What comes to mind when you think of the word change? Excitement? Uncertainty? Does it scare you? While changes are typically made with the goal making improvements, whether it be in someone’s life or within a business, the initial reaction to the proposal of change differs from person to person. To get a better idea of what the general public thinks of change, Google “change quotes With over 1.5 billion results, many of the quotes similarly highlight how one will first encounter negatives before experiencing the benefits of change. Here are some examples:
- Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
- The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
- All great changes are preceded by chaos.
For businesses in the 21st century, change is constant; if you don’t change, you simply won’t grow, and may not survive. As a property management company, one of the changes you may be facing is how to digitalize traditionally manual processes to improve how your entire company operates. A good example of this would be implementing community management software or changing software providers. The goal of this change is to create efficiencies, save money, and provide a better overall work experience for employees and living experience for your residents. So, implementing an amazing new software solution should be simple, right? Not so fast
Over the next several weeks we’re going to cover the topics of digital transformation and change management in businesses. By understanding what needs to happen throughout the organization in order to properly implement changes, you’ll be much more successful when implementing something like new software, for example. That means you will need an action plan for changes. Simply telling people there’s a new software and they need to use it will not yield success.
How have changes gone over at your business? If you’ve struggled implementing change, don’t worry, you’re not alone. There are entire businesses dedicated to training organizations on how to successfully enact change. In fact, one company developed a diagram called The Change Cycle to help organizations better understand how employees react to changes, both big and small (we highly recommend taking a look at this). We’re not saying you need to hire a third-party training consultant in order to successfully make a change, however, we need to emphasize that change isn’t easy and needs to be approached in a strategic way in order to see success.
At FRONTSTEPS, we aim to be a business partner, rather than simply a software provider. We want to help make the implementation of our platform as successful, and low stress, as possible. We believe in the life-changing benefits our software provides when it’s successfully implemented and properly utilized and want to do everything we can to help you accomplish that.
Stay tuned to our future posts about change management, where we’ll provide actionable tips on how to roll out the new software in a way that will help clear up uncertainty and generate buy in, adoption, and even excitement among your team.
Searching for new community management software? Download your copy of our free checklist, 10 Things Your Community Management Software Must Have to help guide your search!
