How prepared are you for any changes ahead?
The financial planning sector has faced enormous change in recent years. The velocity and frequency of this change is unlikely to diminish.
It’s essential that financial planners have the skills to be able to thrive through complex change.
The scouts have a motto – ‘Be prepared’. It’s a good motto to embrace when you are leading or going through a change. Why? Because invariably something will go off track. It’s almost impossible to map out every step of a change process – in advance.
However, often people try to do this, and when they do their planning is usually overly optimistic.
Often with the best of intent, people over-estimate what can get done, with a particular set of resources in a set timeframe. Consequently, projects end up getting de-scoped, while timeframes are pushed out.
The difficulty is when projects are initiated there are many unknowns. As those unknowns become knowns what can and can’t be achieved (in the timeframe and with the allocated resources) becomes clearer. This too can lead to changes in the delivery approach and timing.
Change is easiest when it’s incremental, technical based change that you have planned. It becomes much harder when it’s disruptive and adaptive change that is thrust upon you. Transformations of this nature are complex and there are many unknowns at the beginning.
It’s therefore critical, before you start to execute a change, to undertake a realistic assessment of the potential issues that may arise. This change risk assessment helps you understand your organisation’s current state and the issues that may arise to impede the transformation.
When you understand the risks you can put in place plans to minimise the likelihood that they will eventuate, and minimise the impact if they do.
This approach also helps you be better prepared in the event that the issue does arise. Experience shows that contingency planning enables people to cope better and the issue is better managed, because they’ve thought about it beforehand.
Once you understand the risks you can establish appropriate early warning indicators to monitor the risks and provide an alert or trigger to do something if it looks like one is about to happen.
Through these three elements of identification, planning and alertness you can ensure that you, your team and relevant stakeholders are ready for things when they go pear shaped – both situationally ready and structurally ready.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter talks about how “Everything can look like a failure in the middle”. How true that is. So when things start to go pear shaped, be thankful that you have your contingency plan in place and you are ready to activate it.
Most importantly:
- Draw on your resilience. Make sure you are taking time to take care of yourself and those around you. It is at times such as this that stress levels can be unmanageable and cause health issues. Be wary of this and alert to the danger signs for you and your team
- Don’t lose focus. Your strength of character as a leader is being tested. Your team are looking to you for guidance and direction. Be available, supportive and encouraging to those around you, and find ways to keep moving forward
- Seek guidance and advice from those around you. There will be lots of people who will have ideas about what you should do. Know who you need to listen to, and be open to the voices of dissent as they can provide useful perspectives. Also, be conscious that you don’t need to have all the answers. The wisdom is usually in the group – so seek it out
- Make decisions effectively and swiftly. In times of challenge, people can become reticent to make decisions. However, it is at precisely this time that the need to make decisions is at its strongest. People are looking for leadership and making a decision goes with the territory
- Look on this as a learning opportunity. Out of every failure or thing that goes wrong there are immense opportunities to learn. It is only when you learn that you grow. So whilst you may not enjoy the experience, you will certainly benefit from it
Change happens. Make it work for you!
Michelle Gibbings is known for making the complex, simple. She helps people to think more deliberately, act with greater purpose and accelerate progress by understanding the art and science of human behaviour.