Did you know that only 34% of change initiatives succeed? And that one in three CEOs fail to achieve the desired outcome from their transformation initiatives?
Once a quarter, Andrew Marsh, Vistage chair of the North East and Northumberland, brings his three leadership peer groups together for a speaker day to be remembered.
At the latest event, the room of CEOs, MDs and business owners plus guests welcomed Sue Firth as their speaker and enjoyed a day of looking at Strategically Managing Change to ensure that they are not one of the one in three.
Sue is an expert on change, performance coach and mentor, who brings her background in psychology to deliver key note speeches and workshops. She speaks to corporate and business audiences about the importance of respecting, and reducing stress in our lives, along with building resilience.
Andrew said: “When you consider that nearly 80% of companies need to adapt their business offering every two to five years, leaders need to be on their game to manage the situations ensuring they are keeping stress to a minimum. Two-thirds of workers experience burnout crisis, which also causes transformation failure, so a leader has to make sure the workforce is fully considered. Sue gave us all lots of tools and food for thought to make sure this can happen.”
Having established that the main reason that people don’t like change is fear, Sue’s tools concentrate on reducing that very reaction. She drove home to the room that change management is as much about how to help people adjust and adapt as it is about implementing the strategy.
Some great examples of strategic change management include Sophos migrating to Salesforce CRM, HMRC expanded its customer communication to new digital channels and Booking. com effectively migrated from Office 365 to Google Workplace. Andrew said: “Whilst these companies are all large corporates, the premise of change management remains the same. Keep your people at the heart of what you do, and talk to them in a language they understand with time scales they can digest.”
Sue talked the room through this importance of language. The negativity towards change comes from a fear of breaking habits, bringing a perception it will take more effort. Most people are naturally risk averse, and if they don’t understand why this change is necessary all that happens is that the fear of failure and the unknown kick in, which causes people to disruptive, and the result for the leadership team is loss of control. Sue’s top tips included:
Language is everything.
Tell your people what is NOT changing – down play the ‘changes’.
Avoid the word change or transformation.
These words are attached with stress and negativity.
Avoid references to BIG change.
Use positive language such as alter/modify/improve/fix.
Always give examples of the alternatives, reasons and because…
Once you have passed this part of the strategy it is key to listen to the staff to see what they are saying in response.
The Vistage experience, of course, is not just listening to speakers. As leaders keen to learn and implement, every session includes the cohorts taking time to think about their own organisations, challenging each other to explore more options to make better decisions and get better results.
That led to conversations about forms of intelligence – academic, emotional, spiritual, artificial and systems intelligence to understand why people react they way to change, and why those who need stability and consistency will find change overwhelming.
Andrew concluded: “We drew the conclusion that leaders need to create a culture of continuous improvement. Having discussed in our groups what mistakes businesses make that mean people struggle with change, such as over consulting and under delivering, too much too fast, or to slow or too late we all left armed with new ways to communicate. We agreed there would be no more knee jerk, poor communication and lack of planning to ensure our people aren’t at risk of losing focus and feeling unstable.”
The final takeaway of the session was a one page sheet ideal for middle management to understand changes afoot, in a way they can share with the team to get results.
If you’d like to experience the support that Andrew’s Vistage members get, attend an event or have any questions about this article then do get in touch on Andrew.Marsh@Vistagechair.co.uk