I recently had someone to ask me how to go about motivating top leadership to improve the effectiveness of their change process. That is a very good question and I will answer it here so others might also benefit from the answer.
All processes can be improved. Priorities for deciding which ones are in the most need for improvement must be considered. In my opinion for most organizations the most important process for improving belongs to the top leadership team. It is the process that the leaders of an organization have for driving change in the organization. Many organizations are not good at it and leadership either fails to recognize or accept that fact. So the question was: “what are some options” to motivate leaders to change their change process? They are as follows:
It could be suggested to the leadership that they do a “self-assessment”. Each member of the team could “individually” rate the effectiveness of their process from 1-5. They should then offer comments regarding what they like about it and finally what needs to be improved. These could be sent to a person that would facilitate the self-assessment process. They would summarize the documents received. The summary would be an overall score along with a range of scores, a summary of strengths and of weaknesses. Names regarding who said what would NOT be identified. Then the summary could be presented to the leadership team. They could discuss and determined if they are satisfied with the current performance of this CRITICAL process. If not then they would develop a plan for improvement.
A second suggestion would be for a person in the organization to make specific recommendations that they feel would improve the process based on their understanding of its needs. In addition to having their own thoughts they could identify other possibilities for improvements from books, articles, seminars, etc. One could obtain possibilities from reviewing information that is on my website at http://www.eqcs.net/. Go to the Blog section and find Strategic Planning under Categories on the right. Click on it and you will find description of my process for managing change along with many suggestions that could be used for improvement.
Lastly, consider using a professional that has a proven track record. There are two aspects to a process for managing change. One is the strategic (vision, strategies, etc.) and the other is the tactical (actual implementation of a specific change that has been identified). The professional could meet with the leadership team and share a methodology that has been successfully used by others for them to consider using to improve their overall process for managing change. A variation of the professional approach would have the professional utilize a variety of tools, techniques and methodologies they have to assist a team working on an important change needed and demonstrate successful implementation. When this has been demonstrated as beneficial leadership could then consider using this person to assist with improving their overall process for managing change.
Not taking any action for improving the change process means that you are willing to accept the current process. Is that best for your organization?
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