TopTips: Dealing with Organizational Changes

Today our Top Tips focus on 10 tips for managing and dealing with organizational changes.

Perhaps the clearest and most useful ideas on change are contained in the Prichett and Pound booklet, The Employee Handbook of Organizational Change. First, they dispel the myths about change such as:

Myth

• It will go away.
  
• My job is the same.
• Problems prove that changes are harmful for the organization. I’m not in a position to make a difference.
• They don’t know what they are doing.

Reality

• It won’t.
  
• You need to change too.
• Problems are part of the change process.
• You are part of the solution or part of the problem Some mistakes are inevitable.

They also make some recommendations abut being a change agent:

1. Be positive.
   
2. Take ownership of the changes.
   
3. Pick your battles.
   
4. Be tolerant of mistakes.
   
5. Practice stress management.
   
6. What is the size of the problem?
   
7. Is it very serious?
   
8. What is the source of the problem? Is it personal or organizational?
   
9. Is this a temporary or permanent problem, and will it reoccur?
   
10. What are the causes of the problem, not the symptom.