Throughout our Breakfast Briefing series, the question we get asked most is ‘where do you start when there is so much to change and not enough time and resources?’ So, it was no surprise when our last Breakfast Briefing of 2021 was the most popular we’ve ever hosted! Overwhelmed by Change? How to handle an endless transformation to do list saw an expert panel of transformation specialists from the housing sector share their experience and advice on how to spot the signs of being overwhelmed and more importantly how to apply the breaks without derailing your transformation programme.
Our stellar expert panel for this event featured Steve Allcock, Director of Data & Digital Transformation at Johnnie Johnson Housing, Fiona Astor, Assistant Director – The Magenta Way, Magenta Living and Ailsa Dunn, Executive Director of Insight and Group Services from Prima Group.
Here we share some of their top tips from this incredibly popular session to prevent you from becoming overwhelmed by change:
You can spot when your organisation is overwhelmed through your people. When there’s no capacity to deliver the essential regulatory stuff, or the people that are generally always up for taking on new initiatives stop putting their hands up, it’s time to stop, re-prioritise and give people permission to say “no”.
Go back to basics. What’s your purpose and understand whether the change and transformation activity is adding value to homes and customers. If it’s not you need to stop and regroup.
Similarly, keep going back to why you’re doing it. Simon Sinek’s TEDTalk Starts with Why is a must watch for this. You must remind people why you need to change and if you get that right, everything else will follow and you’ll get people on the right side of transformation.
Identify an honest cheerleader! Someone who gets behind you when you get it right and tells you when you get it wrong. You need that person because it often makes sense in your mind, but not for everyone else. That cheerleader needs to understand their role in helping you.
Pick one thing off the list in the morning and do it. Sometimes make it easy so you can say “yes, I’ve done it” or start with the hardest thing you’ve been procrastinating over to get it gone! You’ll feel so much better when you’ve done it.
It’s good to talk. If you’re feeling overwhelmed tell someone. And if you think someone is overwhelmed, ask them, ask them twice how they’re feeling. Remember we’re always here at Golden Marzipan if you ever need a free impartial chat, simply get in touch.
Don’t be afraid to stop! Just because you’ve committed to something, it doesn’t mean it can’t change. Don’t consume yourself with everything going on in your organisation, stick your head above the parapet and say, “we could be doing this a lot more effectively”.
Get organised. Put everything you have to do down on paper, so it doesn’t need to sit in your head anymore and then you can prioritise. The amount of mental stress caused by trying to retain everything is overwhelming in itself.
We hope these tips will help prevent you from being overwhelmed by change. To get exclusive access to events and offers or to be one of the first to hear about the next season of Breakfast Briefings register as a friend of Golden Marzipan today.
