Managing Change
From An Agile IT
Contents |
Managing Change
Overview
Change is required to stay competitive or adopt new technology and for individuals it creates opportunities (CV enhancement).
The organisation and people within it can react to change in 3 ways:
- By resisting. These want to continue as they have always done and will often either leave or adopt a following approach. Even when moving to a following approach they may lag behind others.
- By following. Will see the value and just do as they are told.
- By leading. Will see the value and help drive the change. These people can help to overcome the resisters.
When people see change they tend to focus on the negative effects rather then the positive effects and work must be done to get everyone to see the positive effects.
Understanding Change
The only way people or organisations can deal with change is to understand why it is needed. Typically change can be categorised into the following causes:
- Social causes.
- Economic causes.
- Technology causes.
Change can originate from many sources and people need to be aware and be on the look out.
- Changes from within. An IT strategy will often affect everyone and must be started from the top-down, whilst smaller steps in such a transformation can be started from lower levels. In all cases everyone must be aware and understand. Education is key!
- Responding to competition. Competition means that rivals will be trying to change and get ahead and so if a rival does change then see what they have done and see if you can leverage it to advantage - Be Positive.
Often some people will resists depending on the source of change due to personality clashes and organisation politics. Often the passive, shy and cautious person will resist change whilst a pro-active, self-confident risk taker will be positive. But both can be equally dangerous and balance is required.
At a high level you have broad vs. gradual change, but within these you have many types of change. An understanding of the type will help in creating an effective change/transformation programme.
- Proactive vs. reactive change. Often a reactive change can result in a proactive change as well to stop it happening again.
- Crisis management. Often means radical changes to avert a disaster.
- Growth changes. As an organisation expands change is required. These can be small changes to process or the need for specialist governance teams.
- Changes for competitive advantage. These are not the standard growth changes but major items like implementing new technology, massive marketing campaign.
- Change culture. You need to adopt a culture towards positive change where everyone looks at the potential for change to improve. This is a fine balance between change as a benefit and too much change causing conflict.
In reality a change may fall into many of the above as items are combined. For example new technology could solve a previous crisis problem and be a competitive advantage. It is essential to identify a measurement to any change to ensure success can be proved.
Planning Change
You must know where you are starting from (as-is state) and going (target state) to know how you can get there. Often strategic gaps appear between as-is and target-state.
Current state and target state should be across:
VALUES - principles on which decisions and actions are taken.
VISIONS - produces the overall frame of reference, the desired future state, within which a mission statement is written.
MISSIONS - a general expression of the overall purpose of the organisation.
Change needs to satisfy internal (employees) and external (customers). Often use dissatisfaction as a means to instigate change. Need to ask employees and customers and use root cause analysis on any crisis.
A change/transformation programme needs to be managed and executed in manageable incremental steps. Don't overwhelm as people need to see the benefit as the changes are implemented or they will become dissatisfied and rebel.
Need to consider:
- Choose key areas. Pareto's law holds that roughly 20% of activities account for 80% of problems. Need to identify and concentrate on this 20%.
- Justify changes. All change must have a measured business case. Often difficult but need to create measures for softer items like improved time to market, agility etc. If no measurement can be found then must ask the question of "is the change that important then?"
- Avoid overload. Priorities must not overload certain individuals or teams. People need to see change is working.
- Maintain continuity. Must prove change works and not just posters by the coffee machines.
Don't create chaos.
Critical to evaluate complexity - break down steps until you have a simple enough task to realistically estimate on.
To evaluate change you must know whom it affects both directly and indirectly. Must remember the outsiders of the core group like external departments or suppliers.
If the change plan is critical then pilot the critical path as change must be seen to be working.
Everyone affected by change may take it in a different way. The critical part is to keep people involved and have the change written into individuals long term planning and objectives.
Best method is to get people to understand through education and communication, at a last resort use manipulation or coercion.
It is good to get people to think about the problem being solved as well as the solution. People will not take on board a solution unless they understand what it is solving and believe that the problem does actually need solving. Even better if you can get individuals to believe they suggested the solution.
Must anticipate the effects of the change and all key people must be committed to the change. Must be able to answer the questions "what is in it for me?" when anyone affected by the change asks.
Monitor morale as the change is implemented and act quickly to stamp out negatives. This will often be related to how you have propagated the understanding of the change earlier to all concerned.
Create contingency plans. Consider: communication, finance, implementation, commitment, delays, 3rd parties, training, timescales, support, troubleshooting
Start off by assuming that you will meet some resistance.
Try to anticipate the fears by thinking about people’s point of views. Often the initial response will be negative (passive resistance), then active resistance, and then passive feelings become active acceptance.
Need to build trust. Often opposition is based on misunderstanding, fear of personal consequences and emotional distrust. Often the intensity of resistance will be based around level of trust. Therefore, communicate at all times and build trust; i.e. prepare people for change before starting it.
Need to incorporate milestone checkpoints in the change programme to ensure all measurements are being met and progress is OK.
Checkpoints should be used as a way to re-evaluate the overall roadmap based on the extra knowledge gained.
If any problems have been met, either hard problems like software not working or softer ones like people's resentment they need to be looked at and root cause analysis used to, make sure they are headed off in the future.
Implementing Change
Communication and awareness of the change is critical to its success. It must never arise that someone finds out through the grapevine, must be direct and timely communication.
Communication must be about the whole picture and then in more detail of the parts that effect the individual. Must allow time for questions, communication must be seen as 2-way but make sure dissenters are handled with care (preferably before a public meeting).
Change programmes need leadership. The more strategic it is the higher up this leadership must be seen. Each programme must also have its dedicated followers to help relay the messages and changes.
Identify and define "change agents" within the organisation. These people will be those that help push it through and change the resenters. They can have the coffee machine/corridor conversations.
All change needs clear delegation and responsibilities. It will not just happen.
Challenge the need to keep any information secret as if it ever comes out it could cause major problems.
Success depends on people support. If people don't like it they will always try the back-door approach to avoid it. The hierarchy in the organisation must be seen to be committed if someone higher up is bad mouthing the change then you can not expect lower levels to support. This is why strategic change needs top level commitment.
Even when underway you must still listen and take on suggestions as you must not be seen as a railroad through the organisation.
People must think they can talk about the change and clear communication channels must be open at all times.
A lot of change requires culture change and possible power changes. This becomes a softer major part of any change programme.
Must generate a feel-good-factor and publicly demonstrate success as you can be sure the coffee machine has the negatives discussed. Ways to influence behavior include: goal-setting, praise, enjoyment, roles, rewarding, conditions and procedures.
Even if you have previously tried to identify and head-off resistance, it will still occur and become one of the major challenges.
Be on the lookout for pockets of resistance. Remember you have active and passive resistance. Often the active is the easiest to sort out as it is visible and can be seen but the passive can be very dangerous as this is in the pub after work or coffee machine type of rumor that can propagate through the organisation.
Counter arguments rather than just bulldozing in, use meetings to discuss and combat fears and discuss items around rumors.
Consolidating Change
TO DO
Further Reading
TO DO
