How much do I have to plan for a change?

Hey Reader,

At last week’s Organizational Change Office Hours, someone asked a great question in the Q&A, one that I hear from leaders all the time: How much planning do I have to do for a change?

The question doesn’t surprise me. When your organization is planning for change on top of everything else you have to do on a daily basis, it can feel totally daunting. And when change is constant? Does that mean endless cycles of planning and planning and planning again? When is the real work supposed to get done?

But what if planning for change was baked into your day-to-day so that it was less of a burden? And what if that made strategizing for big changes energizing and expansive rather than messy and draining? Planning for one change at a time just means you’re going to have to plan again for the next one and again for the one after that.

The alternative?

Using your next change to dig deep into the Uncover phase of change, pulling out all of the details about your business, your organization, and your culture, then creating an organization-specific strategy that can be scaled up or down depending on what a specific change calls for.

And if you really want to go above and beyond, building organizational change capacity with your teams so that they are ready, resilient, and eager to build a restorative organizational culture with you.

(Not sure how well your org navigates the Uncover phase of change? Catch our last Office Hours replay to help you diagnose how effectively you approach that phase.)

You can stop planning for one change after another after another (or, worse, getting so overwhelmed that you drop the planning ball completely) and instead create a strategy that not only scales, but can be used by anyone at your org to implement successful, lasting change.

How?

Let's go back to the Q&A. The person who asked the question gave a little more backstory:

“Last time we did something, we tried to use the templates and tools from [insert big-name change management certification program here] and it was more work to keep everything updated than to do the actual project work itself. We have a small team and it seemed too complicated in practice.”

So how much planning do you actually have to do for a change?

Well, when you have a change before you, “How much planning do I have to do?” honestly isn’t exactly the right question to ask (and if you've been in the Commcoterie-verse for a while, you've heard me say that we can only solve for well-put problems...and the way to frame a problem well is to ask the right questions).

Some better questions?

• “How do our teams typically react to change?” (Not well? We might need some additional strategy, but that's totally fine, because it will increase the change capacity for next time)
• “Do we have a great amount of trust here?” (Yeah? Let's leverage that so that we have less to "plan"!)
• “Do we have a robust internal comms strategy?” (Robust might be a strong word? Okay, let's look at what we do have and see if there's something else we need to pilot)
• "Are there a lot of changes going on right now or are folks in a good flow with their day-to-day work?” (Lot's of things going on? Timeline and cross-team collaboration are key here...let's focus most on those)
• “What is this change? Is it good or bad? Process? Tech? Cultural? Structural?” (See what I mean by some better questions?)

When it comes to successful change, it's is not the planning tools and templates themselves that are important, it’s the approach: the strategic questions you ask and the change mindset that you operationalize in the organization are what seal the deal.

That’s why I don’t really think of it as "planning for a change" and having a checklist of all of these things you have to do, I think of it as preparing an organization for change.

At next month's Organizational Change Office Hours, we’re talking about something adjacent to this: Is my organization or change too small for “change management”?

Spoiler alert: the answer is no, but we’re going to see whether your current change strategy is scalable to fit your org's needs and if not, you'll be able to figure out your next best step. Plus I’ll leave time to answer any questions during the Q&A.

​Register for free here. And bring a friend! The more, the merrier.

Talk soon,

Caitlin Founder, Commcoterie

P.S. — We help purpose-driven companies and nonprofits navigate organizational change. Our scaleable offerings have helped dozens of leaders with teams of 2-250 create people-centered change strategies and change-ready cultures.

Have a change on the horizon and want to ensure its success? Reply here and tell us a little about your team. If it sounds like we’d be a good fit, we can set up time to hear more and let you know how we can help.

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