BUSINESSMANAGEMENTREVIEW.COMNOVEMBER - JANUARY9LACK OF CONSULTATION AND PLANNING AROUND THE PROPOSED CHANGES Without taking the appropriate time to engage with leaders and work through all the moving parts and what might go wrong, organizations miss a critical step in stakeholder consultation. It then becomes difficult to identify where obstacles might be encountered deeper into the organization and how these can be overcome. This stage of planning before execution is needed to get leaders on board and to have any hope of embedding and sustaining the change. It is also critical to ensure leaders are prepared, skilled and practiced before having conversations with their team members, especially for notification meetings around a role change or redundancy. FAILURE TO ANTICIPATE AND MANAGE RESISTANCE TO CHANGE Employee resistance to change is what ultimately makes or breaks organizational transformation. Understanding and overcoming the resistance barrier requires a deep understanding of the reasons why people are reluctant to get on board. This requires intimate knowledge of how the change will impact people, their concerns or fears, motivators and drivers. Any kind of change or disruption to routine is painful. People need to be clear on the reasons for the change and the vision, feel a compelling reason to go through the pain involved and have the skills and resources required for implementation. FAILURE TO ACKNOWLEDGE HUMAN EXPERIENCE OF LOSS Leaders can best help themselves and their teams by acknowledging that there will be loss through every change. Kubler's change curve model demonstrates that people process change at different speeds and experience a range of emotions throughout the stages of grief. Supporting people to process change at their own pace and validating their experience of loss is necessary to enable them to move forward. The cost to the organization of getting change management wrong is massive in terms of dollars and time invested. Not to mention the impact that a disengaged workforce can have on customer relationships and retention, revenue growth and profitability, organizations that are more change-agile have learned from previous failures and see the benefit in embracing change management methodology and best practices around preparing leaders for change readiness. Throughout any successful organizational transformation, the `secret sauce' is how leaders (including HR professionals) show up and show genuine care for their people during the transition. Having been involved in designing and executing many organizational restructures, I can't tell you the number of times that I have questioned myself, challenged leaders, felt physically ill before going into tough conversations, lost many nights of sleep worrying about the emotional responses, and whether people would be ok or not, drank a little too much to try and unwind, cried over those people I respected and valued that were exiting (including my manager on one occasion) and have wrestled with the guilt of being a conspirator in people-impacting decisions in order to save the bottom line. While there is no question that leading and managing organizational change can take its toll, I know that the day it ceases to affect me personally is the day I need to leave the profession. Empathy, kindness and compassion are essential human qualities for leaders to demonstrate and are instrumental in showing care and treating others with dignity and respect. Should caring for people ever cease to be at the forefront of leaders' hearts and minds during organizational transformation, we may as well hand over change management to AI technology.
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