Pay Attention to Red Flags

Leading change can be fraught with challenges, and recognizing red flags early on is crucial for effective implementation.

Here are some of the red flags we look out for, because they signal that the change we are about to make is going to be more difficult than expected:

1. Lack of Leadership commitment.

• There is no Sponsor (Senior leader acting as the face of the change, holding accountability for this change to be a success). Or there is a Sponsor but they are inactive or invisible (hides in their office and won't put their name on communications). Or the Sponsor is too low in the organizational hierarchy to signal that this change is important. To address this: You need to find the decision-maker in the organization, who approved the change, and influence them to either change the Sponsor or let you coach the Sponsor.
• Senior leadership aren't aligned on this change - why we need it or what needs to be done. To address this: You need to find the decision-maker in the organization, who approved the change, and help them understand that a lack of leader alignment will damage the success of the change. You can also help the Sponsor to get their peers aligned with targeted engagement plan for the group.

2. Mismatch of Complexity vs Effort

• The change is quite complex and will be difficult to get people to buy-into it, yet business leaders don't believe that effort is needed to get people ready, willing and able. They feel it is a straightforward process of "Just tell them to do it" and then adoption magically happens and the benefits magically appear. To address this: You will need to put in extra effort to influence these leaders and change their mind.
• The change is not complex, yet there is a large team of project, HR, comms and change people with a long list of activities to get people ready, willing and able. To address this: This challenge is usually quite political and takes effort to present clear data on the size of the change to the right person in the business (often a steering committee) to influence their perspective and encourage them to make the decision to scale back. 

3. Lack of Governance (or "Happiness in the Grey")

• People are vague and non-committal. They are in a protective mindset, trying not to stand out or take on accountability in case it goes bad (usually there is a history of finger pointing and blame in the workplace culture).  To address this:  You will need to find a way to build a "bubble" around your change team, bringing together all of the people who are working on it, running team-building workshops and ways-of-working sessions so that they reset their habits and interact in a more open and committed way.
• There is a lack of reporting or communication about progress, drawing on data and metrics - because people are trying to protect themselves and want to have flexibility to move if things aren't progressing on the path they were expecting. To address this: You need to find a careful balance between role modelling good governance with strong data and not triggering a fight-or-flight response in others.

4. Breadth and Depth of Impact

• There is a one-size-fits-all mindset towards the initiative and the way that it is rolled out into the business, even though the change has a wide impact across the business and will impact different groups differently. To address this: Map out each of the groups and work with a representative from each of them to identify how the change is different for them. Visualise this in a graph or image for the leadership team to get clarity and understanding of the issue.

5. History of poorly implemented change

• We call this "Baggage".
• If people across the business see themselves as "victims" of a past change, and they believe that there is a distinct lack of capability in the business around creating effective change. To address this:  there is a lot of work that needs to be done to be able to re-write the narrative and identify symbolic activities that show this change is different to what happened in the past.

6. Leadership autonomy

• Leaders of departments or teams across the business operate independently with complete autonomy. For example, Managers of a site or geographic location. If these leaders are usually left on their own to run their team as they want, then changes that are being rolled out from the centre or Head office will face a lot of difficulty. To address this: Establish a sense of community across the leadership group. Bring together the Managers of different sites and help them to see that they are all facing similar challenges, and they can learn from what each other do well. In building this community, you open them up to ideas that come from outside their location.

For a complete list of our red flags and the change levers we pull, join our community.