Freative Friday Episode 92 Video Podcast - The Art of Change Part 2

Welcome to Freedom Friday. Mark Danolo here, art school MBA and CEO of Sales Globe. And it's that day of the week. We get to take a look at logic driven creative problem solving. And in this episode, we're going to pick up on the art of change. In our last episode, we got up to point number three, and we're going to pick up here with point number four. Number four, see the organization's view. So expect some resistance and identify who those resistors might be so you can get them on board. Company culture plays a huge role in making change. And some cultures operate on stability and are naturally change averse, while others are change tolerant and sometimes even change seeking. So it's important to know the organization and the individual's comfort level with change in order to message and manage that change. Well. Assume that most people are going to see any change as potentially negative, and this is particularly true when it comes to programs like compensation as an example. So from a sales organization view, unless the current comp plan is a complete disaster, they often assume the only reason to change the plan is to manage, pay or improve the company's financial position. Beyond concerns about risk, you can get resistance from reluctance to alter routines, so people don't like the change. So if you had a new program that required the organization to do something differently, so maybe they have to work on new routines or new products or new customers, it may be something that's uncomfortable for them to do, so they'd rather avoid that change. In our work, we see about 20% of the organization are acceptors and they embrace a new program without argument. And then you got another 50% that are observers. Those are the people going to wait and see. And so if the new program is designed and communicated and managed well, they'll usually join on with that first group of acceptors, but then you get another 30% of the organization, and they're very often resistors. So the resistors can range from passive to active resistors. So you may recognize some of the passive resistance behaviors, and those can be things like apparent confusion or hesitancy to act or a lack of urgency. And on the aggressive side, you can get behaviors that include outright opposition and involvement in trying to change the course of the implementation by demonstrating why the program's not going to work. So the good news is that most of the resistors tend to be on the passive side, although they're not always easy to identify and engage. So the key to working with the passive resistors is to connect and sense and communicate at the individual level. To understand the resistance points before the implementation, and if you ignore it, their resistance can become contagious. As for the active resistors, sometimes they'll test leadership's resolve for change, and we'll talk about that in just a couple of minutes. Number five get the Change forecast. So know your organization's readiness for change and your team's resolve to see it through. Most executives you work with can make a general statement about whether their culture is comfortable with change and when they're preparing for implementation. It helps to be a little bit more specific. So by answering a few questions, you'll be able to get a forecast of your upcoming change and how easy it's going to be. So I recommend erring on the side of considering a change to be a major change rather than a minor change. It's always safer to over communicate. First question is what's the degree of change for the organization? So if you're implementing a change to say, a piece of the sales compensation plan, maybe changing one performance measure, you might think of that as a minor change. But if you're implementing a new go to market strategy and the comp plan change is part of a bigger change, you may think of that as a more transformational change. So give your organization a score from 1, which would be a minor change, to a 10, which is a major transformation. The second question is what? When was the last time your company made a major change? So if you make major program changes every year or two, you might call that recent change. On the other end of the scale, the organization may not have changed anything for more than 10 years. So you'd give your organization a score of one recently to 10 never. The third question is what's the organization's tolerance for change? Even if the organization hasn't had a major change in years, the culture may be a dynamic and trusting culture, and it makes changes easy to do. However, the organization may not sit well with change, even if it happens frequently. Again, give it a score of 1 very high to 10 very low in terms of tolerance for change. Number four what's your management team's resolve for making change? So while the sales organization has certain tolerance for accepting change, the management team also has to have a resolve for making change. So when things get tough, how strong is your management team going to be to push it through? So give your team a score of 1 very high resolve to 10 very low resolve. So your total score is going to give you a sense of your current environment, your likely near term forecast for change, and the potential actions you might take. And finally we get to our sixth step, which is follow the process. So begin communication early and follow your approach until well after introduction. After you worked through the steps of starting strong and crafting your change story and seeing the organization's view and then getting a change forecast, you covered a number of major steps in a change process. So these began during the process of identifying what you were solving for, and they continued through the design of your solution. So now it's go time for your change. So I want to give you a simple example of how you might stage your initial introduction of a program in some basic steps in terms of messaging. So on day one, you're going to announce with your strategic themes and reinforce at the team level and you're going to make an announcement with the context of the overall sales strategy for the business. And this is your first formal communication of the change story and should hit on those C level goals that we talked about and it's going to be positioned with the right motivators of change. So think of those four options that I gave you based on the environment. So you want to translate the story to the team through sales management in concert with your strategic announcement. So sales management should then work with the team and breakout groups, get the details of how the new program is going to work, answer questions, and make sure each member of the organization understands the new program. In the first 14 days following the announcement, open up your support channels. So open up your channels to capture the questions that are going to come in and manage the flow of communications. And these channels might include inbound voice or a chat hotline or a social media presence. So it's important for the company to proactively set up your support channels in a feedback loop because if you don't often the organization is going to take care of that for you. And if the feedback is unfavorable, it'll be on the defensive. And your organization's social media presence, you won't have control over it. So 30 days after the announcement, test for understanding. No matter how well accepted the program is during the announcement, don't assume the whole organization understands it. So following the announcement, managers should work on a schedule to reach out to reps or the front line or whatever organization you're working with and confirm their understanding of the new program and the objectives. 60 days after your announcement, test for change behavior. So the first sign of the program is beginning to work is people are starting to change what they do and they're following a pattern that's consistent with the objectives. Of your program. So you can test through coaching and observation by managers and through performance measurement. You can use CRM, you can track activities, you can track steps and what process people are working in. And then 90 days after your announcement, test your results. So at that 90 day or 1/4 point, depending on the processes you're using, you may be at a point where you start to see results under the new program. So they may show within the initial months or after the first quarter. And you may see an initial dip in performance after the program introduction until people understand how the program works, and then quarterly evaluate your behaviors and results. So at quarterly points you can assess the performance of the organization, the performance of the program, and whether it's driving the desired behaviors. And then you can start to get into shorter periods of just monitoring performance and coaching and getting into a feedback and coaching cycle. So there you have six anchor points for making better change. Whether you're solving the problem with AI or you're going old school human. So as you develop your solutions, make the art of change one of your human creative superpowers and try it in your free to Friday and every day.