Change management is one of the Internet’s most searched-on topics. Put those words into your search engine and you will get 476,000,000 results. Narrow it and the numbers are still enormous: Change Management Plan gets 208,000,000; Change Management Strategy 89,300,000; and Change Management Model 44,500,000. Clearly, change management has our attention.
Change management has my attention, too: I spend half my time managing change, which is surprising since that was not my intention when I became a consultant. I wanted to solve problems, and my expertise was in HR, so I started out doing Lawson HR/ payroll implementations. Soon I noticed that even if I did everything on my checklist, a project could be derailed because the people it affected didn’t act to support it.
That was almost twenty years ago, before change management was a recognized term. Back then, when I started to hear grapevine conversations that were incorrect or I got a sense that not all the leaders were on board with the initiative, I called it project politics. That was an oversimplification, but I recognized it as a risk that a project would fail and I made it my job to manage risk.
I began to include change management in every proposal, and almost invariably, clients pulled it out. The most they would go for was a change plan or the minimum of communications. I wish I could say that is no longer the case, but the truth is that many companies are still asking, why should we concern ourselves with change management? The answer is simple: If your project or initiative requires asking people to do things differently, if it changes their world, if it takes them out of their comfort zone, you must manage that change. It’s not enough to announce it or communicate it; you must reinforce it, over and over, until it becomes second nature.
Recently, the Harvard Business Review ran an article called Managing Change One Day at a Time that compared change management to a 12-step program:
“At the simplest level, the comparison is this: Organizations can’t change their culture unless individual employees change their behavior—and changing behavior is hard. Many change programs focus on providing strategies, technologies, and training. But often that’s not enough. When it comes to modifying deeply ingrained behavior, 12-step programs have a superior track record. They use incentives, celebration, peer pressure, coaching to adopt new habits, negative reinforcement, and role models—things organizations can draw on.”
If that sounds difficult and time consuming, it can be, but you—the project sponsor, project manager, or organizational leader—must take control of change. If you don’t, someone else will, and usually that someone will sabotage your efforts.
Steelbridge Solutions has identified six factors that organizations contemplating change management should consider:
- Organizational context. Viewed in isolation, a change initiative may make perfect sense, but its effect on strategy, operations, and workforce engagement may affect its priority, its timing, or the wisdom of doing it at all.
- Related risk. Financial exposure is only one type of change-related risk. Companies also must weigh the business, market, operational, and legal implications of the proposed change.
- Objectivity about change. An organization that is too comfortable with “the way we’ve always done things” is much more vulnerable to failure than one that has learned to embrace change as an ongoing fact of life.
- Cultural readiness. Influences exist in every organization that will support or hinder change. Among them are perceived urgency, respect for leaders, level of trust, and a history of successful change.
- Availability of resources. Managing and sustaining change requires an infrastructure that supports and individuals skilled in competencies like coaching, communication, and training.
- Access to appropriate change management tools. Well-thought out processes, techniques, and tools exist to strategize, plan, implement, and communicate all aspects of change. The trick is selecting those that will work best for your organization.
In the coming weeks, our blog will explore and expand on these factors. Our goal is to help you establish your need for change management, the required intensity, and the case for hiring a consultant or handling it internally.