Leaders are always the architects of change in any organization.  Change starts because they are dissatisfied with the status quo and take action to transform it. A successful change happens when the leader takes the role of agitator, innovator, and orchestrator and then sustains change.

Leaders create agitation first by showing dissatisfaction and creating a sense of urgency. They raise awareness related to why the change is necessary. This is an important part of the process of change management. They identify performance gaps and inspire their team to recognize the need for improvement.

Innovation comes as next step. Leaders create a clear vision and strategy for achieving the new status. Therefore, they start planning for an alternative solution. Finally, the leaders become orchestrators, using change management tools to align teams, remove barriers, and ensure frictionless adoption of new practices. 

This change management approach used a more social approach for overcoming resistance to change and engaging stakeholders. As a change agent, you have to tackle a lot of challenges with psychology and motivation before you proceed with the technical part of the change.  In this article, you will learn what it takes to overcome this resistance and manage the change effectively as a leader in your organization.

While leading organizational change, you must first understand the environment, including the culture and norms. You must then consider the nature of the change.  Is it a divergent or a non-divergent change?  The divergent change changes completely the route of the solution, and the non-divergent change is building on top of the existing solution. The divergent changes normally receive the strongest resistance, while non-divergent changes can be promoted more smoothly because they are somehow compatible with the established norms.

How to manage stakeholders

When the type of change is clear, the identification and analysis of stakeholders becomes important. Each one of the different change initiatives will affect different stakeholders differently. It is necessary to identify who is affected and how.

Stakeholders can be categorized into three main groups: endorsers, resisters, and fence-sitters. These endorsers support the change actively, while the resisters might push back because of fears or other interests. Fence-sitters can be at the start, and engaging them early may be key to gaining support.

By understanding the type of each stakeholder, you can devise a proper strategy.  Discussions with endorsers will increase their support for the change.  Collaboration with the fence-sitters and explaining to them the benefits of the change can transform them into endorsers. For handing the resisters you have first to understand the reason for their opposition. Explaining the benefits does not work.  You have to understand and resolve their concerns through communication, training, and change management techniques.      

Understand the sources of power

For successful change implementation, you have to engage and mobilize the sources of power within the organization. Power derives from a formal role, expertise, or from networks. Leaders who possess relational power, such as the ‘power to influence through relationships and alliances always achieve sustainable change. By leveraging relational power, you can build relationships between various groups, manage resistance to change, and facilitate collaboration.

You must understand the nature of the change, carefully study the stakeholders, and appropriately apply power to ensure that resistance is minimized and momentum is maximized. Doing that first, set a strong foundation for starting your change management process.

Change is not starting by itself.  The first step of the change is to create a sense of urgency and dissatisfaction against the status quo.  The leader takes the role of the agitator.  This is an important step to get the attention and emphasis on the current overlooked problems. Please with time feel comfortable with the problems and tend to remain on the status quo. You as a leader need to increase the attention and show dissatisfaction and need to take action.

You have to turn the attention of the organization to the areas that do not work and start a change debate.  These can be outdated processes, inefficiencies, or external changes in market dynamics that need a different approach.  You as a leader need to understand and explain the cost and risks of inaction and highlight the required changes.  

Use Crises as a Tool for Agitation

Some leaders also can use external crises or some market difficulties to explain the need for change.  Economic recessions, industry disruption, and customer dissatisfaction can be a good influence for change.  Such events emphasize the risks and threats of not changing. Using these risks as a vehicle, you can break the resistance and create momentum for change.  Then changes need to be discussed transparently and a solution should be found with the involvement of all stakeholders.  

A more extreme case is when leaders are inventing crises as agitation for changes.  They bring some data to emphasize that there is a problem and a challenge is coming.  These leaders are using the psychology of the people to influence them and make them rethink the status quo.

The key to the agitation is communication. Leaders have to present the need for change in a sense of urgency and link it with the strategy.  Then the stakeholders need to see the purpose of the see the benefits of the change. The leader has to present the urgency of change and shift their focus from anxiety to motivation.  You have to understand that the goal of the agitation is to build a shared commitment to the transformation. 

Having established a sense of urgency and linking it with strategy you build motivation and commitment of stakeholders. This can be an extreme superpower for breaking resistance and bringing innovation.

After creating a sense of urgency, you need to craft a clear vision of where to look for a new solution.  The leader then takes the role of innovator, designs a vision, and shows the path.  

In case of a divergent change, the leader needs to break ties with tradition and sometimes challenge the culture.  In non-divergent changes, the vision serves as the integration of new solutions with the current one.  The ideal vision in any type of change must be realistic, achievable, and fitting with the organization’s structure and culture.

For structuring the process of crafting a vision you can use an established model of change management such as Kotter’s 8-Step Model or the ADKAR model.  These frameworks help to structure the change and provide the necessary mechanisms for avoiding missteps.  The key here is how you can create a clear vision that you can engage the stakeholders and move them to execution.  Communicating your vision through action and building support are two of the main steps in this phase.

Communicating the vision effectively

Creating a vision is not only merely on the high-level ideas and direction.  A vision must be actionable and communicate the organization’s strategy.  This means that the leader must integrate all the needs of the stakeholders and ensure that integrates also particular issues from the agitation phase. A good vision must look forward to the future and also be practical and realistic in the implementation.

In this way, the vision must be communicated effectively so that the leader gets the buy-in from stakeholders and team members. During this communication phase, the concerns of stakeholders, employees, and customers must be addressed.  Specific adaptations are possible to ensure engagement, but the overall strategy should not be modified. The meaning of the vision is that it must act as a bridge between strategy and implementation plans within the organization.  In that way, you can gain support and momentum in the orchestration phase.

When the leader is performing as an orchestrator turns her focus from vision to action.  The planning aspect becomes the execution at this stage.  The leader must ensure that all team members and stakeholders are moving in the same direction.  You have to communicate the vision through action.  This means leading the way and making sure that every decision reflects the organization’s strategic goals.

Build Coalitions and Pilots to gain momentum

The next step is to form a powerful guiding coalition for the change. This can be a core team or an executive team that supports and monitors the change.  These are influential stakeholders that can promote the change and ensure that the decisions are taken efficiently. By building this coalition, you can amplify the message and address any critical resistance to change management more effectively.  

In this way, you can highlight the bottlenecks and resolve or escalate any resistance to change. Your goal is to build momentum for moving forward. The change can be an outdated process or a system that needs replacement, and the roadblocks must be resolved at that time.  Piloting is an effective way to demonstrate the new system and tackle roadblocks from feedback. Also, you can demonstrate the benefits and success and also address any risks involved in the new system.

Keys are Quick Wins and Effective Communication

Moreover, creating quick wins is important.  Quick wins also build a psychological advantage for the team, as you build the feeling of achievement and progress. Then you can win the trust of the people implementing the solution, as well as provide a sense of ownership.  In this way, you can overcome skepticism and demonstrate the practical advantages and the right direction of the new solution.  

Continuous efficient communication is important for keeping stakeholders informed and engaged. You can manage in that way resistance and settle feedback mechanisms for modifications or adaptations. Integrating the best practices of change management allows you to overcome resistance.  This helps to ensure that new initiatives are taken up and widely adopted using clear communication and stakeholder management.

Orchestration is the main part of change management for mobilizing efforts, overcoming resistance, and building coalitions and support for change. You can move the change forward and proceed with effectiveness through orchestrating a plan.

Once the changes have been implemented, the final stage is to sustain the change and avoid Rolling back to the status quo. The changes need to be institutionalized and become part of the culture.  

This involves consolidation of improvements and assessment of the success over time. Consolidation requires that stakeholders need to assess progress and check milestones and objectives.  Tools like KPIs and feedback loops as retrospectives are critical for sustaining a change.

At that stage, institutionalization means that the change is embedded into the process map of the organization and people get used to working with the new way. This involves establishing new behaviors and practices through continued communication, training, and reinforcement. The monitoring of KPIs should ensure that the new status can deliver results and perform effectively. Therefore it is important to measure success over long-term sustainability and not over short-term quick wins.  

Sustaining new Behaviors and Practices

Sustaining new status means the leaders establish the “new normal”.  This means that changes are integrated into standard operating procedures, training programs, and leadership development. Additionally, by sustaining change using change management methodologies, leaders can be certain that the benefits can be realized also in the future.

Finally, it is important to recognize that a change management process is not a linear process. You need to be firm at the vision and strategic directive, but flexible at the implementation steps and details.  Feedback is important for the adaptation of the change management processes to the organizational needs and overcoming resistance. Adaptability and flexibility are important for staying relevant to the organization’s needs and sustaining change over the long run.

Each role of the leader in the change management process, as agitator, innovator, or orchestrator, has its challenges.  During agitation, you have to avoid being fragmented in your work, by focusing on very clear and actionable solutions.  While raising dissatisfaction with the status quo is important, transforming this dissatisfaction into a call to action is rather challenging.  

For the innovation phase, the risk is to develop solutions that look appealing in theory but cannot be applied in practice. You have to look at the principles of change management and investigate if the vision is feasible when all stakeholders’ needs are considered.  You have to keep an eye on the practicality of the solutions and reflect on the feasibility of the vision.

In the orchestration phase, there is a risk of vision drift and scope creep.  This means that you have to have a clear message and objectives and keep your communication clear and focused.  You have to keep a plan and KPIs for measuring success and managing resistance to change.

Leadership is crucial in the process of change management.  Guiding organization through transformative phases by balancing the three key roles of agitator, innovator, and orchestrator. This helps the organizations go through transformative phases. 

Changes are important for moving the organization forward or out of a crisis.  The sense of urgency is an important trigger for starting the change, but this is only the start.  With crafting a vision you build motivation and engagement. You must stay practical and relevant to the organization’s needs and culture. The key is to communicate the vision clearly and with actions.

In the orchestration phase, you need to transform the vision into an actionable plan.  This is the moment to build momentum and start piloting. Be prepared to remove the obstacles, align teams, and overcome resistance to the management of change. You have to remain flexible adaptable and agile to the new needs, without losing sight of your vision and strategic needs. With this knowledge, you can manage your next change and overcome resistance.

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