Most people and organizations deal with change of any kind by denying it, avoiding it, or running from it with disastrous results. Only by mastering change or the fear of it can you truly become effective and successful in your chosen field of cost management. The reality in today’s marketplace is that if continuous change isn’t managed properly, the growth of your organization will be stunted and your organization will ultimately breathe its last breath of creativity. To assist you in avoiding this unpleasant outcome, I have listed below 10 change management strategies, tactics, and techniques that, if you master, will set you apart from your peers and ensure your continued career growth:

1. Find a High-Quality Reason for Making Any Change and Quantify It

Change for change sake will never energize your organization to empower you to make changes, even if you believe the change to be extremely important. To make positive change you must have a high-quality reason for any proposed change you are contemplating (reduce costs, increase profits, improve quality) that can be quantified in dollars.

2. Have a Plan that Everyone Understands, Can Relate To, and Buys Into

Activity without planning is a waste of your time and energy. By developing a comprehensive plan describing the what, when, where, why, and how, you will make this change happen. If you have done your homework, it will enable everyone involved in the change to understand it, envision how they fit into the plan, and decide that it is important for them to make this change.

3. Set Targets and Measure Your Results

If you don’t set targets and measure the results of your change you will: (a) not be able to gain your management’s attention for the change, (b) not be able to motivate others to change, (c) not know if your change had the impact you predicted and, (d) lose credibility when you propose other changes in the future, because you will have no track record of success to build on.

4. Communicate Often

No change is ever communicated once and instantly assimilated into a  organization’s culture. Changes must be communicated often, then polished, refined, and sometimes reinvented to get the message right and target the right audience. It must become an obsession with you to communicate often and in as many forums as possible to get your message across to all affected parties on why the change is needed, what is changing, how the change will affect them and their department, the impact of the change on the organization’s bottom line, and what’s happening with the change implementation now.

5. Take No Credit and Give Ownership To Others

One powerful secret to change management’s success is to “take no credit” for the achievements or changes that you proposed and “give ownership” to anyone who steps up and takes a leadership position in your change initiative. Your goal shouldn’t be to receive credit for the change (short-term thinking), but to make the change you propose happen. You will get credit in due course (long-term thinking) as your management sees that you are a person they can trust to makes things happen in their organization.

6. No Surprises, Manipulation, or Games

Effective change management is a matter of trust – no surprises, no manipulation, and no gamesmanship – as you sell your change proposal to all levels of your management and affected employees and follow through with the implementation of your change initiative. Trust begins and ends with integrity: “The uncompromising adherence to principles of morals and ethical principles” that will guide you through the minefields of change management. Any surprise, manipulation, or gamesmanship that you employ that you believe will win over converts to your change initiative will in fact destroy any good will and trust that you have generated with your action plan to effect the change you were looking for.

7. Give Time for Digestion

We often hear experts in change management touting SPEED as the best tactic to move a change initiative through an organization, so that the pain of the change will be dulled. Based on my experience, I would caution you on even considering employing this tactic in your change initiative, because in reality your peers, colleagues, employees, and management actually need time to digest your ideas to fairly evaluate their merits before they can move forward with any change initiative you are proposing. Some need more time than others to understand it and get on-board with your proposal. All speed does is create uncertainty, disorientation, and confusion about your change proposal. So take the time that is necessary to obtain the buy-in for your change proposal at all levels of your organization or you will risk anarchy and turmoil in the ranks and in your corporate suite.

8. Stay Aware and Flexible

Any change initiative that you propose is filled with unknown factors and unforeseen surprises that you can never predict, even with the best planning possible. So you must always stay aware and be flexible enough in your planning and implementation process to react to these unexpected contingencies. To stay aware and vigilant, you will need feedback mechanisms (questionnaires, focus groups, meetings, reports, etc.) on the progress of your change initiative to be able to react to any unanticipated event in a positive manner. Be flexible enough to change your plans in order to fix, modify, or repair whatever is broken. To believe you can stay the course even after it has been proven that your planning process was inaccurate is flirting with disaster.

9. Give Rewards and Recognition

For decades, we have managed change initiatives by just telling people what to do and then making sure they did it or else they would face negative consequences. It has only been recently that we have discovered that we need to reward and recognize positive behavior, if we want to make effective and sustained change. This can be accomplished with incentive programs, positive feedback, and public and private recognition that are timely, specific, well understood by our employees, tailored to suit individual preferences, and tied to the big picture. To do so, you must move from the old model of “command and control” to a new model of “inspire and motivate” to immunize your change management initiative against failure.

10. Be Positive at All Times

Negativity in change management initiatives comes from miscommunication or poor communication, poor direction, unclear expectations, and participants’ desire to protect themselves from pain. Since negativity will arise in any change initiative, to manage this effectively you must first be positive yourself. If you show you have any doubts or misgivings about your initiative it will spill over to all involved parties with negative results. Negativity can be minimized by taking charge, setting clear expectations of what you see as the outcome, giving clear direction so there is no confusion, setting priorities, establishing milestones, actively listening, communicating effectively, and setting the tone for the work that needs to be accomplished by being positive at all times.

To summarize, “Typically, there are strong resistances to change (in any change initiative). People are afraid of the unknown. Many people think things are already just fine and don’t understand the need for change. Many are inherently cynical about change, particularly from reading about the notion of ‘change’ as if it’s a mantra,” cautions Dr. Carter McNamara. To combat these negative forces, you will need a carefully laid out plan with high quality reasons for making the change that have targets that are measurable. Obsessively communicate with all involved parties to avoid confusion, missteps, and frustration. Give credit and ownership to others, so they can share the burden and rewards. Avoid surprises, manipulation, and games so that you build trust. Give time for digestion of your ideas, stay aware and flexible in your planning and implementation, find opportunities to reward and recognize top performers, and stay positive at all times.