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Communicating for Change Management serves three purposes- to motivate, to guide and to provide place.
Place
We are going backwards from my list to illustrate a point. Most change management methods, and the consultants who practice them, move forward in time with my list. Not so effective. Not so effective because place gets lost in the mix. “Place” is the work of an individual in relation to the whole. When communicated well each stakeholder can explain how their work fits in to the bigger picture, how it connects to the next person and how it leverages the work of the previous stakeholder. At any given time place could mean a lot of things with a lot of connections. It is up to the change team and its leaders to make those connections make sense.
Guide
Having done the job of placing work at a spot in time, communication must address how the whole process moves forward. Actually processes, because there is the list of things to do, the project management, and there is the transition from the now to the end state. That may mean behavior changes, new or different technology, additional or changed interactions, perspective that is not status quo etc. Change communication must help explain these two processes and connect people, individual stakeholders, to the events along the way both to get the work done and to ground a human connection to what may be overwhelming change.
Motivate
I am guessing the cheerleaders on the sideline have little to do with the effort put forth by the players in the last minutes of the game. Change works the same. Cheering, amping up a sense of urgency, creating tension may start the play (and our change) fast and furious. The shelf life for that effect is short. Motivation, the kind that moves people forward by choice and deep down commitment is the third purpose in line. With place and clear guidance (read reason and a measure of safety/assurance) motivation appears on its own. Communication within the change process then becomes an exercise in illustrating the good, the positive, the examples of overcoming, effectiveness, commitment and extra effort by individuals
As a stakeholder if I cannot explain my exact spot at any given time, if I am not aware of what is to come and what has passed and if I am not given a reason to connect to the change in my own way, change management has failed.
Things begin to pick up for business (less fear, willingness to spend hoarded cash, new competition appearing from garages- not sure which is the cause, but things are picking up in the change arena) and the revisiting begins. Change anew. Except some of it is the programs that were cancelled a year or more ago. How is restarted change different?
History Doubled
The ability to move change forward is always effected by previous attempts (bad or good). To start something that did not finish on the first attempt is potentially tempting fate. If, in our current case, the economy can be blamed for the earlier stop, starting again just slots right into the business environment.
Care must be taken with communication for a restart because, excuses aside, a mistake was made. Sure, as a leader you do not think so – it was all part of the plan. The problem is to stakeholders it must not have been a good plan. Now the Pandora’s box of trust, faith in leaders (which is a specific kind of trust), I told you so’s and the appearance of mishaps is opened.
Address the double history issue with crystal clear as transparent as possible communications. You might want to recheck and possibly rethink the new plan- the last thing you want is two historical mishaps.
Second Chances
Everybody believes in second chances. You have one if you are restarting change. Some of your work may already be completed. Redo work can be done better. Mistakes can be corrected. And acknowledged. Which leads me to the “be careful”.
By necessity taking this second chance is assuming empathy. There is a difference between restarted change and any other- the empathy has to flow from the stakeholders to the leaders. Empathy should (I always hesitate to use this word, but it fits now) go from leaders to stakeholders, that is a given. To go both ways sets up an interesting dynamic. Maybe I should have said an effective dynamic because the core of relationships connected to accomplishments is shared empathy. Give it a double dose on your second chance restarts.
Rebuilding is impressive
Taking what you have, envisioning something different and better and then layering in additions is smart change. As with any remodel matching the old lines to the new can be difficult. Because that is an obvious component of rebuilding/remodeling everyone is impressed when the result is seamless. With your restart this is an opening for a view of the end state that includes overcoming and tackling obstacles.
For that to make sense as an explanation there must be honesty, transparency and camaraderie around stops and starts and the end states they can create.
With that you can restart and rebuild at the same time.
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.
Stuck with CM too low and too late as a leader or practitioner?
If you are sitting in that spot you probably have little control or influence over corporate strategy, the strategy for the change rollout (if there really is one), the ownership of the initiative, the accountability of leadership tied to the initiative or overall timing. If you are interested in doing things “right” you are in for a long haul.
What you might want to try is to be influential, make a difference, in the speed and acceptance of the change. At its core that is what CM is about. So you are simply leveraging your core competency.
Some suggestions:
- Strip away extras (that suck up budget) like readiness assessments
- Focus on descriptions of a changed environment rather than end states
- Go with “because” as an answer to why (I know cringe factor there) and be helpful and available
- Communicate context to the timeline (rather than the strategic bigger picture)
- Accept that CM can be a project management add on and then practice CM (reach out to leaders, mentor, distribute supporting information to grow awareness, illustrate cross functional collaboration, etc)
Part of the reason CM is approached the way it is with most models and most organizations is because of the thrown in the middle pattern. Initially the idea of CM was to speed along projects. It had an “insertion” basis and so the gurus developed models to address that client need.
Things have changed; stakeholders get it and expect more.
Organizations made up of lots of people and lots of group think move slowly on the change scale.
I am beginning to think that to push that boat takes organic change management in the middle, with leaders, with new employees added to each and every change and operational tweak. If speed is the final measure then addressing that first and making a difference on a smaller scale may be the light for tackling the bigger, wider change as a web approach.
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 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.
High level change management has two or three spots in the timeline/process where I always feel it is essential to call a conference room late-morning-into-lunch meeting to wrap our arms around the big picture. I do not take forcing the invite lightly. One of the reasons I can be bold enough to take a chunk of first or second horizontal executive time is that an interesting thing always happens…something new, something potentially “viral” (in a good way), something specific to the client organization appears. It appears in the form of a new word (languaging at its core) a diagram, chart or picture.
One of those meetings (4 hours long) at a Fortune 50 firm created all of the above- a chart, a diagram and a picture. It was a picture that bore a striking resemblance to a camel. “It looks like we drew a camel”, I said on our sandwich break… that connection, that potential analogy, that unique to that organization picture, was all it took to begin creating a model. You might call that the second step of languaging.
The third step, now I hear a year later, after an all hands presentation by the client, was a wildfire spread of the analogy to different parts of the company around the world. Which has since morphed into functional and regional interpretations of the camel analogy, chart, picture and model.
It is nice that a camel can go a long time without water, can stand extremes of heat and has a face that takes a little time getting used to. All great languaging leverage points. Those up and down humps are also helpful to illustrate passage of time, levels of effort and participation. Carry that a little farther and you could say certain parts of the camel are better at carrying a heavy load (and certain camels are stronger).
This type of analogy languaging has happened a couple of time with clients… Maybe we should count them as deliverables…
I tell my kids, “always check your math”.
In this equation the augend and the addend are less than the sum.
Let’s take a look at where this equation fails in real life.
It is amazing how fast organizations (and, sorry leaders too) communicate before they actually have something to communicate. Or worse, before they check the message.
Communications is absolutely essential to the the CM equation, but there must be a plan. A plan for developing the message (the failed equation spends an inordinate amount of on time line planning). We are missing end state description, place and time, connection to process and acknowledgment (and possibly feedback loops and mistake call outs- there are mini equations built into the whole).
Training is also absolutely essential. It is fairly obvious for technology implementations and skill switches (or add-ons) but less so for cultural and transformational change. It is safe to say, IMHO, that every change initiative has a learning, mentoring, knowledge transfer about the process of change for people and business.
So…
Where ST is skill training, CMT is change process awareness and KT is knowledge transfer = A good start toward the training category.
Where ES is end state description(s), P/T is place and time communication for task and role, PC is process communication (how and when) and ACK is acknowledgment (of effort and movement toward the end state) = A good start toward the communications category.
And then I tell my kids math is never as simple as it looks…
Quick wins is another term that keeps spinning around.
For change management a quick win would establish trust and confidence between those leading the change and those who will be changed. That is the people side.
On the business side the quick win would fill in an objective that is an important piece of the overall change process. It would provide a pat on the back for all that is connected to the end state and the change in general.
Anything that clarifies the process, further describes the end state and or creates new positive energy and collaboration can be considered a quick win.
What no contrarian?
As with many things that have to do with people doing “business” throwing a label on things can often be detrimental. Quick wins can create a sour taste because the definition of win can be different for each stakeholder (see “pat on the back” above- people love to pat their own backs…). Quick wins with a sour taste in relation to change management are often a pat on the back for how well the change team did something. Nice for camaraderie, but not necessarily a tie to the whole and the end state.
Quick wins can be a little like potato chips. Think one will satisfy you? Soon the whole bag is gone and you are too sluggish to accomplish anything. For CM that looks like a focus on quick highs and short term perspective. This is not a short term process. If you can get your quick wins to slot into the longer process and be smart about how you leverage the actual term (keeping in mind historical change approaches that view the term from a shallow perspective and the tweaked history of the term in general) they can be an option in building the change process.
The practice of Change Management (this is the “what I have seen” view) is missing a clear perspective of root causes. Admittedly finding the core of organizational difficulties, not just the work of CM practitioners but also day to day operations, is not easy, takes time and requires insight and empathy- a tall order. An order that should be filled though, because symptom chasing solves little, lays a bad path for the next go around and diminishes the ability of CM overall.
Here is an example-
A method focuses on resistance of stakeholders. It lays out a series of communications, surveys, assessments (readiness which strikes me as the silliest of terms if you are automatically expecting resistance) and pretty pictures to represent the data. The data is “interpreted” and then the practitioners follow their pattern of educating on “the change process”, “gaps” (CM methods love to include gaps), transitions (ditto for this) and the five stages (or 8 steps or 10 boxes) that stakeholders must and will adhere to/pass through to accomplish the change. Everything that is gathered and collected illustrates symptoms, results of the change difficulty.
To get anywhere and to truly be successful at the end state causes need to be addressed.
Short of me (and it is truly an uphill battle) I have never seen a practitioner who takes that information gathered (because despite its poor perspective and damaging assumptions does gather some good data- I love data as much as the next practitioner) and uses it to address the root causes that have created the symptoms that produce the “resistance” that live in the house that Jack built…(I couldn’t resist).
Very often (here’s where I would like to have some good data) strategy-poor or lack thereof-is a root cause. Equally powerful is a performance system that runs counter to the objectives of the change. Culture that has not been molded to be innovative or at least receptive to enhancement can be another stifling root cause.
Therefore the first step of any major horizontal, “transformational” (if you like that synonym) change is to look with a magnifying glass (at the first horizontal I might add- might as well start the real change from the get go) at strategy, the performance reward equation and the good and not so of the organizations culture. That view through the looking glass will illuminate symptoms before they even appear sans expensive, time consuming and often detrimental data gathering.
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