The Flow of Change
The process of change involves subtle points regarding overlapping stages, guiding teams at multiple levels in the organization, handling multiple cycles of change, and more. Because the world is complex, some cases do not rigidly follow the eight-step flow. But the eight steps are the basic pattern associated with significant useful change – all possible despite an inherent organizational inclination not to leap successfully into a better future.
Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the most fundamental problem in all of the stages is changing the behavior of people. The core issue in step 1 is not urgency in some abstract sense. The core issue is the behavior of people who are ignoring how the world is changing, who are frozen in terror by the problems they see, or who do little but bitterly complain. In step 2, the issue is the behavior of those in a position to guide change – especially regarding trust and commitment. In step 3, the core challenge is for people to start acting in a way that will create sensible visions and strategies. For people who know how to plan but have never devised a winning change vision, this behavior change is very big. In step 4, the issue is getting sufficient people to buy into the vision via communication. In step 5, it’s acting on that communication – which for some employees will mean doing their jobs in radically new ways. And so on throughout the process.