Surviving and Thriving Through Change

If you’re like me, navigating the pandemic has highlighted many of your organization’s strengths, and probably, a couple of areas for improvement.

You’ve seen your team rally and rise to unimagined challenge. You’ve seen the community you serve appreciate and care for your team. You’ve seen advocates quickly respond to calls for support. You’ve also seen referral pipelines change, or possibly even dry up. You’ve pivoted to expand your digital marketing efforts and you may be considering rebuilding your website, changing EMRs, building out your telehealth strategy, adding a service line or evolving your brand to better connect with audiences. Some CEOs, weary from the battle and decades of service, are considering implementing their succession plan.

Regardless of the change you’re contemplating, getting ready for change is critical to efficiently and effectively making sustainable change without burning out your people, wasting your money, creating unnecessary and complicated processes or having to go back and redo the whole thing two years later at twice the cost.

To help our clients get their arms around technology options in the market, we’ve spoken with a number of EMR, telehealth and other IT platform providers. They’ve told us that not having a plan for managing change is the number one challenge they see in their new clients.

So, how do you and your team get change ready the right way?

Setting the foundation for change

The foundations for surviving and thriving change lie in the DNA of your organization. Outside your walls, that’s your brand, but inside it’s your mission, vision, values and service model delivery design, codified in your culture, that’s the fuel for future change.

The “why” of change is reflected in your mission and vision. Communicate change to your organization through the lens of your mission and vision for it to gain traction with your team. If your mission is to serve as many people in your market as possible, show how this change will help you better or more efficiently serve. If your vision is to anticipate the needs of people and families, demonstrate how this initiative will give your team insight.

The “how” of change is manifest in your values and employee value proposition. Together, these elements tell your team how change will be implemented. For example, if respect is one of your values, your change management process should include steps that support respecting diverse points of view, individual and functional roles, experience and fresh thinking, and conflict management. Your employee value proposition, which summarizes that value your organization delivers to its employees, provides the filter for the value of change to each employee.

The change management, communication and control plans for any new initiative should all tap into your unique mission, vision, values and employee value proposition to help your organization prepare for, implement and sustain the desired change.

Think back on a time when your organization struggled with change and you’ll likely see a disconnect with roots back to one of these areas.

For more on managing change, join me next Tuesday for a session on Change Management through Project Management at the Home Health & Hospice Financial Managers’ Association virtual conference.

Or catch Transcend’s Stan Massey and Emily Zarecki, along with our client Kristen Yntema, CEO of AuthoraCare Collective, on August 26 for a National Association for Home Care & Hospice webinar on Strategies to Help Employees Navigate Change.