Leveraging Strategic Change Management Three Key Steps and Best Practices to Enable Enterprise Work Collaboration

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Enterprise work collaboration solutions are transforming the way high performance teams and their members get work done. Organizations across the globe are reaping the benefits, internally by engaging their employees, and externally by maintaining their competitive edge and achieving business objectives. In fact, according to an article in Forbes, businesses using social collaboration see an average increase of 12.5% in productivity.1 The challenge many organizations face, however, is engaging their employees in the changes required when adopting new ways of working. As the adage goes, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” When adopting a new collaboration and project management solution, a critical issue to address is managing change across the organization. Successful change management will allow you to gain a solid return on your investment, as well as achieve key business objectives. For the changes you’re preparing to implement to truly take root and flourish, there are three key steps that must take place. First, you must adequately organize in preparation for the changes to come. Once you’ve strategized and developed your plan, you must take the appropriate steps to implement that change in a way that overcomes employee objections and fosters collaboration across the organization. Finally, you must find a way to maintain your initial momentum. Skipping any of these steps will diminish your return and result in a tremendous waste of time, effort and resources. Let’s examine each step in greater detail.

1http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikamorphy/2012/08/14/ar

e-enterprises-really-ready-for-true-social-collaboration-salesforce-coms-betting-they-cant-resist-the-productivity-gains/

Leveraging Strategic Change Management: Three Key Steps and Best Practices to Enable Enterprise Work Collaboration

- Forbes

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Businesses using social collaboration see an average increase of

12.5% in productivity.

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1: Organizing for Change A thoughtful and comprehensive strategy to support the new way of working should be a top priority of an organization’s leaders when they decide to undertake a new collaboration and project management initiative. Create a strategy that will eliminate barriers and accelerate adoption of the new solution. Your strategy should establish the culture and values that promote collaboration. Specifically, you must:

What are the qualities, behaviors and actions you’d like to see as the workplace begins to evolve? The answers to this question will provide a guideline on which to measure progress. They will also provide organizational leaders with a clearer picture of what’s expected of them. The entire process should be handled in a way that promotes open communication, collaborative sharing and transparency – from the top down – so that everyone can understand and begin to feel comfortable with the changes to come. Once you’ve established a list of core qualities, values and behaviors and have begun openly communicating them, the next step is determining the most effective way to implement and manage change within your organization. More specifically, what is the most effective way to not only get employee buy-in, but ingrain a new set of core values across the entire company? There are a number of different approaches that can be taken to accomplish this goal.

Let’s examine best practices necessary to manage change effectively.

Obtain executive sponsorship.

Effective behavioral and cultural change starts at the top. You must start by getting the buy-in of key decision makers within the organization. These leaders must cohesively agree on and support the proposed change and act as a committed, collaborative team before any steps are taken to implement the changes.

Identify leaders and evangelists.

While executives should model the changes, leaders and evangelists will be your greatest and perhaps loudest advocates. They will crusade for a work collaboration solution and collaborative culture. Identify those within the organization that would best serve as mentors to promote and foster the benefits of change to those around them.

Democratize the workplace. Break down silos and obtain employee involvement in planning. When people feel they are a part of the change, they are much more comfortable adapting to it. Often those in charge of implementing and managing change fail to consider how impactful frontline and mid-level employees can be on whether the process is a success or failure. They mistakenly believe that the fewer people involved, the smoother and more efficient the roll-out. To the contrary, without support of the masses, managing change will likely be a much more challenging process.

• Define and share qualities and behaviors/actions

• Promote openness and transparency • Determine a strategy for establishing a culture

of values that supports collaboration

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VOICE TRANSPARENCY CLARITY CHANGE INNOVATION

Be proactive.

In this case, the best offense is a good defense. Know how people may react to the proposed changes and plan to address and overcome objectives. Understand the fears that employees may harbor which couldstand in the way of progress and be prepared to quell those fears right away by offsetting them with the benefits that change presents.

Customize your approach. Because every organization is unique in certain ways, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to implementing and managing change within a company. It’s up to those in charge of the implementation strategy to recognize the obstacles and advantages that a new approach will bring so that they can both be addressed in a customized plan.

Assemble the right solutions ahead of time. Technology is critical to effective enterprise collaboration, so make sure your employees have what they need to work together. Whether it’s an enterprise work collaboration solution to keep everyone connected or video conferencing software to keep remote teams closely tied in, determine ahead of time what solutions will be most effective in helping to promote, implement and foster change and take the steps to have them in place ahead of time.

2: Implementing Change

As Thomas Edison said, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” Implementing your strategy successfully is obviously one of the most critical components of change management; however, be prepared to encounter a number of obstacles, the biggest of which is something that many employees struggle with when it comes to embracing change. It’s no secret that the main reason for resisting change is uncertainty. Uncertainty about job security, uncertainty about reputation, uncertainty about learning new skills, fear of losing control, and most commonly, fear of the unknown. In order to successfully implement change, these concerns must be acknowledged and addressed. This is why clear and continuous communication is so critical. Team members should understand the reasons for, and the benefits of, embarking on a work collaboration initiative. Among the reasons is innovation. We are in an era of unprecedented connectivity, creating significant opportunities for innovation, which are essential for company growth and success. Innovations naturally emerge when employees from every corner of a company work within a platform where transparency is encouraged, clarity is gained and ideas are amplified. True innovations can appear from anywhere within a company, but when organizations give employees a voice, their ideas are socialized immediately and can be heard throughout the organization.

From voice to innovation

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Here are some key practices to manage change along with some proven tactics that will facilitate and foster these changes and spur innovation.

Integrate solutions into day-

to-day work processes.

One of the quickest ways to throw a monkey wrench into the change management process is to introduce the change all at once. The key to getting buy-in from all team members is to implement that change gradually by integrating it into the day-to-day operations. This allows employees to adapt and adjust more smoothly over time. This step supports the “muscle memory” strategy of managing change, where employees are allowed to experience the change firsthand and subsequently overcome their fears.

Model and embrace collaboration.

As mentioned above, successful change starts at the top. There must be a united front and an unwavering commitment from management if the entire organization is to get on board. Collaboration must be modeled and embraced by leadership if it is to foster employee ownership and commitment at all levels.

Demonstrate transparency to foster trust.

You’re not going to foster engagement if your employees don’t fully trust management or the organization as a whole. Creating an atmosphere of transparency is a great place to start building that trust. However, you need to make sure that people don’t feel vulnerable by being transparent about their work.

Communicate change. People naturally gravitate toward things that they feel will present some type of benefit for them. Employees will be asking, “What’s in it for me? Why should I make this change?” To address these questions and overcome the fear factor that change can present, communication is key. Employees at all levels of the organization should clearly understand both the personal advantages of the new collaboration network, as well as the team-centric and big-picture benefits the solution will deliver.

Provide training and development.

The more comfortable everyone becomes using the new collaboration solution, the more smoothly implementation will go. Training and development should be a priority to help educate the entire organization on best practices. Furthermore, selecting qualified peer leaders to assist with the training initiative can help promote and foster support of the change from within.

Collaborate on problem-

solving initiatives.

Get employees involved in solving problems and finding newer, better way of doing things. This creates a feeling of empowerment and provides employees with a sense of ownership, which goes a long way in helping to connect all employees with their role in the big picture.

Offer feedback on positives, not just negatives.

Praise your team when they are doing things right instead of only approaching them with criticism or negative feedback. This will generate respect and develop a more loyal and engaged workforce.

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3: Maintaining Momentum Achieving early wins to build momentum is crucial to your success. By developing and embracing an effective change management strategy, organizations can build a strong base of employees participating and advocating on their behalf. Start off with goals that are measurable and somewhat easy to achieve and communicate successes regularly. When employees can see the fruit of their efforts right away, it’s easier to build momentum and push forward toward more challenging goals. In one of their valuable business tips, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) pinpointed three key points for using milestones to maintain momentum. Their advice is to ensure that goals are:

An additional key point worth adding to HBR’s three tips is ‘impact.’ Accomplishing something that really makes an impact will reverberate across the organization. If employees see that the change delivers something impactful, they’ll be more inclined to support it. Addressing the soft side of change management should also never be an afterthought. Ultimately, it takes people to drive change. In years past, engagement was considered to be the exclusive responsibility of upper management. Now, frontline and mid-level employees have more power when it comes to engaging and motivating their colleagues. This very concept should be applied to any change management initiative. Social engagement at every level of the organization should not only be advocated for, but encouraged and supported. Continuously share the progress and successes of individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole – and allow employees to do the same – thus providing everyone involved with the motivation and encouragement to stay the course.

Additional tips for fostering employee engagement among internal and external teams include:

Communicate clear and measurable goals.

Individual goals should tie in with larger, organizational objectives to show employees how their performance impacts the big picture.

Share on going progress.

Let everyone in on how the organization is performing and, whenever possible, demonstrate how each individual played a role in that progress.

Encourage open, honest, two-way communication.

Encourage the sharing of ideas and opinions, regardless of position or level.

Validate each team member’s role in the big picture.

Show employees how they fit in the company culture, so they feel as though they are an integral part of it.

Foster innovation.

When you encourage employees to be innovative, they naturally become more engaged. They feel as though they can truly make a difference.

Encourage incoming feedback and demonstrate usage.

Ask for feedback – both internally and externally, and show how that feedback is being put to use.

Celebrate milestones and achievements.

Don’t just tell your team when something great has happened. Celebrate it, reiterating the role each individual played in that success. Remember, the purpose of collaboration is to improve internal and external communication to establish a more cohesive, uniform culture, one that leads to a stronger sense of loyalty to a company and its business goals. The more engaged the employee, the more he or she will view change as a positive catalyst for success and the easier it will be to implement these changes without unnecessary resistance.

• Visible – People need to see that their efforts are truly paying dividends.

• Concrete – Make sure victories are real and can

be proven. • Unambiguous – Lofty goals are difficult to pin

down. The more clear and measurable the objectives, the more achieving them will motivate employees to push on.

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Conclusion It is becoming increasingly evident that only those organizations that are able to implement and manage change most effectively will realize continued success. Yet understanding this and actually achieving it are two entirely different things. In order to successfully implement and manage change, there must be a clear plan in place for doing so. The plan must involve organizing to be adequately prepared, implementing in a way that overcomes objectives and achieves employee buy-in and maintaining the same level of momentum for a sustained period of time once the changes have been put in place. The strategies presented here will help you to systematically prepare your company for the future of enterprise work collaboration. The best practices are key to successfully roll out change in a way that moves your organization forward in a positive, productive way.

Change is coming. Are you prepared? About Chess Media Group With offices in San Francisco and Vancouver, Chess Media Group is a leading management consulting and strategic advisory firm on collaboration and "the future of work.” Chess helps companies understand how changes in technology and behavior are shaping the future workplace. The strategic approaches that Chess uses were included in The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization, a book published by Wylie and endorsed by leaders such as the CEO of SAP, Global Chairman of KPMG, CEO of Zappos, CEO of Whirlpool, CEO of Schneider Electric, Dan Pink, Gary Hamel and others. Chess also founded The FOW Community, a by invitation only membership online community dedicated to the future of work and collaboration. Visit www.fowcommunity.com and www.chessmediagroup.com.

About Clarizen Clarizen is the leader in enterprise-class work collaboration and project management solutions that harness the power of the cloud to get work done efficiently, effectively and with better results. Fast to deploy and easy to use, Clarizen is redefining enterprise collaboration by connecting social context with tasks and projects to drive increased productivity and profitability. Clarizen fuels the high-performance teams of more than 2,300 organizations across 76 countries, including dozens of the Fortune 500. Most recently, Gigaom Research rated Clarizen at the top in its Sector RoadMap: process based collaboration in 2014 report. Founded in 2006, Clarizen is privately held with offices in San Mateo, California and Hod Hasharon, Israel. For more information, visit www.clarizen.com.