Change Management

Change: Simple Concept, Difficult To Achieve Success.

In our experience, there is a difference between managing change and leading change. While our approach provides a framework for both to exist, it is often the pre-work needed for leading successful change that gets – well, pardon the pun – short-changed.

Managing change emphasizes minimizing disruption, keeping things under control and making sure change is efficient within time and budget.
Leading change is about putting an engine on the process and speeding it up, making change smarter, faster and more efficient. This requires leaders who can articulate a clear vision, set clear accountabilities, and engage their people to embrace change and execute successfully. We provide a framework for leaders to engage and motivate their teams and to create a culture of change agility in their organization.

Step One: Organizational Readiness Assessment

We use a systematic approach to assess organization readiness for change at three levels; individual, leader and organization.

Individual Readiness

Change for individuals can seem confusing, chaotic and challenging. And the success of any change relies heavily on the willingness and ability of individuals to understand and adopt the change in order to succeed. Our assessment identifies barriers to understanding and embracing change, and provides recommendations for increasing individual willingness and ability to embrace required changes.

Leader Readiness

Leaders have been called the lynchpins upon whom the success or failure of change hinges. They are social architects from whom the company draws meaning and significance about organizational change priorities. Successful implementation of organizational change depends largely on the skill of leaders to prepare their staff to adopt changes. We identify leadership skills necessary for success and work with leaders to ensure that they understand how to develop critical behaviors that lead to success.

Organization Readiness and Sponsorship Development

It’s important to understand what is needed to support and sustain change in the organization so that change is successful. From senior executives to front line leaders, we help clients identify actions leaders can take to help their teams adopt change and achieve organizational goals. We do this by teaching leaders critical skills and coaching them throughout the change effort.

Step Two: Creating a Comprehensive Change Plan for Successful Implementation

A change initiative planned well produces successful results. We assist clients in developing enterprise change approaches that drive desired change impact. This includes specific strategies targeted for each stakeholder group and a process for monitoring change to keep it on track. There is a crucial part of this plan that is often overlooked and under resourced – the change communication strategy.

Change by its nature, often creates confusion, fear and anxiety. As your organization grows and changes, your leaders and staff are confronted with changes they may not understand. The challenge for managers is to make sense of and interpret strategic change based on information they have, and communicate their understanding of the change in order to influence others and gain support for their position.

Nautilus Associates has over 20 years of experience in helping leaders develop and deliver change messages that motivate and engage their teams to embrace change. We help leaders cut through the noise and implement a change strategy that compels their organization to align around change and deliver results.

Step Three: Change Integration and Sustainability Support

This third step of change is often forgotten and crucial to make the change a sustainable one. Oftentimes, once the desired behavior/change is achieved, the support starts to soften and the integrity of the initiative begins to get compromised. We help our clients look at the structure, support and systems required to continue to sustain and process-improve the change once it is seeded.