In your experience, what are the best practices of organizations in supporting leaders during times of impactful organizational change?
What do you see as the most important support needs?
Look forward to your thoughts!
Shelagh
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3 comments:
Re-posted with Permission
Denis Chartland,PMP
Production Manager at Intermap Technologies
Industry
Information Technology and Services
From my experience and belief, the most important support needed should not start "during times of impactful organizational change", but should have already be in place pre-organizational changes! Trust is the answer!
By nature, human will always resist further, changes that are being perceived negatively as oppose to the ones that are being positively perceived. The first interesting observable fact is that the perception from the affected individual (s) can differ, in both degree and intensity, from one person to another, for an identical “impactful event”. The second interesting observable fact is that the higher the trust toward the person (s) responsible for the change from the affected individuals, the lesser will be the negative intensity. Accordingly, the “victims” will move through the phases of resistance to change a lot faster, thus requiring a lot less of the secondary support. Strangely enough, this trust will also allow the enforcer of the impactful changes more room for error, without increasing the intensity of the resistance to change.
Impactful changes are personal and emotional, for that reason the support needed should reflect this reality. Appropriated support can and must be carefully orchestrated and must be applied mostly with art and a modest dose of science.
Everyone in an organization is aware of the impactful events that could occur! We usually resist more the manner into which a change is implemented and/or the motive behind the changes, as oppose to the change itself!!
Everyone in an organization is aware of the impactful events that could occur! We usually resist more the manner into which a change is implemented and/or the motive behind the changes, as oppose to the change itself!!
Re-posted with Permission
Name withheld by Request
I think a best practice is to make sure that middle managers feel that the senior executives have their back at all times. It's easy to forget the middle layer in an effort to work positively with unions whose membership may be most affected by change. But an unsupported middle layer will make for the exits quickly, which can lead to a permanent loss of competitiveness.
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Perry Maughmer
Strategy & Operations Executive
Columbus, Ohio Area
Information Technology and Services
Shelagh,
I do not want to get focused on semantics but exactly what do you mean by "organizations"? The reason I ask is that we know the term means a group of people (more or less) so are you asking what the people do to support the leader or are you referring to the leadership team of the organization?
I would think it is leader's roles to support others during time of change and this could be accomplished by creating an environment conducive for change. For this, I like Bridge's Change Communication plan that brings out the 4 P's of Purpose, Picture, Plan, & Part. I think that communication is the key job of a leader during times of change and the one, if done well, that can be the difference between success & failure.
Great question!
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