If you don’t change, you don’t grow

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. —Maya Angelou

Changes, changes are all around. There will be changes in the Catholic Church as Pope Benedict XVI steps down from the papacy and the College of Cardinals elects his successor. There will hopefully be a new Congress or new local government leadership as old and new faces (not necessarily new names) get elected on May 13. 

We live in a world that’s constantly changing: new initiatives, new work modalities, new technology improvements, new ways to stay ahead of the competition, new everything. All these come together to force continuing transformations to the way you conduct your business and life. Changes can be big or small. It can be personal or professional, intimate or system-wide, emotional or rational. But one thing is common: you feel anxious and frightened by any kind of challenge. Change is inevitable, but where do you begin, who can help you face it, and how and when do you make sure you accomplish your change goals?

Dr. John Kotter, a change management guru and a professor at Harvard Business School, offers help in his book, Leading Change. You can take some cues from his eight steps for leading change below. They were originally written for organizational change, but I adjusted them to suit your individual purpose. By heeding the 8-Step Process outlined by Dr. Kotter, you can sidestep failure and become proficient at change, increase you chances of success in change management, and thrive today and in the future.

Step 1: Create a sense of urgency: In your rush to make a plan and take action, make sure not to ignore this step. Most people fail to make the needed change because they made their mistakes at the very beginning, where they find it hard to go outside their comfort zones. For change to happen, you have to want it. Build on a sense of urgency around the need for change, and have a strong drive to forge ahead and win. This may help you generate the preliminary motivation to get things moving. Try self-introspection. Open an honest and convincing dialogue with yourself. If many people start talking about the change you propose, this urgency can build and feed on itself.

Next, determine probable threats, enlarge scenarios revealing what could happen in the future, look at opportunities that should be, or could be, exploited, establish truthful discussions, and provide self-motivated and credible reasons to get you talking and thinking, and ask support from friends, colleagues and family members to strengthen your argument.

Step 2: Put together a support group with enough power to boost the change. Don’t act like a superman and single-handedly move your change plan. Develop the right personal vision, imbibe the vision, eliminate all of the primary hurdles, generate short-term wins, lead and manage the change project, and anchor new approaches deep in yourself.

Next step: Put together the right support group that understands your change project. You have to have a significant level of trust in the members of this group as they share your goals. 

Step 3: Clarify how the future will be different from the past. A clear vision serves three important purposes: first, it simplifies your decisions; second, it motivates you to take action in the right direction; third, it helps to coordinate your actions in a remarkably fast and efficient way. A lucid and compelling vision will do far more than an authoritarian decree or micromanagement can ever hope to accomplish.  Your vision is the glue that holds things together and makes sense of them both for the mind and the heart. A good vision can demand sacrifices in order to create a better future for you.

Your vision must provide real guidance. It must be single-minded, adaptable and easy to communicate. It must inspire and guide your action. It must be a benchmark for executing critical decisions, but not be so constricting as to lessen the likelihood of empowering action. It must be communicable, which means that if it cannot be explained quickly in a way that makes intuitive sense, it becomes useless. Thus, effective visions have six key characteristics. They are imaginable, desirable, feasible, focused, flexible, and communicable.

Next steps: Determine the values that are central to the intended change. Develop a short summary (one or two sentences) that captures what you “see” in your future.  Create a strategy to execute that vision. Ensure that your change support group can describe the vision in five minutes or less. Practice your “vision speech” often.

Step 4: Communicate your vision. What you do with your vision after you create it will determine your success. It’s important to “walk the talk,” where what you do is far more important and believable than what you say. Demonstrate the kind of behavior that you want to adopt.

Next steps: Talk often about your change vision, address your concerns and anxieties openly and honestly, apply your vision to all aspects of our life, and tie everything back to the vision.

Step 5: Remove as many barriers as possible. If you have been following the recommended steps and have reached this point in the change process, you’ve been living your vision and getting a lot of headway. Hopefully, by this time you are also busy reaping the benefits brought about by the expected change. But as you move on, continue to put in place the structure for change, and repeatedly check for barriers to it. Remove the obstacles to change to make the alterations flow forward.

Next steps: Recognize and reward yourself for making change happen, identify the barriers to change, take action to quickly remove barriers (human or otherwise), and see what’s needed.

Step 6: Create visible, unambiguous success as soon as possible. Nothing motivates more than success. Give yourself a taste of victory early in the change process. Create short-term targets, not just one long-term goal. You want each smaller target to be achievable, with little room for failure. You may have to work very hard to come up with these targets, but each “win” that you produce can further motivate you.

Next steps: Look for surefire programs that you can implement to effect the changes, choose early targets that are easy to do and inexpensive, analyze the potential pros and cons of your targets. If you don’t succeed with an early goal, it can hurt your entire change initiative; thank, if not reward, the people who help you meet the targets.

Step 7: Consolidate your gains and produce more change. Many change projects fail because victory is declared too early. Real change runs deep. Quick wins are only the beginning of what needs to be done to achieve long-term change. To reach success you need to keep looking for improvements. Each success provides an opportunity to build on what went right and identify what you can improve.

Next steps: After every win, analyze what went right and what needs improving. Set goals to continue building on the momentum you’ve achieved, and learn about kaizen, the Japanese concept of continuous change.

Step 8: Make it stick. To make any change stick, it should become part of your core. Your own behavior and persona often determine what gets done. The values behind your vision must show in your everyday work. Make continuous efforts to ensure that the change is seen in every aspect of your life. This will help give that change a solid place in your heart and mind. It’s also important that the people around you continue to prop up the change, because if you lose the support of your family and friends, you might end up back where you started.

Next step: Talk about progress every chance you get, tell your success stories about the change process, and repeat other stories that you hear.

Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ oft-repeated quote “Change is the only constant,” continues to resonate. You have to work hard at it. With careful planning, implementing change can be much easier, and your chances of success can be guaranteed. But if you’re too impatient, and if you anticipate too many results too soon, your change plans are more likely to fall short.

Change is something you simply can’t ignore. You just have to embrace it. As Gail Sheehy said, “If you don’t change, you don’t grow. If you don’t grow, you aren’t really living.”

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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating. Leading Change is available at National Book Store.