Are your leaders ready for successful change?
ChangeAble
Change, by definition, is fundamentally different than wherever your business is right now. Change will require a fundamentally different approach by your management team, as well as different skill sets and perspectives if your objectives are to take and stick. This is true whether you are planning the sale of a business, a merger or acquisition, transferring control to the next generation, a significant reduction in force, or any other major shift in direction or management.
Although in the past an organization might go through a major change once or twice a century, the current business environment means change happens much faster and more frequently. In most businesses, a certain amount of continuous change is essential if your company is going to remain competitive and profitable.
You’ll need leaders who know how to lead change. The problem is, most companies are not set up to go through change smoothly and most managers haven’t got the training, experience or perspectives necessary to shepherd a business through a major change with minimum pain and maximum benefit. As a result:
- the majority of businesses that intend to sell, don’t
- A full 50-80% of mergers and acquisitions end in failure
- Half of family businesses don’t survive the transfer of control to the second generation and two-thirds don’t make it to the third generation
- 40% of new leaders fail within 18 months
Needless to say, the cost to the organization, and those who’ve invested their lives in it, is devastating.
The ChangeAble Program is a strong first step toward
preparing your leaders to take your organization smoothly through whatever change you
have planned.
ChangeAble assesses your management team’s readiness for change, identifies areas for development, makes clear recommendations, sets priorities, and actively begins the process of getting everyone on board and working on the change rather than working in reaction to it.
What happens all too frequently is that a lack of preparedness clouds priorities, limits options, eliminates accountability and prevents your team from making the best decisions. Then, instead of being ready for change, you’d better get ready for confusion, conflict, underperformance and failure.
Four important things organizations don’t know that can destroy them in change situations:
1. What the organization needs to be ready for change. Sometimes change shows up as a great opportunity and sometimes it is thrust upon you as the lesser of evils and the only viable option or anything in between. In any case, the change itself can be so compelling, you lose sight of what the organization needs to be ready. The cost of not being ready ranges from expensive to catastrophic.
2. What gaps the management team needs to fill. Your management team is probably somewhere between good and excellent at what they do best. Change, however, is going to ask them to do things for which they haven’t been trained and in which they have no experience. A change situation is totally unforgiving when leaders lack necessary skills, abilities, knowledge and perspectives.
3. Who will take the lead. (It’s not always who you expect.) We business people are tribal beings. We look around us for cues as to how to feel, think and act, especially in unfamiliar situations. Strong personalities that aren’t well-utilized can influence other employees in negative ways and undermine your objectives. You don’t want to leave this to chance.
4. Where the landmines are. Are you prepared for all aspects of what your upcoming change will bring? What hidden problems will be surfaced by change? What can you learn from the mistakes of other organizations? You don’t want to wait to address the problem until it explodes in your face.
Four things your organization will want to know before embarking on a major change:
While there are many moving parts and much you’ll need to know in any change initiative, if you know these four things you’ll have a solid foundation to build on:
1. The predictors for successful change and how your
company stacks up. When you know the indicators and where your company stands,
you know what you have to do next.
2. Where leaders have gaps in the competencies needed for successful change…and how to close them. Knowledge is power. When you know where your leaders are weak, you can strengthen them, design workarounds or otherwise plan so their gaps don’t derail the change process.
3. Potential change agents in your organization who can smoothly lead the way. Sometimes the most powerful change leaders aren’t on the management team. Even when management-staff relations are strong, there is a natural us and them separation, which occurs between employees and management. In change situations, intentionally developing staff members who are well-suited to step up to lead and influence their peers in positive ways can be invaluable. But first you have to identify who they are.
4. The predictors for failure and how to avoid it. Your organization is not the first to go through a major change. And the challenges facing you are not unique. You can benefit from the mistakes of those who went down this path before you. But only if you invest in assessing where you are and developing a plan to eliminate or avoid the danger spots.
ChangeAble identifies where your company is now, what you need to be ready and how to get there. Through a quick and simple process of noninvasive yet highly accurate assessments, we provide a detailed report and follow-up consultation with clearly outlined recommendations.
measure it.
ChangeAble was created to help companies
gather and focus
the intelligence they need to be effective as they move through
change.
What you’ll get:
ChangeAble is a comprehensive in-house assessment program for organizations with between 50 and 500 employees who are approaching a major change.The program is built on two powerful measurements that will help you ready your organization.
Measure #1: TTI Success Insights Behaviors and Motivators
This well-respected assessment tool is used by 70% of Fortune 500 companies for professional and team development. It’s like having a personalized instruction manual for each member of your staff. In change situations, it allows your organization to identify influencers, build effective teams, increase personal impact, and design powerful communication strategies.
Measure #2: ChangeAble 360-degree feedback
Our proprietary 360-degree feedback instrument evaluates your
management team’s grasp of the core competencies essential for successful
change, and identifies clear paths for improvement.
• We Identify the gap between current and needed levels
of performance
• We priority-rank competencies to effectively focus development efforts
• We link competencies to action ideas and resources
to make clear next steps readily apparent
Competencies we measure include:
- Ability to create and align with a Mission/Vision
- Communication Skills
- Team Building
- Staffing
- Planning
- Setting pace
- Designing Wins
- Dealing with Resistance
- Selling a concept
- Meeting Problems and Challenges
- Creating accountability
- Managing key relationships
- Understanding and influencing culture
- Leadership presence
The ChangeAble Assessment Process actively supports the change. The program will also help you to:
- Spot potential problems before they materialize
- De-emotionalize difficult conversations making them easier and more productive
- Minimize conflict
- Increase retention; Reduce turnover and damaged relationships
- Increase buy-in, ownership of change
- Increase business valuation
- Improve intra- and inter-departmental collaboration
- Improve understanding of involvement from clients, vendors, and the public
- Reduce problems and their severity
- Increase understanding of your organization
- Gain information, insights and direction
- Reduces stress, increases control
- Helps managers motivate and work with direct reports
- Improves communication
- Demonstrates that management is interested in and cares about people.
- Gets people started thinking about key areas for improvement
The ChangeAble program is:
- An easy, largely internet based process
- Customizable to your organization
- Positive and empowering
- Highly accurate
- A set of tool that provide multiple long-term uses
Is ChangeAble a good tool for your organization?
ChangeAble brings together tools that have been proven in Fortune 500 organizations with coaching expertise and hands-on leadership and change leadership experience. It is a powerful source of critical information for designing successful change.
If you’ve read this far, your next step is a complimentary strategy session. We’ll spend about an hour exploring the specific challenges
facing your organization now, what kind of results you’d like to see and how this program may be useful for you.
You'll take away greater clarity about the issues you’re facing and excited about what’s
possible. The conversation will take about an hour and can be held in person or
by phone.
Click here to book your ChangeAble
Strategy Session now.
