Tip of the month, Inside Track, August 2010
Managing strategic change
Are you restructuring or having to put in place a new strategic change programme? We have distilled our shared experience of what helps achieve sustainable change into four simple design principles:
- Create ‘pull’: people happily adopt change when they see it is something they want and need to do their jobs more easily and to deliver a better result. All messages need to refer directly to these themes so that people make and draw energy from the connection
- Focus on outcomes: leaders have to create a concrete picture of what they want to have happened at key milestones in the service of the bigger picture and motivational strategic outcomes. This gives people clear aims, guidance on prioritisation of activities and a greater sense of progress and achievement towards the overall goals
- Spread ownership wide: all employees have to be engaged fully in the shared challenge of making strategic change happen. There are some things (e.g. new technology and business processes) that need to be managed centrally. However, these work best when they are driven by ‘champions’ rather than functional leaders
- Think culture, not just systems, tools and processes: if you design the change programme as something that will help shift mindsets then you are creating a culture that fosters continuous change and improvement.
