Like any aspect of business planning, it helps to document your approach to change. It’s about ensuring that you’re establishing processes and methodologies around the things that truly work when navigating change. Creating a “living change” document:

• Needn’t be complex. There’s no need to overcomplicate this aspect of your planning. All you need is a simple one-page document that captures how you’re going to overcome barriers and how you’re going to validate assumptions to make sure they’re correct so you can have a more successful change effort.
• Can be supported by a checklist. A checklist can help you work through change by ensuring that you’ve answered key questions. “Have we met with the group?” “Have we done our creative solution brainstorming session with the group?” “Have we met with everybody one-on-one to make sure they have resources for what we’re doing?” You’re creating a checklist in anticipation of unforeseen change, but you’re also documenting everything as it happens using a project management tool so that it is replicable. You can’t replicate unforeseen change, but you can replicate the process and the approach.

These documents can then provide a foundation for creating your blueprints for future change.

Read the second in our series of Connections to Growth Leadership guides, Harnessing—and Leveraging—the Power of Change, to learn more about documenting the processes that can help you navigate through change.