The ambitious leader's guide to creating transformational experiences on any budget

In uncertain economic times, Change Management activities can be an easy first thing to cut from your transformations and projects. Often seen as an "optional extra" or a "nice-to-have", it can be hard to influence your higher ups to invest budget into announcements, training and launch, especially when dollars are limited and belts are being tightened in the business. But Change Management activities can reduce risk and ensure sustainable success for your projects and initiatives, which is needed more than ever during times of turbulence when leaders and teams are already anxious and disengaged. Here’s 5 ideas to help bring your Change activities to life on any budget:

Idea 1: Posted packs

If your organisation or project is trying to save on travel costs for a big in-person launch or training, think about posted packs. These can be sent in advance to homes if people are working remote or hybrid, given to field staff to take on the road, or sent to sites across the country or globe (get local Change Champions to lead the assembly and distribution of the packs). With a bit of pre-planning and minimal budget you can totally pull together a pack with info, guides, items, non-perishable food and goodies and post them out, and if you like, support that dispersed physical experience with virtual connection online.

Idea 2: Gift your own products/services

If you’re trying to run some sort of competition or incentive as part of your change initiative, there might not be budget for iPads, Amazon gift cards, or other common prizes. You can always gift your organisation’s own products or services instead such as free product, rewards points if you have a loyalty program, or vouchers, rebates or coupons for services. If you've got a new service, also consider a “free week” as part of your training and launch. Give your team a week to trial it for free. It's a great way to get advocacy (if they love it, they'll tell their friends and family - recommendations rate high), plus you can iron out any bugs prior to customer or all-staff launch.

Idea 3: Piggyback existing events

I worked on a project that scheduled events in each state to announce a major, complex and emotive change and set leaders up for success. So if you've got the budget, time and team to pull it off, bringing a group together offsite and in-person can be well worth it. But if your leaders or impacted team have an existing conference, offsite or team day and it’s appropriate, piggyback on it and launch your change there (so much of the work will be done!). It also saves on project budget, but you could contribute to the conference, such as pay for the dinner from project funds. 

Idea 4: Facilitated virtual events

Again if you’re trying to save on the costs of travel and venues for a launch, think about livestreaming to all sites nationally or globally. Get local champions to lead creating a broadcast space in the office or depot, encourage people to join on launch day (lunchtime could be a great option!), and record it so the replay is available. Combining this with Idea 1 is gold to balance virtual with an in-person component.

Idea 5: Do design in-house

I’m a huge advocate for Change Managers and leaders generally becoming comfortable and confident with drafting and delivering communications - written, visual, and video. It’s why an entire module of my Leading Successful Change program is dedicated to Crafting Incredible Communications. Rather than relying on a Comms Team or paying an agency big bucks to create a Change Brand and Theme, materials and videos, get creative in Canva yourself and design your logo, banner, benefit icons, process icons and avatars to set the change up for success, plus posters, flyers, stickers, videos and more to take people on the change journey. To really mark the occasion of launch, create a special video with interviews, testimonials, product walkthroughs, and a playback of the journey to get to launch.

Even with these budget-saving ideas for your project or team to deliver change, you still might struggle to get your clients and leaders on board with the need and value for Change Management and budget in the first place! A great way to combat this is to create clarity and confidence for the outcome, vision and Return on Investment of the change by running a consultant-style Future State Workshop. I’ll be revealing how I do this with my consulting clients in my upcoming in-person Sydney VIP Day on Wednesday 30 April, including how to set your workshop up, facilitate it with confidence, and collate the outcomes back to the leadership team in preparation for the next stage of developing your Change Strategy, Brand and Planning.

Register for my “How to Run a Consultant-Style Future State Workshop" now - there’s only 7 places available and spots are already filling up:

Find out more and register for the Sydney VIP Day here

Lata xx