Planning for change is essential; the greater the change the greater the need. Stable organisations can use previous experience as a guide to the future; organisations facing new challenges cannot. Change management (or BPR business process re-engineering) has evolved as a topic to combine all the relevant expertise and best practice into one discipline.
Change management refers to medium or long term re-structuring it does not include short term major change which is part of
contingency planning , nor should it involve any of the drastic actions involved in
survival and recovery planning.
When is change management most appropriate?:
As a response to major opportunities and threats in the external or internal environment (for example, significant changes in customer demand, competitive environment, legislation, mergers and acquisition activity, suppliers, bad and worsening industrial relations, productivity, health and safety concerns), or when other types of structural alterations are required, such as is the case for
exit planning.
What are the particular challenges for change management?:
The frequent need to change core competences;
Often the need to make major adjustments to the customer, employee and supplier base;
Often the need to make major adjustments to existing working practices leading to a much greater level of
organisational stress with its inevitable impact on the employees and other stakeholders;
Often the need to change attitudes towards customers, suppliers or colleagues;
The over-riding requirement to effectively focus and manage often large scale resources (time, money, manpower) to achieve the desired end result.
The golden rules of change management
Research on successful change management suggest that there are perhaps 8 golden rules that need to be followed, and in a particular sequence.
Establish the team and lead from the top
If it ain't broke, don't fix it;
Make sure it is achievable;
Communicate;
Take the stakeholders with you;
Detailed implementation bottom up rather than top down;
Train;
Control.
Because change management is so complex and demanding, the planning process should be divided into three phases a feasibility study, a detailed road map, and then a monitoring and redirecting phase.
Establish the team
Change management involves commitment; it involves leadership; it involves responsibility and authority. All the research suggests that it is vital to form an effective team supported by the CEO and other directors to manage the planning and implementation processes. This team should be removed from day to day operational responsibilities; they should be located together, be provided with adequate resources, and they should be led by an individual with the core skills central to the problem in other words a classic team building exercise. The team then provides the focus of all the investment of time, money and resources in making the change work. Visible support from senior management and particularly the CEO remains vital throughout the entire three phases.
Whatever choice is made for team leader, it is essential that an individual with project management expertise is included as control over the
critical path needs to be maintained from as early a stage as possible with detailed
tasks, timelines and milestones. In complex projects it is also advisable to have individuals with experience of project risk management.
The team builds the plan; if expertise in particular areas such as planning, project management is lacking external consultants can play an important role. However, the plan for change must be owned and developed by the organisation itself otherwise it is nearly impossible for the organisation to sell the needs and the benefits of change to the stakeholders.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
Every organisation has strengths. Where significant change is involved it is far better to use these strengths as the foundation for success, rather than to attempt to replace all at once. There are several good reasons why this should be so. Stakeholders take pride in their skills and accomplishments denigrating them is one of the quickest ways to build resistance and resentment. Core competences take a long time to build, while are quick to destroy. As are customer relationships. As is employee loyalty. Concentrate on those areas where the
key performance indicators significantly differ from benchmark levels.
The implication for the feasibility study is that the simplest route should always be chosen to achieve the desired end result the one that causes the least disruption to the operational performance of the organisation.
Make sure that it is achievable
A vital demand for any major organisational change is that it should be achievable. From a stakeholders perspective they are being asked to make what they are likely to consider sacrifices (such as more work, less pay, fewer jobs, fewer orders, higher required levels of investment). In return the contract offered is that there will be certain benefits accruing from the change that will be of benefit to the continuing organisation (in whatever form it may be). If these benefits do not occur the credibility of the leadership is diminished, and any future demands will be met with inevitable (and justified) cynicism, and increasing paranoia.
On the other hand, should the change be successfully accomplished, and the promised benefits delivered (ideally more than the promised level) there will be an acceptance that the terms of the contract have been met and that the organisation can move forward.
The implication for the feasibility study is that it should rigorously analyse the risks, returns and resources available for the programme. The outline project plan should err on the side of caution suggesting a lower return from a greater time, money and personnel involvement than is considered the realistic outcome (and organisations should never, never, use the best case scenarios on which to base their plans). If the plan breaks at this stage, it should be re-assessed and changed.
Communicate
By this stage in the evolution of major change, the organisation will have a clear view of what the objectives of that change are, and that the proposed plan is broadly achievable given the resources that are available. This is because the team and senior management have studied the problem and the solution in reasonable depth they have the knowledge and the belief that this change is essential for the organisation and is not merely a whim of the moment. The benefits need to be actively and continuously communicated to the stakeholders, with the emphasis on joint problem solving. All the possible communication mechanisms should be considered small group discussions, newsletters, face to face presentations, operational unit monitoring meetings (see below). Once the process has started, it must continue with regular updates.
The logic behind the plan will serve as the best communication tool we have to do this because. The plan is the key marketing tool it is the honest rationale of the why. The how is best communicated, in Ibis experience through the use of the action plan this is what we are doing this month, the target, and what remains to be achieved.
Take the stakeholders with you
There will be objections. The plan is never perfect or should be seen as set in stone at this stage of development. Deal with the objections. Change can only be realistically achieved through working with people rather than through them.
Each of the major stakeholders will have a contribution to make to improve either the acceptability of the plan or the plan itself. What are the issues that concern the following groups?:
Customers;
Suppliers;
Shareholders;
Local community;
National/ international government (where relevant);
Does the team know? How will it find out? The communication process must be two-way, providing information on what is envisaged and collecting information on the concerns of the stakeholders and the problems of implementation.
The greatest resistance to any change is likely to be internal. As individuals stay longer within any organisation, their suspicions of it increase. This appears to be a universal finding of research into employee attitudes and is obviously worse in those organisations which emphasise the
mushroom principle of management. The result is that many employees will develop
WSI (Why Should I) attitudes towards any proposal involving them. In all organisations the prospect of change also engenders stress, which can again reduce the willingness of individual to either listen or become involved in the process. How will the team overcome these barriers to co-operation?
The plan is the essential marketing tool for stakeholder communication. It should clearly show the why and the how and can be tailored to each individual group requirements. By using the plan, the organisation is providing concrete proposals which do much to reduce organisational stress and suspicion within the stakeholders.
Detailed implementation bottom up rather than top down
Involving non-team staff in operational areas in detailed implementation planning has a number of advantages:
Decision making is improved (all research suggests that the greater the variety of input, the more optimum the decision);
Communication is improved, as the company can incorporate relevant gatekeepers (managers of information) and innovators (opinion leaders in diffusion analysis) into the operational team;
Key members of the company gain ownership of the plan - buying in - which strengthens the implementation process substantially
The detailed implementation plan needs the involvement of those that have to make it work. Creating effective operational milestones and timelines is an essential part of the detailed plan rather than the feasibility study. The use of departmental action plans helps to build the overall control programme of the project.
Train
The object of change management, when translated to the needs of the individual within the organisation, is a mixture of:
Altered responsibility and authority;
Altered tasks;
Altered skills;
And in many cases the need for a changed attitude (management style, shared values).
It is unrealistic to think that if you have an apple in a certain job, it will automatically become an orange in another position. Training is therefore an essential part of change management. It is in fact useful to use the analogy of recruiting a new employee. Best practice here is to create a detailed induction programme followed by regular maintenance training. It is therefore sensible to follow this system backed up by a complete overhaul of
standard operating procedures. Changes in standard operating procedures will also be useful in changing long established attitudes in established companies, and can over time provide a useful change management mechanism of their own.
Achieving attitude change will be the most difficult task for existing employees and one that requires the most thought and potentially expert external assistance. Where attitudes are entrenched and flexibility to new ideas/ working practices limited, a replacement programme may be necessary though this should be seen as the last resort, as it inevitably creates increased resistance and suspicion amongst existing staff.
The detailed implementation plan will define technologies, work load, and reporting systems, and can be used to identify manning and training requirements.
Control
Large scale change management is one of the most risky projects that an organisation will face others include M&A, large scale product development, international expansion or diversification. Many problems will inevitably arise that have not been fully foreseen
The Law of Unintended Consequences. The organisation must be able to fully understand the elements of change that it is trying to achieve and to be able to regularly monitor and measure against the targets that they have set.
In addition, a detailed contingency plan needs to be incorporated into the project plan with an analysis of areas of high probability and high impact, along with relevant accompanying actions.
The creation of the change management team and a structured approach to the management of the programme with defined reporting methodologies will do much to improve the chances of success.
Planning and the change tunnel
The implementation of change management obviously requires detailed project planning. A useful visual aid and control presentation aid is the change tunnel, used by several major organisations in the management of change. In this the current position of the organisation is mapped with the existing positive (green), neutral (yellow) and negative (red) forces. The tunnel is then continued with the actions necessary to move the plan from the existing position to the required outcome by action on all three elements in the right sequence. It is a useful tool to assist in the management and control of major change, but should not replace detailed planning and evaluation.
Knowledge centres and change management
The Ibis approach to the development of a planning platform focuses initially on the creation of
knowledge centres within the enterprise which are responsible for parallel planning and
business monitoring. This decentralisation of planning makes change management far more rapid; it also significantly reduces the need for major change in many instances, because gradual and incremental change is continually happening as the knowledge centres refocus their activities. Because knowledge centres have also a higher level of skill in project management,
action planning and implementation of change management requirements will also be improved, as will the comprehensiveness of any early feasibility study.
More information on the way in which Ibis can contribute to your business plan development is provided at
Advantage Ibis
More information on the Ibis approach is also available on the FAQ
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