Tag Archives: Change

Managing Change Doesn’t Happen by Accident

I can still remember sitting at home watching a movie as part of my change management class. The movie?

change management Lean On Me, featuring Morgan Freeman.

Freeman plays the character of the “turnaround principal” of a failing school. His job was to step into the school and reverse the negative trends that were plaguing the students and teachers.Â He wasn’t always nice and friendly, but he got the job done and in the end, people respected him and the work he accomplished. Check out this short clip for a glimpseÂ of his management style:

Thinking about change management is something I do fairly often. Most of what we do in the HR profession revolves around initiating, communicating, and managing change. That’s probably why I was so surprised when I looked at the results of theÂ Brandon Hall Group 2014 Talent Management Systems Study.

According to the dataÂ 23% of respondentsÂ did not create any type of change management planÂ to assist with implementing a new talent management system. Wow. In this Brandon Hall Group blog I write about some of the ways to approach change management with a “people” focus as well as some essential elements of a good change plan. I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on the topic!

Sphere of influence

As an HR professional, what is your sphere of influence?

This was one of the conversations I witnessed this past weekend as I took part in an event called HRevolution. It was an amazing event that gathered fifty HR professionals together for a closer look at social media, HR\’s role in the workplace, networking, and more. The question above was dropped during the session where the participants discussed the best ways for HR professionals to make a difference in their organizations.

Spinning wheels

For some of the participants, I got the impression that they were working furiously just to stay afloat. When you\’re spinning your wheels on a daily basis, it\’s quite difficult to see where your efforts are actually making a difference. From personal experience, I can tell you that I know what it\’s like. It can be disheartening. If you are focusing your efforts on changing a large group of people, most of them will never get enough guidance or attention to actually make a change.

Take three

One of the participants at the event, Paul Hebert of Incentive Intelligence (a brilliant writer whose work you should be reading!), gave a relatively simple answer to this problem. His solution was for HR professionals to target a small handful of people to influence. Spend your time developing and mentoring three of the best managers you have. When you have done what you can with those managers, help them to do the same for three more supervisors. You can continually focus on your core group of leaders and they can each spread that knowledge and expertise much farther than you could have if you were trying to go solo.

In an ironic sort of way, the smaller the area where you focus your efforts, the more impact you can have on your organization.

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Photo by wwworks.

Where is HR going?

In recent months, there has been a firestorm of discussion online about the future of HR and where the profession is going as a whole. Will the job functions of an HR pro change radically in the next several years, or will it stay pretty much the same? I encourage you to read some of these thought provoking articles and think for yourself. If it\’s staying the same, what do you want to be doing? If it\’s changing, will you be ready?

This is Your Brain on HR-Discussion on HR\’s recent changes and its bifurcation into two main functional areas. When you finish this one, I think you\’ll be inspired.

Re-Branding HR-Revolves around the bad rap HR gets in most organizations and how to make it meaningful again by redefining its core concepts. This one\’s my favorite.

Blowing up Human Resources-Challenges the direction of our profession and its inner workings. While I disagree with this one, it will give you some interesting ideas.