Onboarding to Tai - A Broker's guide to change management

• Dr. John Kotter studied the organizational change management process for decades to create 8 steps that we know today as Kotter's 8-step Model.

1. Establish a Sense of Urgency

• If you want a win-win situation, then creating “a sense of urgency” is a powerful way forward. In our case, the sense of urgency is “the need for change”.
• The idea is to take everyone out of their comfort zones and make your employees understand the need. Employees of your company must get a feeling that the upcoming transformation is essential and it’s beneficial to them as well as the organization at large.
• Our foremost objective in this step is to motivate and develop interest among employees to support this change. For transformation to happen, you need at least 75% of your people to support the initiative.

2. Form a guiding coalition

• The second aspect of Kotter’s model is to form a team that has completely understood the need.
• It’s very difficult for an individual to manage the entire process. Therefore, you need a coalition of effective individuals.
• This coalition will help to manage and encourage your employees to “buy-in” and aid the transformation process.

• The purpose of this step in Kotter’s 8-step model is to create a sensible vision. A clear and achievable vision can help people understand why you’re asking them to change.
• The initiative is likely to be complicated and often difficult to understand. For this reason, you need to create a vision that is clear, easy yet understandable for all levels of employee

4. Convey the vision for buy-in

• Once if you have a clearly defined the vision, the action part comes in. In this phase, you need to communicate the vision. For higher effectiveness, you must repeat your vision statement at every chance you get.
• The change leaders must leverage every opportunity to discuss the vision with employees and encourage cooperation & support.
• You can see a large-scale change only when a majority of your employees rally around your vision (common goal).

5. Empower others to enact action

• Coming to the 5th step of Kotter’s 8-step model, where you need to empower others by primarily removing obstacles.
• When executing organization-wide change, you might encounter obstacles frequently.
• The leader and the guiding coalition should remove any such obstacles that are blocking your organization’s journey towards success.
• Removing hierarchies and barriers in the transformation process provides the necessary freedom to work across silos and generate real impact.

6. Generate short-term wins

• In the process of transformation, give your employees a taste of success at the earliest possible time. This will motivate them and create momentum for your vision.
• Ask your change coalition team to focus more on short-term goals rather than long-term.
• When there is a smaller target, the chances of failure are minimal and by achieving multiple short-term goals, you can ultimately, achieve long-term success.

7. Sustain Acceleration

• Two big mistakes that many organizations make are:

1. Getting overwhelmed with quick win(short-term)
2. Seeking immediate progress in long-term goals

• If you are one among them, your change trajectory will never hit the target.
• Change is a slow and ongoing process. To continuously enjoy the benefits, ingrain change in your organization’s values, objectives, and culture.
• You must push the pedal harder to keep the momentum going. So, it is essential to sustain the change for long after implementation.

8. Incorporate changes into the culture

• By simply changing employees habits you cannot instill a cultural change across the organization.
• To have a lasting effect, you must anchor and truly embed the changes within the core of your organization.
• Change leaders and guiding coalition team are responsible for embedding the cultural transformation among all members and alter their behaviors to support & participate in the initiative.