C6: Review and Refine
Essential steps to take once you reach the complete stage
How to WIN: Sexual harassment policies
Organisations can tackle sexual harassment (SH) in the workplace by creating a culture that embraces equality, including issuing a code of conduct or SH statement, and policy. For more information, download the Women in News Sexual Harassment Toolkit: https://www.womeninnews.org/resources
Here are some practical steps from WIN that organisations can take to tackle SH:
Commit to being a zero tolerance organisation
Understand the scale of the problem
Understand the barriers to reporting SH in your organisation
Establish a practical SH policy
Communicate to all employees about zero tolerance and the SH policy
Educate managers about SH, and their responsibilities to take actions according to the policy
Educate all employees about what SH is, zero tolerance and the SH policy
Give support with SH has happened, whether in house, in the field or online.
INTRODUCTION: C6 Review and Refine
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What is covered�in this lesson?
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SECTION 1: Defining and documenting
STOP & THINK: Reflect on what worked and what didn’t
SECTION 2: Acceptance, praise and next steps
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT: What are the next steps you want to take in your own career? And what does the business need to do to future-proof itself?
INTRODUCTION: C6 Review and Refine
Section 1: Defining and documenting
Define ‘complete’
Change today is an ongoing process of continuous improvement. But it is still important to know when you have achieved a set outcome that met your SMART goals.
At the closure or complete phase, it is vital to analyse the following:
Consider questions such as:
You may even have to carry out a final reporting stage depending on the size, type and nature of the project.
Write up the details, noting whether it was a success and what action, if any, is needed to improve the outcome.
You could include a simple plan that answers:
Note down the feedback to help improve further change projects.
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SECTION 1: C6 Defining and Documenting
Defining objectives and milestones
Objectives and milestones help the team and individuals to know whether they are moving towards the end goal during the change process.
Work with your change champions to define the objectives and make these colleagues responsible for achieving them. This will help you to get their buy-in early on and they will be more likely to drive momentum for change.
It’s important to define at the beginning what the objectives could look like and identify quick wins - something that is key to the overall success but can be easily achieved and celebrated early. These can also be used to persuade opponents of the benefits to the programme.
And when you come to review the success of the project overall, you will be able to clearly see whether you met your goals and how the milestones helped you to do so along the way.
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SECTION 1: C6 Defining and Documenting
Image from: Unsplash
Documentation and learnings
It is good practice to document insights gleaned from regular reviews, noting successes and what needs to be improved - as well as what did not work.
It’s important to capture this feedback from de-briefs as soon as possible so that information and learnings are not lost.
It can also help to draw up a checklist of what works - and especially what was improved - so that you can note the impact this had on the ultimate success of the project.
This would start to form a blueprint for a future change management project that could be shared with other colleagues.
You may even have to carry out a final reporting stage depending on the size, type and nature of the project.
Write up the details, noting whether it was a success and what action, if any, is needed to improve the outcome.
You could include a simple plan that answers: Who is doing what, and when to address any changes that are necessary. Note down the feedback to help improve further change projects.
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SECTION 1: C6 Defining and Documenting
Review implementation
During the implementation stage, you should review progress regularly to make sure the project remains on track and is proceeding as expected.
Hold frequent meetings - perhaps once a week or once a month depending on the scale of the project - to give your change agents a chance to talk about how the project is going and any issues they face.
It will also give you all an opportunity to consider any unexpected outcomes, either positive or negative, and what action you may need to take.
You must keep the momentum going and encourage staff to adopt the new ways of working because it can be easy for some people to fall back into old, habitual behaviour patterns.
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SECTION 1: C6 Defining and Documenting
Image from: Process Maker
Post-implementation review
The review process should also be a chance to recognise when a project is failing - and give you time to take action.
Look out for these warning signs:
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SECTION 1: C6 Defining and Documenting
Image from: Process Maker
Stop & Think
Let’s stop and think for a moment:
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SECTION 1: C6 Defining and Documenting
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Section 2: Acceptance, praise and planning
Stakeholder acceptance
A stakeholder is anyone affected by the change management process. Many of them will be employees, some of them directly in your team, others across the business. And don’t forget the audience - your users and customers.
If you have laid the groundwork by engaging your stakeholders throughout the change process, involving them, supporting them and considering their views, you should be reaping the rewards now with widespread adoption of new ways of working.
This means you are arriving at the stage where the project is sustainable - and that if you leave or your change champions leave to take on another change project - this new operation will continue.
Project sustainability - and stakeholder acceptance - are critical if there is to be no drop-off in user adoption once the drivers of change move on. Remember that you are likely to need a strategy to keep the change in place and working as planned otherwise it is possible that some stakeholders will go back to their comfort zones and return to working as previously.
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SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
Image from: Unsplash
Praise and thanks
Recognising the success of teams and individuals involved is key to sustaining change. It will help with the adoption of any new ways of working and operating.
Praise can help to drive and motivate colleagues to continue sustaining the change you implemented.
A Gallup workplace poll found that praise is a “surefire way” to boost employee engagement. The survey found that recognition of good work can boost productivity and revenue between 10% and 20%.
But employees who are not adequately recognised for the work they do are three times more likely to say they will quit in a year,�it said.
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SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
Image from: Unsplash
Praise and thanks
You will also need to mix up your messages of praise - and make sure you do not say the same thing over and over again otherwise your message can fail to be received.
To be effective with praise and thanks, follow these five tips from the Lighthouse blog:
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SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
Image from: Unsplash
“I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks.”
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Playwright, Twelfth Night
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Quote source: Plan B Quotes (18 quotes) (goodreads.com)
SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
Forward planning
Forward planning means thinking about future requirements for the business, including potential for growth and development as well as possible challenges.
It can be used to future-proof not only the business but yourself - and your own career development.
Newsrooms are likely to see rapid advancement in artificial intelligence, story and video creation as well as voice automation, for example.
Forward planning will be necessary to think about the impact of these technologies on jobs, roles and training.
Most people are likely to have to modernise their skills to keep up with trends in the sector as media companies change rapidly.
According to the World Economic Forum in its 2020 future of work report, skills that are going to be necessary to succeed in 2025 include:
Businesses - and people - that plan ahead tend to be more sustainable and resilient to disruption - whether that is a pandemic or climate change. Because they have a plan, they can act fast and cope better with challenges.
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SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
Case study: The Philippine STAR social media pages;
OneNews. PH, Philippines
Aurea Calica faced many challenges when she had to build a social media team and an online platform to help grow traffic in the Philippines.
As multimedia editor at The Philippine STAR newspaper and Onenews.ph, part of MediaQuest Holdings, she took several steps:
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Aurea Calica, Multimedia Editor at The Philippine STAR newspaper and Onenews.ph
SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
Case study: The Philippine STAR social media; OneNews.PH
But she did run into resistance. “Some didn't like it,” she says because it felt like additional work that had to be done in real-time, such as tweeting, without extra pay.
Since print journalists did not have the audio and video production skills like those in broadcasting, she focused on the team’s strengths, posting updates, articles and photos.
She not only put a lot of time and effort into explaining new workflows but also the reason why they were necessary. They had to prove to the audience that they could “rely on the information” coming from those in the field, covering different assignments, she says. This would help to “build credibility on social media”.
Crucially, she also promised her colleagues that if they had any better ideas she would incorporate them into the change management plan. “You cannot impose on people,” she says. “You just have to keep on working and show them that this is what we have to do. You have to lead by example.”
It was labour intensive, taking about two years, as Ms Calica ensured high journalism standards were met to build trust with the audience.
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SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
Image Social Media Report, Philippine Star Facebook page
Case study: The Philippine STAR social media; OneNews.PH
During this time, she also had to monitor the metrics to see “what’s working and what’s not”. Part of the strategy was to produce videos that could go viral - which has been very successful - along with art or quote cards that are visually attractive to the audience.
This strategy was devised and implemented by the social media team from the Philippine STAR, which saw its video views grow from just over 3 million in 2015 to 315 million in 2021.
Part of the refine process was to review tasks that didn’t add value. To keep the workload manageable, they stopped doing long-form articles with videos, for example, as well as voiceovers, because the story had often moved on by the time the video was produced.
But it paid off, leading to a sustainable way of working. “Sustainability is always the question after you launch an idea,” she says. “After you implement an idea, you should always ask if you can really do this in the long term. Or are you going to burn out your people? So you always have to adjust. And you always have to balance what the audience wants, and what your people can do.”
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SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
Image Social Media Report, Philippine Star Facebook page
Quiz Assignment
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SECTION 2: C6 Acceptance, praise and planning
End of Lesson Six
MODULE C: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
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Assignment part 6
What is your next step? One one slide outline what you will do next to progress your project.
Bring everything you have learnt into a complete deck of a maximum of six slides and prepare for a 5 minute presentation in the final webinar that will demonstrate an action plan for change that includes revenue generation.
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MODULE C: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
© COPYRIGHT 2022 LYNDSEY JONES
Bring it all together into a road map
Who will help you? | X reporters; X IT developers; external partners | |
What are you going to do? | Train reporters in the use of AI tools | |
How will you do it? | Produce XX stories a day that use GenAI headlines and summaries | |
What will you achieve? | Increase reach by X%, increase engagement by X% | |
What will be the impact on the goal? | Increase in subscriptions from users by X% | |
Goal: 10,000 digital-only subscribers by Jan 2026
MODULE C: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Assignment part 6