Businesses only see an improvement to their bottom line through adoption at the level of the individual employee.
Competitive advantage is derived from innovation, businesses often need to make radical changes to their business models, processes, technologies, pricing and services.
Executives conventionally focus on devising the best strategic and tactical plans. But to succeed, they must have an intimate understanding of the human side of change management — the alignment of the company’s culture, values, people and behaviours — to achieve the desired results.
Long-term structural transformation has four characteristics:
- Strategic importance (How is it designed to impact on achieving the business goals, market expansion, product range extension, changing is customer value proposition etc.);
- Scale (the change affects all or most of the organisation);
- Extent (it involves significant alterations of the status quo); and
- Duration (it lasts for months).
But businesses will only see an improvement to their bottom line through adoption at the level of the individual employee.
No single methodology fits every company, but there is a set of practices, tools, and techniques that can be adapted to a variety of situations. By using a systematic, comprehensive framework, executives can engage the entire organisation in the process.
Here is a ten-point framework that you can use for your transformation programme:
Address the “human side” systematically.
Any significant transformation creates “people issues.” New leaders will be asked to step up, jobs will be changed, new skills and capabilities must be developed, and employees will be uncertain and resistant.
Dealing with these issues on a reactive, case-by-case basis puts speed, morale, and results at risk. A formal approach for managing change — beginning with the leadership team and then engaging key stakeholders and leaders — should be developed early and adapted often as change moves through the organisation.
This demands as much data collection (system data indicating usage as a proxy for employee behaviour, research, focus groups or surveys), analysis, planning and implementation discipline as does a redesign of strategy, systems, or processes.
The change-management approach should be fully integrated into programme design and decision making, both informing and enabling strategic direction. It should be based on a realistic assessment of the organisation’s history, culture, readiness and capacity for change.
Start at the top.
Because change is inherently unsettling for people at all levels of an organisation, when it is on the horizon, all eyes will turn to the CEO and the leadership team for strength, support, and direction.
The leaders themselves must embrace the new approaches first, both to challenge and to motivate the rest of the institution. They must speak with one voice and model the desired behaviours. The executive team also needs to understand that, although its public face may be one of unity, it, too, is composed of individuals who have other goals to achieve, like deploying a leave management system in HR, or a new campaign in Marketing.
Executive teams that work well together are best positioned for success. They are aligned and committed to the direction of change and behaviours the change intends to introduce
Involve every level.
As change management programmes progress from defining strategy and setting targets to design and implementation, they affect different layers of the organisation. Particularly in South African organisations, we find that the hierarchy of management within the organisation is not reflected outside in people’s communities. For example a cleaner in the office could be an elder in the Church at home and so have a higher level of influence than we expect.
Change efforts must include plans for identifying leaders throughout the company and pushing responsibility for design and implementation down, so that change “cascades” throughout the organisation. These people become the change agents, it is their job to evangelise the change and support the people around them.
Beyond training it’s when employees are back at their desks that the real learning begins. Create Change Agents who are immediately available when employees need help to make it easier to learn and adopt the transformation.
At each layer of the organisation, the Change Agents who are identified and trained must be aligned to the company’s vision, equipped to execute their specific mission and motivated to make change happen.
Make the formal case.
Individuals are inherently rational and will question to what extent change is needed, whether the company is headed in the right direction and whether they want to commit personally to making change happen. The articulation of a formal case for change and the vision of the end goals and benefits are invaluable in compelling leadership-team alignment.
Three steps should be followed in developing the case:
- First, confront reality and document a convincing need for change.
- Second, demonstrate faith that the company has a viable future and the leadership to get there. This means putting concrete measurements in place, like improvements in financial ratios (10% increase on EBIDA per annum), productivity (throughput reduced from 18 days to 23), product range (up and down the value chain) etc.
- Finally, provide a road map to guide behaviour and decision making. Leaders must then customise this message for internal audiences, describing the pending change in terms that matter to those individuals as well as define the specific changes required of them, for example KPI’s or parameters for bonuses. What skills development and training will they need?
Help employees want to play their part in the enterprise’s advance.
Create ownership.
Leaders of large change programmes must perform to create a critical mass among the employees in favour of change. This requires more than mere buy-in or passive agreement. It demands ownership by leaders willing to accept responsibility for making change happen in all of the areas they influence or control.
Ownership is often best created by involving people in identifying problems and crafting solutions. It is reinforced by incentives and rewards. These can be tangible (for example, financial compensation) or psychological (for example, camaraderie and a sense of shared destiny).
Communicate the message.
Change agents sometimes mistakenly believe that employees understand the issues, feel the need to change and see the new direction as clearly as they do.
The best change programmes reinforce core messages through regular, timely communication that is inspirational and practicable. Communication flows in from the bottom and out from the top, and is targeted to provide employees the right information at the right time and to solicit their input and feedback. Often requires overcommunication through multiple channels from posters to townhall announcements.
Change by Walkabout.
Executives on walkabouts are far more effective communication, because people feel personally communicated to by senior leadership.
As an organisational change specialist, if I am lucky enough to be on site (in today’s hybrid working conditions, it’s more difficult), I spend a lot of time socialising with employees, across the board, by sitting and having lunch or a coffee with them in the cafeteria.
In this way, I create trust and pick-up snippets of information that I wouldn’t have got in meetings or surveys, simply because I found out what questions they were asking, who the influential and most respected people are and what they needed to know.
Assess the cultural landscapes and address them explicitly.
In successful change programmes it is critically important that leaders understand and account for culture and behaviours at each level of the organisation. Company culture is an amalgamation of shared history, explicit values and beliefs, common attitudes and behaviour. There may be two radically different cultures coming together when organisations merge.
Change programmes involve creating a culture, combining cultures (in mergers or acquisitions), or reinforcing cultures.
Thorough cultural diagnostics we bring major problems to the surface, identify conflicts and define factors that can recognise and influence sources of leadership and resistance. These diagnostics identify the core values, beliefs, behaviours and perceptions that must be considered for successful change to occur.
They serve as the common baseline for designing essential change elements, such as the new corporate vision, and building the infrastructure and programmes needed to drive change.
Once the culture is understood, it should be addressed as thoroughly as any other area of a change programme.
Leaders should be explicit about the desired culture and behavioural changes that will best support the new way of doing business and find opportunities to model and reward those behaviours.
Prepare for the unexpected.
No change programme goes completely according to plan. People react in unexpected ways; areas of anticipated resistance fall away; and the external environment shifts. Effectively managing change requires continual reassessment of its impact and the organisation’s willingness and ability to adopt the transformation.
Real data from the field and supported by information and solid decision-making processes assist change leaders to make the adjustments necessary to maintain momentum and drive results.
Speak to the individual.
Change is both an institutional journey and a very personal one. People spend many hours each week at work. Individuals and teams need to know how their work will change, what is expected of them during and after the change programme, how they will be measured, and what success or failure will mean for them and those around them.
Team leaders should be as honest and explicit as possible.
People will react to what they see and hear around them and need to be involved in the change process. Highly visible rewards, such as promotion, recognition and bonuses, should provide a dramatic reinforcement for embracing change.
It is tempting to dwell on the plans and processes, which don’t talk back and don’t respond emotionally, rather than face up to the more difficult and more critical human issues. But mastering the “soft” side of change management is your lead indicator of success.
Here is a bonus tip:
Be transparent
You need to find a way that the leaders, managers and employees can “see” good change right before them. This may be in the form of an infographic or a chart, at an organisational, project and Department level, so that progress is all around them.
For assistance in your Organisational Design and Change Management, please contact Kate@Digital-Bridges.co.za
