The Top 10 New Year's Resolutions for Leaders of Change

1. Commit to your goals and outcomes
“Say it out loud,” my high school English teacher would say when we each made our commitment to the book report we were supposed to complete by the end of the year. Understanding your goals and regularly repeating them out loud is an awesome exercise for you and all members of your team. It helps with clarity and gets people committed to the change even before the project has started.

2. Get excited about the journey
Get excited about the curves in the road and (as in the beginning of every great road trip) pack snacks for the trip. Snacks are the parts we look forward to like branding the project. Create a unique project logo and/or mascot and make sure it shows up consistently on documents, website, and all project materials. Stage a fabulous kickoff party to create buzz and get people excited about being a part of this team. Having a well-branded and marketed project helps connect people to purpose and why they are a part of it.

3. Get clear on how you are going to make it happen
An important step in helping people frame the journey for major change is to be really clear about how much time, and for how long, each individual’s commitment to the project will be. A well designed change plan with interim milestones increases productivity, stamina, and morale, both for you and your team. Keeping people focused on accomplishing and celebrating those interim milestone wins will maintain the team’s motivation, build trust, and ensure that everyone is moving in the same direction.

4. Manage expectations
If it were easy, it would be no fun at all. Letting people know that it will be a challenging project and possibly a challenging work environment will not scare them off. On the contrary, people thrive when they know what’s expected and why conditions exist as they are. The road is not always going to be clear and well-paved. Your team will be much more effective when they are mentally prepared and well-informed.

5. Don’t ignore the past
Knowing what did and did not work in a particular culture is crucial to the success of every new change initiative. Recognize the difference between resistance and important historical learning: “We tried that before and it didn’t work” is resistance; “We implemented e-learning as part of our training approach but half the company didn’t have computers” is important information to consider. Listen and learn. The greater the number of painful past projects, the heavier the effort to open people’s minds to new initiatives (you will need heavier change management).

6. Understand the work
Much of the time, with regard to change management, the work involved is misunderstood or underestimated. Leaders often think that a single Change Management person can do all of work; leadership presentations, communications, stakeholder management, training development and delivery. Avoid this mistake by analyzing the size, level of change impact, and resistance to your change project up front, and engage the appropriate change management support. If you want your business community to adopt your new initiative, it is your most important resource consideration.

7. Consider building your own “change management approach” to pave the road for the future
Many Leaders understand the importance of implementing a customized change management approach for new project launches. There is immense value in building your organization’s very own customized change approach and set of tools for implementing change. The organization can implement change more rapidly and efficiently with each subsequent project as people begin to speak the same language, recognize the phases of change and where they are in the process, at any given time. Good Leaders are always thinking about how to gain a competitive advantage, and having the ability to quickly respond to internal and external change drivers gives them the edge. Just sayin’…..

8. Be an honest politician
One definition of a politician is “a leader engaged in civil administration”. As leader and key representative of a change project, one could argue that you are absolutely playing the role of the project politician. Make sure that you are an authentic and genuine project politician. As mentioned above, people do well with the truth; they are seeking understanding and clear expectations. Candy coating a rough road will only confuse people. They may not continue to trust your driving skills.

9. Get the right “energy” in the seats on the bus
Having the right people in the right roles is critical to making your project successful and sustainable. As you are considering key roles on your project team, consider individuals with high degrees of emotional energy—the marathon runners. There are some people that are much more fitted to the 50 yard dash (highly productive in high stress situations) and that is perfect for crunch time. Consider that the Project Sponsor (usually executive leadership), the Project Manager and the Change Lead should be marathon runners with the ability to sustain the emotional energy to keep the project and the team going—mile, after mile, after mile….

10. It takes a village
The truth is, you are only one person. Certainly as a Leader of a major change initiative there are expectations that you will clone yourself and perform the noble feats of several Change Leaders. While that may not be not realistic, by choosing the right team members, you can accomplish amazing (if not super human) results. Spend time qualifying the specific strengths, roles, and resources you will need to build the right team. Put the model together to influence other leaders and obtain the right budget. This is one of the most valuable efforts in your project lifecycle. With the whole village at work, you’ll have the right eyes at every corner guiding you to the finish line and helping you avoid the detours and potholes that might delay the trip. So, are we there yet?

Happy New Year!

Tara Seager is the Founder and Managing Principal of Ally Solutions Group. For the past 15 years, she has worked with Fortune 100 clients in Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Technology, and Healthcare industries, building strategies that drive the “people side” of business and technology transformation.

Throughout her professional career, Tara has built relationships with corporate leaders at all levels. She has managed and executed multifaceted change initiatives of various sizes and complexities, from individual initiatives to multi-million dollar global, turnkey organizational solutions. She works closely with her clients and colleagues and believes that we are all here to “serve and support” one another every day. Her philosophy and decision making is centered on creating value-driven results.

Tara is the President of the New Jersey Organization Development Learning Community (NJOD), with responsibility for building the framework and strategy for future growth of the 1,200+member organization and overseeing the NJOD’s Annual Sharing Day event—one of the largest and most visible OD conferences in the country. She is co-founder of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) National Change Management Task Force, and a member of Women for Women International.

Her educational background is a mixture of operational business and technology, studying Decision Support Systems at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in its M.B.A. program, and business Management and Communications at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA during her undergraduate years.

She lives in the town of Clinton, New Jersey with her husband, Ben, and their three children.