In today’s fast paced business environment, change is both necessary and inevitable to build an organization’s future.
The question is: how as a leader do you get your organization on board with change?
Dr. John Hillen, the current executive in residence and professor of practice at George Mason University’s School of Business and former CEO of Sotera Defense Solutions, recently wrote an article for Washington Technology Magazine on how to approach and overcome this pervasive leadership challenge.
Change management, Dr. Hillen explains, has become a well-recognized leadership component. One must not only lead progress in the organization, but be the driving force of it as well.
Change is hard – but Dr. Hillen makes the argument that organizations don’t resist change because they don’t want it, but because the message is unclear and misunderstood.
To prevent this, the best approach for a leader is to explain the change in terms that will make sense to the specific audience and appeal to their values and needs, not the leader’s. This goes beyond the idea of a sales pitch to different constituents of your organization, to making the effort to see and understand your follower’s values. Approaching change with reasoning based on their values allows leaders to build a level of trust that can help everyone ease into change.
Dr. Hillen has brought a new meaning to the acronym of CEO, as Chief Explaining Officer. From his personal experience, he finds revelations more powerful than explanations when it comes to planting the seed for the idea of change.
Gone are the days of “because I said so.” When selling the precise change you want to implement, you have to make sure the steps for change are specific and unique to the organization’s strengths, values and culture.
Dr. Hillen also suggests the approach of creating a narrative with your followers stating the what’s, why’s, how’s and moral of the change. By using the language your peers use and understand, then allows followers to take part-ownership of the change; therefore, a more likelihood the change will stick and be successful.
To read his Dr. Hillen’s full Washington Technology article, Leading Change and the CEO’s Role as Chief Explaining Officer, click here.
