The five principles of organizational change

Gain and maintain support for yourself as a leader and for your cause well before announcing the change or starting the change process. Build a trusted team.

Know where you and your organization are. Be honest. When you start navigating through the field of change, any bias in honestly judging your starting point will show in your results.

Understand where you want to be and why? Without understanding what you want to achieve, you would not recognize it even if you accidentally ended up in the right spot at the end of the process. Understanding why you want those outcomes will help you validate the results and makes sure that your goals are still worth it at the end of the process.

Have a plan to reach your destination in achievable and measurable stages. Organizational change is a difficult process with many potential setbacks and intentional and unintentional forces to derail the process. You only have chance to reach your destination if you also know where you are during the process in order to take corrective actions on time when necessary.

Involve people and communicate with people as early and as much as possible. Do not leave out the opponents of your cause. You can only convince or convert them if you engage them. Just because you avoid communication with them, they may still derail the process. Also involve your supporters. You should not take anyone’s support for granted.