It's still the Senior Manager wot did it

Contributors to Change Success

A recent email from Prosci about their 2013 survey (results published this year) lists the top seven contributors to change success. This is probably the most important result from the survey and the most widely reported. Top of the list, again, and by a large margin is ‘active and visible executive sponsorship‘. There are some changes in the other contributors. All have been re-written to make them more compelling. I notice that dedicated change management resources and funding has moved up the list.
to read about the rest, click here

Systemic Blunders

Structural failures leading to change failures

In the previous blog I described the book, The Blunders of our Governments by Prof. Anthony King and Sir Ivor Crewe which describes a series of major blunders by our governments. The third part of their book covers the systemic failures (as opposed to the human failures) which have contributed to significant waste and failure to change. In this blog I will discuss these systemic failures.
In particular I will re-cast the failures into the frame of organisational change. Click here to see what the failures are

Avoiding Blunders

Blunder: a spectacular change failure

A book I have just finished reading contains some excellent ideas for avoiding a complete failure in a change. The book, The Blunders of our Governments by Prof. Anthony King and Sir Ivor Crewe describes a series of major blunders by our governments. In each case a government minister set out a radical change in the way things are done and ended up wasting billions of pounds and abandoning the change. The most famous is the introduction of the poll tax; but there are eleven biggies in here. As with many significant change failures, its not just the government that is hurt (well its the taxpayers that foot the bill for these in-competencies) but also customers: you and me (who are also tax payers). Similarly, those at the top who should be accountable seem to have the traditional punishment of promotion and whitewash. The authors identified errors in human thinking and system errors which led to these blunders.
These are the human thinking lessons the authors put forward (the system errors are in the next blog posting): click here to see the lessons

Change Manager Standards

Two new standards announced

In the last few months two organisations have announced standards to define the role of the Change Manager. We wait for years for the role to get a formal definition and then two turn up at once.
We believe that these standards are an important development in the maturity of managing change as a subject and especially for the role of the Change Manager. They indicate an increasing awareness of the need for the role and the need to define it professionally. Below I work through the importance of these standards, their context, and the dangers they may present.
click to see the upsides and downsides of the standards

Making Decicions Work

Before, During, After

I have put up a number of posts about making decisions and especially the key role of decision making in Change Management; such as ‘Good enough decisions‘ and ‘making decisions at the right time‘. I have come across a quote, attributed to Scott McNealy a founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems, which has put decision making into a bigger context and has implications for the process of doing change. The quote is “I put most of my effort into making my decisions work”. The insight I get from Scott is the need to balance the effort in decision making across the whole process leading up to the decision, making the decision, and implementing the decision.

A decision process

It is not difficult to build a three step process for decision making. What is surprising is that most of the effort (as suggested by Scott McNealy) is in the third step. Here are my suggested steps:

Prepare for the decision
Make the decision
Implement the decision

Based on my earlier blogs and reading (such as the Chip Heath book on Decision Making) I have put together a simple description of the steps following the diagram on the right.

1. Prepare

The work in preparing covers:

Working out the information required to make the decision and getting hold of that information.
Choosing the appropriate time to make the decision (not too early and not too late) see blog on big science.
Exploring the risks around the decision: especially assumptions about the future and information that cannot be obtained in time to make the decision (which leads to assumptions).
Working out who needs to provide input to the decision and who will make the decision.
Preparing options for the decision.
What needs to be done to implement the decision and who needs to be involved, given the options and risks. (Most decision making is choosing between options).

2. Making the decision

Making a decision should be a social activity. The people who need to be involved should be able to debate the options, risks, and possible outcomes. Hopefully those represented will reflect the people affected by the decision. The person who is accountable will then make the decision.

3. Implement the decision

This is the piece of insight for me. Having made the decision in the best possible way given the risks and options the person responsible now puts their shoulder behind the effort to make this decision work. This implies not taking a fatalistic view of the future (it will be what it will be) but of being proactive and making the future fit the plans so that the decision works.
This is the part where all the effort happens. The preparation for the decision will have identified activities needed to make the decision work; including risk mitigation activities.

Decisions in Change

There are lots of decisions to be made during an organisational change: what to change, when to change, who to change, etc. If we follow a significant decision: to actually start the change in a part of the business — typically moving from planning the change to implementing the change — we can see the similarity in the change process built around this decision. A similar decision lies around declaring the change complete (the outcomes and performance have been achieved). In both cases, the effort to make the decision work comes after the decision and is quite substantial.
I like the idea of making a good enough decision and then working hard to make it the right decision; rather than working hard to make the ‘right’ decision and then hoping hindsight is sufficient. You will notice that politicians often fret about being right and don’t like being wrong; and that the media hold them to account in a similar way. Is this a good way to run a country, let a lone an important change? Let me know what you think via twitter or add a comment to the blog.

New Year, New Behaviour

New ways of thinking

The new year party is over and everyone turns to wonder what the new year will be like. And then you start to think about what are you going to do to make it better and different. Of course there are plenty of articles and blogs to suggest some ideas — and this is one of them! In this context a blog by Rosabeth Moss Kanter stands out with some excellent ideas about doing change.
Click here to find out what the ideas are

Do you know why?

Why is it important?

Three things popped into my mind this week: a paper in the recent Sloan Management Review about the basic question every project should answer; a graphic in a book about project types due to Eddie Obeng; and recollections about reviewing projects. They all revolve around the question ‘why are we doing this project?’. The answer for a change project is the list of benefits! But obviously tackling the question is harder than you might think.
click here to find out how hard and why!

Where does change management fit?

Inside, outside, alongside

In a recent tutorial, Prosci proposed some models for organising a change team with a project team. They came up with four models described below. I think they missed the most important model. Read through the article and see if you agree with me.
click here to work it out

Three supports to successful change

Is Managing Change the same as Project Management?

A recent tutorial from Prosci identifies three critical areas of activity needed for change success. The model is both simple and elegant. However, it opens the question about where should change management professionals go for their support. The three areas are: project management; sponsorship; and change management. Not only does each activity have to work well, they have to work well together for change success. The schism between the three areas is becoming more evident as change failure continues, see how the model can help.
click here to find out how

Falling trees – missing benefits

Did you hear that?

I am sure you are aware of the philosophical problem about a tree falling in a forest; if there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Which amounts to the issue of if we don’t experience something then how do we know if it has happened. I propose the same thing applies to benefits arising from a change.
Click to see the implications