As we say on our introduction page, there are two 'strands' to business improvement and change, Hard elements, and Soft elements. During the initial implementation of a business improvement initiative, or any other organisational change programme, the changes in working practises can be really quite alien to most employees.
It is important during this phase to:
- Have a developed programme plan.
- Have the programme led from the top.
- Explain the rationale for change to all employees.
- Present the vision of the new ways of working, and the benefits it will bring to the organisation, and to the employees.
- Train all employees in the new 'hard' skills required, and let them practise in a 'safe', 'no blame' environment.
- Start to implement the new ways of working in the business.
- Have support mechanisms for all employees.
How can Ambiance Consulting help?
Not only can we assist you in the design of an implementation programme that is right for your organisation, we can also provide 'hands-on' support during the implementation phase:
- Coaching & Mentoring of your top team in the new behaviours required to help support employee acceptance of the changes.
- Work with you to create you vision of the future that can be presented, and understood easily by all employees.
- Equip employees with the 'hard' skills of business improvement techniques, such as World Class Manufacturing (WCM), or Lean Manufacturing.
- Run business improvement workshops, where all employees can participate in improving their part of the business process, to improve productivity, reduce lead times, and to raise customer service.
- Train your first line, and middle managers in the interpersonal skills necessary to turn their staff onto, not off of the changes.
- Coach first line and middle managers through the inevitable implementation difficulties that they will face.
Sustaining Business Improvement & Change
Now that it has been a few months since you implemented the change, how is it going? Are you starting to see the results coming through?
Typically, the implementation phase is 'fragile'. It is easy for an organisation to decelerate, stop, or even go backwards as implementation becomes a few months old. Why does this happen? Well, in most businesses, key employees are fully occupied with their 'proper' jobs. Along comes a business improvement, or change programme, which adds to their time pressures, and which is new and uncertain. Faced with ambiguity, and under pressure, they default to their old (and probably more comfortable) ways of working.
This is where you need to enter the Sustaining phase, which typically involves:
- Reinvigorating the communications.
- Reinforcing the rationale for change.
- Recognising and rewarding success.
- Appointing 'facilitators' or 'champions' of improvement or change.
- Reinforcing the new ways of working, and the new 'rules'.
- Identifying the 'Agnostics' and 'Snipers', and dealing with them.
- Updating your Personnel (HR) policies and procedures, so that they support, and encourage the new ways of working.
How can Ambiance Consulting help?
During your sustaining phase we can assist you with:
- Refreshing your employee communications.
- Creating recognition & rewards that engender greater employee participation.
- Selection criteria for internal Facilitators & Champions.
- Training of Facilitators & Champions, in both 'Hard', as well as 'Soft' skills needed to sustain the organisational improvements and changes.
- Train your first line, as well as middle managers in how to communicate, and reinforce the new 'rules'.
- Provide support with identifying the 'Agnostics', as well as the 'Snipers', as well as strategies to deal with them.
- Update or create new HR Policies & procedures which will support and encourage the creation of a 'Climate' that is more conducive to the your desired state.
Accelerating Business Improvement & Change.
At this stage, you are around a year into your business improvement or change programme. You've started to see some 'bottom line' improvements, but these may be a little patchy? Some areas of the business appear slow, or difficult to change?
Due to corporate, market, or competitor pressures you need to achieve greater improvements. At this stage, you need to move up a gear (or two), in order to create some 'clear water' for yourselves.
You should be considering:
- Reassessing your organisational climate/culture - there may be areas where you have made good progress, but which ones? Are there areas where you've not made such good progress that, with a little attention could give you some quick wins?
- Are we recruiting the right people, with the right attitudes for our new ways of working?
- Have we got any 'Snipers' left, those that may be 'local' opinion formers, and who are holding the business back? If yes, what are we going to do with them?
- Are the business improvements, or changes truly embedded in the everyday working lives of all employees? If not, what gains could be made, and how might we achieve this?
- Revisiting your strategy for the business - have we missed anything, any changes in the market, in the world?
- Becoming STRATEGIC with the changes, by introducing Policy Deployment (also known as Goal deployment), to 'cascade' tangible business objectives across and down the entire business, to give improvement targets to teams.