Pre recession I saw 10+ roles advertised with large firms for employment roles as leaders of internal change functions. In the last 6 months I have seen another five (3 in the same firm, a previous client no less). All of these roles were Director level. One was “Head of Global Change Management” which is better.
I will throw the warning out right away. If you do this in your organization without external influence (that does not mean the person hired bringing in contractors to report to them) you are hiring status quo to support status quo.
There is an unwritten time limit for honest, smart consultants of two years. Anything more than that and the consultant will have gone native. So on the start of day one of the third year these internal change leaders have lost their leverage. An affirming side note here- three of those hired to these roles lasted less than two years.
- 14 of these 15 roles have Director titles. I have never seen an organization where a Director could have enough influence to effect end states (they might get some change going, but… see status quo above). Admittedly no organization is going to bring in a VP (let alone an SVP which it actually would need to be) out of the blue for a new role- talk about busting the status quo. The Global Head title is a good idea (not that it will carry any weight).
- These internal change leaders will be placed right into the organizations performance management system on the first day. Those measures are never the same as the ones needed to get to the end of a change initiative.
- What are the odds that the FOUR layers (Senior Director, VP, SVP and C-level) above them will be receptive to change management (see weakness of Director role above)?
- In our sample organization- a CM Director for each function? What are the odds for cross functional collaboration there (except for a lot of peer to peer cheerleading- at the Director level)?
What will happen in these organizations is a whole lot of energy exerted, a whole lot of “best practices “(never good for CM without high level external influence) moving the ship from one berth to the next without actually heading out to sea, the death of this mini change initiative either by departure of the hire or elimination of the role (it does not have much chance to be effective) and finally a very bad taste in everyone’s mouth for CM.
If I still have your attention and you have the pull to do this right in your organization-
Take a look at my white paper on corporate change management on Scribd, I describe this in more depth. Since bringing in someone high enough to be effective is really not an option, use an external to fill the high-level role (yes they will only be there up to two years but that is probably all you need). They act as a trusted advisor to the C level, SVP’s and work side by side with VP’s. The change role you hire for should be a Senior Director with a heavy implementation emphasis.
