Change Acceleration Process

1. Leading Change

First and foremost, authentic, committed leadership throughout the duration of the initiative is essential for success.  From a project management perspective, there is a significant risk of failure if the organization perceives a lack of leadership commitment to the initiative.

2. Creating A Shared Need

The need for change must outweigh the resistance – the inertia in the organization to maintain the status quo.  There must be compelling reasons to change, that resonate not just for the leadership team, but that will appeal to all stakeholders.  To paraphrase Peter Senge in his groundbreaking book, The Fifth Discipline, “Although we are all interested in large scale change, we must change one mind at a time.”

3. Shaping a Vision

Leadership must articulate a clear and legitimate vision of the world after the change initiative.  Every journey must have a destination otherwise you are just wandering.  The vision must be widely understood and shared.  The end-state must be described in behavioral terms – i.e., observable, measurable terms.  Not business results, but individual behavior.  This might be the single most critical factor in a successful change initiative.

4. Mobilizing Commitment

Once you have leadership support, compelling logic for change, and a clear vision of the future, you have the necessary ingredients to rollout your initiative.  You now begin to execute an influence strategy to build momentum.  You leverage the “early adopters,” to pilot the project where you face low resistance and can learn from mistakes with a forgiving partner.

5. Making change last

Steps 2-4 are primarily about accelerating adoption of your changes.  Steps 5-7 are about making the changes permanent.  You leverage early wins, taking the knowledge gained in your pilots and transfer learning’s and best practices to your broader rollout.  You plan for integrating with other existing, potentially competing, initiatives.  You assess what is helping and hindering the initiative.

6. Monitoring process

It is important to plan for measuring the progress of your change initiative.  Is it real?  How will you know?  You need to set benchmarks — realize them – and celebrate! Similarly there must be accountability for lack of progress.

7. Changing Systems and Structures

Every business has underlying systems and structures: hiring & staffing, IT systems, training & development, resource allocation, organizational design, SOPs/workflow, etc..) These systems were designed to support the current state of the business.  If they are not changed to support the desired, future state of the business they will always push you back to the old way.  That’s what they are supposed to do.  In order to make change permanent you must systematically identify how these systems influence the behavior you are trying to change, and modify them appropriately.  Failure to address these systems and structures is why so many initiatives become the proverbial “flavor of the month.”

Coaching with GROW Model

“Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them learn and grow, rather than teaching them.” -Sir John Whitmore-

Coaching is a mindset, not simply a skill. Manager coaches to help improve his/her subordinate’s performance, and promote a culture where continuous learning and improving performance is the norm. Therefore, coaching is a forward looking conversation, which is a process of moving forward together by asking rather than telling, listening rather than speaking, empowering rather than directing.

GROW coaching model is process for raising awareness and getting the coachee to take responsibility for finding solution and taking action. It is a proven coaching method designed to create a climate where a coach helps people take responsibility for their work and career. GROW stands for Goal, Reality, Options, Will.

Goal: To start, the coach helps the coachee determine what he or she would like to accomplish. This is more effective if the goal is broken into two parts, the end goal and performance goal. The End Goal is a compelling purpose that is rarely within a coache’s absolute control; however, it is something that generates passion and power. The Performance Goal provides a means of measuring progress toward the End Goal. When setting goal with coachee, question is like: What do you want to talk about? What would you like to achieve from this session? What is the most important thing

Reality: In the Reality phase, coach and coachee investigate the current situation, needing to discover all relevant facts. As coach, manager may want to advance slowly and carefully during this phase. Manager might find fact that requires coachee to go back and reset goal. In fact, do not be dissapointed if the model looks more like GRGRGRGROW. When in the Reality phase, question is like: What is happening now? How do you feel about it? What are the facts? Sir John Whitmore said, “In the Reality phase, facts are important and as in police investigation, analysis before all the facts are in can lead to theory building and biased data collection thereafter.”

Options: In the Options phase, the coachee and coach create a list of alternative courses of action. Be sure that oach and coachee come to a common understanding of the Reality of the situation. Ask questions to help the coachee brainstorm ways to accomplish the goal. When in the Options phase, question is like: What have you already tried? What else might you try? What if you had more time

Will: The will phase converts a discussion into a decision. After all options have been considered, the coachee decides what actions to take. As coach, manager aid this process without imposing your own will. It is the coachee’s commitment to his and her own action plan that generates the highest chance of success. When developing an action plan, question is like: what are you going to do? When are you going to do it? Will this action meet your goal?

Some coaching traps that need to be avoided:

• Don’t be vague about areas where improvement is required
• Avoid rambling; cite recent and specific examples
• Don’t surprise. Deliver timely, consistent messages
• Don’t attribute the source of the message to someone else
• Never discuss other employee’s performance or conduct
• Avoid getting emotional during your discussions
• Avoid letting coachee’s emotions affect coach’s calm demeanor

Situational Leadership

Leadership has many definitions. One of simple leadership definition is any attempt to influence the behaviour of another persons or group – up, down or accross organization. Leadership style is the pattern of behaviour of leader as perceived by the person or group being influenced. Effective leadership means adapting leadership style to meet performance needs of those being influenced. Thus, leader is someone who, regardless of position, influences others in an organization.

Any attempt of leading should have impact on two dimensions, which are success and engagement. Success is measured by behaviour, results, accomplishment, the “what”, and bottom line. In a simple question, “Did the job get done, or didn’t it?” On the other hand, engagement is measured by attitude, process, needs, the “how” and motivation. Situational leadership strive to make both dimensions equal and at high level. In a simple question, “how people felt about doing the work?”

Situational Leadership Theory tells that there is no single best style of leadership. Effective leadership is task-relevant, and the most successful leaders are those that adapt their leadership style to the performance readiness (“the capacity to set high but attainable goals, willingness and ability to take responsibility for the task, and relevant education and/or experience of an individual or a group for the task”) of the individual or group they are attempting to lead or influence. Effective leadership varies, not only with the person or group that is being influenced, but it also depends on the task, job or function that needs to be accomplished.

Situational Leadership model has two axis in the chart, which are task behaviour (or called also directive behaviour) and supportive behaviour (relationship behaviour). Task behaviour is the extent to which a leader engages in defining roles, providing the what, where, how, and who. High task behaviour means that leader needs to direct people in details, while low task behaviour means that leader does not need to direct people for task details. On the other hand, relationship behaviour is the extent to which the leader engages in two-way communication, facilitates interaction, actively listens and provides socioemotional support. High relationship behaviour means that leader needs to open communication and gives greater support for people, while low relationship behaviour means that this socioemotional support is not needed by the people.

The right leadership style will depend on the person or group being led. Situational Leadership Theory identified four levels of Performance Readiness :

• R1 – They still lack the specific skills required for the job in hand and are unable and unwilling to do or to take responsibility for this job or task

• R2 – They are unable to take on responsibility for the task being done; however, they are willing to work at the task. They are novice but enthusiastic.

• R3 – They are experienced and able to do the task but lack the confidence or the willingness to take on responsibility.

• R4 – They are experienced at the task, and comfortable with their own ability to do it well. They are able and willing to not only do the task, but to take responsibility for the task.

Performance Readiness Levels are also task-specific. A person might be generally skilled, confident and motivated in their job, but would still have a Performance Readiness R1 when asked to perform a task requiring skills they don’t possess.

Situational Leadership Theory characterized leadership style in terms of the amount of Task Behavior and Relationship Behavior that the leader provides to their followers. They categorized all leadership styles into four behaviour types, which named S1 to S4:

• S1: Telling – is characterized by one-way communication in which the leader defines the roles of the individual or group and provides the what, how, why, when and where to do the task;

• S2: Selling – while the leader is still providing the direction, he or she is now using two-way communication and providing the socio-emotional support that will allow the individual or group being influenced to buy into the process;

• S3: Participating – this is how shared decision-making about aspects of how the task is accomplished and the leader is providing less task behaviours while maintaining high relationship behavior;

• S4: Delegating – the leader is still involved in decisions; however, the process and responsibility has been passed to the individual or group. The leader stays involved to monitor progress.

Below is chart to apply Situational Leadership in daily activity.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory

http://situational.com/