3 ways to map meaningful benefits for change

Change Management without results will struggle to stand up, prove its worth and earn its seat at the table.

To ensure we have real Change success, we need to map our change benefits.

Here's 3 ways to do it:

1. Tease out the business case

I've seen good business cases and poor business cases. Regardless of the quality, they do try in some way to articulate the results the business hopes to achieve from the project, change, or transformation. Rather than try to drag a horse to water, you might as well meet the project at their current pond. Take the proposed business case benefits and workshop with the project and/or the business why they want to achieve them. What will it really give them? What ripple effects will we see? What will it allow us to do in the future? How will it transform the experience for customers, clients, employees, shareholders and/or community. For each business case benefit - create a story on what achieving it really means.

2. Set an Inspirational Change Vision

I'm a trained Coach, so I absolutely know the power of a shared group vision of the future. It helps us calibrate with hope not fear, align expectations and goals, keep people committed and motivated through the change, and onboard new starters quickly with what we're trying to achieve. I craft Inspirational Change Visions all the time with my projects, business teams and clients, and I encourage my Leading Successful Change students to carve out the time to do this powerful step. You can write the goal on behalf of the team, knowing what you know, then get them to review and approve it. Or just keep the goal for yourself as your North Star for leading the change. But if and when I get the chance, I always try to run a vision setting workshop for my project team and/or the business teams and get them involved in the process. This works especially well for leadership teams who sometimes are a little unclear what the benefits to stakeholders and teams will actually be because they get caught up in the big picture and numbers.

3. Use chunking

My favourite tool to use to switch on the hearts and minds of everybody in the project, team or organisation is "chunking". It's a Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) tool and I bring NLP techniques into my change leadership to absolutely transform change success. Basically - a chunk is a level of detail. The higher up you chunk (or higher level of detail), the more agreement you get with people. We do this by asking: “What is this an example of?” or “For what purpose?”. Using the process of chunking up, you can help a project team or business team clearly articulate their highest level benefits AND get agreement and alignment at the same time. Talk about a benefits bargain! One of the best examples I have of the power of chunking was when I worked with a stakeholder to chunk up from her benefit of "financial reporting" (which totally switches on an accountant but probably sounds extremely boring to most of the rest of the organisation!) to "community" (which was the purpose and reason every employee shared for working in that organisation). Using the results of our chunking, our tag line for the change became: “Empowering better decision making for our community.” Doesn't that light you up inside just a little bit more than "financial reporting"? Hearts and minds, people. Hearts and minds... 

So that's 3 simple ways to map benefits for change and if you want to learn vision setting and chunking for Change, I can teach you how in my Leading Successful Change program.  Come join us and you'll have the power at your fingertips in a flash (seriously - we cover them both upfront in Module 1 - Setting Up Change for Success):

CLICK HERE to join me on the Leading Successful Change program

Lata xx