How to Approach Change Management with Transparency
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Change is messy, and in light of the fact that a lot of companies are going through dramatic changes right now, let’s talk about how to approach this transition with the most success with your team.
Transparency is key.
When we're going through times of great change, it's really important for companies to just be transparent and honest with people. People are intelligent, and simultaneously desperately ready for executives to just be real with them and level-set from the start about what’s going on.
Companies are having to make huge choices that are largely in uncharted territories for them - decisions they never thought they’d have to make, and trying to understand which choices will benefit the most amount of people. They’re spending copious amounts of time trying to come up with the best communication of these changes to their people, and that’s hard because ultimately, some people are not going to be satisfied no matter what.
Some of the changes are causing people to leave their jobs, be upset, there’s just a lot going on and something that can help alleviate some of this tension is just to start leading with more transparency.
Lead by level-setting
It doesn’t benefit your team to keep them in the dark, or pretend you know exactly what you’re doing, or every choice you make is perfect. It isn’t a strong move, and it doesn’t build trust.
It’s a far better move to say, "Look, we are considering all of these factors. We're trying to do the best that we can."
And when you roll out changes to the organization, just be honest, the executive leadership team should come out and say, "Look, these are all the factors we considered, and we're putting a lot of new things into place and also acknowledge that we're doing our best. We're trying to consider and do the best thing for the most amount of people possible. And it's not going to be perfect."
If we're implementing a bunch of new changes and strategies and initiatives and ways of doing business, it's going to be messy.
The strongest place you can come from as a leadership team is just go to your people and say, “Look, we know this is not going to be flawless. It's change, growth feels like failure, and it's hard. We know that this is going to be a little bit messy, but along the way, we're going to ask for your feedback. We care about what you think, the things that we're doing. We're trying to keep you guys front and center and make sure that we're doing right by you, and we mean that. We're going to check back in every few months and ask for feedback and say, 'How are we doing?' And we're going to take what you tell us to heart.”
The best place we can come from as leadership is really just to admit we don't expect this is going to feel perfect or go perfectly start to finish, but we’re going to do our best.
For your leadership team, this is a demonstration of growth mindset.
At the end of the day, it's growth mindset. We're going to learn. Ultimately, we know that no decision is perfect across the board and no changes that are coming down the line are going to feel perfect for everybody along the way, so we really are in this together.
“What good is pretending like you’re perfect and every choice you’re going to make is flawless?”
But you cannot skip the level-setting part of this, coming forward and communicating with your people. What good is pretending like you're perfect and every choice you're going to make is flawless? Just admit, “We basically know what we're doing, but we're doing our best. And these are the things we're taking into consideration and our priority is you all of the time.”
Prioritize your people, and mean it.
Do things that back that up as an organization, prioritize your people, listen to their feedback, make changes. If you make a change and go in a direction and find that it doesn’t work or there’s a legitimate reason to make a switch, pivot again.
“Being flexible, being adaptable, being vulnerable, being transparent, those things are so key here.”
Being flexible, being adaptable, being vulnerable, being transparent, those things are so key here. But you first have to be willing to give up the corporate facade of, “We’re perfect, we can’t make a bad decision.” You don’t know everything. Executive teams are sitting there just trying to do their best, just like employees. Being real and authentic goes a long way building trust and just letting people know we actually do care about you. We don't think we're perfect. We're going to get through this together.
Alright, that’s it. Go be awesome.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
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