Why are things changing?

Your business needs to transform. Perhaps you have identified new ideas or opportunities, or perhaps you are reacting to change in order to survive. Now you need to explain the business reasons for the change and set strategic goals in order to avoid initial confusion among your teams. The reasons need to resonate with your audience, so wrap everything in a compelling story that will capture their attention and help gain buy-in.

An executive planning to expand his business once used the analogy of building a bridge to represent the change process. Starting at Point A, there were many important steps that had to be taken in order for his company to reach the new opportunities at Point B.

It’s an analogy that can be applied to any transformation scenario—a useful visual, which helps unite language and translate complex topics into simple terms that everyone can understand.

Having a great idea is not the same as successfully implementing one—there are lots of translations required to figure out whether you are onto something real.

An analogy can help with the process. People will throw question after question at you from their own functional perspective. You need to be able to answer those questions in order to retain credibility and hold onto your initial momentum.

Think about what you might be asked and by whom…

Your executives need to start making clear decisions and setting priorities. Your teams can go through the details to help you decide whether your ideas are feasible and can be put into practice.