Increase flexibility
Increasing flexibility helps a business stay relevant and productive through changing and challenging times. It is one of the great challenges facing the workplace in 2021. Flexibility carries the idea of being able to bend rather than crack. All business leaders want an organisation that can bend and respond to change.
Being flexible means you can handle change well. and how do you do that? By having lots of change fitness and change readiness in your organisation. We can show you how to make that happen.
Better change outcomes
There are 4 things an organisation needs to get right if they want to be good at change.
Get the change fitness right
Change fitness refers to a set of psychological resources that enable people to perform well during change, and perform well at other times. It can be measured using a tool called IRVEY, and it can be significantly developed in 90 days.
If the change fitness resources in an organisation are low, the organisation will always struggle to be successful at change – especially transformational change.
Get the change leadership right
Leading people through change is difficult because anxiety levels are often high and people’s sense of identity is threatened. To do it well leaders need:
- high personal change fitness so they can model the right behaviours, attitudes, and language
- a deep understanding of the change process
- the ability to communicate the 5 key messages that build engagement
- understanding of why people resist and how to handle it
- how to structure change according to the success pattern (how humans naturally succeed at change)
Get the culture right
Organisational culture can make or break a change initiative. To understand why this is, you need to understand 2 things culture does:
- it regulates what normal behaviour looks like – this is how we have alwyas done things
- it defines the group’s identity – this is our sense of who we are, and what makes us who we are
When things change – especially if the changes are big – it challenges what has been normal behaviour and it challenges the sense of identity. A change friendly culture is one that accepts change as normal behaviour, and where the group identity is associated with adaptability and flexibility.
Get the PPS right
PPS stands for policies, processes, and structures. Before change occurs, these support old ways of working. But as change occurs, they need to support new ways of working.
Change readiness
Taken together, these 4 areas are what change readiness is about. It is not about being ready to start a change – it’s being ready to succeed at one.
Get these 4 things right, and change happens with greater ease and success. If you want help to do it right, please book a time to talk to us.