PCP Associate Blog- Debbie Powell

Managing Change Successfully: Embracing Lessons Learned and a People-First Approach.

Change management successes, failures, and lessons are well-documented; however, even with this wealth of knowledge, organisations still struggle to receive consistent positive feedback from employees as to how well change is managed within their organisation.

Is your organisation facing this challenge? If so, know that you are not alone.

What can be done? there is no one size fits all solution, but in this article, I’d like to explore how the impact of using the lessons learned from previous projects and programmes, in conjunction with a ‘people first’ mindset can positively impact and enhance change management practices within your organisation, ultimately leading to higher levels of employee satisfaction and organisational success.

Benefits of incorporating Lessons Learned

Firstly, let’s look at the benefits of incorporating lessons learned into your organisation’s change management approach.

Each organisation will have a gold mine of lessons identified from previous change projects or programmes but often the need to deliver change rapidly can lead to these lessons being overlooked and sometimes overshadowed by the experiences of external resources secured to manage the change delivery. But why capture these insights if not to utilise them?

More often than not, employees hold the longest corporate memory. When resistance to change arises, it can often be compounded by a frustration that lessons from previous initiatives have not been learnt.

Before commencing any new change initiative, it is essential to review past lessons and understand what has worked well and not so well so that strategies, approaches, and plans can truly be tailored to your organisation and people.

By doing this, organisations can minimise the frustration that employees feel in seeing history repeating itself. By listening and taking positive action in response to employee’s previous experiences it demonstrates the value the organisation places on their experiences and insights.

To commence a new change initiative without recognising these lessons is risky. It can erode employees’ confidence in the organisation’s commitments to addressing feedback and concerns. If employees repeatedly observe practices which negatively impact on their experience it can only subsequently negatively impact on their perception of how well the organisation manages change.

Embracing a People – First Approach

Embracing a people-first approach isn’t just a slogan, it’s a fundamental mindset crucial for successful change management. As people determine the success or failure of change initiatives it is imperative that we prioritise their needs and emotions alongside the prevalent focus on time and cost factors during change delivery and adoption.

People are likely facing a myriad of changes, both professionally and personally, making it more critical than ever to acknowledge this broader context for successful change management. However, implementing a people first mindset can be challenging, especially considering that emotional intelligence levels amongst leaders and managers within organisations will vary.

There are several actions that leaders and managers can undertake to support a people first mindset during change delivery and adoption. One technique I have seen work well is when leadership teams consistently build into their meetings open dialogue about employee sentiment, discuss insights from communication and engagement events, and collectively determine responses to concerns raised through their management channels.

Adopting this approach allows leaders to leverage insights from diverse perspectives within the leadership team. Without this collective discussion, varying levels of emotional intelligence among leaders may result in inconsistent responses to addressing employee concerns, ultimately leading to disparities in employee experiences during change initiatives and heavily influencing an employee’s perception as to how well change was managed.

Conclusion

In order to improve employee satisfaction when it comes to managing change within organisations, learning from past initiatives becomes imperative. Resistance to change is inevitable but compounding it with avoidable frustrations by neglecting past lessons is unnecessary.

A people first mindset is essential for managing change successfully, people are the ultimate decision makers as to whether change has been managed well, one measure they will use is how they felt.

Implementing strategies to recognise differing levels of emotional intelligence in leaders and managers is key in minimising the risk in disparity of employees’ experiences, as is ensuring that the impact on people and people’s emotions remains as prevalent as time and cost in decision making and leadership team discussions.

Whilst this article has proposed just two actions, there are many more approaches organisations can take to positively impact employee satisfaction and organisational success when it comes to managing change. If not already in place, I encourage you to implement these two ideas in your own organisation and observe the difference they can make.

Please do contact us, we may be able to help deliver and embed your change ensuring people are always at the very heart.