The amount of change businesses need to manage each year is increasing and does not look like it will let up in the near future.
In 2016, the average business experienced approximately two major planned changes per year. Now businesses are experiencing an average of ten major planned changes per year ranging from structure changes to new technology, systems, innovation, and employment changes.
If organisations are trying to innovate, grow, and work in new ways, a workforce that’s drowning in change fatigue will be a significant handbrake.
In order to keep change fatigue at bay, organisations need to embed high levels of employee trust and facilitate strong team cohesion.
One solution for this is by actively engaging the employees in the change process up front rather than playing the game of catch up.
There are three ways in which we can engage with our people on change. We refer to this as Open-Source Change and this is illustrated in the diagram. (Source Gartner)
However, a key barrier preventing open-source change from being a success in businesses is a lack of safety our people feel in sharing their ideas and engaging with the change.
The key role of the leader in open-source change is to create an environment where people feel safe sharing ideas, challenge the status quo, developing innovative solutions, and collaborating ideas.
See the link from Simon Sinek about creating a “Circle of Safety”
There are two different types of psychological safety that our people need;
Safety to experiment includes feeling safe to learn from mistakes, ask questions and try new things.
When allowing our people to experiment, be sure any decisions follow the following basic principles;
If employees can answer ‘yes’ to all three, then they are empowered to make the decision themselves thus improving efficiency.
Safety to challenge means employees also feel safe to push back against the status quo.
Our role as leaders is to create cultural norms and invite healthy and productive challenges to the status quo.
The safety challenge does not mean everyone gets a vote or everyone gets a voice. We want the right people in the conversation – empowering knowledgeable employees to share their views.
As an organisation, we need proactive methods like these to manage change, as it helps;
These simple yet effective approaches are a worthy investment of time because your team will assist in being the drivers of the business achieving its goals.
