5 tips for successful change management

Mark McAleer – Director of Organisational Solutions

Like a play, complex change or a transformation programme comprises many moving parts and the actors that need to come together to deliver success. The art and science of a change management practitioner is like being a stagehand that seamlessly moves the scenery and props ready for each new act.

Do transformation projects work?

The 70% of all transformation projects fail statistic is often cited. Is this true or an old canard which keeps being trotted out? We reviewed some research:

• A study by Gary Hamel found that Globally companies are spending more than $4 trillion annually on IT, and yet this is not showing up in productivity data.
• Just 41% of change projects were described as successful in an IBM report.
• Large IT projects run an average of 45% over budget, while delivering 56% less value than predicted.
• The Home Office’s programme to replace the police national computer has been delayed by at least five years with an associated cost overrun of more than £400 million!
• Failure rates for analytics, AI, and big data projects is 85%.

So even being conservative we can say that at least 40% of IT transformations will either fail or fall well short of achieving the intended outcomes and business benefits.

The keys to successful change projects

While you might conclude that the odds for success are stacked against you, there are some approaches which can improve outcomes. Having excellent project and programme management practices in place should be a given, so I will focus on the people side of change management which is too often an afterthought.

Ignore organisational context at your peril

Adverts selling financial services often end with a warning that “past performance is no guarantee of future results”. I have seen organisations continue to layer new initiatives on old based on the tacit assumption that more change will deliver higher returns quicker.

Understanding the current mix of projects and programmes through the strategic portfolio will help pinpoint parts of the organisation which might be experiencing change overload. This should not be misinterpreted as ‘resistance to change’. When it comes to organisational transformation, sometimes less is more.

Understanding the aggregate impact of multiple inflight change projects should be the starting point for any top team prior to launching a new programme. Any organisation system has a finite capacity for the assimilation and adoption of change, before change fatigue and disillusionment set in.

A second lens when considering the number of concurrent change projects, is the allocation of talent for leading change. I have seen successful change leaders ‘rewarded’ with further projects and responsibilities, to the point where they become overwhelmed. Eliminating or at least minimising the number of leaders with ‘double or triple hat’ roles will reduce stress and burnout?

Benchmarking and measuring effectiveness of change

Optimism tends to trump pragmatism when it comes to considering an organisation’s track record for successfully delivering change programmes. I have worked with clients who believed that they responded effectively to a crisis and were pleased with the collective brilliance of their work. I then asked what they were comparing their performance against?

The ‘hard side’ of transformation programme management will track execution, cost overruns and business benefits. However, fewer organisations track user adoption well. Even fewer start with a coherent change impact/readiness assessment that gives them a tangible baseline for change.

I have seen too many examples of personas and user journeys that look great in a presentation but are not underpinned by robust data or input from enough ‘real people’. The disciplines of UX/UI when done well can be immensely helpful for change adoption, the key is ensuring it translates into training programmes that enable adoption of new skills and knowledge.

Senior leaders must be effective sponsors of change

We have a stakeholder map, so we are all set with that sponsorship thing, right? I have seen too many fancy tables and graphics which claim to illustrate the levels of sponsorship for a change programme. Frequently, they bear little or no resemblance to reality.

It is a cliché that sponsorship starts from the top. However, it is vital that the right tough sponsorship conversations are had on an ongoing basis and that they are recorded. This is essential to formally establish exactly what a leader or sponsor has signed up to.

Asking a senior leader if they will support the programme results in an instant “yes”, but rarely much more. A genuine and effective sponsor is accountable for:

• Defining and communicating the business case for change
• The allocation of resources
• Ensuring that sponsorship and ownership for the change is cascaded through the organisation.
• Reward and recognition decisions.
• Confronting poor behaviours (not individuals expressing legitimate concerns)
• Tracking and measurement of change deliverables
• Being authentic and prepared to own setbacks as well as successes.

The key lesson is never to assume that individuals who are in leadership positions are automatically signed up as effective sponsors. While no programme will ever achieve 100% aligned sponsorship, especially across large complex organisations, it’s certainly worth paying attention to the collective alignment prior to commencing work in earnest.

Avoid pseudo consultation

Several years ago, I was facilitating a change workshop in Copenhagen, which I felt was going quite well until I was asked the following – “Are you really asking us for our views or are you just engaging in an exercise in pseudo consultation”? I was taken aback. However, together, we started to explore how best to engage groups across the firm and how to ensure that feedback was used. My learning was that if a change is a fait accompli without any optionality, then it pays to just be honest.

Working with another organisation, I was introduced to “TTT”. The anacronym stands for Tell The Truth, and if you cannot, then say when you can provide more information. Too often, I see leaders communicate, or should I say bury, unwelcome news late on a Friday via email or worse still just before the Christmas holidays.

Major transformations typically require changes which are not always easy or palatable. It is better to be as upfront as possible with potentially impacted individuals so they can better understand the choices they have to make. Procrastination and delay inevitably mean paying a higher price down the road through lower levels of employee engagement or increased attrition, for instance.

Whatever your engagement approach, it’s worth considering that the tipping point for effective behavioural change across an organisation is 25% of your employees need to be committed to the new ways of working.

No plan survives contact with reality

Harold Macmillan was once asked what the most troubling problem of his Prime Ministership was. ‘Events, my dear boy, events,’ was his reply. The same can certainly be said for a change management plan when it encounters reality!

Effective change management should always be founded on a robust plan underpinned by reliable data. However, it also means accepting a degree of ambiguity and anxiety. Change by its very nature is emergent. You can’t predict the twists and turns in advance. I have personally found that adopting an action inquiry mindset enables me to look at the stage and the actors from a more detached standpoint. Having good insights and data brings credibility with sponsors but at times you also need to have the tough conversations.

So, to recap, ignore organisational context at your peril, be honest about benchmarking your change performance, make sure you have the most effective sponsorship you can get, avoid pseudo consultation and be ready to adapt when your plan derails.

If would like further information, please visit our People Advisory pages or if you have questions and would like an initial conversation then please contact Mark McAleer.