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Okay, yeah, we get it. Times are changing and business needs to change along with it, right? Yeah, well, easier said than done. Transforming a business from one model to another is no easy task, and gets harder and harder the bigger your business is – especially if you’re struggling to control all the elements that make your business work.
But it’s just a little change. I mean come on, how hard does this really have to be? Well…
Issues are Bigger Than You Think
The fact is that just like you, every one of your employees is used to things working a certain way. Not only that, but every single one of your employees probably has a different idea of what changes should be implemented based on their unique perspective. Your frontline worker is going to have a vastly different understanding of what the business needs compared to your managers compared to yourself, and that’s your first challenge.
When people see change, they resist. But more specifically when people see change they don’t agree with, they resist with strength. Some quit. Others practice malicious compliance or techniques of quiet quitting. And the thing is, you can’t blame them for that. As a rule, people don’t quit or act in malice over nothing. These practices mean that workers aren’t being heard and their complaints – the things that are directly affecting their job – are being negatively impacted by the change. Or it might mean that the changes you’re implementing are already being implemented far too late and should have been implemented months earlier when there was time for gradual adjustment. However, which of these it is you’ll need to identify fast because…
Change is Often Miscommunicated
Remember how we said everyone has an idea of what changes need to be implemented? Well, managers, in particular, have the power to implement changes of their own, and it’s their responsibility to communicate the changes down to the workers. A fantastic change that benefits everyone but the manager, or a manager who doesn’t see value in the change or who accidentally misinterprets the change has the power to make that change completely ineffective. Not only that, but if you implement a change, test it, and find it doesn’t work, it might not be the change that’s the problem but the manager’s or worker’s interpretation of what that’s supposed to mean. Clear communication, explaining the value of the change, and checking in to ensure it has been understood isn’t just required to get the change to work, it’s also required to understand the reason it doesn’t work if there are issues.
Desperate Change and Changes That Come Too Fast Are Doomed to Fail
Look, we get it, sometimes change needs to happen, it needs to happen fast and it needs to happen now. There’s no getting around that. And there is definitely some value to the eponymous crunch time of certain industries. But overworking your staff, even if it yields short term benefits, can have disastrous long-term consequences. This is doubly the case if they have to learn a new system at the same time which is often the case when a business is understaffed.
But let’s talk about the “benefits” of crunch time – wouldn’t they already be better if your business model was transformed to start with? Wouldn’t it be better if crunch time was either unnecessary or only used to maximise benefits when your business can afford to push their employees with the crunch?
And then there’s YOUR business
Here’s the thing, everything we’ve talked about so far are things that affect every business. Anytime you implement a change it’s going to be faced with some amount of resistance, miscommunication, altering opinions, and the issues of timing combined with the regular pressures of the job. None of this is to mention specific changes your business might need or specific hurdles your business might need to face. Fortunately, for your particular business, there’s better resources than a web article like this.
You can look into what your competitors are doing, hire people already trained in the business model you want to emulate, or you can personally get training from a graduate certificate in change management. All of these options and more are open to you, but if your goal is to enact a seamless transition, then the first step is learning what your obstacles are, and then learning what you need to know in order to succeed.
