Be prepared for the fast life
Life keeps speeding up. Do you remember when the tape ribbon would come loose on your music cassettes and you’d use a pencil to wind it back in?
Now your smartphone is music, watch, torch, map, TV (and phone), all in one. It’s barely a decade since Apple launched their first iPhone in 2007 and 2.3 billion people have a smartphone.
And whereas it took 50 years from the launch of electricity for one in four people to be using it, the internet swept through 25% of the world in just seven years.
How to prepare for business transformation
The organisations I work with are keen to be ready for change. They try different approaches such as Lean, Continuous Improvement, Agile and different change methodologies – but there is no silver bullet. Above all, it comes down to PEOPLE.
Ultimately it’s people who will make change happen – or scupper it!
Just as you wouldn’t send your people up a mountain without preparation, so you need to equip them for change.
Some welcome change. Some resist even a small divergence from their routine.
Equipping your people for change
But by helping people develop a change mindset you can get everyone on board.
If you want to keep pace with your competitors and tackle future challenges, you need to prepare your people to learn to change themselves. The good news is that our brains are not fixed – they can expand, grow and learn new things.
Building that confidence, building that muscle is having a “growth mindset” – learning and growing so that come what may, your people will approach it as just another obstacle to overcome. Not an insurmountable challenge to be afraid of.
How to embed a “growth mindset”
It’s crucial to make sure people understand the reasons for change. Then it’s easier to engage them with that change. (Just like a driver seeing a “school” sign and understanding why the speed limit is 20mph.)
People also need to have a sense of control – some autonomy to feel they can make a choice, rather than everything being imposed on them. You need to create a safe environment of trust and openness so people feel safe learning and trying out new things.
It takes sustained effort to bring about change, so it’s vital to build in the practice of continually reviewing and reflecting. Give staff the scope to talk about what’s going well, what not so well, and what’s working.
And celebrate successes along the way – good news is infectious, and a powerful motivator.
Delve further into this topic by downloading our Whitepaper – Tackling the Pace of Change, this explores:
1. How the pace of change is increasing
2. How we can best prepare for it – in particular, attitudes and mindset around change
3. Practical ideas to help you support people through change in the future.
