Great Ideas: Three keys to guiding your company through any change

If your business has been through a massive change—the kind of endeavour that alters your business processes from end to end—you’ll know that it’s not easy to get every employee on board. Some may object to the new way of doing things, others may drag their heels. And without buy-in at all levels, it’s unlikely the transformation will be as effective as it might be otherwise.

You can avoid this undesirable outcome by guiding your employees through the change in a strategic fashion. In Faster, Cheaper, Better: The 9 Levers for Transforming How Work Gets Done, business process transformation specialists Michael Hammer and Lisa Hershman explain the leadership tactics you can use to make organization-wide changes stick.

Educate from the top down

If your staffers don’t understand the nature of the change you’re trying to effect—and why you’re doing it—they can’t realistically be expected to help make it happen. For optimal effectiveness, don’t conduct large, town hall-style education sessions. Instead, appoint business process transformation leaders in different departments throughout the organization. Educate these “leaders” with tutorials and workshops. Then have them share what they’ve learned with their employees, ideally through collaborative processes (e.g., by asking front-line staff for ideas on how to best accomplish a milestone in the transformation).

Give your project a jargon-free slogan

Often, the only insight companies give staffers about a large organizational transformation comes in the form of a new, usually generic, mission statement. Not only can these prompt cynicism and even derision from team members, they provide little guidance about how each individual role contributes to the change. Instead, the authors suggest giving your transformation project a slogan that enlightens employees, regardless of role, about how they might behave to better enact it. For instance, when U.S. specialty chemical company Ashland Inc. made a significant alteration to its operational processes, it used the phrase “Ashland first” to inform staff that they were to now put the needs of the company as a whole ahead of those of their individual business units. It worked, the authors say, because it was simple, clear and free of jargon.

Walk the talk

As theologian Albert Schweitzer said, “Example is not the main thing, it’s the only thing.” In other words, you shouldn’t manage the transformation from the shadows. According to Hammer and Hershman, demonstrating that you understand—and relate to—the strains the organization is experiencing to accommodate the change can improve morale and productivity. This can be very simple. For instance, if your transformation involves changes in customer experience, you can volunteer to man the customer service phone line for an hour a week.