The Ten Essential Tools include personal influence and structural influence methods, plus a focused foundation that every change agent needs to start with.  If your change initiative is stalled, use the Ten Tools as a checklist to see what areas might be in need of a boost.

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If you prefer to read a small synopsis of the list, see the previous post Ten Essential Tools for Change Agents.  However, you will miss out on a special offer that is presented at the end of the show!

1.  Change Knowledge

Change agents are the people in their organizations who understand how change works – or at least how it is supposed to work.  Your own change knowledge helps you know what to expect and understand what is really happening.  When the initiative is stuck in a rut, your knowledge helps you generate ideas for what to do next.

2.  Clarity

A lot is said about the importance of a clear vision.  In addition to making sure leadership has a vision and that it is clear, change agents also assess current reality and identify the barriers that stand in the way of achieving the vision.

3.  Your Role

When used correctly, your role as change agent can be a powerful tool.  As trusted advisor, you help leaders fill in the gaps to ensure that change happens.  It is necessary to strike a balance of ownership of the initiative and to manage relationships.

4.  Power

People who have power are able to take action, make decisions that affect other people, model behavior and open minds.  Since change agents don’t have direct authority, they need to build up indirect authority to influence others.

5.  Leadership Support

Also, since you don’t have direct authority as a change agent, you need to gain a partner who does have it.  When you have leadership support, you need to make sure it manifests as behaviors and activities that drive the change forward.  If you don’t have support, you will eventually need to get it.

6.  Conversations

The one-on-one conversations you have as a change agent will help get beyond fear and develop mutual understanding.  Conversations are a means of providing feedback and preserving relationships.  The most important conversations are the ones you don’t really want to have.

7.  Meetings

Most meetings are seen as drudgery, or necessary evils; however, when effective they can be a key means of moving a change initiative forward.  Whether you are meeting with a project team, a leadership team, or a work group or a steering committee, your job as the change agent is to make sure people are collaborating for results.

8.  Accountability

Without having direct authority, you will most likely not hold people accountable yourself.  As a change agent, your responsibility is to make sure a system of accountability is in place.

9.  Incentives

Although incentives can be tricky because they frequently have unintended consequences, effective change agents find ways to motivate desired behaviors or results.  The best motivation techniques are not external rewards but psychology-based nudges in the right direction.

10.  Communication

Some say the first law of change is communicate, communicate, communicate.  To be more specific, the key activity for change agents is to get the appropriate message to the right person and to have them do something about it.

Whether you are executing strategy, implementing technology, designing process improvements, or transforming culture, your role as change agent is fraught with challenges.  Use these ten tools to help navigate them successfully.

For a more in-depth look at the 10 Essential Tools, check out:

• The 10 Essential Tools webinar
• The INflux Change Agent Network

Follow these five rules to increase the productivity of your leadership team meetings, and thus make progress on your change initiative.

1. Know the goal. What do you need the leadership team to do by the end of their limited time together? What are the key decisions that need to be made, and what issues should be discussed? Design the meeting with the required steps and final outcome in mind.

2. Prepare in advance. At a bare minimum, create and distribute the agenda and any review materials beforehand. To be most effective, meet with individual team members before the meeting to prepare them for what is expected of them. Leave only the key items that need to be done together for the meeting agenda. Everything else should be done in advance to the extent possible.

3. Build, don’t create. If your initiative requires that the leadership team develop something new (like a strategy, scorecard, new product, etc.), do not start with a blank sheet of paper at the meeting. To quote Jeff Lebow of Alignment at Work, LLC, “It’s easier to criticize than to create.” Although it can be tempting to have the team create something from scratch as a means to build buy-in to the final product, the process can be frustrating, takes longer, and is unnecessary. Build a draft from the input you receive during the pre-meetings, and point out where the group agreed and disagreed as a starting point for a more meaningful conversation.

4. Separate the important from the urgent. If the team starts discussing the latest fire, the meeting will be derailed. Unfortunately, as a team that probably meets infrequently, they might use your meeting as an opportunity to catch up on the latest news and updates. As much as possible, keep the focus on the important topic at hand. Use a “parking lot,” a separate flip-chart where extraneous topics can be captured and discussed at a later time.

5. Integrate fun. Stodgy boardrooms need a jolt of energy to break its inhabitants out of their normal habits. Sometimes the air is thick with politics when leaders get in the same room. Play and humor are great equalizers. Use creativity toys, games and role-playing to break the tension, kick leaders out of their comfort zones and get your point across. When you take charge as a facilitator, you’ll be surprised what people will do if you tell them to, regardless of their title.

One way to increase support for your change initiative is to not make key leaders dread getting together to talk about it. When you follow these rules, meetings will start to be meaningful and productive, and even enjoyable.

Having pre-meetings is far different from having post-meetings.  Post-meetings happen because not everything that needed to be said came out during the actual meeting, due to fear, mainly.  Pre-meetings are held to make sure that what needs to happen in the actual meeting actually happens.

What do I mean by the actual meeting (herein referred to as the Meeting)?  The Meeting is where people with crazy schedules (usually in leadership positions) somehow find a way to meet all at the same time.  The topic for the Meeting, in whole or in part, is your change initiative.

To make the best use of the team’s time during the Meeting, only do the things in the Meeting that need to be done together as a team. Focus the team on the task at hand, whether it is a discussion about solutions or whether a decision must be made. Everything else should be done beforehand in pre-meetings with individuals or small groups.

Some of the things you can take care of in pre-meetings are:

• Training
• Seeking opinions, to see how each person is leaning
• Answering questions, since some will not ask in front of the rest of the team
• Target key people to speak up during the meeting
• Persuade people who need persuading

Notice that I’m not talking about a pre-meeting e-mail.  This is a real sit-down (or phone call if necessary) meeting where you are preparing individuals for the Meeting (and also helping you prepare for the Meeting).  If the Meeting and its desired outcome are really important to the success of your change initiative, an e-mail is not going to cut it.

Having pre-meetings may seem like overkill, or even like playing politics.  But, if you’ve ever been in a leadership team meeting that has careened out of control or that has become stuck on an irrelevant or minute point, most likely there was not enough preparation of the attendees beforehand.

Take the time to have pre-Meeting meetings so you can focus the Meeting on achieving the desired outcome for your initiative.