Implementing Change Until Things “Get Back to Normal”

I’m in the middle of teaching an 11-part online course called Fundamentals of Influencing Change at Work. Even before the pandemic, I taught the course online to people from around the world.

Participants in the course bring their projects to the class each session and work through a variety of exercises using PowerPoint templates, so they can make real progress over the course of the class and get feedback from their classmates.

This time around, because of the pandemic, I found I corrected myself occasionally with comments like, “When things get back to normal,” or “When we’re all back in the office.”

Today, I took a step back to review when I was saying that, to see if I needed to make any corrections to the course, considering things may not go back to normal soon, if at all.

I found for the most part, my caveats were coming after suggesting they don’t have to use the electronic templates from the class in their conversations at work. That doing these exercises was as simple as walking up to a white board, drawing a few lines and asking colleagues to answer a few questions.

Of course, the dry-erase markers are drying up on whiteboard shelves right now, hence the statement that you can do that once people are going to the office again.

Then I realized that, because everything is being done online, they could, in fact, just use the electronic templates from class to help guide these conversations. I don’t need to feel guilty about giving bad advice during a pandemic after all! The tools can work as long as you can get people in a Zoom/Teams/Webex room to discuss them.

You don’t have to wait until things get back to normal to keep making progress toward change. There are electronic tools that can help you:

• Clarify what the change really looks like
• Identify who is impacted by change and how
• Spot potential sources of resistance and figure out what to do about it
• Determine who is involved and how they’ll work together
• Design specific initiatives that will to drive change
• Track progress against goals
• Create clear communication messages.

Would you like to get these tools for yourself? The next online course starts October 1, 2020. You, too, can get ahold of these easy-to-fill-out exercise templates to guide your change conversations online… and in person once we’re able to do so again.

How have you altered your change implementation techniques to still get things done until things go “back to normal?” What will you do if things stay this way? Please share your thoughts in the comments.