The 3-Step Change Management Process That Will Boost Your Career

The 3-Step Change Management Process That Will Boost Your Career Over the course of 40 years, Dr. John Kotter developed an 8-step change management process. Its scope is incredible. And its worked in organizations big and small for decades. Do you want to lead change in your team, your company, or even in your own life? If so, theres huge value there. As marketers, though, we can take a leaner approach and apply it even faster even by the time youre done reading this post. This post is for you if you want to: Lead lasting change in your marketing team, Transform the way you (and your team) work, And become more productive than ever. The 3-Step Change Management Process That Will Boost Your Career by @jordan_loftis via @The 3-Step Change Management Process That Will Boost Your Career You will learn three simple steps to leading (and sustaining) change. Create a sense of urgency. Take action and find quick wins. Go back through the loop to sustain momentum. As youll see, each step is directly driven by your teams goal. At , we talk a lot about goals why? Theyre incredibly important. In fact, our own research shows marketers who set goals are 429% more likely to be successful than those who dont. Im not talking about fluffy New Years resolutions, either. (^^^ After all, the University of Scranton found that 92% of people who make those resolutions dont hit them.) Instead, were tackling specific and challenging goals, which the classic study, Goal Setting And Task Performance, found was a linchpin of success. Specific means there is a number and a deadline on your calendar. Challenging means it will achieve significant growth in your team, organization, or personal career. For example, you may want to leverage this change management process to revolutionize the way your team works. Leverage this change management process to revolutionize the way your team works.The Specific And Challenging Goal To Fuel Your Change Management Process We work with thousands of marketers in over 100 countries. Our customers range from companies like Microsoft to agencies and lean marketing teams. One thing unites them all: they are done with the old, outmoded, crappy way marketing works. Theyre sick of endless spreadsheets Theyre over confusing email threads Theyve had it with single-function tools that werent built for marketers in the first place We call the old way of doing things  makeshift marketing. And it refers to mashing disconnected tools into one martech stack. And thousands of smart marketers are sick of letting it gobble up their budgets and productivity. While thousands have defeated this ugly beast its taken a dead-serious approach to do so. In this case, setting the specific and challenging goal of  transforming from the old way things worked, to the new way. You have to overcome the reality of change aversion. This is our natural inclination to resist change and even to reject a new solution as bad because its different. You have to fight this in your team - and even in yourself. Setting a specific and challenging goal is your first step. It might look something like this: We will refine all of our marketing processes for maximum efficiency by July 1, 2018. Your goal specifically outlines the change youre after AND puts a date on the calendar. This is the focusing force of your new change management process: Create a sense of urgency around accomplishing your goal. Enable action toward your goal by racking up quick wins. Sustain positive momentum even after your goal is accomplished. Step One: Create A Sense Of Urgency First up, lets talk urgency. Recently, I met with my boss, our head of demand generation. Id been working on a project with a pretty important goal. And while I was working hard, my progress didnt have quite the velocity we needed it to. So we had a frank conversation. He told me, Were accelerating the timeline. Were hitting your goal this week, not next month. Thats right my roadmap had a few weeks left to make the project successful. After this conversation, there was just five days! Thankfully, Nathan didnt simply dump an impossible deadline on my shoulders. He offered to go shoulder to shoulder and help accelerate growth. And in just five days, we accomplished what Id planned on achieving in weeks. How did we do this? Urgency. Urgency is a force or impulse that impels or constrains. And its a productive marketers secret weapon. It makes you focus, prioritize, and then act. Urgency makes you focus, prioritize, and then act.How To Create A Sense Of Urgency With Loss Aversion Now, what is your goal? There are many levers to pull to increase urgency in accomplishing it but the most powerful is loss aversion. Research has shown: For human beings â€Å"losses loom larger than gainsand the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. (Kahneman Tversky, 1979) If youve ever done any conversion copywriting, you understand this. People prefer to avoid loss rather than acquiring equivalent gains. For example, whats more compelling to you not losing $100 you have? or gaining $100 you dont have? Psychologically, we work harder to avoid loss than to make gains. This is the first lever you can pull to create a sense of urgency. Ask yourself: What will I lose if I dont meet [your goal] by [specific date]? The bigger the goal, the more you have to lose by not hitting it. As depressing as this may sound, its actually invigorating to see whats really at stake if you (and your team) do not change. Step Two: Enable Action With Minimum Viable Marketing (MVM) Next in our change management process, take action and get to quick wins with minimum viable marketing. It helps you quickly test ideas to learn what works - and what doesnt - before you heavily invest into marketing campaigns or projects destined for failure. In Garrett Moons new book,  10x Marketing Formula, he devotes an entire chapter to Minimum Viable Marketing (MVM). He explains: The MVM concept stems from the minimum viable product (MVP) methodology, which was popularized in the world of startups by Eric Ries in a book called The Lean Startup. At their essence, MVPs are a way of quickly validating business ideas by producing the minimum number of features to satisfy early customer or audience needs. The MVP process decreases risk by testing assumptions against reality. For our simple change management process, MVM is the perfect framework for action. First, because it enables you and your team to rack up quick wins that get fast results and build momentum. Second, because it actually allows you to decrease long-term risk by testing ideas in small before you roll them out in large. Heres an excellent example Garrett cites in  10x Marketing Formula: Use A Minimum Viable Project Mentality In 1981 American Airlines was in dire financial straits. They were low on cash and high on expenses. This is never a good place to be. To pull themselves from the money pit, they cooked up what seemed a clever, homerun of a marketing campaign. To get millions dripping into their coffers, they offered  unlimited first-class travel for life  for $250,000. To most of us, a quarter-million bucks sounds steep (and it’s roughly $600,000 in today’s dollars). However, to the consumers who spend as much time in the air as they do on the ground, this was an incredibly good deal. A  Los Angeles Times interview  recounts one of the frequent flyers who took advantage of this deal: â€Å"We thought originally it would be something that firms would buy for top employees,† said Bob Crandall, American’s chairman and chief executive from 1985 to 1998. â€Å"It soon became apparent that the public was smarter than we were.† The unlimited passes were bought mostly by wealthy individuals, including baseball Hall-of-Famer Willie Mays, America’s Cup skipper Dennis Conner and computer magnate Michael Dell. Mike Joyce of Chicago bought his in 1994 after winning a $4.25-million settlement after a car accident. In one 25-day span this year, Joyce flew round trip to London 16 times, flights that would retail for more than $125,000. He didn’t pay a dime. â€Å"I love Rome, I love Sydney, I love Athens,† Joyce said by phone from the Admirals Club at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. â€Å"I love Vegas and Frisco.† American Airlines soon went upside down on this big bet- and they still kept it going for nearly ten years! Oops. This historic marketing blunder is a good lesson for us 10x marketers. Because this story is far from an isolated incident. Here’s how it goes. A giant X-factor company puts loads of money into a big campaign. Problem is, this campaign does more harm than good. And whether money is lost from lack of sales, or poorly projected financial impact, the big bet goes belly up. So, test your assumptions by building in stages to learn as quickly as possible. Use MVM In 3 Steps With The Lean Feedback Loop This method of MVM capitalizes on what startups call a â€Å"lean feedback loop.† It works in three stages: Build it. What projects or ideas will do you believe will help you quickly reach your goal? What lean version of this idea can you launch to test it and get quick results? Measure it. Is the idea working? What key data points who if youre toward your goal, remaining stagnant, or even shrinking? Learn from it. Based on key metrics is the idea working, and therefore worth investing more time, energy, and resources into? By working the change management process in this way, youll notice you are concerned with learning as much as winning. Learning is winning. Lets look at some example projects Launching A Podcast With A Lean Loop Build: Smartphone recording of pilot podcast episode shared as a key blog post. Measure: Measure traffic, number of listens or downloads, and listen to comments. Learn: Will a podcast be a viable marketing channel between us and our target audience at this stage? Timeline: One week. Rebranding With A Lean Loop Build: Start with core positioning statements, value propositions, and key messaging. Measure: Present the messaging to sales and target customers on calls for one week to gauge resonance. Record all calls for the marketing team to review. Learn: If the messaging is clear and relevant, continue to the next stages. But repeat this process of testing each major element before investing further. Timeline: One week. Adopting New Marketing Strategy, Processes, Or Tools Build:  Get a free demo of the software with a real person. Ask questions specifically about how it would work for your team. Then,  hold a kickoff meeting with your team to introduce them to the new tool. Measure: Set benchmarks for success. What results are you working for? What numbers will tell you if your new tool is growing them? Learn: Look at the data and make the call. Does your team like the process? Has your tool made your life easier? Are you getting closer to your goals? Timeline: Two weeks. Step Three: Sustain The Momentum Of Your Change Management Process Now that youve gotten results, its time to sustain the momentum youve created. There are tons of amazing books to help you get better marketing results There are game-changing marketing strategies you can adopt There are clever ways to 10x your ROI in short order but the truth is, none of it matters if you dont maintain the results youre getting. This third step is the most important. Why? If you rest on yesterdays success, you will be tomorrows failure. Thankfully, this can be the easiest part of the process. To sustain momentum, propel your team back into the process of urgency and action.