Change Management

Many of you will be planning changes for your pharmacy in 2015, and if you are today’s blog post will hopefully maximise your change management strategies.

If you haven’t started yet, hopefully this will be a great starting point for future change! This article is a summary of a blog post by Torben Rick. To access the full content click here. 

Most change management initiatives fail. This is because most fail to consider how changes affect the people in an organisation.

To successfully implement change initiatives, organisational leaders must identify the need for change and communicate it throughout the organisation. 

Engage people at all levels of the organisation

Engage people at all levels of the organisation by involving them in the design of the implementation strategy. 

Leaders must actively involve the people most affected by the change in its implementation.

This will help ensure employees at all levels of the organisation embrace the proposed changes.

Be wary of expressions like “mindset change” and “changing people’s mindsets”

Be wary of expressions like “mindset change”, and “changing people’s mindsets” or “changing attitudes”, because this language often indicates a tendency towards imposed or enforced change, and it implies strongly that the organisation believes that its people currently have the “wrong” mindset, which is never, the case. 

If people are not approaching their tasks or the organisation effectively, then the organisation has the wrong mindset, not the people. Change such as new structures, policies, targets, acquisitions, disposals, etc., all create new systems and environments, which need to be explained to people as early as possible, so that people’s involvement in validating and refining the changes themselves can be obtained.

Whenever an organisation imposes new things on people there will be difficulties. Participation, involvement and open, early, full communication are important factors.

Tell a compelling change story

Management need to be able to tell a compelling change story that motivates employees. People aren’t going to consider anything until they are convinced there is a problem that truly needs to be addressed. 

Workshops are very useful processes to develop collective understanding, approaches, policies, methods, systems, ideas, etc.  

Storytelling can be a powerful tool when you want to drive organisational change. 

Staff surveys are a helpful way to repair damage and mistrust among staff – provided you allow allow people to complete them anonymously, and provided you publish and act on the findings. 

Management training, empathy and facilitative capability are priority areas – managers are crucial to the change process – they must enable and facilitate, not merely convey and implement policy from above, which does not work.

You cannot impose change

You cannot impose change – people and teams need to be empowered to find their own solutions and responses, with facilitation and support from managers, and tolerance and compassion from the leaders and executives.

Management and leadership style and behaviour are more important than clever process and policy. Employees need to be able to trust the organisation. 

Avoid these common change management pitfalls

Make sure to avoid these common change management mistakes: