Collaborative Change Partnerships: The Top 7 Principles

Collaborative Change Partnerships for Initiating Effective Organizational Change
Collaborative change partnerships are the vehicle to initiating effective change within an organization. Why? Because most leaders carry ideas about change that stem from additional ideas of command and control leadership.

We know from project postmortem and change management simulation data, that top down leadership approaches have a limited and short-lasting impact on behavior change.

To succeed at change, organizations need to create a more effective model of how change occurs — a collaborative partnership model of change.  Taught in change management training, its principles and practices may seem remarkably simple, but in practice they are:

• Difficult.
• Demanding.
• Require learning to create lasting change.

Collaborative Change Partnerships: The 7 Keys to Sustainable Organizational Change

Change management consulting experts know that change capability within an organization is created through collaborative partnerships that combine a model of active engagement and participation across the whole organization. The seven core principles of collaborative change partnerships include:

1. Take an Enterprise Perspective
   For most large scale organizational changes, every part of the change process is connected to every part of the organization. Because of this interconnection, the integration of change leadership activities is critical to success. To succeed, focus on building appropriate stakeholder involvement, linking activities across boundaries, and striving toward shared goals across functions.
2. Ensure Two-Way Communication
   This is the most mentioned and least followed change principle. Too many leaders still mistakenly think that communication is telling people what to do. We know from communication essentials training that people are unlikely to change very much if they don’t understand why they are being asked to change and are not part of designing the changes that affect them.

   To succeed, change communication needs to be two-way, and people need to have an open forum for sharing their reactions, concerns, and feelings about change.

3. Encourage Active Participation
   Effective change builds partnerships to jointly define the problems, work streams, and outcomes. This is another overused and underdone principle. Those affected by change need to be actively involved and consulted about changes to their work for any changes to stick.

   While people admittedly may be tied to the way they do things and find it hard to change, new ways of working need to be embraced by the people who will be most affected.

4. Focus on Learning and Shifting Mindsets
   Learning is more than changing behavior. Successful change demands employees not only learn new skills but adapt different mindsets and take on different roles in the organization.

   People learn and shift their hearts and minds by being an active participant in the process and feeling like they have the skills, motivation, and confidence to succeed.

5. Strive for Alignment
   We know from action learning leadership development feedback, that the to the degree to which people understand, commit to, and act upon what they say has an impact on change initiatives. So does the degree to which one system, group, or activity is connected to other related ones. The process of organizational change demands that change leaders need to look at the alignment of their words and their deeds between what they do and what they want others to do, and between results and the pathways to the results.
6. Cascade the Same for Each Level
   A change must reverberate from the top or the middle to become part of the behavior of every part of the organization. It often erodes as it moves down the organization. The people at the top take time to plan, to build commitment, and to learn; then they expect that people below them to just follow.

   They forget the process that they went through. The process of change needs to be recreated with the same level of investment for each level of the organization for change to stick.

7. Span Boundaries and Break Down Silos
   People and organizations tend to see their functional groups as having a reality and solidity that must be maintained. Functional silos tend to become a barrier to change. Most change efforts involve breaking down these barriers and boundaries to create collaborative processes that have more open and fluid interaction.

The Bottom Line
Change typically begins when a visionary leader tries to shift ways of working to meet new demands.  Change leaders must design processes and systems that help the people engaged in change to recognize, understand, and act upon new ways of working.  Can your leaders effectively design, implement, and sustain the changes necessary for success?

To learn more about how to create collaborative change partnerships, download The Science of Successful Change Leadership: 5 Critical Lenses for Leaders

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.