Business Leadership 6: VitalSmart’s Model for Changing Your Business

This continues our series on roles and traits of leadership for your business

You will want to change your business to align it with your clear vision. Your employees need to follow your vision and help with the changes. Our last post outlined John Carter’s 8-Steps for change. In addition to Kotter’s 8-steps, several other change theories exist. Today, we will review the change theories outlined by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, David Maxfield, Al Switzler, and Ron McMillan.

Their framework centers around helping people answer two questions 1) Is it worth it? (motivation) and 2) Am I able to do it? (ability). They accelerate change with support to both questions on three levels: personally, socially, and structurally.

Personal Support for Change

Your efforts should focus on helping each employee to answer “YES” to two major questions.

• Do I want to do it? Your workers should all answer “YES” if you aligned them to the vision you created. Their personal motivation increases the more aligned they become.
• Can I do it? Skill development and training helps your people to answer “YES” to this question confidently. The more they practice and verify their capability, the more confidence they feel.

Social Support for Change

Next, you want to set up processes that facilitate answering “YES” to these two questions.

• Are others encouraging me to do it? Establish processes so that co-workers, supervisors, and others consistently encourage workers to change?
• Are others helping me to do it? Build a core of workers who can implement the change and assign them to help others implement the change.

Structural Support for Change

Finally, you establish structural, procedural, and compensation incentives to generate “YES” to

• Is the environment right for me to do it?  Group meetings, bonuses, posters, and more can create environments conducive to change. Analyze what is preventing them from wanting to make the change.
• Does the environment support me doing it? Look for bottlenecks or barriers in your procedures that will inhibit the changes you want—and remove them.

Tuesday we discuss ensuring that workers have the skills, tools, & resources they need