The Toolkit – Step 5

Towards Normality

Questions

  • How is the change progressing?
  • What learning needs are still emerging?
  • How are these learning needs being addressed?
  • Are stakeholders continuing to hear the 5 change readiness messages?
  • Is the level of support adequate for each stakeholder?
  • Are blockages to progress identified & removed?
  • Is success recognised in tangible ways?
  • Are struggle, failure, & setbacks normalised as part of the change process?
  • Are stakeholders encouraged to take risks?
  • Do stakeholders feel safe?
  • Is change being supported by the culture?
  • Are new behaviours being embedded in the culture?

Tasks

Sustain Acceleration

Where progress in Step 4 might be slow because people are learning new behaviours and tentatively moving beyond their comfort zone, progress in Step 5 can accelerate as the learning curve flattens out.

Keep up the pace in Step 5, but also remember that mistakes can still be made, and people can still experience setbacks. These can be hard to accept after so much progress has been made.

How would you sustain acceleration and avoid the change dragging on or getting bogged down in too much process?

Institute Change in the Culture

This is a big topic. What it essentially means is establishing a new cultural norm for certain behaviours. The old way of doing things that used to be culturally normal must give way to the new way of doing things, that must also become culturally normal.

Some ways to achieve this are:

  • Keep telling stories that normalise the new behaviours – “this is how we do things around here”
  • Establish clear expectations around the new behaviours, so that you no longer need to talk about them as new behaviours
  • Create some sort of tangible signs that show the normality of the new behaviours

Write down some ideas about instituting change in your organisation’s culture. 

Terminate the Project

It is important to terminate the change project, but only when:

  • All milestones have been reached
  • The culture is ready to support and embed the new behaviours

If you terminate before these 2 goals have been achieved, you risk an unravelling of the changes and a return to old behaviours.

Write down any ideas or questions you have about termination. 

Review and Retell

A successful change project is cultural fuel to empower your next project. It becomes important evidence of what you can do. Therefore, it is important to review the experience.

What did you discover about yourselves? What did you learn about change? What new stories can you tell going forward? Write down some of these lessons and make them part of your cultural capital.