What Is Change Management?
Change means to make something or someone different. Change management is an approach to managing changes within organizational systems. It involves formal processes to ensure those changes are implemented and sustained with time. Transformational change is usually sudden and radical and is generally influenced by external business factors such as economic conditions and technological disruptions. Incremental changes conversely, happen over time. Think of building legos or stacking blocks.
Components of Change Management
I found a useful change management tool kit from UC Berkeley and the rest of this article will explore these components. Their tool kit was adapted from Linkage, Inc. “Leading Change and Managing Transitions”, 2015, pp. 8–11
According to the authors, these are the components of effective change management (listed in order) :
- Case for change
- Compelling vision
- Communication
- Manage barriers
- Manage resistance
- Show Progress
- Reinforcement
Neglecting one of these areas will result in sub-optimal results.
Case for Change:
If you don’t make a strong case for change in any setting or system, there’s bound to be indifference from those impacted by, and required to change.
How to Make a Case for Change
Making a case for change is communicating the change project’s relevance or value. It’s a campaign that is effective when adapted to the communication preferences or styles of the environment you are working in. Some teams prefer memos while others prefer organization-wide meetings and group discussions. You’d have to decide the best way to present your case. However, these are some key areas to include when building your case.
Start With the Problem.
Starting with the problem highlights the need for change. It tells your stakeholders that your case is relevant and valuable.
Current State
Most people will prefer to do what they’ve become used to, but you’ll need to highlight what’s not working. You can also emphasize the opportunities being missed in the current state. Remember that these opportunities have to be related to organizational goals.
Risk of Not Taking Action
Articulating any future negative impact or consequences of maintaining the status quo will bolster the argument and improve stakeholder buy-in.
Benefits of Taking Action
Lastly, highlight the potential positive impact of the change project.
You are pitching this case to anyone impacted by the change initiative. Make a list of all the processes that may be affected by the project, and identify the individuals responsible for those processes.
Create A Compelling Vision
It’s also crucial to get everyone excited about the future. The project sponsor shares the project’s vision with you, and it’s your responsibility to help them gain buy-in from the rest of the organization. Regardless, sponsors must be seen advocating for and promoting the change project. Their visible support will boost staff morale and convey that the project aligns with the company’s strategic direction. It takes visible excitement to get others excited as well. Championing the vision is like a road show for change.
There are different ways to communicate the vision. You can create a compelling vision statement or draft a future press release or newspaper headline. The technique of drafting a future press release is called, “Imagining the future” and it means writing about a desirable future state based on executing the project in the present.
Sometimes, It’s better to create an image of the future. As they say, “a single powerful image is more effective than a thousand words.”
Communication
Communication also plays an important role in change management. The process of making a case and creating a compelling vision are different forms of communication. Without communication, there will be ambiguity and confusion making the change process more difficult.
This is a statement from the UC Berkeley Change Management Tool Kit, referenced earlier:
“The goal of change communication is to facilitate the sustained realization of the change goal by recommitting people along the way.”
This therefore means that communication must be continuous and carefully planned. At the start of a change project, a very effective way of creating buy-in is organizing group discussions (usually by teams). This should be done immediately after the organization-wide announcement of the change project. This provides opportunities for people to raise their concerns about the change so that they can be discussed.
I can’t stress enough the importance of tailoring to the culture and preferences of the organization. Effective communication meets the needs of your stakeholders and the project. In my experience, asking for feedback about the frequency and effectiveness of your communication helps to improve it, as the project progresses.
Manage Barriers
Otherwise known as blockers. This refers literally to anything that prevents an activity from progressing. Is there a difference between a blocker and a risk? A risk in project management refers to a future uncertainty that can affect the outcomes of a project. When that future uncertainty occurs, we refer to it as an issue. A blocker is an issue that currently prevents a project from progressing.
Therefore, to prevent issues, we have to turn to risk management, which is the process of identifying, analyzing, prioritizing, and mitigating risks.
Risk Management
Risks come in different forms such as financial, operational, and compliance-related. The first step involves identifying them. Risk identification is done collaboratively with the key stakeholders on your change project. You can hold one-on-one meetings, facilitate brainstorming sessions, or circulate a risk register so stakeholders can fill it with risks they have identified from their perspective.
Moreover, learn from previous projects. Some organizations keep lesson-learned registers, retrospective documents, or CAPA reports. Review these reports for similar projects.
The next step is risk analysis which involves estimating the impact and probability of different risks. Risk analysis can be quantitative or qualitative. However, quantitative risk estimation can be burdensome, so the latter is often chosen for practicality.
A risk matrix is a simple tool that uses both factors (i.e. impact and probability) in assessing risks. With stakeholders, you’d collaboratively decide the impact and likelihood of each risk and assign an overall risk score.
For example, if you consider the impact to be low and probability low as well, then you assign a “low” score to the risk
Following this assessment step, the next step involves risk mitigation and there are 4 broad ways of mitigating negative risks. Please note that positive risks can also occur; when they do, they are called opportunities.
- Risk avoidance: Taking steps to ensure a certain risk does not happen, usually with high probability and high impact risks, such as regulatory compliance.
- Risk reduction: Reducing the impact of a risk.
- Risk transfer: Transferring the burden of managing a risk to a third-party organization such as an insurance company.
- Risk Acceptance: Accepting a risk due to its low impact or ineffective risk mitigation strategies.
Manage Resistance
For any change project to produce the intended results, you need the cooperation of your stakeholders. A stakeholder is an individual or group with a vested interest in a project. This can include beneficiaries of your change project, project team members, and those impacted by the change. There are several reasons why people resist change. Chiefly, people will resist changes that negatively affect their current situation. For example, if the shift threatens their job, power, or influence. Also, people are afraid of what they don’t understand, so if the benefits of the change are unclear, people are more likely to resist it. You need to be able to identify resistance to address it effectively.
Here are some signs of stakeholder resistance.
- They are not attending project meetings or responding to communication.
- Negative feedback such as complaints, and open criticism about the project objectives, outcomes, or breakdown.
- Delaying decisions or slowly responding to your requests.
- Lack of interest which could manifest as not completing agreed or assigned tasks.
- Withholding resourcing. That is when functional managers delay resource allocation,
- Outright sabotage which includes a counter-campaign against the change.
The next step is prioritizing stakeholders for engagement.
There are several techniques for mapping stakeholders, but the Power and interest grid is practical enough. This grid organizes stakeholders according to their power (ability to influence within the organization) and interest in the change project.
If you have numerous stakeholders, you can identify the key ones or group similar stakeholders. For example, if you have 1000 engineers in your organization, you can group them into “engineers” and “engineering managers” instead of listing a thousand people.
Once you have a list of stakeholders, you can organize them into the following groups.
High Power & High-Interest Stakeholders
These people wield enormous power and are strongly interested in the project. This group can include executives, senior leaders, functional heads, and process managers. They are usually people leaders or play critical roles in the organization. The goal is to manage them closely.
High Power, Low-Interest stakeholders
Although they are influential, they have little interest in the project. The goal is to keep them satisfied by providing regular updates.
Low Power, High-Interest stakeholders
These stakeholders have low power but very high interest in the project. They are usually the project’s beneficiaries and the goal is to keep them informed. Their support is valuable.
Low Power, Low-Interest stakeholders
Little engagement is required. just keep an eye on them.
How to Engage Resistant Stakeholders
- Listen Actively: Schedule meetings with them and listen actively to their concerns and feedback.
- Keep the communication channels open. Also, err on the side of oversharing updates or ask for their preferred cadence of communication.
- Seek their input early on. That is when gathering requirements and planning the project.
- Leverage influencers or allies. Look for allies to support your campaign
- Build trust. Demonstrate that you have their interest as well.
Show Progress
Showing progress becomes part of your communication. Regular progress updates show your stakeholders that you are committed to delivering the final results. It’s equally important to choose the right metrics. Eric Ries writes about actionable metrics in his book, The Lean Start-Up. These metrics demonstrate a clear cause and effect. That is, the metrics are impacted directly by your activities.
Reinforcing Change
The last component of an effective change process is reinforcement. Reinforcement ensures that the change is sustained in the long run by modifying people’s attitudes. The theory of reinforcement is based on the premise that an individual’s behaviour depends on the consequence of that behaviour. Positive reinforcement is an attempt to increase the frequency of a behaviour by rewarding the desired behaviour. Negative reinforcement involves removing blockers that could hinder the desired behaviour. Punishment is a type of conditioning whereby a negative behaviour is discouraged by providing an adverse stimulus. However, the organizational culture is a key factor in selecting the right reinforcement tactics.
