Fast Track to Success: Managing

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5

IMPLEMENTING CHANGE

When you start a new management role, you will face a number of

interesting challenges and opportunities, ranging from making a quick

impact to getting to know the personalities involved. You will almost

certainly need to make changes to the operation you have taken over.

Be aware that, while these changes should be primarily motivated by

a need to improve performance, you may also need to be seen to be

changing things by your team and by your peers and seniors.

The challenge you face as an agent of change is inertia. Many people

in their jobs are comfortable with the status quo and relatively few

people embrace change as an exciting opportunity. Moving your team

to the vision you have for them will take pushing, pulling, cajoling and

an inspiring vision, among other things. You’ll find plenty on the book-

shelves about change because change is difficult to achieve. In fact,

Fortune magazine calculated that the main reason for CEOs losing their

jobs was the inability to realise change in their organisations.

Change is not impossible, however. Follow the relatively simple steps

outlined in this chapter and you’ll have a good chance of success.

Identify the gap

When you plan to make significant changes to the working environment

and processes that you control, make sure you have understood the

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gap between where the operation is now and where you want it to be.

This will help you to sell the change to those in your team and others.

 Understand specific items that need to be changed.

 Set clear goals for the unit.

 Focus on the elements that should be measured to demon-

strate the success of the change.



Communicate your intent and the gulf that needs to be crossed.

 Demonstrate the problems you face and the opportunities that

could be gained.

To do a ‘gap analysis’, you must have an idea of what the best exam-

ple of this type of operation looks like – a best practice operation. Make

sure that your best practice example sets out clear and objective stand-

ards, such as performance measures and statements of activity and

behaviour. You can generate this by:

 benchmarking (comparing) what you do against existing best

practice operations – companies running similar but non-com-

peting processes may be happy to show you how they work or

you may be able to glean useful information from the internet

 drawing on your experience of operations that run better

 developing your own standard of excellence – you may find it

useful and motivating to include your team in this process and

it will be important to understand what your manager expects.

Let us look at an example of this.

A colleague in the soft drinks industry – let’s call her Jane – was

anxious to make a mark when she was appointed Marketing Strategy

Director. She was aware that there were several opportunities to make

improvements in how the business organised and delivered marketing

projects, but she needed to make a clear case for this by comparing

her organisation with a best practice benchmark one. She had worked

for other similar businesses and took the time to talk to external experts

who had views on what the best companies were doing and also what

future best practice might look like. Jane put together a picture of all

PART B BUSINESS FAST TRACK