Influencing Change
I was talking with a client recently and they raised a question about a challenge they were facing about trying to change a company policy.
As I often do in these articles, I wanted to take that discussion and turn it into useful guidance that anyone could use. After all, there will be times in your career, whether you’re an individual contributor, a manager, or a senior executive, when you want to initiate some sort of change. This could be a desire to change a policy, your organization, a strategic goal, or anything else.
How should you go about doing this?
After thinking about it for a while, I was mulling on Kotter’s 8-step change process, a change methodology I learned a long time ago, and I wanted to add to it based on my real-world experience of what it actually takes to get change done.
So below I’ll take you through a three phase approach that uses some of Kotter’s ideas, adapted for use in a real corporate environment. Of course, as always, you should adapt this to whatever’s required to make it successful in your context.
Phase I: Preparation
In order to get started, some preparation is required. This is where a lot of the work is done that enables the rest of the change process to go more smoothly.
Decide what you want to change: Be clear on what you want to achieve. Distill it down to its clearest and simplest form, so that you are able to articulate what you’re trying to do quickly and easily.
Gather allies: Find others with a similar cause. If you’re looking to change a policy, look for others that are impacted that also want the change. If you want to change your organization, bounce your ideas off your peers, and find some of your stakeholders to help support the change.
Gather data: Along with your allies, gather some data to support your idea. Find out what competitor policies are, look for best practices or new ideas in the space that you’re aiming to change. Use this data to build a compelling argument for your change.
Decide what success looks like: Use the idea, the data, and your allies to decide what victory will look like. How will you know that the change has been successful, and had the impact that you wanted?
Iterate: Use the data and the input from your allies to further clarify your idea. You might need to go through some of the above stages a couple of times to hone your idea and the supporting argument.
Not quite the allies I had in mind
Phase II: Approval
There are very few impactful changes that you can make that won’t require some sort of approval - by a manager, perhaps HR, legal or compliance, the board, or your stakeholders.
Figure out who you need to persuade: First up in this phase is to establish who the ‘authority’ is in this situation. Who do you need to get buy-in from? Who is going to be the final approver? What are their motivators and how will this change impact them?
Top tip: If this change will make the approvers look good in some way, it’s more likely to get the green light
Present the data: Use the data you have to present your argument. Listen for feedback. Some stakeholders will want to make changes to your plan just so they can say they contributed towards it.
Iterate: Use the feedback to refine your argument accordingly.
Repeat this step until you get approval or a firm no.
What happens if you get a no? My advice at this point depends very much on the type of thing you’re trying to change - it may be that you’re told that the change isn’t affordable, in which case your next step is to figure out how it could be funded and add that to your argument. Otherwise, I would say for the most part that this is where your judgement comes in. Depending on the feedback you get you might decide to try again with more compelling arguments and data, or you might need to see if there’s a way to solve your problems from a different angle.
Phase III: Implementation
Once your idea is approved, now you actually need to get on with it.
Deliver quick wins: Get started quickly and see what wins you can deliver as soon as possible. This will help prove the value of the change and get it embedded.
Listen for feedback: Create some feedback mechanisms. Listen to those impacted by the change and your stakeholders.
Iterate: Use the feedback to adjust course, and get your change implemented.
Report back: Use your original success criteria to report back to the stakeholders and approvers. Let them know they backed the right horse.
Conclusion
Influencing change isn’t necessarily easy, but if you have the data to back your ideas up then it isn’t impossible. Don’t be afraid to iterate - the preparatory work you do will stand you in good stead when the time comes to get approval and to implement the change.
Best of luck!
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