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Often when people think about leading change or
implementing change in organizations, they always think at the 30,000 feet.
They're very abstract.
They usually talk about generalities such as, how do I communicate?
How do I engage?
How do I reach out to people?
But often, this 30,000 feet orientation simply means that we're fighting
the campaign of leading change and implementing change as an air war.
By contrast, if you really want to succeed in embedding change within organizations,
thinking about it just as an air war is not enough.
You really have to think about it as a ground war.
And in order to fight that ground war,
which is going to be messy, which is going to be surprise laden.
You've actually got to have, not only a plan that gives you confidence, but
a plan that emphasizes flexibility.
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PRESS is an acronym.
It consists of five letters.
Each letter denotes, if you will, a sub-process of implementing change.
Remember, it's a sub-process and not a stage.
That means you have to think of these five sub-processes in tandem.
What does PRESS stand for?
The first sub-process is persuading.
Persuading has to do with, how do you influence the emotions of people so
that you can change their beliefs, in the hope that they will actually you know,
generate new behaviors that are much more relevant to the organization.
The R in the PRESS framework stands for
recruiting support and overcoming resistance.
Any worthwhile change will face opposition.
Of course, individuals oppose change for a variety of reasons.
But if we understand the target markets behind change,
we can understand those individual reasons.
And here,
we're much more concerned with how groups of people can stymie and block change.
So we're interested, if you will, in the network structure of resistance and
how to break open that resistance in organizations.
The third element of the press framework is E, and it is very important.
It's actually about energizing new behavior.
A very powerful way in which we can change the beliefs of
people is getting them to do things.
And energizing is all about getting people to do things given how you supply them
information, given how you cleverly design rewards, or empower individuals.
The other sub-process in the PRESS framework is staffing.
Staffing actually has to do with, how do you put together a change team?
And here, who should be on the change team?
What does that actually convey in terms of credibility of the change initiative, and
so forth?
And we'll talk about how the change team may actually be related to
the executive committee or the executive leadership of the enterprise, and
how various teams can bud off from the change team
to implement sub-tasks that are part of the overall change.
The final S, of course, is sequencing.
Sequencing has to do with the ordering of the actions, and these actions may
have to do with persuading or energizing or recruiting or staffing.
Figuring out when to do what is important.
So, what we'll actually focus on in the sequencing module is,
what do we need to do before day one of the change?
What do we need to do on day one?
What do we need to do by day ten, day 20?
We'll also build an opportunity for review.
And if you have a plan like that, the chief consequence is confidence.
But it'll also give you again, opportunity for review and editing, and
then you can actually see how much of persuasion do you want to emphasize,
how much of energizing do you want to emphasize?
And what is it you want to do to ensure that,
as you're implementing the change, there is momentum rather than fatigue?
There is excitement rather than cynicism.
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