3 Biggest Mistakes Change Leaders Make At This Time Of Year (And What To Do Instead)

As the year draws to a close, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that progress in your change program is futile.

You might believe that everyone's focused on holiday festivities and not paying attention to your initiatives but today I’m telling you why that’s simply not true. Stakeholders, customers, and potential talent are still watching, and your team still wants to know how change will impact them.

In this episode, I'm sharing insights and practical tactics on how you can keep the momentum going and avoid the common mistakes I see change leaders make at this time of year.

One of the biggest mistakes I see change leaders make is not having a clear end of year strategy.

Without a focused strategy for December and January, you risk wasting the valuable effort that you’ve made throughout the year. This time is actually an excellent opportunity to make a significant impact while keeping your stakeholders engaged. I share my suggestion for creating holiday-specific plans that are low-intensity but high-impact, ensuring that everyone on the team is aligned with the priorities.

Business activities naturally slow down during the holidays, but I've discovered that disappearing entirely can lead to a loss of momentum. When you’re not visible as a change leader, stakeholders tend to deprioritise change-related tasks.

In this episode, I reveal some excellent tools you can use to maintain visibility during the festive season, including creating a holiday roadmap, sharing a holiday calendar, and sending personalised end of year messages to key stakeholders.

The holiday season doesn't have to mean a standstill in your change program. By avoiding these common mistakes and implementing the strategies I share today, you can keep the momentum going and set the stage for a successful start to the new year. It's all about being intentional, strategic, and thoughtful in your actions.

Remember, your change program still matters, even during the holiday season. So, choose one or two impactful tactics, stay visible, and make the most of this time.

Tune in now to get all the insights and start implementing these strategies today. Your future self (and team, and stakeholders) will thank you.

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Your review helps the podcast grow and reach more change leaders in need of these insights.

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Thank you for your continued support and engagement. Catch you in the next episode! 🌟

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:01:05] Hi, it's Kate here. Thank you so much for joining me on this shorty episode today. I'm actually recording this so early in the morning, it's still a bit grey outside. I'm doing that because my days are pretty full this week. I really want to get as much done as possible before December hits. Do you know what I'm talking about?

[00:01:27] Are you in the same mode or are you already winding down? If you are, I get it. It has been a massive year, hasn't it? A lot of us are just feeling really tired and when we're tired it's so much harder to perform at your best. I feel like every day is much more of a struggle. Gosh, now I'm thinking about it, when I get really tired, it's hard for me to make smart decisions, let alone follow through with anything. That's why I thought it would be really good for us to talk about some of the biggest, the most common mistakes that I have seen change leaders make at this time of year. Don't worry, I'm not about to suggest that you should go into beast mode or anything you know, as we're coming into the end of the year, where our energy is a bit more subdued that's why instead I'm going to cover what to do and what not to do so that you can set the stage now for a really smooth and effective start to the new year. I'm going to break down the biggest mistakes that I see folks making, who are leading change programs and I'm also going to share how you can use this time really wisely to pave the way for your post holiday success when you are back in the office and it will almost be like magic where people are going, God, how did they do that? Everything is ready to go and feeling really positive.

[00:02:51] I also want to say everything I'm going to share today is doable, even if you're tired, even if your team is tired. I've intentionally thought about it that way. So, even if you're going to have skeleton staff, or maybe no staff around during Christmas and January, the tips that I'm going to be sharing will still work for you.

[00:03:09] They're going to work for you if all you can think about, you know, the Black Friday sales this week, and they're still going to work, even if you can't stop daydreaming about going to the beach and eating pavlova on Christmas day. Okay, maybe that's just me, but maybe you're there with me. Now quickly, before we kick off, I have a favor to ask whether this is your first time tuning in if it is.

[00:03:34] Hi. Hi. Or if you've been listening since the beginning, I would be so grateful if you could please leave me a quick review wherever you're listening to this podcast. All you need to do is pick up your phone. You can do it right now, whatever platform you're on. It's only going to take about 10 seconds.

[00:03:51] Your review is going to help new people find the podcast so that we can share this great information with others who really need it. It helps the algorithm so much, that magical unknown algorithm. And I would be eternally grateful if you could take a couple of seconds to leave a review. Thank you so much.

[00:04:10] Now. By the way, if you are one of the people joining for the first time, we haven't met before, hi, I'm Kate. I have a business called ever change and communication and we help leaders and their teams deliver organizational change. And we do that in three ways. First, we provide change management services. We also use best in class diagnostics to help measure and develop individual and organizational change leadership capabilities.

[00:04:38] I love that part of it. And perhaps my favorite, we facilitate leadership alignment and team culture workshops. If you have a problem that you think we might be able to help with, please get in touch. You can DM me on LinkedIn and let's chat. enough of all of that. Let's get into it. Let's talk about the three biggest mistakes that I see change leaders making at this time of year.

[00:05:01] The first big mistake is assuming that progress, you know it's just futile. There's no point to it at this time of year. Maybe you think it's too late. Maybe you think there's just no point in progressing the change program now because no one's going to be paying attention. I get that. You know, there are already team Christmas parties in full swing out there.

[00:05:21] You know, I popped into the shops over the weekend and there's Christmas decorations everywhere. I'm sure you've seen them too. In fact, one of my work besties sent me a message yesterday saying that they were stressing because they aren't organized on Christmas presents yet. By the way, I haven't thought about presents yet at all, because it's barely mid November.

[00:05:42] My point is that you might feel like the end of the year is almost here, and so are the summer holidays so there's no point worrying about visibly progressing the transformation initiative for the rest of the year. I've got to tell you, that's wrong. If you think that you shouldn't be driving your transformation program forward at this time of year, it's just a major misstep, my friend.

[00:06:06] I promise you that your stakeholders are still paying attention. Your customers are still buying. Potential talent is still checking out your employer brand. Everyone is still watching. Your people still want to have a say, and they still want to know how this change is going to impact them. Don't leave them hanging.

[00:06:26] Even if you and your team don't have very much bandwidth right now, you should still find a couple of relevant, sneaky ways to progress your transformation initiative, which leads me to the next big mistake and that is lacking a clear end of year strategy for your change program. Do you have a clear plan of attack?

[00:06:49] Do you know what you're focusing on for the next couple of months? If you don't... not having a focused strategy for this period can really lead to a whole bunch of wasted effort. This is an incredible time to take action if you get it right. If you don't have a clear strategy in place for December and January, don't worry, it's not too late, but I reckon that this is something that you really want to get onto this week. Right now is a great time to come up with a holiday specific plan. Ideally, you want this to be something that's low intensity for you and your people to deliver, but high impact that keeps stakeholders, including your own team, we'll talk more about that in a moment, but keeps them engaged and keeps the change program visible. Now to do this, I recommend that you identify just one, two at the most, key objectives to focus on outwardly for the next couple of months, and make sure everyone on the change team is aligned to these priorities.

[00:07:55] Now, I just use the word outward there and what I mean by that is that you should have at least one or two things that important stakeholders outside of your immediate change team, they're going to be able to see progress on over this period. That's what we're ideally looking for. So for example, the change sponsor is a key stakeholder.

[00:08:17] Perhaps you've identified everyone who works in the learning and development team as key sponsors. Perhaps all of the executive assistants across the organization are your key stakeholders. Or maybe representatives from three different industry associations are incredibly important. Ideally, what one or two things do we want them to know?

[00:08:39] What do we want them to feel and what do we want them to do between now and let's say the end of January? A tip that I want to share here is to figure out what's working well now. This is a clue on the direction that you can take for the next couple of months. Think about what have been your most impactful tactics. What are the strategies that you've had the best results from, or perhaps really great feedback about? And then ask yourself, how can you double down on those right now? What could you and your team do now, in the next month, let's say so that you're ready to go before Christmas to stack the deck on the successes that you're already having.

[00:09:20] Answering those questions are really going to help you clarify your most impactful strategy here. It doesn't have to be overwhelming and I want to emphasize it again now. This is not about working yourselves to the bone and everyone burning out. This is about being smart and adding massively based on being really strategic about one, maybe two very impactful tactics that you can action now so that they roll out over the next couple of months. Exactly what this looks like, well, obviously that's going to depend on your unique situation, but maybe it looks like getting the CEO to record a couple of talking to camera videos that you can share. Maybe it looks like hosting a series of really engaging and fun listening or co design sessions with stakeholders, you know, to get their input about change priorities for the next year.

[00:10:15] Maybe it's about hosting some other kind of event and planning it and promoting it now, but you're going to be hosting it in February, something like that. Maybe it looks like working with a corporate communications team to batch create content now to create some kind of special summer season of content that you can come up with that will roll out over the next few months.

[00:10:38] Now, the last big mistake that I see folks making at this time of year that I really think we should talk about is that you as the change leader and the change program itself not being visible. Now, this can be a big problem and a really huge missed opportunity. Of course, business activities are going to naturally slow down at this time of year.

[00:11:03] I get that. And a whole bunch of organizations in both the private and the public sector, I know they have a shutdown period where they shut down completely over Christmas and New Year, but, but, but, but, but. completely invisible for this time, well, that can just lead to a massive loss of momentum for your change program. When you're not visibly leading the change effort and when the new ways of working that you're really trying to implement when they aren't top of mind for your stakeholders, well, your stakeholders are going to deprioritize the change related tasks or activities that they might be related to or need to get involved in. And even just the key messages that you're trying to share. That's natural. When we aren't top of mind, so many other things are fighting for our attention all the time.

[00:11:53] I just want you to take action now to get up there because losing momentum like that can really hurt the program's progress, and it means that you're going to need to put a lot of effort to get the wheel going again in the new year, to start building up that momentum that you have now, when it drops off, it's much harder to get it started again.

[00:12:15] And of course, because you're the leader, there's also a chance that your direct team members in the change team or the project team. Well, If you're not visible, they might feel less motivated and less connected to the cause while you're away, you know, while you're personally on holidays and now I think everyone should take a holiday, a really great one and be completely offline during that holiday.

[00:12:43] But I just want to be clear, if your team doesn't have a clear sense of direction over December and January, well you may be there for some of it but if we're not doing things that are visible and keeping momentum, then we're in trouble. Ideally, you want everyone on the project team to feel really clear about their work plan from now until they go on holidays, have a fabulous holiday, and when they come back, they are just as clear on their first day back of work next year in terms of what their work plan is.

[00:13:14] There's a bunch of actions that you can take over the next few weeks to make sure that this is the case, that you and the change program stay visible and that your team is aligned, even when you're on holidays, even when everyone's on holidays. Let me share a few things that have worked for me in the past.

[00:13:31] The first is creating a roadmap specifically for this holiday period. So the first thing I recommend here is putting together a really good looking, you want it to be visually attractive, one page roadmap with your team, which is all about the strategy for this holiday period. your focus over this time, the one or two things that you are going to be focusing on, your goals around that, key tasks and key deliverables over that time.

[00:14:00] And of course, you should include specific contacts that folks during the holidays, if they've got questions, how they can get answers to those questions. Not only is a holiday roadmap that's what I'm going to call it, Not only is this going to help sum up the team's focus and keep folks aligned on what's most important, but it's also a really useful tool for creating visibility when you share it with some of your key stakeholders. Share it with a change sponsor, share it with your manager and share it with whoever else you've identified as key stakeholders.

[00:14:37] Giving them that one page roadmap means that they know that the change effort is going to be progressing in a very intentional way over this time, and that's why it can be such a useful tool. Now, along with a roadmap, I reckon that you should create and share like a holiday calendar that spells out key dates, deadlines and actions and other reminders that are, you know, kind of very time based about the change programs key objectives over this time. When you share your holiday roadmap and that calendar together, it's really powerful because it's a way of making a promise to your key stakeholders.

[00:15:18] You're visibly saying we're committed, here's our plan and these things will happen. Now, remember, again, this is not about over committing. It's not about making promises that you can't keep and stressing out. This is just about focusing on progressing one or two key strategies over the next coming months.

[00:15:39] That is plenty. That's all you need to do because the power is in publicly claiming it. Something else that I have had success with is developing and distributing kind of like a holiday toolkit. I feel like this is very Christmasy every time I keep saying holidays, but this is where you put together, you know, a really useful resource pack that your stakeholders can refer to during the holidays over the next couple of months when people aren't around as much. This resource toolkit, I recommend including FAQs, that's frequently asked questions about the change program and answers, troubleshooting guides again, those key contacts, where should they go somewhere on the website or the intranet or something like that, training resources, because people do, if they're still working, this is often a time where people step up and actually have the space to complete some training so definitely include resources around that. Include links to any feedback channels that you have available. Gosh, I hope you have feedback channels available for your change program. Include all of that good stuff. The idea here is that the toolkit gives your stakeholders all the information, all the support materials that they need.

[00:16:58] Everything's at their fingertips. And of course, by distributing it, you know, in the next few weeks in the lead up to Christmas before everyone goes on holidays, you're keeping the change program top of mind for people. Something else that you can do to really pump up, increase your visibility at this time of year is to write, or if you're comfortable on video to record, you can just kind of screen record with your laptop personalized end of year messages to each of your key stakeholders.

[00:17:30] The key here is to give yourself enough time to do this because the more personalized the message is, the more thoughtful and meaningful it is, the more that you're going to build a sense of one on one connection and appreciation with your key stakeholders. For me, it always takes more time than I had originally anticipated so you want to make sure you give yourself enough time for this one. Tailoring each message means that it's more likely to be read and to really land. And it's way more impactful than sending out yet another all staff email. People are just, they're not even going to open that. It's you get the vibe, you know, when something's all staff versus something that has been addressed to you personally.

[00:18:11] If you're not sure what to say in each message, here's what you can do. You can highlight the achievements of the past year. You can mention a few things where you guys have worked together, particularly call them out the specifics and thank that person for the individual, really meaningful contributions at those times, at those points, how they helped you and share your vision for the transformation program's next steps when everyone is back at it in the new year. I sure that you have received an email or a message somehow like this in the past, at some point in your career. Think about how wonderful it felt to get a special note from someone that you've been working with and now think about how it made you feel about that person as a result, even if it was someone that maybe you hadn't enjoyed working with a lot through the year.

[00:19:10] Think about how it made you feel. That is the same kind of connection that you're going to be able to create when you take the time to send meaningful, personalized messages to your most important stakeholders. I hope that you really do it. So look, there you go. I promised that this would be a shorter episode, so I'm going to wrap it up but there are the three biggest mistakes that change leaders often make at this time of year, and I suggest doing instead. I hope that you've found this shorty episode really useful and that you are inspired to take action, that you feel like this is doable. It's not going to burn you out and you can see how impactful these tactics and strategies are going to be.

[00:19:50] Basically proactively taking some simple, but very targeted, thoughtful, intentional action now means that the change program is not going to completely lose momentum. Just think about how good it's going to feel to walk back into the office after you have had a fabulous break and you are refreshed and ready to get going, knowing that everything is in place already for a really productive start to the new year. Oh, it's going to be so good. And with the tips and tricks that I've shared here, it's not going to take a huge amount of time. It's not going to be hugely stressful to make it happen. DM Me on LinkedIn to let me know which tactic you're putting in place first. I can't wait to hear how you go. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you have a great week, that you are motivated, inspired to take action on this. And I'll catch you next time. Bye for now.

CONNECT WITH KATE:

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Website: https://www.everchange.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkatebyrne/