Rushing into change can be counterproductive. Changing how things work in your business can eat up time, dragging you away from working with customers. You can end up dividing your time between the tasks, and it could result in you feeling like you’ve got nowhere fast.
So, how should you approach it when you’re faced with doing a change – whether its you own choice, or whether its something you’re having to do. After all, change is a fact of life for most businesses these days.
If you’ve made the final decision about the change, you’ll have already defined in detail the benefits that your business should gain once the change has been put in place:
Time savings; Cost savings; Increased income; Changes in the processes you use; The cost to benefit pay-back period; you may even find added benefits in how you use data
This creates the Business Case that demonstrates how the change will drive your business forward and sets out the best way to use those benefits the change will bring.
So, from all of that, you know what you want to change and why you want to change it.
You just need to sort out how you get there!
Running straight into doing a change means that you’re more likely to hit a problem, which can be like hitting a wall, and it can have similar effects – headaches, confusion, increased anxiety, and it’s likely to significantly increase a business’ workload.
With all the other calls on a business’ time, you can end up having to switch between tasks more and more often, which can be draining and can also raise the likelihood that something will be missed, which in turn could mean that a trip-point has been seeded into the change’s progress that could end up causing you even more pain.
To avoid this experience, try hitting the Pause Button earlier rather than later, and step back from Doing.
Sometimes, it’s the best thing you can do.
What’s the next step after you step back?
Plan.
A good starting point will be to understand:
Also, taking time to clearly understand what the business will look like when that change is in place will allow you to define how it will change the way You Do What You Do – where the changes will be in your day-to-day work.
This points you at any alterations in other processes you use and will also help to identify the risks that will trip you up as you put the change in place – those things that will give you a headache and tie you up in knots if you don’t tie them down early.
And I repeat – Plan. It’s something that can’t be said enough. Understanding how your change NEEDS to be delivered will reduce your stress and anxiety levels phenomenally.
What else do you need to think about?
Recognise when you need help, this may sound self-serving since I’m a Change Manager, but none of us can be experts at everything – we might sometimes think we are, but we’re not, and to try to do everything… well, that way lies stress, late nights, and a lot of anxiety.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
And don’t forget, if you get stymied by a change, or something stopping you doing what you need to be doing – Ask for help!
Making life easy for your clients