I’m here to help your organisation manage change – more…
This is the set of blogs, topics & tips on Change Management, published before I set about writing my book on Successful Change Through Incentives and Trust at the end of 2014. (Please give me your comments & feedback here)
30 Nov 14 Stop or Accelerate in a Crisis?
01 Sep 14 Mandated v. Discretionary change
07 May 14 Belonging brings Engagement
13 Feb 14 Interims: continuity & handover
21 Jan 14 Convergent versus Divergent change
19 Dec 13 The Value of Strategic Plans
17 Nov 13 The Kis n Tell approach in Change Management
25 Oct 13 Change Management as a Company Strategy
12 Sep 13 Explaining change through “what I do counts”
29 Aug 13 Change without strategy = bad consequences
05 Feb 13 When Failure is Good
01 Nov 12 Is Transformation Change better achieved by permanent staff or interims?
15 Jul 12 Surveys and other inputs to strategy
07 May 12 Complexity Management – clean interfaces
05 Feb 12 Transferring between industries
02 Feb 12 Change Management “comes of age”
12 Jan 12 Relating to Outputs, or “what I do counts”
29 Oct 11 Trust & Certainty – two great levers for action
08 Aug 11 Timing is crucial, so are Timescales
29 Jul 11 Room for Steady State
02 Jun 11 Strategy of Change
12 May 11 Fear of the Unknown
22 Apr 11 Change Roles
05 Apr 11 KISS principle
01 Apr 11 LAUNCH Time
30 Nov 14
Stop or Accelerate in a crisis?
This question was raised in a LinkedIn forum: A crisis occurs in the organisation which significantly affects your change programme – what should you do? Here is my response.
STOP will be right if external events have invalidated the business plan for a product or service oriented change programme, although this does not mean that everything gets thrown away – there can be value to salvage, even if it is only lessons learned and experience gained (individually and corporately).
ACCELERATE will be right if the change programme is organisational, behavioural or process oriented, and the crisis has arisen because the programme has not yet delivered, although this does not mean blindly pushing the pedal to the floor – it usually requires re-prioritising to deliver both early wins for stakeholder survival & general morale and the best leverage to alleviate the crisis.
My mantra for a crisis is to think quickly and act slowly. I.e. consider and consult on all the options at high speed, don’t knee-jerk without thinking about the altered frame of reference.
01 Sep 14
Mandated v. Discretionary Change
Mandated change is externally driven, the prime examples being new regulatory or legal requirements, or demands from a parent organisation or even a supplier.
Discretionary change is an internal decision, entirely within the control of the organisation.
Mandatory changes still need a fit-for-purpose vision and all the rigour of change management. They still have options, they still need enrolment (or sign-up, or commitment), perhaps even more so. There’s no difference in the challenges of establishing incentives and trust.
07 May 14
Belonging brings Engagement
The holy grail in managing any change is that ALL those involved or affected are positively engaged in the change. This is rarely the case because it is quite difficult to achieve.
In Prosperity Without Growth, Tim Jackson starts by examining what we mean by, what we expect from, the term ‘prosperity’. He uses the term to mean the well-being or happiness of an individual on the widest scale, rather than the narrow meaning of financial status. I suggest that in the work context, this broader prosperity is partly derived from a sense of belonging, of feeling part of it, of feeling included. Furthermore, people who have a feeling that they belong to a change, or indeed that the change belongs to them, are open to being positively engaged, if not so already.
Belonging comes from an understanding, both of the change rationales and the context for the individual. Delivering this to all participants requires a clear, believable strategy, well-defined outcomes, and great communication through multiple channels. Obvious stuff perhaps, yet often left aside in the flurry of planning, resourcing, financing and re-planning.
So look for individuals who are not engaged and observe them, research them, and talk with them to find out why they don’t feel they belong. Perhaps despite all your excellent communication, it passed them by – a localised blip. Or perhaps it points up a systemic failing in the change programme’s communication strategy.
13 Feb 14
Interims: continuity & handover
There is a factsheet about Interim Management provided by Executives Online on the IoD website. It’s a good, if slightly self-important, summary of what Interims are and how to use them. There is one serious omission in the factsheet, which is important both to the Interim and to the Client using them; continuity & handover.
If a change management interim is to live up to our label, then we should be working in the context of the client organisation. At the start that means getting a briefing on what has gone before and the current status. Unfortunately that is often not readily available, because the client is probably already stretched hence the need for an interim. Therefore the interim should go and find the information, in a non-challenging way, using the opportunity to build up our network of connections in the organisation at the same time.
Most interims are aware of, and quite good at, the need for a comprehensive handover at the end of our assignment. We will give considerably better than we got; that’s the nature of our work. However I suggest that a really good interim will be transferring skills, knowledge and expertise into the organisation all the way through the assignment, whenever the organisation’s resourcing allows it. You might argue that an interim is then a turkey voting for Christmas, in doing themselves out of a job. My experience is the reverse; a client is happier with an interim who is helping to grow the organisation’s skills and knowledge, and ensuring sustainability, as well as getting the work done – and more likely to use that interim or their intermediary again in the future.
21 Jan 14
Convergent versus Divergent change
There is a hugely important distinction between convergent and divergent in terms of the factors for successful, sustainable change, especially in incentives, belonging, and outcome measurements. These are my terms, and I have coined them as a result of experience and analysis across very many changes; some as an outside observer, and some where I have been deeply involved. There will be investigation and discussion and examples aplenty in my forthcoming book on “successful and sustainable change through incentives and trust”. Here are some taster notes.
Convergent change is where the organisations ends up bigger and with a wider scope (typically, although it can be down-sized), building on their history and investment. Although the period of change may take them off their ‘centre-line’, once the change is operational they are back on it. An example is where some skunkworks leads to a modification or extension to the product line. The integration into BAU is a challenge but it’s a nice kind of challenge to have.
Divergent change is where the organisation changes direction or expands non-organically, or breaks up. The outcome is often not so much disruptive as cataclysmic, with a very different organisation shape and function yet still with existing value to be preserved perhaps in terms of brand, or plant, or staff expertise. An example here is when private equity takes on a struggling diversified company, sells off some components and merges some with other companies in their portfolio.
The ways in which you align incentives, create belonging, and measure outcomes are very different in the two paradigms.
19 Dec 13
The Value of Strategic Plans
A survey early in 2013 by Impact Executives asked the question “Considering the increasing pace of change, do you think 3+ year strategic plans still have genuine business value?” The responses from 260 business leaders in companies of all sizes was 70% Yes, 30% No.
In their summary report (IMPACT Issue 29 pp 14-17), Impact concluded that “many medium-term strategic plans are a waste of time, yet companies persist with them”. Interestingly they also report that “30% of respondents say that half the programmes and projects they put in place to help their companies adapt to change, fail”. I can’t help wondering if this is the same 30% who don’t think 3+ year strategic plans have any value?
Let’s just think for a moment what people might be meaning by a ‘3+ year strategic plan’. If by this they mean a vision, or mission, then that’s not a strategy. If they mean a set of statements of desire with no grounding in achievability, risks and options, then that’s not a strategy. Too often the term ‘strategy’ is simply taken to mean ‘high-level’, the sub-text being ‘don’t bother me with the (uncomfortable) details’. The term ‘strategic plan’ is a misnomer, because what we mean to say (I hope) is a plan for executing the strategy. A strategy is an interconnected set of observations, analyses, communications, options, decision points, and actions. It is far more than a simple statement of aims.
I do not disagree with Impact’s view on the value of many organisations’ medium term, so-called strategic plans. However, let’s not infer that we should do away with medium-term strategies altogether, due to the increased pace of change. My assertion is instead that organisations need proper strategies more than ever, to act as frameworks for action, and because developing a strategy is a test of the achievability and risks associated with the required outcomes.
17 Nov 13
The Kis n Tell approach in Change Management
The full article was published by Alium Partners on their IM In Mind blog here, and the first and last paragraphs follow here:
This is about Keeping It Simple and communicating it well. Then people will understand it, or feel they do, and are more likely to support it. If the message is complex and/or lengthy they will be much less likely to understand it and will therefore be more likely to criticise it.
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As a manager we have access to a wider context about the change – our staff have a narrower horizon of information. ‘Belonging’ is a natural human trait, and change threatens that. So it’s important that we provide that broader context for them, so they see how they ‘belong’ to this change and the new structure/role/process that is the outcome.
25 Oct 13
Change Management as a Company Strategy
The full article was published by ReThink Recruitment on their WeThink blog here, and the first and last paragraphs follow here:
The interconnectedness of the functional components within an organisation has a strong influence on how change needs to be managed. Most larger companies are interconnected and interdependent between their functions …[such that] a small change in one function will have consequences across the whole operation.
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Even small companies benefit from having one person with a central accountability for change co-ordination if nothing else. Larger companies with low interconnectedness may establish a change directorate in each semi-autonomous function, with a brief to co-ordinate between themselves. Highly interconnected companies need a company-wide change directorate.
12 Sep 13
Explaining change through “what I do counts”
It is a healthy mindset within an organisation for everyone to understand how their job contributes to the outputs of the organisation, the products or services that are delivered – in other words the value of their job. It’s pretty obvious in sales & marketing, slightly less so in R&D, but what about the facilities staff? It’s a fact that the appearance and ergonomics of a building affect the morale of the staff, and morale is one of those magnifiers for productivity – a slight dip can cause a much bigger fall. Everyone does count.
Every job in an organisation can, and should, be described in a maximum of three stages away from that organisation’s deliverables. If this is in place, it can smooth the path of organising change; you only have to help people understand the ‘delta’ – the change in their role & contribution in relation to the overall well-understood framework. If not, and people are unclear about the contribution of their job anyway, then announcement of a significant change can create hiding in cupboards and wailing in toilets – scenes of distress and anger.
So ensure there’s a framework in place that allows people to see clearly how their job contributes to the organisation’s success … before you start talking about the changes.
29 Aug 13
Change without strategy = bad consequences
Dateline 29Aug13, UK Parliament recalled early to debate the principle of military intervention in Syria. As far as I can see they are going about it all the wrong way. There is no overall strategy, they are simply focused on whether or not to agree that they (we) might take the first step.
Leaving aside the politics and the emotional illogicalities that abound, it is worth examining the strategic aspects of any successful change, which certainly apply in this context. We must have a vision, translated into one or more successful outcomes, preferably a range of acceptable outcomes (possibly with some negatives far outweighed by the positives). These outcomes must be measurable and sustainable. Once that is agreed, often in the context of some timing and resource constraints, we can figure out a roadmap to get from here to there, analyse the risks involved, and then plan the detail of who does what and how much it will cost. Sometimes the detailed analysis & planning shows the vision is flawed or the outcomes unachievable, and we then go round the whole loop again.
Unfortunately our parliament is making the classic error of using a huge amount of mis-directed energy on deciding the first step without considering the overall strategy and all the different ways in which that might be achieved, and how the various attendant risks could be managed. There will be consequences to any military intervention into Syria, beyond the well-intentioned hope of deterring further chemical weapons usage, and of a negative nature. That’s what happens when you don’t think things through.
05 Feb 13
When Failure is Good
The full article was published by Alium Partners on their blog here, and the first and last paragraphs follow here:
Trust is a very important factor when hiring someone and when delivering change of any kind. As an aside, I don’t expect a trusted person to be perfect – if I trust someone it means I have tangible evidence that they are capable, honest and loyal.
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Having been introduced to someone by an intermediary, you need to assess this secondary trust. Naturally the person, and the intermediary, are going to focus on their successes. My contention however, is that you should put more trust in the person who openly and honestly discusses a failure or two, compared to the person who has apparently only ever been a brilliant success. (The person who admits to a majority of failures should be gently shown the door, with the number of the nearest career-change office.) A discussion of what a person has learned from their failures, or partial successes, can be illuminating – it’s not necessarily the nature of the failure, but how they dealt with it and how they talk about their approach to avoiding similar problems in future that can generate the trust you need.
01 Nov 12
Is Transformation Change better achieved by permanent staff or interims?
The short answer is that you need both interim and employee components to effect a change that is transformational (as opposed to incremental or small-scale change). Although the best combination depends on the individual organisation’s situation, I believe the following assertions to be broadly true.
A transformational change, by definition, will affect multiple parts of an organisation and will be high-profile. Effort and money is wasted unless the change is sustainable, and this is particularly true for transformational change. This is not achieved by a single individual – a team is required spanning all affected areas and levels of the organisation.
The interim’s role crucially includes asking the unaskable, challenging assumptions, facilitating new thinking and, of course, driving hard to deliver the business benefits, unencumbered by politics or promotion prospects. The staff roles inevitably include high-level sponsorship & budget allocation, operational & infrastructure support, and ongoing ownership.
The most successful, sustainable changes are achieved through a positive, trusting partnership between senior manager(s) and the lead interim.
15 Jul 12
Surveys and other inputs to strategy
Strategy is about defining long-term objectives and the high-level roadmap to achieving them. In companies this is most often set by the senior management, from their own experience and aspirations. In voluntary organisations, associations, industry bodies and other groups, and even some political parties, it is often set by feedback from the members (in the broadest sense).
One way to gather input from members to form or influence the organisation’s strategy is to conduct a survey. Like most forms of communication, and much of democracy in general, this has its flaws and is open to misunderstanding and misuse. Nevertheless, if the right questions are asked in the right sequence of the right people, then useful information can be gathered that would not be available any other way.
Of course companies also use surveys, typically in marketing, and not so much on strategy as on tuning products and checking customer experience. So what of surveys in change management? They can be very useful to gauge opinions and solicit ideas, and also to create an inclusive ethos where the company staff feel part of the change rather than having it thrust upon them. The risk of course is in allowing expectations to grow that all opinions will be handled and all ideas used, and this must be mitigated by both the message around the survey and the phrasing of the questions.
I make a point of participating in all surveys sent to me, because I know what it’s like to be at the other end, relying on quantity & quality input.
07 May 12
Complexity Management – clean interfaces
A lot of the Change managed by interims is complex – in other words there are many interdependent and interconnecting parts needed to achieve the whole. If it wasn’t complex, we probably wouldn’t be needed.
Complexity introduces risk because it typically means that one person cannot have their head across all aspects of the change, which in turn means that multiple accountabilities are required, along with significant communication and governance overheads. Amongst all this is the opportunity for politics, confusion (wilful or not), dropped balls and duplication.
A vital part of the interim’s role is to manage this complexity, in a way that reduces risk to the four key constraints: time, money, function, quality. One of the best ways to do this is entirely analogous to good software and systems design: clean interfaces. As long as interfaces are well-defined, covering all eventualities, and strongly managed, then the activities either side of an interface can be safely delegated without jeopardising the integrity of the whole structure.
05 Feb 12
Transferring between industries
Many of us interims have transferable skills, however clients are often resistant to the idea.
As a Change & Programme Manager, the skills & experience I have are around strategy, structure, organisation, planning, communication, reporting and measurement. The principles, and a lot of the practice, are the same wherever you are because there are fundamental rules of business and people are people.
Nevertheless clients often insist that such a role must also be a subject-matter-expert. In my view this can be positively dangerous, as the interim manager risks getting sucked into and distracted by the detailed design work and problem solving, whilst losing control of strategy, stakeholders and deliverables. Whereas on the positive side, someone fresh to the industry or functional area can ask the ‘dumb questions’ that challenge preconceptions or assumptions and shake out unprofitable corporate habits.
There’s a useful article on this at Execunet which although focused on permanent hiring does have some relevance to interims also.
02 Feb 12
Change Management “comes of age”
Normally this blog is my thoughts and tips, however here’s a comment from the latest survey of 1,600 Interim Managers by Russam GMS:
“Our analysis of professional disciplines now needs to be altered to accommodate “Change Manager” as a classification. (It’s like a ” coming of age” of the Interim Management industry – from a “filling the gap” perception to a progressive, positive and modern reaction to competitive forces.)”
12 Jan 12
Relating to Outputs, or “what I do counts”
It is a healthy mindset within an organisation for everyone to understand how their job contributes to the outputs of the organisation, the products or services that are delivered – in other words the value of their job. It’s pretty obvious in sales & marketing, slightly less so in R&D, but what about the cleaning staff? It’s a fact that the cleanliness of a building affects the morale of the staff, and morale is one of those magnifiers for productivity – a slight dip can cause a much bigger fall. Everyone does count.
Every job in an organisation can, and should, be described in a maximum of three stages away from that organisation’s deliverables. If this is in place, it can smooth the path of organising change; you only have to help people understand the ‘delta’ – the change in their role & contribution in relation to the overall well-understood framework. If not, and people are unclear about the contribution of their job anyway, then announcement of a significant change can create hiding in cupboards and wailing in toilets – scenes of distress and anger.
So ensure there’s a framework in place that allows people to see clearly how their job contributes to the organisation’s success … before you start talking about the changes.
29 Oct 11
Trust & Certainty – two great levers for action
Think of any aspect of your life where you are doing something new; aren’t you more comfortable, more relaxed if you know what to expect, if you are confident it’s the right thing, if the outcome is reasonably predictable? In other words, if you trust the situation, the people involved, and indeed your own judgement?
It’s no different in business, in fact it’s even more so. People are usually nervous about changes, for a whole raft of reasons – a lot of it comes down to uncertainty, borne out of a lack of understanding about the what, why, where, when, who and how of the change.
There’s a virtuous circle to be had here: if you reduce uncertainty, through clear & appropriate communication, then you will build trust; and if you build trust, through showing and sharing understanding, then you will reduce uncertainty. It all comes down to communication, and that includes tone of voice and body language (or written style and imagery) as well as the content of what is said.
08 Aug 11
Timing is crucial, so are Timescales
Of course all Changes must be completed within the allotted time, even if that was a wild guess or simply a statement of desire by senior management that needs significant correction. The strategy of ‘bad news early’ is never more important than here; timing is about delivering messages to stakeholders at the earliest possible moment when the message will be heard and understood. Choose your moment for receptiveness.
Timescale is a different issue; many of the world’s problems, from population to environment to economy, require a change strategy that is far longer than the term of the people elected to deal with it – their temptation is then to apply tactics until they can exit. Beware of this within the organisation, it’s human nature – for a long-term change, you need to break it into shorter-term deliverables & benefits, and you need to find a way for the overall change strategy to survive management generations.
29 Jul 11
Room for Steady State
Everyone from guru to pundit tells you, and has been telling you for decades, that “the only constant is change” and “the pace of change is ever increasing” and “the need for change is continuous”. Yet the whole point of a change is to move from one ‘state’ to another ‘state’, usually improved in some way.
A change that is not planned, communicated, managed and without defined, measurable benefits will be chaotic and will most likely fail. To measure and reap the benefits from a change there must be a period of ‘no change’ or steady state following it. Beware those who hide behind continuous change as a reason for never delivering and measuring the required benefits.
02 Jun 11
Strategy of Change
Any change that is a significant step for an organisation will have many factors, including external dependencies, stakeholders, resourcing, measurable benefits, acceptable outcomes, timing, brand impact, customer satisfaction and of course cost (money, people, expertise, opportunity).
Strategy is about signing off on an achievable vision, bringing all the factors together, balancing off conflicts, pre-handling issues, creating and pursuing a high-level roadmap, and constantly looking for new threats and objections. Strategy is not concerned with the details of implementation, it is managing the interfaces between the implementation building blocks and maintaining the high-level plan through to successful outcome.
12 May 11
Fear of the Unknown
Most of us are uncomfortable when faced with unknowns that will effect us, and depending on the size & nature of the effect we may be fearful. “Will I still have a job next month” is an unknown that usually makes us fear for our income and our self-respect. Fearful people can act irrationally, and fear tends to spread: it is best avoided.
Fear arising from the danger of mental or physical injury or death is perfectly understandable and deep-rooted – however we are hopefully not dealing with that in change management. Fear of change, however, usually arises from ignorance, and can be mitigated or even avoided by timely consultation and communication. Perhaps the job is at risk, so explain the factors involved, decision process, redundancy & support package.
22 Apr 11
Change Roles
Change is something you may do, or it may be done to you – you may be an instigator, executor, participant or recipient. How you manage a change depends on the role you have. Management is not all about top-down, proactive direction; sometimes upward, reactive management is called for, usually when there has been poor planning, consultation and communication.
So don’t think of change management as only a specific methodology for change managers, it’s more about a set of principles and skills around comprehensive planning (in the broadest sense) and communication (not just one-way).
05 Apr 11
KISS principle
I recall being introduced to KISS very early in my working life by a stubbly manager with an Einstein hairstyle – it was a bit of a shock. “Keep It Simple, Stupid” he would roar at me in a thick Glaswegian accent, and of course he was right. We might remove the invective and call it KIS.
The point is that it’s easy to embrace (unlike him!) yet surprisingly hard to do – we live apparently in a sea of complexity. Part of a Change Manager’s job is to manage that complexity and stop it disturbing the high-level simple view of the vision, the realisable benefits, and the roadmap between the two to which all stakeholders can sign up.