If you are a small business owner, then you know change. It’s a simple as that. And your ability to manage change effectively enables you to grow and build a positive corporate culture in your organization. Knowing how to learn about change and developing yourself as an effective change leader is key. Here are the most important factors to focus on…

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Starting with a Modest & Achievable Plan

The single best step in jumping in as change leader is to develop a plan for what you want to do. Review your business, looking at each functional area and capture your ideas for improvement. Focus on small steps that are relatively easy to implement and can add immediate value. Take “big ideas” and break them down into smaller ideas. This approach maximizes your chances for success. Wait to implement big ideas until you’ve had more experience.

For more information: business change management

Vetting the Plan with Employees

Getting input from the troops is always important. Don’t assume that your ideas are the best or don’t need some tweaking. Involve your employees and managers in the process too. Have some of your best people go through the same review process and compare notes. Work together to make your list of ideas better. Ultimately, you will end up with a better plan that everyone has some ownership in - which will make implementation easier and more productive.

Communicating the plan to rest of the employees is important too. Unless they know where you want them to go, how can they get there? Most managers don’t appreciate how hard it is to get a single message out to an entire organization consistently and without distortion. Communicate repeatedly using different methods to make sure everyone knows what’s going on.

And lastly, be sure to give credit where it is due. Recognize those who came forward with good ideas. Reward those whose hard work made their ideas a reality. Be generous with recognition and incentives; they will always be your best investments.

For more information: business change management

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Business and Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.