The business world has arguably seen more disruption in the last nine months than in the last nine years, bringing new and urgent demand for change. Initiatives are being launched by the dozen, adoption can’t happen fast enough, and the stakes are higher than ever. In the midst of a Covid-induced recession, and with some industries on the brink of extinction, change isn’t about fine-tuning — it’s existential.

But traditional change management — often characterized by heavy process, lengthy timelines, and clunky rollouts — won’t cut it right now. As organizations fundamentally rethink their product and service portfolios, reinvent their supply chains, pursue large-scale organizational restructuring, determine on the fly how to operate in a virtual world and rebuild to correct systemic racism from the ground up, the type of change management required in this moment is quick, agile, and (in many cases) virtual.

In the article that follows, I borrow principles from agile software development processes and draw on Korn Ferry’s experience helping clients navigate change in recent months to reinvent the change management playbook. When facing crisis-driven change, consider these modifications to accelerate and streamline your process:

[Here are three recommended modifications.]

Declare your change vision.

The first step in well-known change management models is often to “create a sense of urgency.” It’s safe to say that 2020 did that for us. Depending on the change you are pursuing, you may be able to skip straight to declaring a change vision that outlines a compelling vision of your future state, including the principles and values that will guide your response and provides specific actions you’ll take. While details are preferable in these types of statements, companies should be confident they can deliver on any stated commitments in the change vision. 

Moving quickly will mean that not everyone will be able to weigh in, and your change vision won’t be perfect. But it will make clear where you stand, put an end to any speculation and buy you time (though not much) to develop a plan. Companies without a clear vision will spend too much time fielding stakeholder inquiries instead of tending to the necessary changes.

Empower the people who are best positioned to drive change from the beginning. 

In times of crisis, senior leaders are almost always preoccupied with crisis management. CEOs can accelerate the change process by empowering a group of trusted experts deeper in the organization who can be redeployed full-time against the challenge at hand.

Companies should also look to build an external network of advisors who can quickly be tapped to weigh in on business threats where in-house expertise doesn’t exist. Having these individuals at the ready will reduce your response time and lend credibility to the plans that are created. Your group of experts should include a change management advisor.

To eliminate friction and delays, the group of internal and external experts will also need to quickly align on guiding principles and open a physical or virtual “war room” to drive collaboration.

Encourage self-organizing teams to supplement your efforts.

When time is of the essence, these teams can help tackle challenges and opportunities as they see them, including those that aren’t visible to leadership but are critical to supporting the change agenda.

For example, one such group emerged at IBM as employees transitioned to working from home earlier this year. They took it upon themselves to establish guiding principles to help make work and life easier for themselves and their colleagues, collaborating with business and HR leaders to evolve their efforts into a company-wide pledge. Within a matter of days, thousands of employees posted their individual pledges to an internal social media channel and CEO Arvind Krishna shared his publicly on LinkedIn. This grassroots effort likely did more to accelerate the company’s transition to productive remote work, and on a faster timeline, than any corporate-led initiative could have.

Similarly, many race-based employee resources groups self-organized following George Floyd’s murder to launch grassroots efforts — from hosting “difficult conversations” to lobbying for Juneteenth to be formally recognized with a day off — that complemented top-down diversity and inclusion activities.

Use internal social channels and influencers to drive employee awareness and engagement.

For organizations operating virtually, internal social media and collaboration platforms are likely the fastest and most effective way to drive understanding of your change efforts and recruit the cadre of people who will champion the transformation.

If your CEO or other leaders are not active on these platforms, help them get up and running. One CEO that came under attack for non-inclusive practices following the racial justice protests recently began posting weekly Slack updates on his organization’s transformation efforts. This more informal channel created greater authenticity, enabled two-way dialogue and made it possible for the CEO to assess employee sentiment as the change efforts unfolded.