A few months ago I was talking to a friend of mine, a team manager in a bank branch near me, and he told me about some problems he was having getting monthly reconciliations audited in time for the accounts department.

“Every month it’s the same,” he said. “The problem is that one of our systems runs its data only once every month. The data run is so long that it takes two or three hours. Then the staff have to go back and reconcile thirty days against three other data runs. It’s a labour intensive job.”

He told me that he’d forwarded a couple of ideas to the branch manager, but he’d refused to take them further.

“On the one hand, the manager says the bank won’t pay out for overtime,” he told me, “and on the other there isn’t the will to change systems. So my team are left with the conundrum of missing targets every month, and that’s going to affect bonuses and morale.”

Four steps to being an effective change agent

It’s my experience that plenty of people at the sharp end of business have great innovative ideas that would improve the organisation. After all, they are the ones who do the work, and it’s a natural human trait to want to make life as easy as possible.

While managers would do well to be more open to ideas put forward by their people, it also has to be remembered that managers are busy people too. An idea has to be really strong to be a contender for time and effort. An innovation in systems, process, or procedures that might create extra work, coaching, and the need to sell to higher level executives needs to be positioned real carefully.

What my friend was acting as, and that so many people have the capacity to be, was a change agent. The problem he was having was not an unresponsive manager, but a lack of ability to frame his proposal in a way that would sell it.

Here are the four steps that I proposed he took to get his innovative change message across:

Step 1: Clarify the idea for change to be listened to positively

I told my friend to take a little more time to really drill down into his idea. Was he proposing a change in culture, process, or procedure? Perhaps the change would crossover several types of change, and maybe impact more than just his team. Would the change impact others, and in what way?

If he could make a positive case for change, and where negative potential existed show that he had considered these, too, then he’d be more likely to be listened to. But this wouldn’t be enough.

Step 2: Show the context of change impact

The next step I suggested my friend take is to look at the problem and suggested solution more globally. A lot of people explain their idea in the following way: “Hey, boss, I’ve got a great idea that’s going to make my job easier; all it needs is a couple of grand as a budget to get off the ground, and, perhaps, a word from you to smooth the way with the powers above.”

Even if you don’t use those words exactly (and you won’t!), it’s likely to be what the boss hears. A far better approach for my friend to take was to think wider:

• What will the change do for the company, in terms of its strategy?
• How exactly will it help my friend’s team and those around him? What positives will others feel?
• What about the impact on customers – what positives will flow through to the customer?

If my friend could answer these three questions within the proposal he put forward, and demonstrate that the change will positively impact in these three areas, then he’d be listened to more positively.

I also warned him that by undertaking this exercise he might find that there was a few gaps that needed to be considered and addressed.

Step 3: Use your expertise and experience to propose change

My friend was doing the job he was employed to do because he knew what he was doing. He had expertise that the branch manager couldn’t expect to have. By demonstrating that expertise, he would stand a better chance of being able to demonstrate the validity of his plan. He might have to spend a little time to interrogate other areas where the change would impact, but that would increase his level of expertise.

I suggested that he also look at times when he’d made a change for the better, the impact it had on others, and how he could work those experiences into a conversation about change.

Step 4: Sum up the positives and then promote the change

The final step is to sum up the positive impacts, and then promote the change. I told my friend that he should reiterate the positives and the way in which it could benefit others and even the whole company. I told him then to temper the enthusiasm that he would by now have generated in his manager for the change, by saying that it would be important to test out locally first before the manager could extend the change on a wider basis.

Two months later…

My friend couldn’t have been happier. He’d spent some time to revisit his ideas to smooth the working patterns, spotted some flaws and ironed them out. When it came to making the proposal he told me that he’d taken a bold approach.

“I knocked on the manager’s door, stepped in and placed a written proposal on his desk. I’d summarised costs, cost savings, advantages, impacts, and benefits in two pages. I’d already spoken to other team leaders about their difficulties, and it was surprising how wide an impact late reconciliations were having on so many areas.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

“As I placed the summary report on his desk, I said, ‘This is how we’re going to save $2,000 costs in this branch every month. It’s going to reduce stress in the office, provide better and more timely reporting to management, and that’s going to save time, too.  And you know those awkward moments when you can’t give the area manager those important numbers? They disappear.’”

“So what did he say?”

“Two hours later,” my friend told me, “I was called back into the office. The manger simply said, ‘This is brilliant. How comes you haven’t thought of this before?’”

I laughed. Then my friend continued.

“He especially liked the bit of rolling the success out to the other 14 branches in our area, once we’d proved the validity of my proposed changes.”

People at the sharp end have great ideas to make positive change all the time.

Often those ideas fall on deaf ears, not because they are bad ideas but because they are poorly phrased. Every change initiative needs a change sponsor: show your manager the positive impacts and the wider benefits of change and you’ll become a reliable change agent as your boss becomes your reliable change sponsor.