 'wow listening is really key'.

Now I know it goes even further. Now I know that you are better to ask first. Even more over time you begin to realise how important the questions are that you ask. Then of course you need to listen. It is amazing how often we don't ask. We don't ask customers what they need, we don't ask staff how they are feeling or what they need to do...