An axiom that the Executive of our days accepts with total security, is that the environment in which your company lives and develops is subject to an accelerated process of change.
Their customers, competitors, suppliers, the technology to be used change and, above all, the way of doing business changes.
And faced with this accumulation of natural changes, the executive has only two positions from which to face what is happening around him:
- Consider them a passing fad that should not affect those who are doing it well and with notable successes, and consider it as something that forces us to question our way of doing and thinking, to adapt to such changes or even to anticipate them.
The first of the positions is the most human and natural, since the first thing that all change produces is a natural reaction of fear of the unknown, of abandoning secure positions for a new, uncontrolled world, in which the imagination takes a preponderant role..
However, it is the least suitable and the one that, not in the very long term, will lead us to failure.
Fighting that fear is the first step the successful executive must take to deal with the need to change.
Once this mentality has been personally assumed, the Executive must create around him, among his own collaborators, a culture of change that allows him to face the challenge of questioning as a team.
A successful Executive must in turn be a leader of his team, therefore the first step is to appear before the collaborators as convinced of the need to change, evolve and adapt to the new environment.
Only when the collaborator sees absolute conviction in his leader, does he begin to believe in the need to assume something that he himself is fearful and insecure.
But this is not enough. It is necessary to break down before the team, by means of the before And now, the changes produced in the last five years in all the aforementioned areas.
Discussing these changes with them can be enormously effective. Examining how they affect the basic principles and processes of our business is decisive for everyone to feel involved.
It is essential to give the project a name as a banner for that cultural change, so that everyone speaks, thinks and executes on behalf of the new model.
The next phase consists of specifying the changes to be introduced. For this, those who must propose them must be isolated in a quiet place, it can be an interesting method to specify the objectives, processes, people responsible and deadlines for the necessary changes.
And from there, the new model becomes something real and palpable at all levels of the company.
Then, you have to launch a comprehensive communication process at all levels of the company, so that people know the dimensions and characteristics of the change you want to implement, and thereby try to dispel any fears that may exist.
Efficacy is at odds with complication and is easily twinned with simplicity. The simplicity of the method explained is the best endorsement to encourage you not to remain motionless wondering "who has taken my cheese", if not to put on your running shoes and jump into the wonderful labyrinth of the market, dragging your team, with renewed enthusiasm, to the process of change required to maintain the success you enjoy today.
Every change process needs to be motivated and led from the highest level of the company, to involve the whole team in it.
