How can we be change agents in the community
Answers
Explanation:
5 Ways to Be an Effective Change Agent
1. Embrace the Resistance
The source of most of the angst when it comes to change management is people. People will be resistant. Know this. Appreciate this. Be comfortable with this. Then determine ways that you can slowly chip away at this resistance. The first step is to identify your allies.
Find the long-standing employees who have some degree of influence in the organization and partner with them. When colleagues recognize that a long-standing team member is on team change, they will be more willing to accept the changes rather than oppose them.
2. Co-Create the Vision
Most change management books will highlight the importance of creating a powerful vision. This emphasis is warranted and the advice is sage. However, it is more effective to have leadership and other influencers collaboratively working with you to craft your desired end-state. The vision needs to be a co-creation with everyone feeling like they contributed and own the end result. Your vision needs to be easily understandable, to inspire action and to focus attention.
Frequent and consistent communication of the vision is one of the key strategies that will help you further erode the resistance that you will face. You and your allies can never talk about the vision too much.
3. Get Buy-In
Getting people bought into the idea of changing is vital. Steps 1 and 2 would have helped you get your allies and leadership co-creators bought in. However, you not only have to launch an awareness and feedback campaign for all affected, you have to ensure that the most senior leader is on team change and spreading the same good news.
Change management initiatives have a very high probability of failure when the top leader is not on board. They have to be bought in, actively communicating the vision and demonstrating with their actions that they are supportive and enabling the change.
Also colleagues that feel outside of the sphere of this cool, new change are more likely to exhibit even more steadfast resistance. This is why it is crucial for them to be heard and provide feedback on the path forward.
4. Create a Track Record
Once you have the vision in a solid state and there are enough people bought in, then it is time to create your execution plan.
Be mindful of time and deliverables in your action plan. People will not wait for nine months to see the effect of your plan. You need to produce, demonstrate and constantly share tangible products to the organization every one to three months.
This process will build the momentum, support and excitement for change that you will need to fuel the successful execution of your plan. It also reduces the resistance you will face as you move forward.
5. Make Change Normal
Not only do you have to embed the changes made on the path to the vision, but you have to take steps to make change management a normal part of work life. Identify and use the levers available to you and your allies that can gently nudge people to continuously question and improve.
For example, when doing efficiency evaluations of your human resources team, a useful lever to ensure continuous improvement would be to have a mandatory step that forces the HR team to do a re-examination of current policies and procedures in order to determine current relevancy and potential optimizations.