Dealing with a Change-Resistant ManagerWith almost any change, whether a trivial adjustment in procedures or a large-scale organizational change, people will vary in their receptiveness to it. But if you and your teammates have some good ideas to improve processes and your manager keeps shutting them down, you may be dealing with a change-resistant manager.
How Do We Land This Thing? Planning for Go-Live and BeyondSome project managers have little experience bringing a project in for a landing, so they can be dismayed or just blindsided by organizational change needs and stakeholders’ expectations at delivery. Here is a checklist of some commonly forgotten items to address when a project goes live, so be sure to plan for them.
Handling the Emotional Turmoil of Organizational ChangeChaos, confusion, and emotional turmoil are not unusual during major organizational change. Nevertheless, even people at the top sometimes minimize the impact of the change on employees—and on themselves. Worse, they sometimes do so dismissively. It's important not to underestimate the challenge of managing change.
During Times of Major Change, Keep People InformedDuring times of major change, readily available information can help reduce the fears of those affected about what it means for them. If you’re involved in implementing change, it’s wise to keep people informed—not just about the change itself, but also about its impact on processes, responsibilities, and expectations.
An Agile Approach to Change ManagementMany organizations are reluctant to introduce new tools or technologies, or even to update existing ones. The reason is often framed in terms of risk management, but agile teams already have the tools to manage the risk of change: testing and experiments. These approaches together eliminate gaps in risk identification.
Think through System Changes to Anticipate Quality IssuesWhen you replace or significantly modify components of a larger system, too frequently we focus on whether the code we are building functions correctly. This is important, but it’s also short-sighted. It’s easy to introduce errors because we are changing interactions. Coding bugs are only one quality problem.
Something to Remember When Managing Change at WorkGrieving is usually associated with the loss of a loved one, but it’s equally relevant to loss triggered by changes in the workplace. If you are introducing or overseeing a change, it’s a mistake to belittle people’s reaction to the loss or excessively tout the benefits of the new way. Be sensitive to those affected.
Managing the Turbulence of Organizational ChangeIn times of major change, particularly organizational change, it's normal for people involved to experience turbulence, including anxiety, anger, or uncertainty. If you’re overseeing a change, how you communicate with those affected can significantly decrease—or increase—the duration and intensity of that turbulence.
