Because sometimes you need a little visual stimulation

I've had this image on my desktop for some time now, and can't remember exactly where it came from.  But I know I like to look at visuals like this when I'm feeling a little 'linear' in my thinking.  When you've been poring over a lot of text and spreadsheets, mindmaps can be a good way to get your brain thinking in different directions, and suddenly you feel a lot smarter than you were 15 minutes ago.

This particular mindmap is titled 'Behavior Change Program', and that's really what change management is all about:  Helping the organization, and the people within it, to change their behaviors, both on a corporate level and an individual level.

The next time you're feeling stuck in the process of change, try a mindmap - you never know where it could take you.

If you're at all interested in change management, you're probably familiar with the problem:  It can sometimes take an awful lot of reading time to get to a single key insight.

That's why I love this infographic, which I found here.  It does a great job of identifying the key components of successful change management, and what happens when one of those components fail.  It's not only a good summary for change management practitioners - it's an excellent visual to use when presenting change management strategy to non-change-management types.  And it reminds me of a Vegas slot machine:  In order to get to the jackpot, you have to get all 6 components to line up at once.

This one is definitely going into my toolbox.

I know, just what you needed - another infographic about change management failure!

But this one caught my eye because it's both HR-specific and the result of interviews with actual senior HR leaders.  And while I don't always agree with the HR department, I do agree with the experts in this case about 'result-oriented psychological facilitation'.  As I've said before, you can be focused on the ROI of change and still have room to address the psychological effects of change on employees.  In fact, when you don't address the psychological effects, you'll quickly find that your change-related ROI goes straight out the window.

So I think this infographic is worth at least a skim.

I always find it interesting that the reasons for resistance to change are so well known (even people who aren't change management experts have a good intuitive understanding of the reasons for change resistance, based on their own life experience), and yet so often unaddressed in the workplace.  

So here's an infographic about the reasons for change resistance and some ideas for how to guide against resistance.  It's all about communication, leadership, employee engagement and, of course, taking the time to listen.

(infographic by Catherine Adenle at Catherine's Career Corner)

On my more or less constant quest for interesting change management items, I came across this infographic today:

Now, Knoll is a company which specializes in office furniture (or perhaps they'd prefer to call it 'workplace environment design'), so their core competency isn't change management.  However, if you're a supplier involved in a refit of an office of hundreds or thousands of people, you're going to need to know something about change management - because no matter how beautiful your 'office environments' are, getting a whole lot of people packed up, moved and settled, without losing a lot of productivity, requires quite a lot of change to be managed.

This content of this particular infographic isn't particularly earth-shattering - communication, input, messaging, supporting and evaluating are all pretty standard components of any change initiative - but what I liked about it was how aethetically pleasing it is, and how it makes clear that even an office move requires a 12-18 month lead time in terms of communicating the Big Idea to the organization.  In my experience, if organizations did a better job of creating compelling communications, and put them in place earlier in the change process, almost every change initiative would go a heck of a lot more smoothly and with more enthusiastic buy-in throughout the process.  After all, it's hard for people to keep resisting something that looks so appealing, especially if it's been announced months - or years - in advance.

Just something to think about.

It's funny:  Every organization is different, but when organizational change fails, it's usually for the same reasons.  In this infographic, Rick Torben lists the top 20 change pitfalls to avoid. One of my favorites - and it's often overlooked - is 'Only focusing on rational elements'.  People often think they're being rational about a change - but it's their emotions which are providing the resistance to it.

Towers Watson undertook a 'Change and Communication ROI Study' this year, and are producing some interesting infographics from the data they collected.  In this one, they highlight how managers (particularly lower-level ones) aren't well-served by most change management initiatives.

Interesting infographic of the Fogg Behavior Model.  Image via Pixelbento.

I do sometimes enjoy a great infographic - it's amazing how a different format can sometimes help you to see information in a whole new way.

Today I noticed an interesting infographic from OneSpring about managing big projects, and thought I'd share it.

Remember you can follow me on Twitter at @BethBanksCohn!