If you are accountable for your organization’s change program, there are five steps you need to take to ensure success.

1. Fully understand why your organization needs to change. The reasons behind your organization’s need to change will drive many of your decisions. What are the events placing new demands on your organization? Are these events internally – low employee engagement – or externally – downward shifting economic trends – driving the change?
2. Establish what must be done. At this stage you need to:
   • set a vision for the change project
   • define your guiding principles and imperatives to ensure each decision made or step taken on your path to change is the right one
   • set measurable objectives and goals and determine how you’ll measure your progress
3. Plan how the change will roll out:
   • identify the major actions and timing necessary to achieve your objectives.
   • establish the strategies necessary to reach your vision and objectives
   • identify and obtain the resources you need to achieve the objectives.
4. Align senior managers. Granted, the change was likely their idea, but the execution is all yours. You must have them aligned on the how and when of your program. Do this so they walk the talk.
5. Initiate a measurement program to track your progress and adjust plans as necessary. Provide feedback processes to gather information about your progress, and rewards to engage employees.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Change Management, Leadership.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.