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Explore how to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerful change via these 39 top change management tips shared by 13 well-known change experts. A seminal study by Harvard Business School professor emeritus, John P. Kotter, revealed that 70 per cent of transformational change initiatives fail (HBReview, 1995) for various reasons. For this reason, knowing how to successfully implement fast dramatic and powerful change in any organization is important.

How to Successfully Implement Fast Dramatic and Powerful Change

By Catherine Adenle

The importance of knowing how to successfully implement fast dramatic and powerfully change in any organization can not be ignored. For any organization to thrive, they always need to think of new ways to do things, innovate, restructure, re-engineer, use new technology and improve services and processes.

Gone are the days of one large change every couple of years. Organizations now face faster, more complex, interrelated and more expensive change than ever before. The pace of change will not slow down. It is going to continue because change will always happen in organizations. The gig economy, globalization and technological advancements plus the agile business sense of various startups will continue to drive change globally. Every day in the business world, new initiatives or projects are launched to improve performance, increase revenue, and enhance competitive advantage.

See Successful Change Implementation in Organizations: 4 Components (Infographic)

There are two common denominators for achieving the intended outcomes of any change initiative: people embracing the change so that it’s successful, embedded and sticks. Change management is the approach used to drive adoption and usage so that initiatives deliver expected results and outcomes. Being able to deliver results on multiple changes in a rapid manner will allow an organization to achieve its strategic vision and thrive in today’s changing business landscape. Applying this know-how of successful change management enables organizations to deliver results on each change more effectively and build competencies that grow the organization’s capacity to tackle more changes at one time.

Organizations cannot afford to think of just existing only. They need operational excellence to survive. Looking at what makes organizations succeed, they’re things like the ability to adapt, innovate and make successful changes. While all of these are important and contribute in their own way to an organization’s success, there is one key factor that makes great organizations excellent, its people! To initiate any change and get buy-in from their people, all organizations need to know how to implement fast, dramatic and powerfully change by including and involving their people in various ways.

See 20 Effective Ways to Involve and Support Employees During Change

Change ‘Know How’ is Critical

In companies, managers, and supervisors are the ones who have to implement the change cascaded down to them by CEOs or Directors. However, the traditional skills possessed by most of these managers do not include that of being an effective Change Agent. In these rapidly changing times, a change management skill is needed for managers more than ever before.

Simply put, knowing how to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerfully change in any organization will dramatically improve sustainability. The better an organization applies change management, the more likely they are to deliver on change objectives. Prosci’s correlation data from over 2,000 data points and eight years show that initiatives with excellent change management are six times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management.

Having the skills and the tips to support any change will increase the likelihood of meeting change objectives by three-fold. McKinsey data also shows that the ROI captured from excellent change management is significantly more than with poor change management. Change management, when applied effectively in an organization, significantly increases the success rate of the effort.

 

Helping Hand from Change Experts 

Implementing a successful change is not an easy task. Various books have been written on the topic of how to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerful change in organizations. Numerous courses have been developed on the subject, covering every aspect of change management – its initiation, leadership, fundamentals, tools, theory, strategy, components, its facilitation and implementation. Many groups have also helped thousands of organizations to develop and implement sustainable change.

When embarking on any change effort, using the apt tips below as shared by these well-known change experts on how to implement fast, dramatic and powerful change in organizations is essential for any Change Agent. The tips will let you know how best to focus your effort.

When Daniel Lock asked these highly renown 13 change management experts for their top three tips for anyone wanting to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerful change, here are his broad takeaways from their feedback:

  1. Communication/collaboration, engaging stakeholders in the very creation of the vision and change processes.
  2. You need to focus on people, changing their behaviour, not your own methods and processes.
  3. Change requires focus and discipline. It is way to easy to succumb to the drift and slide into mediocrity.

To draw your own conclusions from the tips on how to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerful change in organizations, now explore the tips:

How to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerfully change in any organizations

John Kotter's tips on how to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerfully change in any organizations

  1. Dramatic and powerful is not going to happen unless you develop a true sense of urgency about the opportunity offered by the changes, and urgency that is intellectual and emotional, and among lots of people. Ultimately, you are going to need a lot of people to help, not just resist.
  2. You need to start demonstrating some successes asap to develop credibility, and momentum, to start to win over the sceptical.
  3. You have to approach all the work with the question of sustainability in the front of your mind. Is what we are doing going to show results for a while but then start to slide back to the old way?
Jason Little's tips on how to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerfully change in any organizations

Jason Little

www.agilecoach.ca

When it comes to deep, transformational change, more is more. That is, we think it’s wasteful to have everyone in the room when it comes to aligning people around the change so we end up separating the ‘thinkers from the doers’ because it’s the most efficient. The thinkers carry the message to the doers, and then we’re surprised when people don’t understand why.

  1. Everyone who will live with the day-to-day consequence of the change needs to be involved with designing it.
  2. Piggybacking on Point 1, visualizing the change is the gift that keeps giving. Stop burying change project details in online tools, and start using big visible walls. It’s cheap, simple, and even for large changes in multiple locations, they’re easy to take pictures of, or even duplicate. Simple is better!
  3. Once the people affected by the change have had a hand in designing it, and the work is visualized, establish new rituals in front of the big visible walls. That replaces your communication strategy with something meaningful, allows you to ditch status reports that no one is reading and forces more meaningful conversations.

There will always be a new trendy change model that comes and goes, but at the end of the day deep, meaningful conversations is the only way to create fast, dramatic and powerful change in today’s organizations.

Kate Nassar's tips on how to successfully implement fast, dramatic and powerfully change in any organizations

Kate Nasser

www.katenasser.com

  1. Communicate early and clearly. If you want change to be dramatic and fast, don’t surprise your employees. Fast doesn’t mean being thrown off a cliff. Give them details so they can see it isn’t just a lot of talk.
  2. Inspire them with vision don’t blame them for past events that precipitated the impending change. Show them you believe in what the change will do. If you don’t believe in it why should they?
  3. Involve them. Reach ’em don’t preach’em. Ask their concerns and work with them to create solutions. When people have a sense of control in their daily lives, it reduces anxiety and resistance.
Frankly, when change comes knocking on your organization’s door, who do you call for insightful tips? Well, I don’t expect you to call any of the 13 experts shown below because they have each captured the top three things to consider for you already. All you need to do is explore and refer to the tips.

 

How to Successfully Implement Fast Dramatic and Powerful Change in Organizations

Now that you’ve seen and read the content of the Infographic to discover each expert’s response on how to successfully implement fast dramatic and powerfully change in any organization, what do you want to add? Leave your comments below.

Catherine Adenle
Founder, Catherine's Career Corner. The career site empowering and inspiring ambitious candidates of all ages and professions to thrive and work smarter on their careers. Gladly helping all career-minded people worldwide to explore their career, manage change and understand how new technologies are changing and enhancing the future of work.
Catherine Adenle
Catherine Adenle

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5 thoughts on “Successfully Implement Fast, Dramatic and Powerful Change

  1. Change is inevitable in business and in organisations. Knowing how to make them successful is crucial. These are great tips. Thank you.

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