5 Practical Tools to Create Clarity when Leading Change

Change happens—and change fails! Do an internet search about why change plans fail, and you’ll get dozens of articles that unravel all of the reasons why change initiatives don’t deliver results.

 So, who’s responsible for the failure? A little bit of everyone. These articles will point to leaders lacking the endurance needed to champion the vision and engage employees. Managers and employees are tagged for being resistant—or just plain fatigued from too much change. 

If you put blame aside and assume positive intent, I think the other issue is everyone becomes overwhelmed with change. The longer or more complex the change, the more clarity and consistency become important. If you’re planning a longer or critical change, documenting key elements at the outset and committing to continue leading change until objectives are met can help.

Here are 5 tools I like that can help create clarity and consistency when leading change. The nice thing is any of these can scale up or down to match the level of rigor you need to align to the degree of change you’re up against.

1.     Stakeholder Map

A stakeholder map identifies individuals or groups impacted by a change and categorizes them based on shared characteristics like their level of impact on the change, expected contributions, and common professional language. You’ll also want to rate how resistant each group will be to change, and identify key individuals who might energize or detract others around the change. By grouping stakeholders, and minimizing the number of groups, you can simplify your stakeholder management.

2.     Segmented Communication Plan

To create a segmented communication plan for change management, identify what each stakeholder group needs to know and what actions they need to take to implement the change. Start by writing a simple change objective for each stakeholder group. Focus on what behaviors you want stakeholders to change:

Instead of doing __, do __.

Then work through the sequence of information they will need to get from current to future state. Assign roles for crafting the message (writer), ensuring its accuracy and effectiveness (reviewer), and delivering it to the intended audience (deliverer).

3.     Key Message Training Plan

A key message training plan is just like any other training plan, but your goal here is to ensure managers are well-prepared to communicate changes effectively and maintain consistency. You’ll start with action-oriented learning goals, engaging managers in active practice of delivering key messages, and setting clear metrics to evaluate their effectiveness in delivery and responding to anticipating questions.

4.     Measurable Adoption Goals

What does success look like? How will you know when you’re actually done? Pick specific, quantifiable targets. For long-term changes, include leading Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can help you gauge whether you’re on track during the adoption process. Depending on the scope of change, you might consider picking some KPIs that can be communicated to all staff. This way, everyone has the same milestones in mind, and leaders can openly celebrate progress with the team.

5.     Wind-Down Plan

This is basically your exit strategy. How will you signal to your teams that the work is done and the change has been successful? Is an email enough? Do you need to do more to acknowledge and celebrate success?  A wind-down plan in change leadership is a structured approach for gradually reducing change-driven activities while ensuring the new processes are embedded and sustainable.

In future posts, I’ll go into how I’ve used each of these in more detail.

Have you used any of these in the past? Do you have other favorite tools to gain consistency with your teams? 

Leave your comments below.