The evolution of change management part 1 – the battle to stay relevant.
“It’s not the strongest, or most intelligent that survives. It’s the one that’s most adaptable to change” – Charles Darwin.
For a profession that specialises in helping people understand and adapt to seemingly constant change, the world of change management itself can feel recalcitrant and rooted in the past.
Paul Keating was Prime Minister when the ADKAR methodology was introduced. How is it that an approach to change management, developed in the days of Windows 98 and Bill Clinton’s impeachment, is still put on a pedestal as ‘the’ approach to managing change by some?
It’s possible that change management has been so focussed on proving that we’re pivotal to the success of strategic transformations, that we’ve failed to recognise that we too need to evolve. We need to meet the unprecedented environment we’re living and working in.
Let’s explore where we believe change management needs to go to remain valuable, relevant and indispensable…
The problem with ‘typical’ change management
While change management now has a seat at the transformation table, it could be argued that it has become commoditised. Organisations can take their pick of experienced, day rate contractors at reasonable rates – each with knowledge of any number of change management frameworks, tools and templates.
It’s great news that change management is recognised as being key to the success of any organisational change, however the commoditisation of the discipline does come with its pitfalls. It’s led to an approach to change management that is:
Linear: it’s in our nature to approach things step by step, and change management is no different. Stakeholder analysis, followed by impact assessment, followed by a change management plan, followed by a communications plan. This approach is resulting in a ‘tick-the-box’ and operational practice, rather than a strategic and holistic one.
Siloed: The more change management has established itself as a necessary discipline, the more it has become a stand-alone function. In our opinion, change management isn’t being brought into the right conversations at the right time. It’s being treated like an enabling function – there to provide support but not included in strategic decisions and solution design.
Narrow in focus: Change management as a discipline is becoming increasingly narrow due to its predominant focus on managing stakeholders and developing communications. While these elements are crucial, an overemphasis on them can detract from the comprehensive understanding required to drive effective change.
All this results in a ‘fill out the template’, ‘tick the box’ change management approach that is failing to reach its potential.
The next evolution of change management
Change management hasn’t caught up to the reality of the world we’re living in. When Greek Philosopher Heraclitus said something along the lines of “the only constant in life is change” over 3500 years ago, he probably didn’t have large language models, SAP S4HANA, or Microsoft 365 in mind.
We’re living and working in an environment where we’re experiencing multiple changes at any one time. They are overlapping, morphing and constant. We need to think about change management differently – it needs to be more holistic, encompass a broader skill set, and it needs to take a stakeholder-centric approach.
A more holistic approach
We need to adopt an approach that encompasses all (or most) organisational changes, rather than focusing on isolated projects. This comprehensive oversight ensures that change initiatives are aligned with overarching business objectives and that their cumulative impact is effectively managed.
We’re seeing a movement towards this more holistic approach with large organisations setting up enterprise change management offices or transformation offices. However, these offices require a different skill set to provide true value, which we will explore shortly.
Involvement in solution design
There is no denying change management should be employed as early as possible in any project to help craft the case for change, future state vision and engage the right stakeholder at the right time. But it shouldn’t only be for this reason that change management should get involved as early as possible.
Change management can (and should) play a role to plug gaps in how solutions are designed, right from the outset of the program. Change management should bring critical insight of the people impacted by a transformation to the forefront of solution design, playing a pivotal role aligning different projects spanning people, process and technology to a consistent business-led outcome, ensuring a holistic design that’s fit for purpose for the intended audience.
Solution design can encompass technology, structure, process or benefits. Pairing change with solution design brings valuable insight and ensures that the needs of an audience are understood and considered, opposed to trying to convince an audience to adopt a solution that may not be fit for purpose.
Stakeholder-centricity
A more holistic approach that has oversight over enterprise-wide change needs to be supported by stakeholder-centric change - an “audience-in” approach opposed to a “project-out” one.
Taking a stakeholder-centric approach ensures your audience isn’t overwhelmed by multiple initiatives competing for their attention. Through being involved in the solution design and connecting the different people, process and technology facets of the transformation, change management can craft an effective, consistent narrative tailored to specific segments of the impacted audience. This approach ensures complex change can be easily understood by people and sustained long term.
Integration and agility
As changes are being made in such a rapid manner, we propose that the discipline needs to be better integrated into the program or project team. We don’t believe that change management, project management and process design should be separate disciplines anymore. We don’t have the luxury of time to undertake a piece of work (i.e. process design) and then brief the change management team. To enhance agility and responsiveness we need more fluid and blended capabilities and resource models. This is a significant shift.
A broader skill set
To have the influence and ability necessary to take a more holistic and strategic approach to transformation, to be involved in solution design and to be more agile, a broader skill set is required compared to a traditional change management skill set. Notwithstanding our bias, we strongly believe that more effective change management needs resources who are more like management consultants who have been exposed to a broad range of organisations, industries, cultures and teams, and have developed the following skills, in addition to the more traditional change management skills:
Solution design
Problem solving
Process design
Data analysis
Project, risk and financial management.
A more strategic approach: Transformation Advisory
The next evolution of change management is ‘Transformation Advisory’. Transformation Advisory brings change management to the forefront of the program at the solution design stage, ensuring that individual projects/streams are aligned around a consistent business-led outcome and that the needs of your audience are adequately considered.
It treats transformation as an end-to-end business-led process that is shaped around holistic business outcomes, ensuring change management is informed by adequately designed business-led solutions.
In our next article on the evolution of change management we will explore how you can take this Transformation Advisory approach. In the meantime, please get in touch if you’d like to discuss how we can help you with more effective change management.
CLARE MORRIS