Like lots of important areas of business management there is an urge to codify the best practise ‘methodology’ for transformation & change. This urge is an understandable human inclination to try to control our activities towards success; success with the fewest trials and tribulations along the way.
The problem, like many method based approaches, is that ‘Change Management’ is often practised as a highly scripted and sequenced approach. It is all too often seen as just another set of tasks alongside ‘Project management’.
In our world we try to distill things down to the root fundamentals – the essence of enabling success. In that world there are really just two simple, holistic ‘mantras’ we believe are essential:
THE PRIMARY MANTRA – Purpose, Vision, Mission, Ethos
THE SECONDARY MANTRA – Engagement, Readiness, Benefits
Let’s start with the first… the fundamental root…
How many times in a project have you heard someone say
“Remind me, why we are doing this?”
Or worse, everyone is thinking that but afraid to voice it… or in extreme instances, there isn’t a credible answer offered back by anyone.
Ask yourself honestly. Have you never worried if you know the most fundamental thing about any change… the ‘Why’… the ‘Purpose’?
Our experience is that the ‘PURPOSE’ of a business change is usually poorly defined and often really badly articulated to the people who will be affected by that change. What is needed is a clear definition, a clear articulation and clear communications to spread that root reason and rationale.
Now think about how human beings often best describe something to someone else.
As the saying goes, “A picture speaks a thousand words” and a ‘VISION’ is most often defined as a mental picture. The challenge is to describe that mental picture of your future business state and to do so in a way which captures the root purpose/reason and the subtle shading of how that helps the business progress and grow.
Too many people forget to start with the PURPOSE and illustrate how the future state could look with an articulate VISION. Only after these two are clear should one ideally start on defining the strategy, actions and objectives – the MISSION.
We won’t confuse over semantics of one person’s strategy versus another’s tactics. For the intent of a concise mantra we consider that the MISSION encompasses both strategic roadmap and tactical implementation.
Lastly, let’s consider the style, character, mood, vibe that you want to adopt to help the change succeed. There are times when a covert, need-to-know, ethos might be appropriate but in most instances this fails to acknowledge that the people who will have to live through/beyond the change need to be engaged as early as possible rather than the change being dropped on them, from on high and without consultation.
Do you want your teams to feel part of the collective improvement and transformation effort?
Do you want them to want it?
Do you openly and proactively engender an ethos of collective stakeholdership or do you have just reason to believe a more directorial approach is the most likely to succeed. There are no right/wrong answers here… but you do need to decide on the ethos you intend and be conscious that it might be a multi-layered model.
This brings us neatly to the second mantra… and specifically ENGAGEMENT.
How often do IT-based projects and business change in general fail to succeed because the relevant subject matter experts and business process champions were not consulted and even less so actively engaged in designing the future world. In our experience this is the most overlooked aspect of the change process.
Engagement isn’t achieved with a single management briefing to the troops. It requires genuine discussion, debate, garnering of opinion and ideas from across the community which will face the pointy end of the, proverbial, change stick.
Don’t believe that it is as simple as just talking to your people either… it requires a partnership approach to make all involved feel genuinely involved, valued and committed to the change at hand. Various forms of communication and interaction are essential for true ENGAGEMENT that leads to success.
However, once you have genuine engagement there is still a necessity to be sure that you don’t push the metaphoric green button before being sure that there is READINESS to do so.
Readiness is no magic spell but it does require rigour and honesty in ensuring you have completed all reasonable levels of preparation to move to the changed state. Preparation and readiness checklists are an essential aspect to any project plan but are almost routinely overlooked from the perspective of whether the people going through the change are prepared and ready.
Lastly, but by no means least is the often excluded focus on BENEFITS realisation by setting qualitative measurements to define goals and targets. So many organisations set metrics that are too holistic and then wonder why they can’t prove their success or even know if they’ve achieved it in their own heads. The PURPOSE is not necessarily the same as the BENEFITS… although for some technical projects they may be linked.
The real value of a well structured benefits/measurements framework comes from the collective commitment it sets to all involved and the ability to showcase continual progress through each change step. Realistic metrics help engender a sense of positive momentum towards the benefits goals.
Finally, when employing all these elements it is important to endeavour to make it personable in implementation and realistic in ambitions.
All of this requires experience, relevant skills and a common-sense approach.
That’s why project success rests on strong change management just as much, if not more, than project management.
Hope this helps – we are here to assist if we can add value.