Stop Shoving Change Down Your Employees’ Throats. Make it Exciting and Fun!

As you prepare for more organisational change in 2024, consider this: have you sufficiently cultivated a change mindset?
We’ve always advocated telling a compelling change story to explain the reasons and timing for the change, and to consistently paint an empowering vision of the future to get buy-in from teams.
 
However, repeating the story and communicating consistently and transparently is only part of the equation. 
 
A crucial element that many organisations neglect is the need to equip each person with tools to independently manage and embrace the change. This requires uncovering each person’s motivations, concerns and challenges.
 
It may seem like a long road to work with each individual but that is a myth. Training team leaders to be effective change coaches takes a matter of a few months.
 
Cascading down the line, this approach has proven to make the change process exciting and even fun. Imagine your organisation thriving on a robust and sustainable change culture, not just one that lasts during a transition. Wouldn’t that be great?
 
The process begins with these steps:
 
Truly internalise the organisation’s Vision, Mission & Values
 
Communicating and internalising an organisation’s vision, mission and values shouldn’t just involve senior leadership presenting information and directives on internal communication channels.
 
Instead, use a collaborative approach to help employees see how the organisation’s vision, mission and values are congruent with their own career goals.
 
While employees work purposefully to help the organisation succeed, they must be supported with the tools they need to not only execute the change, but also to meet their long-term career objectives and aspirations.
 
Employees will feel like they truly have a stake in the organisation’s success. Moreover, they will feel a sense of belonging which would certainly help with talent retention.
 
Install empowering beliefs
 
Beliefs work as either accelerators or decelerators to success. They are installed from young and most people are unaware of the beliefs that drive them. Once uncovered, damaging beliefs can be debunked and replaced with new, empowering beliefs that augur well for change.
 
You may find people who were averse to change before operating differently after such exercises. They become open to what’s ahead and ready to thrive in the new landscape.
 
If done in a modular format, these training sessions only take up to six months to show exponential success. Money spent is easily recovered and organisations are left with a workforce that is trained for long-term evolution.
 
Organisations that invest in such efforts are also likely to retain top talent more easily. Why? Because employees evolve from having a “no choice” mindset to feeling passionate and excited about their jobs. They end up actually embracing and loving transformation exercises. Ultimately, they are motivated to help the organisation succeed as they succeed personally in their careers.   
 
This post was co-written by Communications Strategist, Consultant and Coach, Bharati Jagdish.