Instead of imposing change on your employees, you should consider exploring ways to align the aims of the business with the needs of your employees. This does not mean that because you consulted with your employees before and during change that you are handing over the firm to them. The reason to consult with your staff is that it saves you from yourself and your own wrong assumptions.
Consulting with them gives you and them a chance to fully explore and understand the implications and feasibility of what you think needs to change. And, it gives your employees the opportunity to see things from both sides and may just open the door to some very good ideas for doing things better than you could have thought up all by yourself. In fact, it helps you to see things from both sides, too.
Often, organizations have enacted change without fully engaging the employees in the process because they perceive that there is not enough time to reassess and realign aims and values or that change is a response to some crisis. Crisis, though, is no excuse for compromising integrity or short-circuiting respect for the views of your employees. Crisis should be a wake-up call to enact change carefully and is the best reason to re-align your aims and consult with your staff on that change. When a firm is in crisis mode, the employees are almost always okay with doing what it takes to "right the ship."
How do you enact change? Change should be handled as a project and managed accordingly. This means developing the conditions, variables and consequences of change. It also means enlisting your employees in the process of change through a thoughtful, considerate schedule that takes into account what needs to be done to successfully enact the change given the limitations and schedule implications to those employees who will ultimately have to deal with a transition. Project management takes into account a series of activities that leads to a successful outcome or change in the firm.
Building a project requires some skill. Apart from using project management software, there are practical considerations to incorporate into the planning process. Here are four steps to consider:
1. Setting goals is usually the first, most logical step. What do you hope to accomplish with the change in your office? When do you hope to accomplish it? This might involve a strategic planning-type meeting with staff to develop ideas and share insights. Using a third-party consultant, for instance, to facilitate discussions with staff on change can further distance you from the negative role of persuader.
2. Setting the roles and responsibilities is usually the second step. Who is responsible for what and how do you decide who is accountable?
3. Setting a timeline for successful completion of the project, for instance, could be the third step. Whether you develop advanced Gantt charts that illustrate the timeline or not, success does not depend on fancy graphics, but simple, clear communication of the timeline.
4. Set up a measurement system to determine how successful the firm is in making the change(s) and whether the result matched the expectations.
Involving your staff in every step of the change process will greatly improve the chances of success. Try to remember before enacting change that change for sake of change alone is largely useless. To be successful, a firm does not need to jump on every new trend or idea that comes around. Carefully evaluating those trends or ideas in light of a firm's vision, values and the resulting benefit to the client goes a long way toward determining the validity of making a change.