To welcome change, we need to understand why we will benefit from the development and how to manage it. Bettina Pickering of PA Consulting Group explains the key factors of change management.
Change is the one thing we can be sure of constantly happening in our lives, so shouldn’t we be used to it by now and embrace change when it comes along? Far from it! Experience shows that most people are not necessarily averse to change if they can see the benefit, but they are unwilling to change for change’s sake. Most of us need to know what’s in it for us, to understand what the change would involve and what the end state looks like. That is where change management comes in.
Change needs to be managed to ensure that it results in the expected benefits and that all key stakeholders that need to be brought along are involved in the journey. However, the degree to which change needs to be managed and scope of change management activities will differ.
What is the right degree and scope of change management?
There is no right or wrong answer to this question. It very much depends on the type of change the organisation is trying to achieve, its change maturity and capability, the desired end result, the complexity of the change journey and the number or type of stakeholders involved.
A highly complex programme which involves a new technological solution both internally and externally, changes to key customer-facing processes and to ways of working would need a far higher level of change management than, for example, a roll out of a change in the absence management procedure.
Unfortunately, many programme managers and programme boards underestimate the amount of change management required from the start or tend to de-scope change management activities first when other parts of the programme require additional budget.
One of the reasons for this is that the results of change management actions are not immediately visible and tangible unlike, for example, the configuration of a system which once it is configured, people can see screens and click buttons. Because change involves a shift of people’s mindsets and changes to often long standing habits, this will not be immediately visible as the more tangible aspects of the programme are required to kick start the mindset change or change in ways of working.
Research has shown that it takes 21 days to change a habit. That means individuals need to apply the new process or ways of working on a daily basis for 21 days to ensure it is embedded. This means there is always a minimum delay after a programme has gone live until the change is fully embedded. Most programmes go live, programme staff take a deep breath of relief and more often then not take their eye of the ball whereas this is the time when business is going through their real change process and trying to change their habits.
Another reason that programme managers often underestimate change, and that is one of the most fundamental reasons, is that they tend to look at deliverables or products and not outcomes. This is what most programme managers were taught to do by traditional and established programme and project management methodologies.
Programme plans and more often than not programme vision statements stop at the tangible deliverables (i.e. a process document published, a system gone live) instead of stating what the outcomes of the programme should be. This view causes a disconnect between benefits of the programme and the deliverables. Usually the benefits can only be fully achieved if the outcome of the programme is achieved, whereas the deliverable based view often causes programme benefits to fall short of expectations.
Let’s take an example to illustrate this point. A business transformation programme team had the vision to introduce common and standardised working practices across the organisation’s European businesses. The programme plan was very detailed (thousands of lines). The key deliverables or products included common processes, common policies, a common system implemented and so on. What was missing (and one of the key reasons why the programme failed) was the outcome (and success factors or measures of this outcome).
What was that the aim of this programme? What was it intended or envisaged to achieve? The aim was never stated and therefore plans, budget and resources were not put in place to ensure that the aim was achieved. It was that its entire staff would work to or use common processes and policies supported by common systems. Although it seems a very small difference between deliverables and vision, the absence of these few additional words stood between success and failure of the programme. The board who came up the vision probably intended this outcome when they phrased the vision, however, when the stated vision got to the programme manager, he interpreted it into deliverables and the implied, but not stated, intention was lost.
The change management budget was therefore not sufficiently large to cover changing mind sets and working habits of the entire staff. Just to name a few things that went wrong as a result:
- change champions from only a few affected business areas were appointed, other business areas therefore got no say in the solution and when it was presented to them had the “not invented here” reaction
- involvement of representatives from only a small selection of business areas were involved in the development of the technology on a regular basis and not just for user acceptance testing which meant that major critical must have business requirements were missed from areas not involved)
- regular road shows to all areas and countries of the business, but those countries not involved in the initial phases felt left out and rejected the new solution and processes.
Although this programme was started with a lot of enthusiasm and board level ownership and backing, it still failed.
So how can organisations best deal with change?
Steve Covey in his book The habits of highly effective people sums up one of critical success factors of change programme “start with the end in mind”. It applies to individuals as well as organisations (which are really a collection of individuals). To ensure a successful change programme and thus ensure the budget and resources for the change management part are estimated correctly from the start, change leaders should define the outcome they are trying to achieve clearly and unambiguously. This definition must include the answer to the question: “How do we know that we have got there?”
Although this is a much more difficult approach which takes more time upfront to get right, change leaders should not be seduced by the potential time saving that can be achieved by getting a deliverable-based business case and plan out the door quickly. In the long run the deliverable-based approach will cost more in time, effort and opportunity cost of non-achieved benefits, than spending a little more time and budget in being very clear about the outcome of the change and following it through to achieved outcomes.
About the author:
Bettina Pickering
Bettina Pickering is a Managing Consultant for PA Consulting Group. Since joining PA in 1997, Bettina has worked across a variety of private sector industries (various manufacturing, chemicals, postal, telecommunications, legal, banking and insurance) and public sector clients (Health and Work & Pensions). Her focus is on managing and delivering business transformation projects (in particular HR and Finance Transformation), business and IT-enabled change, corporate performance management and business intelligence. Her most recent projects included HR Transformation including shared services for a law firm, HR transformation review for a retailer and performance management for a health organisation and change management for a major UK postal organisation.
3 Responses
Failure to engage with the hidden, messy and informal dynamics o
Research consistently shows that over two-thirds of all change efforts fail to deliver the desired results. Something vital is clearly missing from most of the approaches that currently inform change-leadership practice. Almost invariably, as in Bettina’s article, prescriptions place most emphasis on changing the formal processes, systems and structures, and on getting these ‘right’ through rational analysis, project management techniques and detailed implementation programmes. This approach is then carried over into the less tangible elements of organisational change, such as the cultural dynamics of the organisation or the challenge of building commitment to change, which are also treated as separate work streams in a formal project plan.
But organisations don’t follow the same rules as inanimate structures, systems and machines. Instead, they are made up of dynamic networks of people interacting with each other. And people have a habit of not conforming to the mechanistic assumptions that still channel much of the mainstream management thinking about organisational change. Paraphrasing John Lennon, “Change is what happens to organisations while managers are busy making their formal plans.” It happens continuously, as a result of the day-to-day conversations and interactions through which people coalesce informally around issues and themes that are important to them and take action to initiate, support or frustrate specific changes. Formal plans and statements contribute to this process. But these consistently fail to address crucial aspects of real-world organisations that managers experience every day. Other, ever-present features of organisational life – such as the impact of power and politics, the importance of informal processes, and the implications of paradox – tend to be dealt with superficially or ignored altogether.
In summary, actual outcomes result from much messier processes than allowed for by the wholly rational schools of change management – whether top-down or more participative. Managers therefore need to look below the surface of the formal change strategies, structures and systems, and actively engage with the underlying dynamics of their organisations. My new book, Informal Coalitions, explores these issues more fully.
LetsGrow – change management consultancy
I agree whole heartedly with Peter Hunter’s comments about the ideal world of managers managing in a more supportive and participative way to overcome some of the resistance that change creates. However, seldom does major change come as a result of what the employees (and often the managers) want, but rather from external drivers. This means that often it is the managers who need the support to enable them to understand what the change means to them so that they can in turn offer the support, communicate the message and ask the right questions when using their participative approach.
Change is such a complex subject that we are in danger of over simplifying what the golden nugget of success might be. Any process that describes change ‘management’ must involve supportive structures, involvement and trust of everybody to move in the direction the organisation needs to go in.
Kaaren Brook MSc
Could the reason it is so difficult to get right be that, it is
Change management is required because we are trying to make people do what they do not want to do.
The change managers job is therefore about adopting strategies and artifices that are designed to persuade individuals to do something that they don’t want to do.
The reason that people do not want to change is that the change is not their idea.
As a species human beings of all ages hate being told what to do (Try telling a teenager to clean their room).
So when management decide what changes they want and tell the workforce to adopt them, of course the changes need managed because like the teenager, the workforce will resist doing what they are told, not because the changes are bad but because they are being told what to do.
In this situation the role of the change manager can be likened to someone trying to make water flow uphill. In the same way, as soon as the change manager leaves the water will resume flowing in the usual direction.
What people enjoy is implementing their own ideas.
If the ideas for change came from the workforce they would work and they would be supported,there would be no need to manage change, it would happen because it was supported.
This requires a transformation in the way we view the role of the manager away from the destructive Command and Control of the last century towards a more participative supportive management style, characterised by McGregors Theory Y.
We only have to “Manage” change because the way we try to implement it generates resistance.
If we change the way that we manage our organisations so that we do not generate this resistance then we will not have to use this huge amount of energy trying to “Manage” the change.
Peter A Hunter
Author – Breaking the Mould