How do organisations get the message across and change/rectify their staff behaviour? The secret of doing so is explained by John Kotter’s 8 Step Process to engage employees, have transformational organisational change and eliminate complacency. Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model is recognised globally to be a tool for organisational change management. The model was developed after Kotter after four decades of observing innumerable leaders and organisations as they were trying to execute their change strategies. Kotter, the leadership and change management guru, extracted the success factors and combined them into a logical methodology which leads to the discovery of the award-winning 8-Step Process for Leading Change.
It is imperative to create a sense of urgency and build a team to deliver a vision of the future that people buy into. Urgency is the key to eliminate complacency and kick-starting change. Instead of conducting lengthy and expensive analysis plus forcing transformational change, upon a disinterested audience; create a sense of urgency of change. Typically the change is needed to adapt to market developments, changes in the legislation of rising cost and anything that may impact the strategic nature of the business. By taking an overly analytical approach to transformational change management will drive projects to a halt before it even commences. Thus, urgency is the problem at hand whether competitive rivals, unsatisfied customers etc.
The organisational transformational change process must be lead, and for successful leadership, a company requires committed staff engagement. Once the sense of urgency has been established, a dynamic team should be assembled in order to guide the change. This team may need to confront issues which may be difficult or not discussed due to corporate culture and organisational complacency. The team members need to exhibit strong emotional intelligence and not be fearful of expressing opinions.
Company politics and workplace complaceny hinder transformational change. In reality, what is required is by having open and honest dialogues in which conflict is used profitably to build trust, collaboration and project credibility. Instead, a vision is the focal point which will bind conflicted, complacent and disheartened team members also gear the organisation towards soaring to a better change process. Creating a vision which is compelling and can be easily communicated is one challenge faced by many companies. When successful, the vision is a prime motivator in combating complacency in the workplace. A vision of the future which brings opportunities and benefits into clear focus will engage staff within an organisation that has a clear business plan and a budget to turn plans into reality.
