How to implement lasting change in your business

We know that death and taxes are constant. Well, when you are in business, change is also constant.

There’s an old saying – “if you do nothing, something terrible happens….nothing”.

In business change can be demanded by the market, by your customers changing, by new trends and technologies, by changing team members and by your own changing life goals. If you don’t change, one of these things will jump out an bite you and if you don’t respond, your business will inevitably suffer.

But if you’ve ever tried to change something in your business, have you found that it may have worked for a while, then after some time, people slip back into their old ways. Or, it has been impossible to put through a change because people just don’t want anything to do with it!

Why is that?

Because change has to be implemented by people, and people just hate change.

You know how it is. You get comfortable doing the same things over and over again. In fact you get really good at it that you can do it in your sleep, with your eyes closed! You get so good at it that you start to justify why you don’t need to change – it would cost too much, you would need retraining, it would take a long time to be as efficient as the way you have been doing it because you can do it in your sleep, with your eyes closed.

You even say this when the need for change is staring you in the face.

Your product is getting old. New entrants into the market are using mobile apps to deliver your product. Yet you say “they’re not as good, they don’t go into the detail like your hands on approach can provide”. While that may be true enough your customers are voting with your feet. Remember Kodak had the best film processing chain in the world. They stuck to what they knew because it was so good. Meanwhile customers started buying better and better digital cameras.

So, how do you implement change in your business that will “stick”?

Here’s those 8 steps again:-

From Professor John Kotter’s book “Leading Change” available from Harvard Business Review Press:-

1. Create a sense of urgency
2. Create a guiding coalition
3. Develop a vision and strategy
4. Communicate the vision
5. Empower broad-based action
6. Generate short-term wins
7. Consolidate gains and produce more change
8. Anchor new approaches in corporate culture

I highly recommend this extremely readable book for any business leader looking to implement change.

You can also get over to https://teikoh.com and find templates and other resources to plan for and implement change initiatives. Subscribe here to our newsletter and get more of these resources to grow your business delivered directly to you to access whenever you want.

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Related posts:

How do I quantify my Vision? Creating a Mission-oriented Organisation Structure A “proper” planning process How to Create a Resilient Business

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