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Managing Change

Managing Change

The importance of managing change

 

Organisational change and development is critical for any organisation to maintain and improve performance within a rapidly changing environment. 
 

The context of organisational change and development, driven by the recent pandemic, has forced many organisations to re-consider how they do business or serve their clients. As part of our support to organisations going through change, we've been helping a number of clients reflect on how well changes and improvements were implemented and supporting others put in place the right change management plans to help ensure success.

 

In our experience, failure to effectively manage the people aspects of change is more likely to be the cause of failure to deliver improvements than the strategy itself or the design of structures, systems and/or processes. 

 

Taylor Clarke knows that it is essential to work in partnership with our clients to successfully deliver organisational change and development – and to provide expert support to manage change effectively.

 

What is change management?

 

Put simply, we believe that effective management of change is the management of activities that ensure people are willing, and able to go on the journey and fully contribute to help shape how organisations change.

  

We are clear that the design and implementation of an effective change management approach is equally as important as the project management activities related to the design and implementation of any structures, systems, data and/or processes that will change. It is the culture, communication, engagement, development and involvement approaches that tend to feature in “Post mortem” lessons learned….rather than the solutions being implemented.

 

How we help organisations and leaders manage change

 

At Taylor Clarke we understand how to make change stick. We know that, without effective management of change, most organisational changes won’t get the results that the organisation wants and that change initiatives will fail. We know how to prevent ‘change-rejection’ because we understand how to introduce and embed change to ensure that it is enhanced and embraced by the whole organisation.

 

Our approach has been developed over thirty years working alongside leaders and senior executives. Our experience allows us to work to help our clients understand clearly where they are and where they need to develop in order to maintain a sustainable, competitive edge. And we help our clients develop and implement the change management activities to ensure the desired results are achieved.

 

Through our related work on Culture and Leadership Development, we are able to help our clients build strong foundations for development of business strategy and to create the leadership capability required to align and embed change. Using our Releasing Potential In Change model (below), we build on these foundations in a structured way to help organisationsoins manage the human aspects of change and create the psychological climate for successful embedded change.

 

We believe that visible and active sponsorship of change by leaders is critical. Our six steps focus the change leaders’ energy and influence, beginning with articulating the Compelling Purpose (why is the new system is required and what benefits it will bring) and working round each stage to, finally, Embedding Behaviours (specifying what the new behaviours are: to start, stop, do more or less of.)

 

Our approach takes from and builds on the globally recognised work of John Kotter, Daryl Connor, Dan Denison et al.  

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Our guiding framework for managing change

 

At the centre of the model are four levers to engage the hearts and minds of individuals and teams:

 

  • We think: deals with what we know and the beliefs we hold.

  • We can: focuses on our behaviours and abilities.

  • We feel: addresses our motivation, engagement and commitment.

  • We're allowed: relates to the organisation environment, climate & culture.

 

These levers focus on the hidden elements that relate to the human psychology of change which are often misunderstood and consequently mishandled.

 

For each of the six steps of change, being able to push or pull at one or more of the underpinning levers helps achieve outcomes. This is done by actively considering the four different aspects of human psychology that can help or hinder progress. For example, listening sessions held with leaders and/or teams that focus explicitly on safely expressing hidden feelings of fear or failure.

 

Working with our model, we help clients prevent a lack of understanding and/or fear of change from undermining the change initiative and we help ensure that people come on board with both hearts and minds.

 

We use the William Bridges model of change and transition to help leaders and their teams understand the natural phases of adapting to change through letting go of, engaging in shaping new solutions and embedding future behaviours, processes and habits.

 

Whether using our own tools and models, complementing existing client tools and approaches or providing our support through consultants qualified in the use of Prosci® ADKAR change mangement practices, or Denison culture assessments, our objective is simple – we work to help our clients embed change in a way  that delivers the results and shapes the change culture they need and takes their people with them as they do.

 

A bespoke approach to co-creating change management plans

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We have been evolving our management of change framework and tool kit to help us work collaboratively with clients. We help client organisations navigate their way through a process which helps identify the changes they want to make, understand the cultural challenges and to be more intentional around how they lead and shape their approach to communicating and embedding those changes.

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  • Every project is different, managing change has many moving parts and influences so the start points, journey and solutions vary with the context and goals

  • Our approach helps bring more leadership, focus, measurement, structure and ownership to the development of the diagnosis, plan, choices, ownership and engagement around a process we believe is shaped from the top and built from the bottom…… People commit to what they help create

  • We wear several hats…..Coach, Consultant, Facilitator, Critical Adviser in supporting a co-creation process that is fundamentally collaborative

Clients include:

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Coveris Taylor Clarke
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 "Taylor Clarke worked in partnership with us as we implemented significant changes as an organisation. They supported us over a six-month period as we reflected on our progress to date, built our communication approach for the changes to come and as we started to implement the remaining planned changes. Taylor Clarke’s involvement really helped us as we developed further our change management strategy and assisted us in our goal to strengthen change leadership capability in the organisation." 

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-CEO, Non-Departmental Public Body

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