summarized in your own words

steps include:

1. Create a sense of urgency

It's human nature to maintain the status quo and have some form of resistance to change. However, a sense of urgency can often spark the initial motivation to initiate a change implementation process.

It's critical to communicate the need, and reason, for upcoming change projects for employees to understand it as a solution to an existing problem or risk. As a change agent or change consultant, you must obtain the buy-in of at least 75% of the organization's management to lead effective change.

Examples of how to create a sense of urgency include:

• Showcase how other companies have failed to act on similar issues and the negative impact it had on their company.
• Highlight how companies have implemented the change and the success it has brought.
• Demo the potential of the change in company all-hands.

2. Form a guiding coalition

Driving a change initiative isn't a one-person job. The 'Leadership + Management' change principle stresses that organizational changes need multiple leaders' opinions, ideas, and support.

Your guiding coalition comprises people you choose as your support system, including managers and supervisors under effective change leadership.

Another principle applicable here is 'Select Few + Diverse Many' principle. Designated change leaders (select few) delegate tasks to experienced individuals (Diverse Many). Educate them about the reason for the change to feel confident in its need, to ensure that you have support from various functions.

Organizations should form a guiding coalition by:

• Building a change advisory board that all large, transformational change projects are run through.
• Form cross-functional change teams for individual change projects that include team members that will be most impacted by the change and who best understand the current state issues and the contextual reasons for the change.
• Encourage individual contributors across your organization who have strong influence to act as change agents.

3. Build a strategic vision

A change initiative is often challenging to understand at the lower hierarchical levels. Start with a change management plan that clearly outlines all project milestones and deliverables. When the vision is only in your head, it's easy to underestimate how long the initiatives, such as training or data migrations, will take. A documented vision helps you balance various aspects of the change implementation and set more realistic timelines.

Examples of how to create a vision of change includes:

• Creating a change roadmap with key project milestones.
• Showcasing how a change will setup organizations to evolve further once they're in place.
• Tying individual change projects to business outcomes and success KPIs.
• Tying individual change projects to larger enterprise digital strategies.

4. Enlist a volunteer army of change agents

Organizations often focus more on a change's logistics over properly communicating the change. Change must be understood and supported for it to be successful - without effective change management communication, the change initiative is likely to fail. As a change practitioner, you must:

• Talk often about your vision and change implementation plan
• Address employees' concerns transparently
• Apply your vision to all operational aspects - from training to performance reviews
• Lead the change by setting an example

5. Remove barriers to change adoption

The top-to-bottom approach of change imposition is often met with employee pushback. To successfully drive the change, you must identify all the factors likely to reduce its chances for success.

Whether it's individuals, org culture, or limited resources, there will likely be a few barriers to change. Identify these obstacles as early as possible and rely on available resources to break them down without disrupting other business areas.

Examples of change barriers organizations must overcome include:

• Lack of clarity on why a change is happening.
• Internal resistance to change.
• Lack of leadership and stakeholder buy-in.
• Lack of IT or change governance.
• Change fatigue.
• Poor understanding of new techniques or lacking skillsets.

6. Generate short-term wins

Implementing change is a long and cumbersome process. To keep your employees motivated throughout their change journey, you must recognize and celebrate short-term wins and achievements.

Organizations can generate and showcase short-term wins by:

• Setting achievable milestones with incentives for hitting each.
• Using employee recognition tools to reward team members who are early adopters.
• Create self-service data studios and goal boards that showcase your change goal's progress.
• Announce organizational change wins and success stories in Slack, through email, in team meetings, and in 'Lunch and Learn' style presentations.
• Highlight how early adopters are overachieving in comparison to laggards.

7. Sustain change as a continuous process

There is a large gap between implementation and complete adoption. A change initiative can easily fail if the people driving the change become complacent due to short-term success or get disheartened due to barriers.

Organizational leaders can sustain change as a continuous process by:

• Creating an overall change management strategy for your entire organization that includes processes for submitting change idea charters, how to prioritize change initiatives, etc.
• Make "fail fast and continuously" a pillar of your culture to encourage employees not to fear failure and always seek improvements.
• Encouraging employees to build and present project charters for change projects and innovations.
• Gather feedback on change projects from individual employees, c-suite, and the change implementation team.

8. Institute change into your organization's DNA

Change initiatives require behavioral change, and for a change to be fully adopted, it must be deeply rooted in an organization's culture and processes. According to Accelerate, "accelerators 1-7 are all about building new muscles." The final aspect of Kotter's 8-step change model is about maintaining those new muscles.

Examples of how organizations can integrate change into their company's culture include:

• Enable employees with continuous upskill training to improve their skill sets.
• Support employees with contextual performance support in the flow of work to build habits, lower time-to-proficiency, and improve productivity.
• Provide change management training and coaching to help employees become more adaptive and innovative, and less resistance of new things.
• Contibute case studies and PR stories to enterprise publications highlighting your company's change-driven culture.