A Recipe for Effective Change Management
I love dinner parties. Good times with friends and family, good food, and a good excuse to clean the house.
This weekend, my sister and I had a friend over for a belated birthday dinner, and the only request from our guest of honor was margaritas. So, we crafted a menu around that: fajitas, corn on the cob (rubbed with some delicious street corn-inspired seasonings), and Texas sheet cake.
If you’ve ever asked me for a recipe after liking something I’ve served at a dinner party, you know that it comes with caveats (“I followed the ingredient list but not their amounts”) and additions (“I threw in yellow bell peppers one time on a whim, and they were delicious”). Each of these amendments is based on hard-won wisdom built through experience.
But the magic of the gathering doesn’t come from the recipe, or even my updates to it. It typically comes from tailoring the time and space to the guest(s) of honor. I’ve learned over the years that Kristin gets headaches from red wine and that Rachel hates chocolate. Preparing the environment and experience for the participants really makes the dinner party sing.
What do dinner parties have to do with change management?!
At FlexPoint Consulting, we firmly believe that people are the key drivers of change, and that technology and process follow.
So, we wanted to share what we see as the essential ingredients of change management, along with some of the personalizations and updates we’ve scribbled in the margins of change strategies and plans over the years, to help you in driving out effective change where it matters most.
Which cookbook are we in?
First of all, we need to make sure we’re in the right cookbook, with clear definitions. My tiramisu is not going to turn out well if you tell me to use the sabayon method to prepare egg yolks and sugar without making sure I know that means to cook them using a double boiler on low, stirring constantly for 10 minutes. (You may also have to define double boil, depending on the audience.)
In that spirit, change management is the people side of change. It is how each person impacted by a change will engage with the initiative; adopt any new processes, mindsets, or tools; and use the new ways of working going forward. It is not the technical side of change. That is, it is not the effort to design, develop, and deliver the new solution, process, or way of working.
Said another way, the technical side of change is building the rocket to take us to Mars, and the people side of change is getting people into said rocket and flying it effectively. The rocket isn’t very helpful without people in it, and, no matter how much people want to go to Mars, they can’t do so without a functioning rocket. We need both the technical and people sides of change to accomplish what we’re setting out to do.
Essential ingredients of change management
Now that we know which cookbook we’re in, let’s describe our favorite ingredients.
To start, we need someone leading the technical and people sides of change. This may look as simple as a project manager and a change manager, or it may get more complex. Think: a program manager with a team of product owners owning various workstreams working alongside a change manager with a team of communications, training, and adoption experts.
In addition, we need a sponsor providing high-level support, enablement, and authorization of the change. If there’s a most important role on this change dream team, the sponsor is it. According to research conducted by Prosci, a leading change management research and training organization, “projects with an extremely effective sponsor met or exceeded objectives more than twice as often as those with a very ineffective sponsor” (Best Practices in Change Management 11th Edition – Excerpt: Prosci Benchmarking Report, p61). This is a huge difference!
Rounding out our list of change roles are the people impacted by the change (once the change has taken effect, something about their tomorrow will be different from their yesterday) and their direct leaders. Managers close to the people impacted by the change are best suited to help them navigate. They act as a liaison between leadership and team members, an advocate for their people, and a communicator/translator/coach as everyone navigates the waters of change.
Coordinating responsibilities
A well-oiled change management team makes life easier for each of the other roles without taking over their responsibilities. For instance, the change manager may send over bullets on recent progress so that managers aren’t spending valuable time finding and interpreting the most recent status report. But the change manager stops short of sending the email, to allow for the magic of listening, understanding, and coaching to happen at the team level.
It's a bit like divvying up responsibilities in the kitchen. I like to be in charge of the entire cooking process for my meals, so I can keep track of timing and seasoning. That leaves chopping raw ingredients and washing dishes as potential shared tasks. So, while my sister is working at the stove, I’m typically chopping the next set of ingredients she needs or washing her prep dishes. And while I’m at the grill, she’s washing more dishes. That way we support each other without overstepping or micromanaging.
Essential activities of change management
You know The Complete America’s Test Kitchen cookbook that’s bigger than most of my college textbooks? We could spend at least that many pages describing how to do change management, so we’re going to start with the highlights here.
At its core, the change management approach includes the following steps.
Get a sense for what’s prompting this change: Why are we changing? Why are we changing now? Who’s impacted by the change? How do they feel about change in general and this change in particular?
Understand where you’re trying to go: What does success look like? What can we not live without on the other side of this change? What resources do we have at our disposal? What about dependencies, resistance, and constraints?
Make a plan, measure performance, and iteratively improve: You can use Prosci’s materials (their change triangle, ADKAR, etc.) or another favorite, but make sure to spell out what you’re intending to do, define your KPIs early, keep track of progress, and learn as you go.
Expect surprises, changes, resets, and more along the way. Stay flexible and keep the reasons for change top of mind. Choose empathy and listening, rather than assumptions and blaming.
Support the project team, sponsor, leaders, and impacted individuals through the change and a stabilization period, then hand off to the team that will drive ongoing progress. And make sure to celebrate all that you’ve accomplished!
Some encouragement in closing
Change is difficult, even if everyone involved wants to achieve the expected benefits. But it is possible to do well.
This reminds me of those times in high school when my mom tried – rather unsuccessfully – to teach me how to cook. I vividly remember a moment at the stove together, my mom trying to teach me how to prepare a cream sauce she had made dozens of times before. She picked up the half and half container, shook it to see how much was in it, and simply poured it in the pan. “How am I supposed to do that?” I protested. She said, “you’ll learn.”
It took leaving the house and practicing on my own, but I did eventually learn. Lots of practice has sharpened my instincts in combining flavors, making substitutions, and creating my own recipes.
This leaves more time for the magic of gathering: tailoring my approach to make the most of time with certain people. It means more time spent sitting at the dinner table trading stories. It creates room for spontaneous gatherings (that in-case-of-emergency freezer pizza can be a life saver!). Focusing less on the mechanics of cooking and more of the magic of connecting allows my home to be a welcome place for lots of people.
It is possible to practice change management so much that these ingredients and actions become second nature. That will give you extra time to tailor your approach to best serve the team, the project, the solution at hand. You’ll get to use well-worn methods, awareness, and fresh thinking to drive out ever more effective change.
If we at FlexPoint can be of any help in your learning or managing the people side of change well, please reach out to us at info@flexpointconsulting.com.
