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Managing Change - Keep Focus on the Day Job

Guest post by: Martin Haworth

Article Overview: When your people are implicated in changes you are making, it can be a challenge to keep them focused on keeping their output up. It's your vital role to help keep them focused on the day job, whatever else is going on...

Managing Change - Keep Focus on the Day Job

Change is challenging. And when individuals are affected, it can be a huge challenge to maintain focus, morale and engagement, because of the personalized implications they may feel concerned about. It can be a tough call for them to make. Managers need to have the ability to manage the attention of the employees in their team, even when there are the significant distractions that come when change impacts on them.

At a time where focusing on managing change effectively is at the top of their own agenda, the best managers are taking the time to make sure that the performance of their team remains focused on the day-job.

They do this by being all the more visible than usual and by taking the time to engage with their people like never before. This is time-consuming and challenging in itself. And it's a vital role for the more diligent managers to play.

There's a spin-off too. Where a team are in the thick of change, with all its implications - real or simply perceived - making concentration all the more difficult, there's a need to get grounded and back to normality.

Where a manager is able to combine change management with their normal role in managing and leading their team effectively - and be seen to do so - it will have a beneficial effect on team energy, focus and keep excitability at least a little under control.

Managers who take off the change manager hat for some or even most of their time and show that they are focusing on their normal role, will be demonstrating a resilience during times of change that will impress model for their people too.

This 'normalizing' behavior will slowly and surely percolate into the way their people do their job and help calm down the excitement that so often bubbles under when circumstances are changing.

Good managers focus on the day-to-day requirements of the organization and with that, instigate a normality that can so easily get out of hand if allowed to.

Change management is not simply about delivering a change program, it's about taking your people with you and helping them see that for most of their work, change is an insignificance that can get out of proportion.

Managers who are managing change this way, will be showing that they care about their priorities effectively and, with that, their people will most likely keep engaged where they add value best.

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Article Tags: change management, engaging employees in change, leading change, managing change, organisational change, organizational change, workplace change



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Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri


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