Agility of Change Management: How to Handle Change

Change is painful, but change is constant. Change Management is necessary when one understands that it is inevitable. Change is the law of nature, and it is bound to occur. Thus, expect the unexpected change with an open heart & mind. The most important change faced by the Global Industry is the new normal.

Let us talk about the topic that is out in the light today “Agility of Change Management” and how to handle it. We all know what the change and What are its significance, how the changes we make today are helping us achieve our vision for tomorrow, be it in our personal life or our professional ones.

But now the question is how to handle it?

How to execute change among employees?

How to deal with employees’ reluctance & fear of changes?

Why it becomes detrimental for any organization trying to implement change?

So here I strongly believe that strategy matters a lot. The Strategy to Connect Effectively with your workforce!

Agility of Change Management

Whenever changes happen, this is very obvious that employees show a lot of reluctance to accept the consequence when they don’t understand why these changes are happening. This reluctance gradually converts into resistance and eventually, this becomes a leading factor for the failure of change transformation. It’s a common issue in maximum organizations if anyone not adopting changes is pushing back the organization’s effort towards changes and making it less flexible. In a constantly changing world, the non-adaptive approach of any employee can be a killer problem.

However there is still a set of employees who are agile and curious to move quickly into a dynamic environment, and always eager to acquire new skills by carrying a positive attitude towards adopting changes. So the whole game is about mindset, willingness, and attitude. An individual’s skill training, team agility and leadership also play a key role here. So we will see here how to weave them into an individual’s and organization’s life.

4Es Theory to Handle Change

Here I tried to design a simple theory of 4 Es – Explain, Effective communication, Empower and Engage & Inspire.

The Following Hacks can be helpful for an organization to mitigate such issues/resistance (while incorporating necessary changes) and to increase the agility to accept necessary changes.

1. Explain ‘Why’

Don’t just inform employees about changes, but explain to them the purpose of it. Here the first and foremost thing is to give a clear understanding to employees and the purpose of change taking place. Just intimating/informing employees about the change, won’t fulfil the purpose. It is very important to explain to them why the changes are happening and why it is so important. Changes can be related to anything like organization restructuring, Mergers or acquisitions, or any regulatory change but a lack of understanding about the objective of changes, can create constant unrest among the workforce and can convert into resistance.

2. Effective Communication

Continual information becomes a leading factor here to gain the confidence of the workforce. It is very necessary to update the workforce on each step of the change process. However, three points are needed to be taken care of while communicating to employees and these are.

The communication should be very clear and straight.
It’s not necessary that you can answer all their queries, so be transparent and open to saying no but to ensure they to update as soon as you come to know. Well hiding or giving wrong information can create unnecessary anxiety and uncertainty to them so it’s important to let employees know that you are committed to communicating everything transparently.
Tell them the advantage of what’s there for them. If employees understand what’s in it for me, the organization gets fewer challenges and employees resistance.

3. Empower Leaders

It is very obvious when leaders model the changes, transformation becomes more successful. A leader can understand his / her team better in terms of how to inspire and feel confident among them by leading through change. Hence it is very important to empower leaders and managers to understand the fundamental of change, to become an effective leaders during the time of change, and to handle the roadblocks or resistance.

Know more about: How to Create a Solution-Focused Work-Culture in an Organisation?

4. Engage & Inspire Employees

When planning and implementing any change, it is very important to engage and involve people in the process. This builds ownership among employees and makes them more supportive of the change. It’s always better to brainstorm creative ways to engage/involve employees during the change process to mitigate resistance and to get the desired result/transformation.

I am sure my above article would serve the purpose to understand the “Agility of change management” and similarly the 4Es theory would have been able to explain “How to Handle Change during the Work From Home Business Operations”. Thus, while approaching change in this era of remote working, one needs to be cognizant of the 4E Principle of Explain, Effective Communication, Empower and Engage as one of the most powerful ambassadors to lead your organization towards successful transformation.

Keep changing where necessary and keep transforming yourself!! Wishing you all the very best for a successful transformation. Thanks for reading my viewpoints; do share your valuable feedback and ideas to have a successful transformation journey.

The Inspirit Way

Change Management is now the must-have skill in every team player. Coping up with this extended reality of the pandemic has aided us to upskill. As remote work thought leaders. are you thriving as a distributed team or as a collaborative organization? It’s now time to not only accept but also strive towards a highly effective work environment.