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This is an interesting relationship. Symbiotic, hopefully. Adversarial, sometimes. Good show, always.
When they are the same person
Usually that means layering CM into the role of the project manager. There is a conflict here. A project manager will by nature work to narrow focus to reduce risk. When focus expands it is to satisfy “the list”. They know that the broader the spread the more the risk because that brings in more People. The more time spent influencing people the less spent managing the timeline of to-do’s.
At times, less than our first combo, the CM is tasked with both roles. There is, perhaps, less of a conflict here. A change practitioner will by nature work to broaden perspective because they know the risk inherent with a narrow focus, especially when it comes to People. The more time spent influencing people the less time spent revisiting the to-do timeline.
My suggestion for both- pay more attention to the effect on people than the list itself. The list is dictated by participation. It is very difficult (hence CM as a career) to dictate participation.
When they are two people at the same horizontal
This is not always managed well in organizations. Because of the view that change is something layered over a project CM is usually added too late. CM comes first; PM comes second. If the operating horizontal is the highest the initiative needs to reach they could start close to the same time as long as the planning is CM to PM. Then the symbiosis begins. Now the PM can focus on strict management of costs, risks and tasks (and they could take or help with the role of measurement along the way). The CM can anticipate and address roadblocks in the rollout of the change (and shepard through a lot of those PM to do’s).
When they are two people at different horizontals
This is the potential adversarial combination. If one has better leverage and connection to leaders and that is not transferred to the other it becomes a battle between “this has to happen now” and “I can tell you why it will not”. When this combo is CM higher and PM lower it has a real chance of working. It is the change practitioner that needs ultimate (whatever that means for the particular initiative) exposure in order to get ahead of people risk. With that exposure and a jump start on the PM work the CM can make project management much easier for everyone involved. This can also be an excellent mentoring arrangement to help mold a version of paragraph one.
If the PM is high and the CM is thrown into the middle of the organization it is… like 90% of the engagements with CM involved. This is the status quo arrangement that makes change management an exercise in futility. It takes a knowledgeable, understanding, flexible PM to work in this arrangement. It takes a senior experienced connected to people CM to orchestrate the partnership. If there is any hint of control of the CM on the part of the PM then there will be an adversarial combination.
In general the change management piece must be guided with a broad perspective which then connects to specific moves forward on the timeline (including specific tasks). The project management piece operates best when it can dispatch talent to task and know, within reason, how long it will take to check off the to-do. If you can get that in the same person (and they will still have time left to sleep) great. Just remember-
CM early and broad.
Changes in organizations are approached in two ways. One is to frost the change over existing operations as an add on. The other is to set the change off to the side and “manage it” as a new and separate thing. They both have their pros and cons.
Layered Change
Layering change over existing operations works well when process and structure need to be tweaked or overturned. Layering makes it easier to have transition periods, to train and adapt stakeholders in their true environments and to set up for sustainability and a foothold for the change.
Change that is layered can also be focused on specific areas or functions. That focus can then be repeated. So layering works well with piloting. Because layers by nature build to a whole, each successive wave can gain improvements from the previous attempts. The succession possibility also makes this a way to train internal leaders on the change process.
Layered change is fantastic for year to year smaller changes in operations itself. Every little thing in an organization is a change (if not the organization ceases to exist or ends up existing under another umbrella), but they do not all have to be labeled as initiatives, programs or even projects. Layering from year to year helps with a smooth organizational change process.
Peeled Change
Is change that is guided separate from day to day operations. This means resources tend to be heavily external. Which is smart since peeling necessarily means taking away. That taking away can be a positive for internal resources if it is meant to train and develop. Focusing on the process of change can be a powerful addition to a young leaders arsenal and by extension the organization. Peeled change has little that gets in it way, but it can get in the way, because any change will at some point need to become operational.
Internal resources are not typically employed full time to large change initiatives- even when they are peeled. This creates a push and pull for resource time usually won by operations over change. If the separation and reintegration of those resources is managed by the change process though this can be a great way to keep the change management crisp and efficient.
Too many peels on the ground gets a little slippery though…
As a senior leader it is important to look at your strategic initiatives, programs and projects with an eye toward their connection to day to day operations and culture. The tighter the hold, or put another way, the less transformational, the more layering makes sense. The questions to ask are-
How drastic is this change?
How much do we want the work we do around managing this change to integrate into our fabric?
At what point and in what way do we insert the change (knowing there will be disruption to operations)?
When it exists is like a sponge. It pulls in until it fills to capacity.
This is something to consider, leverage and acknowledge for change management. It is not necessarily something to be fed and nurtured.
What is Loyalty in the context of change management?
Loyalty to the cause
This is a connection to the core purpose of the change that creates interest, motivation and action. A technologist may quickly be on board for an IT implementation (or not of course). Someone sitting in HR may jump right on board for a human capital initiative. A senior executive may pencil in more and more free space on their calendar for dialogue and exchange for a program that touches their function.
Loyalty to the company
This is the version we think of when we see the word loyalty tied to work or workplace. It might infer staying power in terms of retention, it might mean atmosphere and culture, it might mean the tenacity with which people stick to goals/strategy/plans. It might even be the level of evangelism from participants extending outside internal operations-social marketing.
Ongoing connection
Loyalty that is truly strong is ongoing. Loyalty has a distinct time connection and a measure of strength over that time frame. Ideally it is increasing strength-measured differently for each individual and/or stakeholder.
Which brings me to the sponge.
Loyalty has both a pull and a maximum limit. The expectation of loyalty in change management often creates that maximum limit quickly. This is the common pattern of project/change management- shove something in, assume loyalty and get-…wait for it…Resistance.
Thankfully loyalty has a rosy side too. The pull. The more things (our things being change) make sense and connect in some way the smoother and more powerful the pull. Loyalty tends to spread easily once the pull begins. Charismatic leaders can help with the pull- someone has to communicate the “make sense”. The pull tends to produce evangelists who can increase the speed and, at times, the capacity of the pull.
When it is strong loyalty should be acknowledged within the change process. The acknowledgement can be kudos in communications, illustrations of commitment, examples of time saved through dedication and collaboration, etc. This is the right approach for feeding/nurturing/leveraging loyalty.
What does not always makes sense is rewarding loyalty.
Think of the expectations airline miles have created. Think of the backlash about blackout periods. Rewarded loyalty has a scale of expectations that increases quickly which decreases loyalty if not continuously fed.
Loyalty’s dark side is group think, retention of the lowest common denominator and potentially reduced innovation. In terms of change management the dark side is models and approaches that make incorrect assumptions or are based on internal best practices. The way we do it, a form of cultural loyalty, may not always be the most efficient or effective (effective adding a human capital component).
Keeping all this in mind, change management can build loyalty by rewarding skill and showing how that skill connects to end states and the health of the change entity. If compensation structures do the same bonuses can be added that tie to change participation.
Kudos always work. They work because they are after the fact and specific. Incentives are the opposite, before and general. They do not work so well because of the expectations they create.
When it comes to loyalty, specifically reward rather than generally encourage.
Because it creates a chance for congregation, for display of achievement, for shining a light on talent, for the noise of a communal group, for laughter, for conversation and for acknowledgement. A parade is a good analogy for understanding Change Management.
We have a Fourth of July parade here in Danville that attracts 40,000 people (almost the same as our population). It is a typical local parade. Lawn chairs are lined up the night before 2 and 3 deep for over a mile. Proof positive that everyone loves a parade.
Change benefits (and moves along smoother and faster) when tradition and people are recognized in the process of changing. A parade happens at the same time each year. Some participants are there for years at a stretch. Some go in and out. Some show up just once. In long standing parades there is an order to the procession. But who’s to say there is not a better sequence?
There will be whispered comments about this year versus last year, the parade not being the same as it used to etc. This is the continual conversation that goes on with the tradition/change interaction.
Within the parade are displays of achievement, participation and accomplishments. An annual meeting can do the same with the last years change. When called out as change and included in a change entities process the displays can become more of a cultural acknowledgment and less of a display of feathers.
Celebration is important in the change process. Tying that celebration into the fabric of an organizations culture can help with transitions from yesterdays tradition to tomorrows change.
 Just the fact the there is a role for CM on any given initiative, program or project is a plus. It sends a signal to participants that the transition from one thing to another is complicated and difficult enough to warrant sheparding by a person rather than just through communication or project management.
As a Conduit
A CM resource external, internal or a designated leader will consider it their responsibility to make connections that are obvious, but for some reason are not happening. Leader to stakeholder and vice-versa, function to function, peer to peer across functions, internal to external resources to name a few.
As a Leadership Guide
This an extension of the conduit plus. It is difficult in organizations to get valuable feedback as a leader and to give the same as an employee/stakeholder. The CM often falls into the role of coach/mentor/advisor between the leading and the hands on work.
As a Communication Lever
In the same third party sense the communication for a change process can weave in operational interaction in a safer and more approachable manner than mandates and barked orders.
As an Organizational Assessment avenue
The process of gathering information for the end state descriptions reveals a wealth of data about the organization. Companies rarely have an avenue for objectively evaluating their people, structure and process. CM (with a good practitioner) shines a light in all three areas.
As an Operational Builder
If Change Management is an entity within the organization all of the above combined with the regular change management activities and expectations can address efficiency, collaboration, cross functional accountability and overall connection between strategy and implementation.
In keeping with my practical, as efficient as possible approach, I have to ask Why? Why the push lately for metrics, ROI and just plain justification? Maybe we are on the long tail of the same pattern from HR, OD, Human Capital (did I miss any?)…Somehow there is a group think around the need for metrics for the “people side”.
You would think that is coming from the business focused metrics guided senior executives. Only one snag- from one career and one CM practitioner- in my 13 years working with over 70 firms I have never had a senior leader ask for metrics. And I, wisely I think, do not suggest them.
The last thing I want is for the insufficient CM budget to be stripped further by metrics design and gathering. Although if you are a client reading this a full budget with the opportunity to design the metrics would be nice…
Let’s formulate the front end.
There are two types of CM to consider. One is the kind that gets inserted or overlaid on the project process, the other my horizontal/circular view of change. For mine ongoing operational measures can often be used since large scale transformational change must be weaved into the organizations overall process. For the other the only true measures would be speed to get change accomplished and effectiveness against inevitable slowdown.
Both have problems. It is not fair to use operational metrics when you are mixing in more work and effort. The “more” slows things down while the CM helps get to the new state, but they likely balance out. Speed only works if you have an equal initiative to measure against. Same with facilitating slowdown.
CM at its core is a discipline that helps corral and funnel work and effort toward the accomplishment of a business goal. A good measurement of that would show that less time was spent on understanding, learning, collaborating, dialoguing and planning than would have happened without CM. I personally would value subjective measures taken from stakeholders (senior leaders being part of that category). Surveys and questionnaires can turn those responses into measurements. The ask why approach must be critically evaluated since those tools are favorites of consultants looking to expand their revenue base (and are, apparently, crucial for that group looking to legitimize).
Now my commentary.
If assumptions are wrong, then approaches are tainted, which makes results less than optimal, which begs the question, Why measure a substandard delivery? Previous posts of mine have pushed the idea of separating CM from typical performance measures. This metric group think is a perfect example of the desire to monitor and control, coincidentally one of the foremost roadblocks for change.
This is also another example of pushing CM deeper into the organization since it is analysts that will typically do the work of actual measurement. This is a connection and use of time that is essential to successful CM. The work of connecting to and gathering metrics would (I avoided using will although human nature as it is that is the right word) take away valuable connection time with stakeholders. So it becomes a time issue as well as a money issue-two strikes. And, of course, that time now potentially effects the actual metrics and makes CM look less successful- nice loop.
Thanks to the facts that CM is placed to late and too low, that stakeholders get it and organizations untouched by botched change are rare, practitioners and their leader clients are forced to outright say or infer that, “this time will be different”. And so we have a task built in to the very beginnings of the change process to gather the historical record of Leadership and/or Change Management’s success and failure.
Here is how to get close to supporting that promise-
- Find out why previous efforts were bad or good
- Wind back the clock on this initiative (see fact one above)
- Craft and deliver an introductory communication that clearly lays out upcoming interaction
- Connect with the leader(s) responsible for bullet one
- Mentor and model from day one
You are trying as the CM practitioner and/or the owner of the change to acknowledge the previous attempts, grab a dose of humility for second chances, show your expertise and command of the process and illustrate that change, changes, as you go along.
Change starts with an idea, which must be exchanged with others, in order to tie into the bigger organizational picture. That tie-in and exchange creates an end state description that can be shared and then acted on. Since change really does have a beginning and an end, however vague and wispy the two may seem at times, disbanding of the participants is the finale. Endings are always the beginning of something else though, keep that in mind as a leader.
Idea
The beginnings of the change. This could be innovation, noticed gaps in talent or technology, mergers, needed culture adaptation or new executives, etc. All change starts with one person somewhere, but that start is quickly communicated to others. When the second person becomes involved change has begun. Keep in mind rejection of ideas has just as much bearing on future change processes as acceptance.
Engagement
Connecting with individuals to build out the idea. Each new connection spreads the wave of influence-positive or negative- a little farther in all directions. Theoretically this stage could be skipped. That would assume that every idea was good, that the innovator had pretty amazing leverage and that money grew on trees. This is an area crucial for senior leaders. It builds a foundation of trust and connection and it is a stage where the rest of the organization acts as the audience (I could mention tomatoes here…).
End State Description
A preliminary description. The idea and initial engagement help to start the forming of an end state picture. Depending on the complexity of the idea and change necessary the actual description may need reinforcement from experts in and out of the organization.
Expertise
Take the money you spend on readiness assessments and use it to connect with specific individuals and groups who hold the knowledge to support, question and tweak the description of the end state. Do this well and you may just have some old fashioned champions set up for later. This is the spot where you can develop inclusion for the right reasons- skill and knowledge, not the wrong- internal politics.
Socialization
Right before all the chickens begin to run is a time to socialize the steps that have happened to this point. This is the time to contract with the organization for the change process. There should be dialogue here (brown bag lunches come to mind), virtual connections to the process (wikis, intranet, newsletter, etc), explanations of how the change process will connect to stakeholders and how time, place and context will be illustrated, expectations and leadership introductions (and ideally some personal connections and promises about dealing with the change and behavior). With the right mix this is where languaging takes hold.
Project Work
PMO’s, mid level leader grooming, functional requirements and expectations, the tasks, the lists, the to-do’s, the timing, the “when’s” fall here. The old fashioned version of CM can grab the reins and go now. All the previous work would be guided by a senior CM practitioner; now is the chance for mid level CM consultants to shine.
Disband
Ideally this is after Adoption. This is immediately after gathering together any metrics that were chosen early on. This is the spot to talk about what went right and not. This is the official debrief, slash, celebrate spot. And do celebrate- there is never enough of that with change.
In truth I am naive since most organizations take the green PMO box and slide it to the left thus blacking out this whole post. You wouldn’t do that as a leader would you?
Change Management at its core is a process of describing something new and different and connecting it to time and work. People respond to explanations, descriptions and new learning in different ways. That may have to do with learning styles http://tinyurl.com/2fnseg2, with interest, with workload, with promise for the future, with selfishness or with altruism. Sometimes it just has to do with catching them at the right time or off guard.
As a change agent with a full tool belt you will need to be able to draw pictures, make sounds, fill in charts, collaborate, illustrate (in pictures and words) and interact. As a client I would not hire a change agent who did not have a respectable command of-
Adobe’s Master Collection or its equivalent. http://tinyurl.com/csn4sl
Microsoft Office or its equivalent. http://tinyurl.com/yexjp89
Captivate or other training design software.
A command of CSS and HTML (not tools, but skill)
A design sense and an understanding of how design influences, grabs attention and shows concepts and connection.
The above timeline is a simple example of drawing a picture to describe, show time, place and relationship. It could be stand alone, part of a training module, the basis for changing communications or a design piece to provide structure to a written description.
The line represents time, the colors passage of both time and task, brighter colors items of significance, larger dots to show current time and place, even a pallet of colors to show teams, functions or responsibility areas.
To put all this together as a framework for guiding change takes a surprising amount of technical and people skills…
and the right tools.
Change Management is often a race to stay ahead of the setting sun. By setting sun I mean demise of the initiative itself. I am running out of fingers to count the times I have been involved in or seen the complete stop of major initiatives (most in the 7 figure + range).
Here are a few reasons why this happens-
- Change Management is added too late
- Strategy does not connect well to resources and motivation
- Strategy is not present, misguided or unrealistic
- Timeline is unrealistic
- The people are unrealistic (yes sometimes there is TRUE resistance- see bullet one through four)
Change Management is often seen as a training, communications, speed the project along discipline. I cringe when I see something like “provide training, communications and accelerate project implementation”. Cars accelerate.
As a result of this perspective (one seen in both practitioner and client I might add) change fits at the beginning of the implementation of the change, somewhere a little after all of the planning, all of the designing , all of the making of the task lists. Which is exactly where it falls 99% of the time (my stat). And one step behind the setting sun.
To make this worse, and effectively make Change Management even less relevant, the practice of CM is used as an overlap to other processes. The perfect example is placing the machinations (word chosen wisely-CM deals with people) of CM under the watch of the project manager. Or in the hierarchy having CM report to HR, or IT, or Finance or any function.
In both these cases, perspective and placement, CM will be well behind the setting sun on every initiative.
Unrealistic timelines. I will leave the timing of tasks to a project management/operations discussion. It is the timing of the coordination of people and their human nature luggage that is important here. With the change process weaved into the whole from true beginning to end state there is actually is the possibility of speeding up timelines. But that will only work when the original timelines included that human nature component. Which we know rarely happens because CM is added well after that planning stage.
Strategy.
This is corporate strategy I am referring to not the strategy of implementation. Many consultants and their clients confuse the plan for implementation as strategy. Use “strategic implementation” and you might be able to language and separate the two meanings. They are different and stakeholders are not only well aware of the difference, but confused when leadership and engagement leaders do not know or see the difference.
Corporate strategy is the vision of the leaders, the possibilities in the current (or near future) environment, the direction of the organization as a whole, the business objectives on a high level to get to profit, success and sustainability. Every one of your initiatives should, and most certainly does, connect in some way with at least one part of this definition. Why is it then that there is no thread or glue to make this connection?
If you have operational change management in your organization you might actually be able to have a component that looks like the current approach to change that makes sense and works. If you understand, as a leader, that change management is about the connection of work to vision and vice versa then you will provide the avenues for that connection to happen. If you understand that the moment of the “idea” for an initiative is about the time Change Management needs to be added…
…you just might get a polar version of a day where the day is long and the sun sets right at the end state.
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