Leading Change and Managing Transitions

Change, love it or hate it, it is part of our lives.  To be successful in leading changing and managing transitions requires specific skills, focus and practice.  Build these capabilities in yourself and your organization.  Mergers are less than satisfactory, culture clashes in the process, yet leaders don’t take pay attention to the people side of change until it’s too late.  Change initiatives are abandoned midway because they loose momentum wasting time and resources and eroding credibility of leaders.  Continue to take the same actions and have the same frustrations, turnover and dissatisfaction or take charge and create the future that you and your organization deserve.  What choice are you making?

Definition

Creating a mindset and environment for leaders and employees to work effectively in a complex and changing environment is what effective change management is about.  Change is the eternal event that happens – the new strategy, an acquisition, a new technology.  Transition is the internal shift people go through to fully embrace and maximize the change.  Change can occur relatively easily and rapidly.  Transition involves engaging people’s minds and hearts to let go of the past and move forward.  It requires building trust, capability, a clear sense of the future, a path, a sense of urgency, along with clear and consistent communication.

What Linda Kennedy Associates Does

We engage in a working partnership based on collaboration and mutual trust to asses the situation and define the goals and outcomes.

• Clarify business goals and objectives
• Assess current situation
• Develop immediate and long-term goals
• Define deliverables and success criteria

Sample Deliverables:

We assessed, designed and delivered the plan for “the people adoption” of an organization wide standardized desktop system.  The company had grown through acquisition and had disparate systems that would not communicate and very different cultures based upon their heritages over a wide geography throughout the US, Europe and Asia Pacific, though headquartered in Silicon Valley.  The IT department had a reputation of “shoving” changes down the user community throats, amongst other challenges that were uncovered in the assessment phase.  We focused on:

o     IT Leadership team articulating a clear vision so individuals so see how they benefited from the change, not just the company

o      Frequent and succinct communication utilizing numerous modes of delivery (including 2-way forums)

o       VSPs – visible signs of progress
o       High involvement via decision-making processes, system testing, development of training, job aides, etc. from the various geographies and user communities.

Co-designed and co-facilitated All Employee sessions with Executive Director and his senior staff as part of an agency’s re-organization, re-engineering and IT system changes and upgrades mandated by the legislature of a Western State. The purposes of these sessions were to:

o   Have the ED and his team talk about the vision of the future in a two-way conversation so people could as questions and fully understand

o   Develop basic change readiness and communication skills to utilize during the implementation of the changes and beyond for all employees

o   Engage in meaningful two-way conversations about concerns and implementation of the changes.

The agency was 100 years old, and had previously never experienced any major organizational change. This was one part of the overall Change Management plan.  Other key elements of the plan included ongoing communication, highlighting immediate successes, and a feedback system to continue gathering suggestions for a successful implementation.

Designed and delivered Leading Change and Managing Transition workshop as part of the  Executive Development curriculum for an organization based upon the strategic plans and competencies needed for their leadership

 

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