Archive for the “Change Management” Category

Monday’s post was about the types of change occurring in large companies. Today’s is about what stands in the way of organizations implementing large-scale change.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ 11^th Annual CEO Survey asked: “Which of the following people challenges were critical barriers for your organization in terms of achieving the desired benefits?” Frankly, the answers are fairly depressing.

The depressing part is that all five of these barriers are within the CEO’s control. The CEOs are talking about their own people.

Some observations:

• As Bill Gates said, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” He was likely not referring to the pace of change within a company, but the quote is still appropriate. The C-Suite is typically looking for transformational change to occur much more quickly than it actually takes. What might be seen as a two-year project is usually a three-year project. Sometimes the factors above play a role, but sometimes it is just plain old, overly optimistic, bad estimating.
• The Human Resources function has a responsibility to address. If speed, flexibility and agility equal competitive advantage, and senior management skill sets are a significant barrier, HR should be forcing change management skill development.
• The CEOs never mention that they themselves may be part of the issue. They aren’t saying, “Failure to hire appropriately skilled senior managers,” or, “Inadequate time spent on leading change initiative.” The cure for some of these issues could very well be the personal demonstration of change management skills.

Based on casual conversations with just about anybody in the business world today, large-scale change is commonplace. The Society for Human Resources (SHRM) published the Change Management Survey in 2007 and quantified those types of change. Over the two years leading up to the survey, companies with more than 500 employees had the following types of change: 

The key takeaway: change is occurring for any and all reasons. In the words of Benjamin Disraeli, “Change is inevitable. Change is constant.”

The question invariably comes.  “How long will this ‘transformation’ take?”

The client is thinking that, like the children of Lake Wobegon, the employees of this company are above average, so it won’t take long. But whether it is a merger integration, a change in direction or a large-scale reorganization, it almost always takes longer to achieve the vision than the client would like. The reason is simple: it takes time to move a group of people to do anything, and moving a group of people takes work.

Take this example from my vacation: seven people deciding on lunch. The conversation started at 11:30 and covered the following topics: choice of food, best place to obtain, who would drive, relevant allergies, how the choice would mesh with the dinner choice, what would be for dinner, confirmation of location, take out or pick up, getting a menu, what the kids would eat, the need to make a quick phone call, the need to change shoes, cleaning the back seat of the car, forgetting the cell phone, and who would sit in the front seat. The cars left the driveway at 12:10. It took 40 minutes to accomplish the simplest of tasks.

Granted, part of this debacle was the effects of Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill available time. Given that it was vacation, time was aplenty, the adults weren’t truly hungry, and the kids weren’t screaming. The debate stretched on because it could. Unfortunately, decisions at work can drag on as well – and so does the transformation.

So what is a change leader to do? The answer is simple: cut the available time. When establishing goals for a transformation, a leader cannot just set the long-term, visionary goal. A leader also must set milestones along the path, and hold people accountable for achieving the interim goals along the way. The change leader must create a sense of urgency by helping people move from milestone to milestone as quickly as possible. The leader must break the long visionary journey into a series of discrete, focused trips.

Summer vacation has ended, and so has the big trip to see family. During our trip, my brother unintentionally provided a great observation on change.

He has had a lot happen recently. He finally found and married the woman of his dreams and ended his wild and crazy single days. He bought his first home; became neighbors with his mother-in-law and brother-in-law; became an uncle to a severely autistic boy; changed jobs from a big company to a start-up; began working out of the spare bedroom; turned 40; and became a father himself. On top of all this, his wife broke her foot three weeks after giving birth. The poor guy is definitely going through change.

In the middle of a long conversation about all that has happened, his wife called from the bedroom: “David…  John needs to be changed.”

My brother, physically tired, but filled with fresh memories of his recent lifestyle, arose from the couch, and observed, “John likes to be changed a lot more than me.”

His cynical observation is worth putting into a change management context. Unless the current situation is outright unpleasant, nobody will want change. The leader’s job is to show why the new way is better than the current.

In defense of my brother, he couldn’t be happier. He is just going through the process of change, and realizes denial and anger won’t help. He also realizes he can’t really bargain with a woman with a broken foot. If possible, he is happy and depressed at the same time. (Either that, or he needs to be less subtle in bargaining with me to change the diaper!)

As a business discipline, meaningful and effective measurement sometimes proves to be elusive. But, it is an absolute must in transformational change, certainly if there is to be continuous improvement.

Consequently, “Evaluate Effectiveness” is the sixth step in The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE Change Leadership Model^TM, and builds on the measurement work from earlier steps. In this step, you measure the effectiveness of your tactics. Because, typically, you’ll be looking for both business and behavioral results, you’ll need the right balance of quantitative and qualitative insights.

Quantitative surveys can statistically validate what tactics were most effective at creating awareness, understanding and participation in the program. They also can help you assess such factors as the degree of individual commitment to the initiative.

As a partner to quantitative surveys, you also should implement qualitative surveys because they can give you valuable insights on your employees’ thoughts, attitudes, perceptions and emotions that might figure into engagement issues.

However, best practices tells us there is some foundational work to be done before starting any research project, whether it be quantitative or qualitative. This foundational work focuses on a smaller group of employees and will give you the insight to develop a more scientific research and statistically valid survey.

The foundational research should follow four simple steps:

1. Develop a list of three to five open-ended questions. Open-ended questions can’t be answered by a simple “yes” or “no,” and, thus, elicit a more detailed response.The questions should attempt to tap into the basic thoughts and feelings of employees regarding the change. Some possible questions might be:
   

   What do you think about the company’s plans to change?
   What do you understand about the need to change?
   What goal is the company trying to reach with the change?
   What concerns do you have about the change?
   How confident are you in the company’s future?
   What do you think will happen if the company doesn’t change?
   How do you think the change will affect your personally?

2. Target a manageable number of people.For an informal survey as this, aim to contact five to 10 participants. However, do so over a broad range of job levels.
3. Document the responses as best as you can. Pay special attention to words indicating emotion.
4. Analyze the responses and use them as the basis to develop questions for your quantitative or qualitative survey instruments.

Measurable outcomes – on macro and micro levels – are vital to an effective change initiative. So, too, are rewards and consequences for individuals whose behaviors either support or prevent success. This takes us to the fifth step in The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE Change Leadership Model^TM, “Recognize Results.”

You’ll recall that in step three – Plan Programs – you began to outline your strategies, timelines, tactics and measurements to reach the goals you set in an earlier step. It’s during the “Recognize Results” step that those measurements begin to come into play.

Let’s use a simple analogy: a long car ride with a bunch of young children. When you reach your destination, you should celebrate the accomplishment. Whether it is ice cream, a swim in the pool or some other form of reward, it is time to celebrate. Importantly, however, you also should recognize the behavior during the journey. The rule about nine carrots and one stick is probably about right. “I like the way you played with your sister, and I also liked the way you invented the game with the trucks. Next time, I would appreciate it if you didn’t throw the fries at your brother, however.”

It is the same in a change initiative. You will be surprised how far you will actually travel. Celebrate the milestones. Importantly, tell everybody what they are doing well – and do so publicly. Nurture the momentum you’ve started.

The first three steps of The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE Change Leadership Model^TM tell you where you are, where you will go and how you are going to get there. The fourth step is the journey itself. “Implement Initiatives” encourages a deliberate, cautious, metrics-based approach to executing the change program. At its core is a set of approaches to overcome resistance.

Regardless of whether your proposed change is significant or relatively minor, you can anticipate resistance from some or all employees impacted by the effort. In fact, SHRM’s 2007 study on Change Management shows that about 70% of major organizational changes encounter employee resistance.

Your employee’s resistance can have many origins – such as differing on why change is needed, what change is needed or how to go about the change – and take many forms. They may show obvious signs of resistance, as when they strongly object to, or refuse to cooperate with, the change. Sometimes their resistance takes on a more subtle appearance, as when they show apathy. 

It is vital that you, as a change sponsor, not only anticipate resistance from your employees, but have a plan to detect, diagnose and eliminate it. You also must understand why they resist change so that, from the very beginning of your initiative, you can undertake preventative measures to minimize its potential effect on your success.

As discussed in our post about setting goals, gaining input on goals enables people to become aware, understand and participate in the change process. At one client, we used a three-step implementation approach for most tactics. It wasn’t the three steps that were important, it was the fact that people got to participate in the rollout of every tactic that was important. The approach consists of:

• The Laboratory – the laboratory was essentially a focus group. Beyond providing the project team the input on how to adjust messages and timing, it gave the project team the confidence that they would be able to rollout the tactics.
• The Pilot – the pilot was a internally visible test marketing of various concepts. The project team used the pilot to use new presentation material, validate training material and test new support tools. The pilot participants became change agents and ambassadors of the new ways of working. “I was part of the pilot, and it mostly worked. We recommended a few changes, but it can work for you too.”
• The Rollout – the third and final stage, the rollout is the large scale implementation of the change. By this point, confidence is high and resistance is significantly lowered.

Resistance to change isn’t necessarily all bad, as it sometimes can serve a constructive purpose. Allowing employees to express their beliefs and feelings will help you identify where their concerns lie and how to address those concerns to achieve the needed commitment to your change program.

Now that you know what your destination is, you need a roadmap to get there.

The third step in The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE Change Leadership Model^TM gets you that roadmap. During the “Plan Programs” step, you define milestone goals, strategies and tactics to reach your end goals as defined in the previous step in the model. (See “Setting Goals).  

Again, this might seem easier than it truly is. It is easy if you stick to general, directional plans. If you are very specific, measurable and time-bound, it isn’t nearly as easy – but your plan will be better by orders of magnitude. Stating, “Train key employees in the fourth quarter” is easy.  Stating, “Train 85% of all managers and 100% of directors and above in the first two weeks of December” makes the expectations clear for all. You might not get the 85%, but your result will be far better than the first example would provide.

Likewise, your strategies, which are the basic action items to be undertaken in support of the objectives, need to be specific. For instance, just saying that you’ll use communication as a strategy during the initiative isn’t enough. You need to dig deep down to what you’ll communicate, how, when and why.

As might be obvious, measures are the standards by which the success of the strategies is quantified. The key mistake we see is tracking activities, like counting intranet articles. Your measures need to be outcome focused, allowing you to track the degree of behavioral change that’s been achieved. And if the behavioral change isn’t great enough, then your measures also need to tell you why.

One final thought on planning your program, you must establish a system of governance over the program and a method for managing the program. A governance program will provide you and your change team with information and understanding about:

• Who the program’s stakeholders are
• The roles and responsibilities of all parties
• The process for escalating issues

Some form of program management will give you the ability to:

• Track and report program milestone status, resource plans, budget, interdependencies
• Provide transparency to risks, issues, etc.
• Make unbiased, final calls on status
• Ensure actions are executed, issues assigned and addressed and key decisions made; ensuring issues, resolutions and key decisions are communicated
• Ensure consistency of ways of working, team protocols, reporting, in an effort to improve effectiveness and efficiency

A college student researching change management asked us for information on how our company works, and this inspired us to update some documentation on The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE Change Leadership Model^TM. Yesterday, we began posting some of that work – specifically, the assessing steps required to kick-off a successful change initiative.

Rarely do people embark on a journey without knowing the destination. Well it’s the same with a change initiative. According to the Harvard Business School, a compelling view of the future is critical. However, this compelling future view is more than just a vision statement. It’s a shared vision that is desirable, compelling, realistic, focused and flexible, and more importantly, capable of motivating employees to participate fully in the change.

This need for a shared vision takes us to the second step in the model, Set Goals. This might seem deceptively easy. But in fact, it’s arguably the most challenging component of the model because it requires a very deep and clear understanding of all the issues surrounding your change program.

On the surface, it might appear that developing a vision might be a process that requires you, as a change sponsor, to fly solo. In reality, the exact opposite is true. The more you reach out to change participants to help develop the vision, the more likely you will get their assistance in carrying it forward. Involving others often results in gaining their commitment and willingness to help you implement the change ahead.

For that reason, the development of a shared vision is an important activity to undertake at the beginning of an initiative. It can serve as a catalyst to draw change participants together and share the common bond of being able to see – and own – the future success of the effort.

Therefore, once you have “assessed the as-is,” your focus should turn to creating a shared vision for the change program by establishing:

• The way participants will know they have reached the desired end state or the definition of the desired end state
• The scope and parameters of the change
• The reason – or case – for the change
• The risk if the change is not undertaken
• The relationship of the change to the company, industry and/or competitive environment
• The various workplace factors – such as processes, practices, systems and facilities – that will not be affected by the change

However, in designing the shared vision, you should not simply confine yourself to the consensus of change participants’ opinions. To give the effort meaning and scope, the vision must challenge employees to imagine, seek and achieve new heights of excellence. As Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge.” When change participants become aware of what is possible, they begin to realize that challenges can be surmounted, problems can be resolved, and a target can be achieved.

Why does a shared vision need to have the abovementioned characteristics? Because, it:

• Paints a picture of a future that is both desirable and attainable. It motivates participants to focus and achieve their goals to accomplish an end that – in many cases – differentiates their company from competitors.
• Has credibility with employees as it is tethered to the business’s needs and, hence, to a clear target.
• Focuses employees on the activities that have the most value – and discourages them from pursuing more opportunities than they can handle.
• Encourages employees to work toward new levels of achievement as the organization continuously improves its capabilities.  

In today’s business world, no competency is more crucial for a manager than the ability to spearhead change effectively and expeditiously – and in a way that fully engages all stakeholders.

As we’ve already established, change management is a systematic and coordinated approach that can be implemented on an organizational, operational or even personal level to create, lead and manage change. However, to successfully lead any change, one needs to follow a series of six comprehensive steps. These steps are manifested by The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE Change Leadership Model^TM:
 
For the successful implementation of any large project, and especially a change initiative, it is important to perform project steps in the correct order. Thus, the ASPIRE model begins at the top of the circle, with Assess the As-Is.

The Assess the As-Is gives you with some critical components to launch your change initiative:

• The awareness and understanding to explain why change is needed based on current business issues.
• A clear picture of your current state. You might have an idea of how your organization is performing, but thoroughly investigating the as-is state ensures you have the facts and not just guess work.

All this results in a platform for change that helps you establish the sense of urgency – one of John Kotter’s key reasons for failure (see posting Why Transformation Efforts Fail) – to rally support. Support is critical because for change to happen, according to Harvard Business School, 75% of managers must believe that maintaining the status quo is more dangerous than making a change.

In future posts, we’ll discuss the other steps in detail. But one final comment for now: You’ll notice, that The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE model is a closed loop. That’s because it needs to be a repeatable and sustainable process of continuous improvement that brings about meaningful change and continues to drive your organization ever closer to optimal performance. This is an important point to remember as we discuss the other steps.