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Managing change within your organisation is the same as preparing a good broth...sitting down for a deliciously prepared soup can warm the soul and put a smile on your face. So too can a well structured and executed program of change.
Consider the broth of a well prepared soup as your employees, it will be the hero of the dish and can make or break it!
Well considered, timed and planned change can prepare your employees to adopt the changes necessary to transform your organisation. Today, we will consider some of the key elements that will ensure you don't over season your broth, as we interchange this analogue with the caution of change saturation.
Don't put too much salt in - don't overburden your employees
When you are putting your ingredients in, you don't want to put too much salt in; in other words, don't try and introduce too much change at once. Once you put in too much salt, you can't go back - similar with change programs, delivering too much change can cause overheating of your most value asset...your people! Overburdening your employees with change will lead to change fatigue and general apathy for what comes next. You don't want to make change a bitter experience for your employees, as they may become resistant for future programs.
Get the right sized stock pot - measure your change delivery
Map out your change with delivery outcomes and business as usual activities in mind. A good guide is to plan out 12 months in advance; to give you greater visibility of what you are expecting your employees to do. When you have your stock pot on the stove, if you go with a small pot and put too many ingredients in, you can cause the stock to boil and spill onto the over...that's going to be messy and a loss of your valuable ingredient. The same applies to change, people can get too overloaded and a response could be to leave your organisation.
Let the broth simmer - enable your employees to digest the change
An over abundance of information to absorb will cause critical change activities to be diluted and adoption to be less impactful. Hence, let the broth simmer. Time to understand the change, practice the change and embed the change [before the next program of work], will position you for success. Give employees the space to understand, download and appreciate the change; which will create an environment for advocacy and drive for change.
Don't dilute the broth - change is more than emails, newsletters and training sessions
Emails, newsletters and training are great tools; but there is so much more that you can employ to gain a great result. If you "dilute" your change with one, two or three channels/activities, chances are you are missing a golden opportunity to spread the message and enable adoption of essential change for your organisation. Design co-creation, stakeholder engagement, test & learn, iterative change, policies & procedures review, leadership drive, packaging change...there is so much more that you can introduce to have a full "flavour" of change to excite your employees.
These are just some "ingredients" for you to ponder, but we would love to hear your thoughts. Do you see your change programs get "over seasoned"?