Understand How to Lead Sustainable Change
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Understand the importance of taking a comprehensive approach to change.
- Understand the social, individual, and structural factors that influence human behavior.
Change Is Tricky
Organizational change is challenging. Whether it’s helping people adopt a new technology like Salesforce, a new process like a new customer onboarding process, or a new mindset like Agile, changing the way people work and behave is a daunting task. That’s why many digital transformation efforts fail, CRM rollouts stall, and change projects don’t achieve their desired results.And to make matters trickier, most of us don’t have a comprehensive model for managing change in our organizations.
As a result, we look for quick solutions that never seem to work. We invest in training and send out cleverlyworded communications hoping that people change. When that doesn’t work, we have leadership send out a sternlyworded email. When that doesn’t work, we scramble to find the next foolproof strategy—which turns out isn’t foolproof at all. It’s not that these strategies aren’t helpful—they are! It’s that they’re incomplete. You discover why shortly.
In this trail, you consider the various forces that influence human behavior in order to create change. You learn to see the invisible obstacles that keep people locked in old ways of working, and identify concrete actions to nudge new mindsets and behaviors.
Why People Do What They Do
Behavior is shaped by a number of influences, including individual factors like a person’s beliefs and abilities, social factors like peer pressure and leadership direction, and structural factors like policies and incentives. These factors can be captured by the LEVERS model, which stands for Leadership, Ecosystem, Values, Enablement, Rewards, and Structure. In the next section we look at how to use this model to foster change.