Leading Through Change | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 13

Leading Through Change

Change is a consistent part of just about every aspect of life. Businesses introduce new changes every day for the betterment of their business, employees, or customers. But change can be difficult to navigate and lead.

People aren’t against change, they love the outcomes of change, but don’t enjoy the period of transition nearly as much. Everyone wants to be able to free up their time or energy but learning the new process that creates that flexibility, might still be a bit of a pain.

Before introducing any kind of change we need to dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s. We don’t want to bombard our people with a million different things and no legitimate plan of action put into place. There should be zero loose ends by the time our team learns of the new changes and begins putting them into place.

The Two Types Of Change

The first type of change is small incremental changes. We put changes like these in place when we already have a system that is working within a program but not at its fullest potential. These changes don’t radically change anything, and they can be discussed or relayed over a simple team meeting followed by an email.

An example of a small change is deciding to change a messaging template for a currently decently operating system.

The second type is a full change. These changes do radically change things within the business. Larger changes need more management, quality checks, and reviewing. These larger changes need more prep like training for the team etc.

An example of a large change would be switching out a hiring department’s entire onboarding process would be a bigger change that might take longer to learn.

Transition Period

Depending on how much a new plan changes things for our employees helps us gauge how long the transition period needs to be. If it’s a small change, it can be don’t instantly and put into place that day. With bigger changes, instead, it might take 90 days to roll out a new system. The rollout period should match the intensity of the task and the amount of change that has occurred.

Sometimes we have to break down the introduction of a system to ensure not to overwhelm our team, which might look like introducing a section of the program at a time. People need to be constantly reminded of the end product that is trying to be achieved during the transition period so they can be reminded of all that they are working for.

How To Know If The Change Is Working

Once we’ve put our changes into action we need to check back in to see the results. We need to know if the change is working! Staying on top of data collection for all departments, especially around the time of a big change is important.

Data doesn’t lie, and it can tell exactly how the business is doing and what areas need more work.

Consistent department meetings help get qualitative data from the individual departments. It’s important that not only does the business owner know what is happening in every section of the business, but when all the departments are working together and understand each other’s goals the business works like a well-oiled machine.

Another great way to ensure the change is being applied and working are by doing quality checks on your team. How well do the people in our organization know the policies and procedures? Certification is especially important regarding large changes to ensure that everything was viewed, understood, and put into action.

Changes should always be documented in a place that can be reviewed and accessed at a later date. This ensures that they can reassess anything they may have forgotten. If all changes are documented then when mistakes are made after the RAMP period, this documentation can be referred to for reference of company policies. We have to be the Policy Police and ensure everyone is changing what needs to be changed and sticking to it.