PART II: CHANGE MANAGEMENT - WHERE TO START? WILLIAM EASTMAN

Unless you are starting here with a blank sheet with no operating business, something exists. This one of your multiplier roles, the ability to Manage the Change from today to the future. Never forget that most change efforts come up short of its potential. Only your management will make change successful and create the success you need. Managing Change is both a technical process to align all of the businesses resources, it is also a method for building commitment and consensus for the change.

​Never forget that as long as the pain of staying the same is less than the pain of changing, you will be pushing a very large boulder uphill. A second lesson is good plans with commitment will always outperform great plans with little commitment.

Show Objective
Given the topics covered in week 2, you will create a unique Burning Platform presentation and Vision of the Future that will serve as the basis for changing all aspects of the business.

EPISODE 37: Summary
Our experience with managing large corporate change is no different in the smaller companies - just fewer people and resources. The place to start is the ‘Burning Platform” - why can’t we stay the same?

Next is your vision for the future - if successful, what will that look and feel like? Then there are the challenges of building concensus for the change.

If you have been successful selling why the past needs to be abandoned and the future embraced, then concensus is enhanced by having a strategic plan without the details. Why? Because to make the changes owned by everyone, they need to participate in its design and implementation.

EPISODE 38: The Burning Platform
Last week we covered the attributes of an effective 'Burning Platform. It cannot discount the past and it has to tell the truth about the present and future without using fear.

The following is an approach I have used in the past that has worked.

Topics:

• The Current State of the Business
  • Details of your SWOT Analysis
    • Strengths to Build On
    • Weaknesses to Fix
    • Opportunities the New Enviroment Presents
    • Threats the New Environment Creates
• The Current and Future State of the Economy
  • Weaknesses we must fix
  • Threats coming our way 

EPISODE 39: Your Vision of the Future
When painting a picture of the present and future if we don't change, you focused on the negatives - short-term weaknesses and long-term threats. Now is the time to shift focus to Strengrhs and Opportunities.

Your job in explaining the vision is to create legitimate hope we have what it takes to get it done.

Topics:

• Strengthening Our Core
  • Our Financial Situation
    • Increase Cash On Hand
    • Improve Available Credit
    • Pay down or eliminate Debt
    • Collect everything owed
  • Achieving Lowest Cost Producer in our market
    • Build only on demand
    • Eliminate non-value processing time
    • Reorganize work areas - 5 S
    • Increase quality
    • Improve margins
  • Enhancing Relationships with Core Customers & Suppliers - holding their business
    • Improve relations through the use of data
    • Bring core customers into improvement efforts
    • Share cost improvement by reducing prices while maintaining marhins
  • Making Work Easier to do more - long-term employment goal
    • Process improvemnts = better work environment
    • Focus on skill mastery first, cross training second
    • Building a variable compensation system - rewarded for improvements

EPISODE 40: Building a Consensus
At this point in the change process, it is still early but you should have as much commitment as possible. Whether you can maintain it comes later as the plan is built, progress achieved, and adjustments made.
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Topics:

• Financials
  • Open Book Management
  • Line of Sight on Business Performance
• Operations
  • Value Mapping all Processes
  • Creating / updating SOP's (Standard Operating Procedures)
  • Creating / updating all Position Descriptions
• Customers & Suppliers
  • Understand the current state of relationships
  • Create / update data collection
  • Triage today - fix what we can fix immediately
• People
  • Involved all aspects of the business - management and improvements

Next Show/Part III: The Strengthening Our Core Plan

How to apply today's show to your business:

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