MASTER CHANGE MANAGEMENT PART I

Like it or not, we are all in the business of change management. Those good at change management have a significant advantage over those that struggle with it.

Sometimes, the need to change is evident and unavoidable, such as when the pandemic forced us to change how we operate our businesses. More often, the need to change is not so pressing, and this is when we demonstrate how good we are at change management; we either make the change to improve our business, or we limp on. I’m sure most of us have changes in mind that would benefit our business. What holds us back?

“Business owners good at change management have a significant advantage over those that struggle with it.”

Often, it’s time; we have so much else on our daily plate, we can’t take the time to dedicate to the process of making change. Other times, it might be cost; right now, making the change is outside of our budget. Sometimes there is an element of risk; the change might not result in the benefit we are anticipating, and we don’t want to take that risk.

More often, however, we don’t make even incremental changes to our business because we don’t have the energy to overcome the resistance we will get. All of us have had the experience of making a change that “didn’t stick”. It’s not necessarily that our staff didn’t want to support the change (although that happens); they just keep forgetting. They have been following a particular process for so long that they can’t easily make the necessary change, so it doesn’t happen, and the change is soon forgotten. This has two significant effects; firstly, it reinforces our experience that change is difficult, and secondly, it tells our staff that supporting change can be optional. Both make any future change that much more difficult for us.

“All of us have had the frustration of making a change that “didn’t stick”.”

Like any skill, we get better at change management through practice. If we very rarely make changes to our business, we are not going to improve our change management skills, and our staff will remain resistant to change when it arises. On the other hand, if constant change is a feature of our business, we get good at managing it, our staff becomes used to it, and they even become a source of suggestions for improvement.

We are not talking about big changes; instead, ongoing incremental changes to improve the business continuously. Many large and successful businesses have a culture of continuous improvement.

Of course, we should acknowledge that not all change works out as we hope. Part of change management is recognising that some changes must be fine-tuned or even abandoned while recognising that there is no shame in an idea that didn’t pan out as we thought it would.

“…if constant change is a feature of our business, we get good at managing it, and our staff becomes used to it.”

In my next article, we will look in more detail at what we can do to become better at change management, but to finish, I want to share our daily experience with change management.

At RFMS Australasia, we are in the business of change. We are working with our clients to implement RFMS as their business management system or helping them make the transition to electronic quantifying. Often both. This type of change is amongst the most difficult a business owner can make. Often there is resistance from staff who don’t understand why their boss has foisted this unwelcome change on them. Even supportive staff who understand the reasons for the change sometimes struggle to unlearn the old processes to learn the new. Given this a business owner might ask if we will train new staff he might take on in the future. We will provide that service, but having done this for more than ten years, I can remember only very few instances of training new employees. In fact, our clients often tell us in amazement that new staff picked up on how to use these new tools far more quickly than the existing team did.

The difference is that new employees come on board with the expectation they will learn new skills, and as a result they learn quickly.

If we create an environment in which our staff have an ongoing expectation of continuous incremental change, they will cope with change, even big changes. In the next issue, we will look at what we can do as business owners to ensure that our ongoing efforts to improve our business are successful.