The change question set all change leaders should be able to answer:
“Do you understand your organisation's change history? Do you have a change vision? Are you aligned on your strategic objectives? Are you a high performing team? Does your team have change leadership skills to lead the change or improvement that your organisation is facing?”
Step 1: Perform a Change History Assessment© - A data driven approach to establish how successful the organisation was at previous change.
Our change history assessment© (CHA©) is used by change teams to review the outcomes of previous change programmes within their organisation. It provides organisational insights that can increase the likelihood of successful implementation through the analysis of lessons learned, mitigating previous weaknesses and enhancing future success. It is important to learn from previous change by performing structured analysis to identify negative issues and to avoid repeating them on the next change. The insights from the CHA© will help to shape the change approach, planning and the resistance strategy.
“To achieve future organisational change management success, analyse previous change history to mitigate previous weakness and enhance future success”
What is Change Leadership Alignment?
Change leadership alignment ensures that the organisational leaders are an aligned leadership team before they start their organisation's change implementation. This means they understand the organisation's change history, they have the same change vision, they are aligned on their strategic objectives, they are a high performing team and they have the change leadership skills to lead the change, transformation or improvement that their organisation is facing.
Why is Change Leadership Alignment important?
Change leadership alignment is important because the skills required for leading day-to-day operations are very different to change leadership. Without aligning and preparing the leadership for their change journey, it is highly doubtful they will successfully implement organisational change to ensure a return on investment, achieve full employee change adoption, and sustainable change.
What are the key steps of Change Leadership Alignment?
Change leadership alignment has five key steps:
1. An assessment of previous change history to establish what went well and what needs to improve.
2. 1:1 Interviews with the leadership team to establish barriers and enablers to change success.
3. A strategic alignment exercise to ensure the leaders are aligned on the organisation's change priorities.
4. Develop a high performing team so the leaders can deliver the change together.
5. Develop Leadership of Change® capability, the knowledge, and skills to lead employees through the change.
More on Change Leadership Alignment.
Peter consults, speaks, and writes on the Leadership of Change®.
For further reading please visit our websites:
Change Management Body of Knowledge (CMBoK) Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, A, B, C, D, & E
Peter F Gallagher is a Change Management Global Thought Leader, Expert, International Speaker, Author and Leadership Alignment Coach.
Ranked #1 Change Management Global Thought Leader: Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Change Management (May 2021 & 2020) by Thinkers360.
Ranked #2 Business Strategy Global Thought Leader: Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Change Management (Dec 2020) by Thinkers360.
Ranked #2 Leadership Global Thought Leader: Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Change Management (Aug 2020) by Thinkers360.
Business Book Ranking
Change Management Behaviour -Leadership of Change® Volume 6, listed among the 50 Books from Thinkers360 Thought Leaders to read in 2022.
Change Management Adoption - list among year-to-date’s (Jul 2021) most popular books on business and technology from Thinkers360 member thought leaders.
Change Management Handbook - Leadership of Change® Volume 3, listed among the 50 Business and Technology Books from Thinkers360 Thought Leaders to read in 2021.
Change Management Pocket Guide - Leadership of Change® Volume 2, ranked within the top 50 Business and Technology Books (Jan 2020) from Thinkers360 Thought Leaders.