Want to lead a radical change in your organization? Here’s how to succeed

Navigating your team through organizational change is a challenging and transformative journey. It tests your leadership abilities while offering opportunities for personal growth and learning. In my experience, keeping employees engaged through mergers, acquisitions, and restructurings has been one of the most significant challenges that has shaped my leadership journey.

Success during a major organizational restructuring or change requires careful planning, open communication, and empathy. Providing reassurance and direction strengthens the relationship between leaders and their teams. Employees need clear direction and reassurance. These aspects of change management present significant challenges and emphasize the essential role of trust and team buy-in.

Navigating change is a full-body workout for your leadership skills. This journey requires a delicate balance, aligning the organization’s goals with the team’s needs and aspirations. It’s a dynamic challenge that requires identifying and harnessing your natural leadership strengths.

Employees look to leaders for guidance, clarity, and assurance during times of change. Managing the psychological aspects of successful change management, such as building trust and securing buy-in, can be the most challenging but impactful part of the process.

Positioning your team to achieve this goal requires that you be intentional about your goals, transformation strategy, and your efforts to help leaders foster employee engagement and systematically develop processes and skills to leverage their advantage.  

Organizational change versus transformation

Change involves external processes such as organizational restructuring or new initiatives. On the other hand, transition is an internal experience we go through when we encounter change. It means adapting our thoughts, emotions and behaviors to the new situation.

Transition can occur in response to various life events: starting school, accepting a new job, getting married, having a child, moving, or experiencing loss. Transition can create confusion, uncertainty, and even fear. Change is inevitable. How we deal with it shapes us.

Related: 3 ways leaders can “talk” to AI to drive organizational change

Change can be difficult. People process it at different speeds, and are likely to have a range of feelings about it: How necessary is it? What is the extent of its impact on change? How does it compare to previous structures?

Respecting the past, focusing on the future, and communicating clearly and thoughtfully puts organizations in a position to create teams that are flexible, adaptable, and ready to succeed in a constantly evolving environment.

Getting deeper than buzzwords

Venturing into the unknown requires a team effort. True transformation is not just about adjusting processes and systems, it requires genuine engagement with the people who fuel the work. The resilience and adaptability of your employees, including you, drives the journey.

Complex jargon and buzzwords can fail to advance change efforts, hindering understanding and transparency. Clear and direct communication is crucial. Break down your company language, reframe it, and make sure your team understands your message.

Create comfortable spaces for open dialogue with your employees. Routine one-on-one sessions, town hall meetings, and open forum meetings are opportunities to address your employees’ concerns as they arise and provide updates as they develop. Maintaining a steady flow of communication can also help dispel rumors and keep the journey on track.

Early adopters and change agents set you up for success; gaining their trust and support is one of your most important initiatives.

Be a mirror of change

As a leader, you are a master culture builder. You set the tone when it comes to embracing and supporting change. To truly excel at change management, be a change agent and reflect that to your team.

Commit to being a learner of everything, not a knower of everything. Learning requires discipline and deep listening. Questioning. Reflecting. Extracting information. Finding new ways to grow, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Show that you are enthusiastic and fully invested. While change poses challenges, it also provides ample scope for growth potential, providing new opportunities for learning, development, and shaping the future of the organization.

Embracing challenges, supporting accountability, and refraining from placing blame will foster a safe learning environment that supports employee engagement.

Prioritize simplicity in design

As a leader, you set standards for implementing and maintaining operations. Focus on the voices of your employees and the needs of your customers – use these priorities to guide your design.

Recognize that redundant administrative layers lead to inaccurate decision making, bureaucracy, and inefficiency. Unpacking these complexities and removing bottlenecks and redundancies.

Processes should simplify work, not create it. Building internal processes that streamline roles and responsibilities is critical. Scalable, understood, and well-documented processes foster a culture of productivity. Simplification and clarity are essential when defining responsibilities and defining work.

Analyze managers’ span of control (the number of employees each manager supervises) taking into account small, volatile teams. I spent half my career at Amazon, where I first learned Jeff Bezos’ principles.two pizzaRule: If it takes more than two pizzas to feed your team, that team is too big.

Employee engagement is key

Building flexible and resilient structures is the key to success in a constantly changing environment. Focus on the process, and don’t build an organization around one person, which can create dependencies and organizational bottlenecks.

Foster an environment designed for innovation, a key driver of success, and enable your business to pivot and embrace rapidly emerging trends and technologies.

As a leader and change agent for the team and process, you are leading your team through a major transformation, which has tremendous growth potential for your employees, and for you as well.