When we look at change inside a business, we often look at the big picture, “how the business manages the changes to reach its goals”. But what we don’t often look at are the components of change that can negatively affect the bottom line of your business. What we know of human behaviours and change is that people react and act differently, which can be the cause of failure or success when it comes to managing change. These behaviors are experienced at different levels inside the business. There are 3 levels of change; External, Personal, and Group(Internal).
Imagine your business has recognized the need to expand to a new market or deliver a new product. This change may feel familiar and possibly quite easy to make happen. After all, you have done this before.
While it is true that experience can make the transition easier, it can also create many challenges if the different levels of change are not addressed for the different behavioural needs with the business. Change will always require the people within the different levels of the business not resist the change.
External Level
The External Level may involve many external resources, people, and communications as you go through your changes. For instance:
- shipping logistics may require different truck types to manage your new product, different equipment to move and load product
- suppliers may not be able to manage your new design or handle your increased needs,
- changes in external communications may affect brand, marketing language, the process, or our clients’ needs.
This is where we usually start in our implementation for change. We start our plan for change looking at the big picture, the final outcome, the affect on our client and our bottom line. It is usually where we set our goals (e.g. increase in sales by March, or 2% penetration of the new market by 2026). It is easier to see and visualize what needs to happen.
Personal Level
When it comes to the Personal Level, each person reacts differently to the change that will affect their job. Some people are excited for the new works, the challenges of doing something new, the opportunity to use their highly developed skills in the act of creation. Some people are indifferent. For them, it is just something different to do but it is expected, like showing up every day at the workplace. And others are worried. The worry if they will be able to perform at the level expected? Will they enjoy the new work? Will they have to join new internal groups, meet new peers, make new connections? The uncertainty of the future changes is not easy for these people.
Group Level
And finally, the Group Level, which is an internal level of change within the business and sometimes happening within the group dynamics itself. If your business is very small, you may not have more than one group. Everyone interacts with each other on a relatively equal standing. But, as your business grows, it will eventually have several groups, which then creates several different perspectives of what the change is and how it will work.
For instance, one owner I worked with had more than one business with different working teams for each of the different companies, that all worked from the same location. Those that worked onsite had one perspective of the expected of change. They were very committed to the change, creating new process, moving equipment around, and changing the resources needed. The other group, that worked offsite, had no insight into the change, because they were not expected to do any of the work. The shared resources were changing and moving, and the second group had no say. This created confusion as the new changes were implemented in one of the group’s process, but not in the other.
As you can imagine, confusion caused delayed action and misunderstanding. Sometimes it resulted in rivalry between groups, which not only splintered their working relationships within the location, but reduced the groups’ drive to produce. It was costing them too much to move forward.
Not changing is not an option. As nice as it is to have consistency and stability within our lives, a business that cannot change cannot continue to survive. There is simply too much change that happens externally, that a business cannot ignore.
If you want your business to be successful in change at all levels, you need to ensure your communications are shared at all levels, and that all people, with some responsibility within your change, have buy-in to the change. This means your people need to know about it, understand why the change is happening, and agree that it is the right direction. Then they all need to know what specifically is changing and who is responsible for what part of that change.
In the example I gave you earlier, if the off-site group knew what was happening and why, they could approach the person in charge and let them know to not move certain resources because they are key to their early loading for their travel to client sites. In this case, change in one group needed to also support continued work in another.
When everyone is on board, they know what is happening, they agree it is needed, and they know who is responsible for the different areas of change, then your bottom-line will be more positively affected by the change.
Positive change is the desired outcome we are all looking for in our businesses.
Another article you may like:
“Why You Might Be the Reason You Cannot Sell Your Business”
This article is 100% original content – The articles you read in this blog are 100% created by Barb Stuhlemmer, not by AI.
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