Change Management

Source: Change Management: The People Side of Change, Jeffrey Hiatt and Timothy Creasey - Prosci, 2003.

title

Change Management

author

Bernard Szlachta (NobleProg Ltd)

Why Change Management? ⌘

• People resist change (either good or ill)
• Manager can mitigate the resistance
• Technology changes are easier and cheaper these days than people attitude changes and learning

Problems encountered ⌘

1. Not adequate time and resources
2. Wrong or negative message about the changes
3. Employees who become distracted and lost interest
4. Value employees left the organization
5. More sick leavers or absenteeism
6. Unforeseen obstacles poping out of nowhere
7. Lack of funding for the change

Executive Concerns ⌘

1. Required Investement
2. Financial Performance
3. ROI
4. Completion time
5. Improvment capacity
6. Impact on customers

Eployee Concerns ⌘

1. Impact on my current job
2. Job security
3. Suitability of the new environment

Two views of Change ⌘

Organizational change management

• the top-down executive view

Individual change management

• bottom-up employee view

Primary change management principles ⌘

• Senders and receivers
• Resistance and comfort
• Authority for change
• Value systems
• Incremental vs. radical change
• The right answer is not enough
• Change is a processes

Senders and Receivers ⌘

• Sender provides information about the change
• Receiver is being given information about the change
• What a Sender says it not what a receiver hears and vice versa

E.g.

Sender: "We will reduce costs by automating this process and move people to more important tasks"
Receiver: "I may not have a job"

Preferred Senders ⌘

Immediate supervisors: messages related to personal impact

• personal impact (salary, people I work with)
• day to day responsibilities

Executives: messages related to business issues and opportunities

• external factors driving the change
• issues facing the business
• marketplace drivers
• financial risks

Resistance and comfort ⌘

• "The natural and normal reaction to change is resistance"
• Plan for resistance
• Assess aversion to change from holistic perspective (e.g. what other changes are there)

Authority for change

• Visible and active executive sponsorship
• "Employee resistance increases as the authority and sponsorship for change decreases"
• Sponsor is "the individual or group who has the power to sanction or legitimize change"

Employees will resist the change more if sponsor:

• is incompetent
• has know history of failed changes
• walks away too soon
• is not active and visible throughout the project

Value systems ⌘

• In old hierarchical (military like) structure, change is easier to implement
• The more employees are empowered the harder the change will get (they expected to question management decisions)

Incremental vs. radical change ⌘

• Change management should reflect the change size
• I.e. no "one size fits all" approach

The right answer is not enough ⌘

• Right answer to a business problem is not sufficient to overcome employee resistance
• People resist "we know batter what you want" approach

Change is a processes ⌘

ADKAR:

• Awareness of the need to change
• Desire to participate and support the change
• Knowledge about how to change
• Ability to implement new skills and behaviours
• Reinforcement to keep the change in place

ADKAR and an individual ⌘

• Each person can have a different rate of adapting to change
• I.e. some people can be in an Awareness mode, other already in Reinforcement
• Applying Change Management should be aligned with Project Management
  • in the Business need stage, there should be focus on Awareness and Desire of the employees,
  • In the Implementation, there should be focus on Knowledge and

ADKAR ⌘

• Individual Change Management framework
• Communication framework
• Diagnostic tool (which department/person is on which stage)
• Corrective Action tool