Managing Change & Surviving!Meg Downey

Mark Stevens

Managing Change

• 70% of all major change efforts fail.!

• Solution? !8 steps to help manage change. !✴ Based on research

and analysis from Dr. John Kotter of Harvard Business School.

Bobcatnorth

But first…Let’s hear some of your experiences.

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Managing Change1. Establish a sense of urgency: Examine market

and competitive realities. Identify crises and opportunities.

2. Form a powerful guiding coalition: Assemble a group with enough power to lead change effectively. Encourage group to work together as a team.

Sense of urgency, guiding coalition

Let’s talk

1. Establish a sense of urgency: Examine market and competitive realities. Identify crises and opportunities.

• How do you stay on top of the changes in your market now? • How do you rally the troops to act?

2. Form a powerful guiding coalition: Assemble a group with enough power to lead change effectively. Encourage group to work together as a team.

• How do you decide who should be in your guiding coalition? • What should the mix be?

What did you learn?

Blue Mountain Local Studies

Managing Change

3. Create a vision: Create a vision to help direct the change effort. Develop strategies for achieving that vision.!

4. Communicate the vision: Use every vehicle possible to communicate vision and strategies. Teach new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition.

Effective Visions• Imaginable: They convey a clear picture of what the

future will look like.!• ! Desirable: They appeal to the long-term interest of

those who have a stake in the enterprise.!• ! Feasible: They contain realistic and attainable goals.! • ! Focused: They are clear enough to provide

guidance in decision making.!• ! Flexible: They allow individual initiative and

alternative responses in light of changing conditions.!• ! Communicable: They are easy to communicate and

can be explained quickly.

A good vision statement

Help more journalists cover business better.!

— Reynolds Center, businessjournalism.org

Strategy may be right; communication may be wrong

• What was the best way to teach video?

Christine und Hagen Graf

Let’s talk in groups again3. Create a vision: Create a vision to help direct the change effort. Develop strategies for achieving that vision.!

• What has your organization done to create a vision?!

• What strategies made it effective?!

4. Communicate the vision: Use every vehicle possible to communicate vision and strategies. Teach new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition.!

• How did you promote the vision? Did it work?

What did you learn?

Managing Change5. Empower others to act on the vision: Get rid of obstacles to change. Change systems or structures that undermine the vision. Encourage risk taking and nontraditional ideas or actions.

6. Plan for and create short-term wins: Plan for visible performance improvements. (What does success look like?) Create those improvements. Recognize and reward people involved in those improvements.

Change the work!first, not structure

• Lead by example!

• Train staff. Make sure people have the tools they need.!

• Start by doing.

City of Thunder Bay Archives

Back to our discussion…5. Empower others to act on the vision: Get rid of obstacles to change. Change systems or structures that undermine the vision. Encourage risk taking and nontraditional ideas or actions.

• What gets in your way?

• Is risk taking encouraged? Give an example.

6. Plan for and create short-term wins: Plan for visible performance improvements. (What does success look like?) Create those improvements. Recognize and reward people involved in those improvements.

• How do you regularly reward those who improve?

What did you learn?

Managing Change7. Consolidate improvements and produce still more change: Use increased credibility to change systems, structures and policies that don’t fit the vision. Hire, promote and develop employees who can implement the vision. Reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes and change agents.

8. Institutionalize new approaches: Articulate connections between new behaviors and organizational success. Develop the means to ensure continued leadership.

Sarasota’s mindset change

Restructured the newsroom: Made it more horizontal and priorities-based, with more focus on projects. • Replaced the city editor with a projects editor. • Empowered a senior editor and visuals editor to be

project collaborators, eliminating silos. • Had reporters pick teams and pitch proposals to a

team of editors, designers and digital developers. !!

thestolenones.heraldtribune.com

Sarasota’s Agile ModelDECIDE: What are the challenges? What’s the timeline? Who needs to be involved? Who are the champions? !DESIGN: Sarasota breaks into informal teams to determine every aspect of the project. The team uses Basecamp to unify communication and planning. A project editor and project champion is selected. !DEPLOY: Sarasota explores partnerships. The team builds awareness of the project before publishing.

Discuss last steps…7. Consolidate improvements and produce still more change: Use increased credibility to change systems, structures and policies that don’t fit the vision. Hire, promote and develop employees who can implement the vision. Reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes and change agents.

• How do you keep the effort to change from stalling?

8. Institutionalize new approaches: Articulate connections between new behaviors and organizational success. Develop the means to ensure continued leadership.

• How do you prove that the new way is superior to the old?

• How do you reinforce the culture?

Steps 7-8: What did you learn?

June Marie

Observations? Revelations?

Poughkeepsie Journal