Virtually all organisations are undergoing change. Especially right now, with the impacts of Covid, companies are now challenged with multiple layers of driving change simultaneously. What is applicable in this situation is not about a particular methodology of implementing a change program. It is all about implementing simultaneous changes, at the same time. There is no luxury of just focusing on one change at a time, the result of competitive, industry, and environmental challenges.
As change practitioners we work closely with our colleagues in Operations to get ready for, implement, and fully embed changes. So how do our colleagues in operations view and manage change initiatives?
Operations as a function is focused on managing performance and delivery to ensure that the business runs smoothly, with little disruptions and that performance measures are achieved. Operations is focused on resource management, efficiency, and achieving the various operational indicators whether it’s customer satisfaction, turn-around time, average handling time, or cost target.
When times are hectic and there is a lot going on with multiple change initiatives, the key focus for Operations is on managing people capacity. Key questions to consider would be “Do we have sufficient time to cater for the various changes?”, and “Will we exceed our change saturation level?”. This is a critical question to answer since the business still needs to run and deliver services without negative change disruptions.
From an Operations planning perspective ‘change capacity‘ is often reduced to the time element, especially those impacting frontline staff.
For example:
What are the times required to reschedule the call centre consultants off the phone to attend training?
How much time is required in the team meeting agenda to outline the changes that are being rolled out?
What is the time involvement of change champions?
Though these are all critical questions and clear answers will help Operations plan better to face into multiple changes. However this is not adequate. There is more to planning for multiple changes than just focusing on the time element.
Using the lego analogy to manage multiple changes
We all know LEGO as kids. To build a car we start one brick at a time and see how we go. We experiment with different colours, shapes and sizes. We make do with the bricks we have and use our imagination to come up with what a car would look like. Sometimes we get stuck and we may need to tweak our bricks a little, or sometimes start from scratch.
It is the same as implementing change initiatives. In order to take people along the journey, we implement a series of activities and interventions so that our impacted stakeholders are aware, ready, committed, and embed the change. The design on the change journey is the process of determining what LEGO bricks to choose. There is no short cut. It is not possible to build a building without each necessary brick to raise the building up. In implementing change, we also need to lay out each step in engaging our stakeholders.
McKinsey studies over decades have told us that one of the most critical factors to focus on in ensuring change outcome success is clear organisation-wide ownership and commitment to change across all levels. This means that when we design each change brick we need to ensure we target every level of impacted stakeholders.
For example:
Team Leaders: How often do we want Team Leaders to talk about the changes to their teams prior to the roll out? What content do we want them to use? Do they know how to translate the message in a way that resonates? Do we want them to tell compelling stories that talks to the what, why and how of the change?
Managers: How are managers made accountable? What metrics are they accountable for? What mediums do we want them to use to engage their teams? What are the consequences of not achieving the outcomes?
Senior Managers: Through what mediums do we expect senior managers to engage their teams about the changes? How do we ensure that they are personally accountable for the success of the change? How are they involved to ensure they own the change?
Looking at the above you can see that for complex change there may need to be a lot of bricks in place to ensure the change outcome is successful!
Going back to the issue of facing into multiple changes, how do we play around with the bricks to ensure that multiple changes are successful? The same way that we play with LEGO bricks!
Look at the colours of the bricks. Do certain colours belong together? When we look across different initiatives, are there similar or common behaviours that can be better linked together to tell a compelling story? Do they support the same strategy? Can there be a joint-campaign for these changes?
Is the overall LEGO structure going to be intact? What are the impacts of the various changes happening at the same time in terms of focus, performance and outcome? Have we exceeded the likely ‘mental capacity’ for people to stay focused on a core set of changes at any one time? Will the pieced-together structure collapse due to having too many elements?
Look at the sizes of the LEGO structures. During implementation when we have both larger and smaller initiatives being executed at the same time, will the larger ones overshadow the smaller ones? If so what are the risks if any?
Re-jig or re-build parts of the LEGO structure as needed to see what it looks like. In a situation where we want to see what the changes look like before we action it, it makes sense to visualise what would happen if we move timelines or change implementation tactics
Example of data visualisation of ‘re-jigging’ change implementation timeline with The Change Compass using different scenarios.
Just like in building LEGO, for change initiatives we need to be agile and be flexible enough to play with and visualise what the outcome could look like before pulling the trigger. We also need to be able to tweak as we go and adjust our change approaches as needed. In facing the multitude of changes that the organisation needs to be successful, we also need to be able to play with different implementation scenarios to picture how things will look like. Each brick needs to be carefully laid to reach the overall outcome.
Careful consideration also needs to be how all the bricks connect together – the analogy that the change outcomes across initiatives can be determined by how we’ve pieced together various pieces of LEGO for them to make sense, and result in the ownership and commitment of stakeholders.
One of Peter Drucker’s famous quotes is that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, indicating the importance of culture for organisations, more than its strategy.
In this infographic we breakdown how culture can be broken down into its elements, i.e. behaviour and how we can achieve and embed behaviour change in organisations in a way that is deep and lasting.
As the world continues to struggle with Covid we are starting to see the financial fallout with businesses closing doors and others undergoing significant cuts to stay afloat. Around us, we see the effects. The front page of New York Times has been showing what life is like with Covid around the world. Those who are still in lockdown and those getting used to wearing face masks as a requirement. For the change practitioner, we need to braces ourselves for the myriad of financial implications in this challenging environment.
As companies start to tighten their belt expenditures is the first to come under fire. Project and initiative investments are naturally reviewed, consolidated, and cut to try and save money. Large companies typically invest millions to billions to execute on their strategy, maintain competitiveness, and improve the business effectiveness. Typical cuts in the project world translate to cutting project funding which means that change practitioners like other project professionals may be in the firing line.
As companies start to focus on the critical operations of the business the frequent question that gets asked is “what is the value of change management?”. “Can we save cost by cutting change management?”. Managers would already have a preconception of the value of change management when making this decision.
The challenge then becomes what is ultimately the ‘proof’ to the value of implementing effective change? Many will argue that it is that employees are more engaged, managers are communicating the right messages, that employees have the right skills, and that they feel that they are ready for the change. However, ultimately, a project has a set of benefits it is targeted to achieve and the question then becomes what ‘proof’ is that the benefits have been achieved.
For a lot of the work that change practitioners are involved in the ‘proof’ is the change in the behaviours from A to B. For example, undertaking different conversations with the customer, operating a different system, selling a new product, reporting on incidents, following the required steps in completing a form, etc. Ultimately the change in the behaviour results in the targeted benefits being achieved whether it is improved customer experience, cost savings, efficiency in operating a system, or generating greater insights through new data.
What are some of the ways to demonstrate that we are setting the course for ultimate behaviour realisation?
Clear identification of core behaviours
To be able to implement behaviour change we need to know what behaviours we are focused on changing. The trick is not to try and come up with an exhaustive list of all the various types of behaviours that need to take place in the end state. Instead, focus on the core behaviours that will make the most differences in achieving the ultimate benefit.
For example, what are the core 2-3 behaviours that leaders need to display in the end state to ensure those insights are captured and utilised to make better business decisions? It could be being confident in interpreting the data and using any system prompts as required, highlighting the insight generated in planning meetings, and using the insight to make better decisions that result in a better outcome for the organisation.
Measurement
Behaviours need to be measured and as we all know “what get’s measured get’s managed”. Behaviours may be measured based on a survey, observation, system reports, etc.
Ongoing tracking
In order to successfully embed the new behaviour into business-as-usual ongoing tracking is required. Tracking ensures that the status of the behaviour change becomes visible and therefore becomes a goal to be focused on.
Tracking does not need to be cumbersome and overbearing. It could be as simple as incorporating the reporting into an existing weekly team meeting or a monthly planning meeting. It could also be a system-generated report that is sent to managers.
Our ultimate challenge as change practitioners in driving behaviour changes becomes even more crucial during these difficult financial times. We need to constantly demonstrate how our work directly links to benefit realisation. This may require stakeholder education. Are your stakeholders clear in terms of the importance of behaviours in reaching the benefits? Do they understand the design that has been in place to drive impacted groups toward the end state?
In almost every change initiative there is an element of behaviour change. For some initiatives the behaviour change required is large and complex whilst for others it cane be as small as pressing different buttons and using a different user interface. Effective behaviour change is one of the most critical outcomes that the change practitioner can hope to achieve. With the achievement of desired behaviours come the ultimate benefit associated with an initiative. On the other hand, not achieving the behaviour change targeted means that the change has not succeeded.
Given the importance of behaviour change in every initiative this article aims to cover key aspects of how a change practitioner should approach and design the behaviour change. Yet, successfully designing and implementing behaviour change is one of the most challenging tasks for the change practitioner. It is common place that many change practitioners do not have the experience to know how to achieve successful behaviour change.
The definition of behaviour change
So what is behaviour change?
Behaviour change “refer(s) to any transformation or modification of human behaviour”.
Wikipedia
This seems like a fairly general definition that is all-encompassing and can include anything ranging from behaviour change in a psychological context or in a social or workplace context.
However, a key part of behaviour change is to recognise that behaviour, by definition, must be observable in some Shape or form. A behaviour can be verbal, non-verbal or physical behaviour. However, a behaviour cannot be ‘perception’ or ‘thinking’ since these cannot be observed nor displayed necessarily.
Another feature in behaviour change is that the behaviour is to be changed from the current state to a future state. The quantum of the change determines the complexity of the change required and the extent to which a series of change interventions is required to achieve the desired future state. This means, if the behaviour change is easy from the impacted person’s perspective, then the change approach can be fairly light and does not need to be complex. However, if the quantum of the change is large, then a heavy design of change interventions is expected to achieve the outcome.
Some examples of behaviour change within a change initiative context includes:
Using a different computer program interface with different layout or keystroke steps in performing tasks
Different process steps required in disclosing financial details in business reporting
Proactive coaching employees through feedback to improve sales effectiveness
Reporting on risk incidents that are not compliant with company standards
Actively establishing rapport with the customer to demonstrate empathy by acknowledging their feelings and demonstrating effective listening
Speak up against bullying behaviours amongst colleagues
The importance of focusing on behaviour change
Inexperienced change practitioners will normally just followed the standard cookie-cutter approach of filling out the various change templates such as stakeholder matrix, change impact assessment, and a change plan. And then proceed to develop a communications plan or a learning plan before executing on implementation.
So what is wrong with this?
As called out previously, in almost every change initiative there is a set of desired behaviours required to achieve the end state of the change initiative. The job of the change practitioner is to figure this out and design a change program around the achievement of these behaviours. Just by filling in templates and carrying out standard change approaches will most likely not achieve the targeted behaviours.
For example, in transitioning users from an old ERP system to a new digital system with a new look and feel, it is critical to identify the core behaviours required in the new state. Is it that in using the new digital system the user has access to a lot more timely data and therefore the behaviour change needs to be around 1) proactively checking for data and derive insights and 2) use these insights and data to make better decisions.
This means that if you were to just focus on communicating the change and train employees on how to use the new digital system, the whole project may not be deemed to be successful. This is because it is simply a project of ‘installation’ of a new system. However, the benefits targeted by the new digital system is about employees gaining more insights through the ability to easily access a range of data previously not available. Employees may know how to use the new system but it does not mean that they will automatically exhibit these desired behaviours.
One of the tricky things about behaviours is the ‘knowing’ vs. ‘doing’ conundrum. Just because someone knows how to do something it does not mean they will necessarily do it. Just because there is a pedestrian path, it does not mean that everyone will always use it. In a similar way, just because someone knows that the company wants him/her to document sales activities, it does not equate that all sales people will document all sales activities. In fact, in practice, we know that spending time on ‘admin’ such as documenting and entering sales activities into a system is often the last thing sales people want to do.
In the next section we will cover how to drive behaviour change.
How to achieve behaviour change
PJ Fogg model
Dr PJ Fogg is a Stanford professor who founded the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University. PJ Fogg also wrote the New York Times bestseller ‘Tiny Habits’. What I love about this is that the Fogg model is incredibly simple and practical. It is grounded and backed up by significant empirical research and not just an ‘opinion’.
The Fogg model highlights 3 key elements that must converge at the same time for a behaviour to occur.
1. Motivation – Different motivators have different impacts on behaviour
2. Ability – This refers to how easy it is to undertake a behaviour. Some characteristics include time, money, physical effort, brain cycles (or ease of understanding and processing the task at hand), social deviance (the extent to which a behaviour is out of the social norm), and non-routine (behaviour that disrupts an existing routine)
3. Prompt/Trigger – These are reminders of events that prompt a particular behaviour. It could be an alarm, an associated image/event/person/scent, etc that reminds the person of the behaviour.
The power of this model is in its simplicity. You can apply this to any change initiative and the model will guide your thinking on how to design effective behaviour change. When something feels easy to do (low ability), then it will not require a lot of motivation to do it. Alternatively, when something is perceived as very hard to do, then it will require very high motivation to understate the behaviour. The key is to aim above the line. So, either focusing on increasing ability or increasing motivation will result in above the curved line, which means the behaviour taking place.
Example of applying the Fogg model
Case: You are implementing a cost cutting exercise due to the impact of Covid on the organisation. As a result of this exercise, the impacted employees will need to pick up parts of the roles of others who have been let go. The behaviour change required is that impacted employees will need to cover a broader set of tasks and at times have a heavier workload as a result.
Application:
Motivation: The impacted employee’s motivation is currently impacted after seeing their fellow colleagues lose their jobs and hence feeling worried that their jobs may be impacted. This is despite reassurances from senior managers that no more jobs will be cut for the time being. The challenge will be to sufficiently motivate these employees by continuously reassure them of their job safety and work through the transition of having a broader role responsibility. Appealing to the focus on supporting customers and not letting them down maybe a theme to reinforce.
Ability: It is critical to assess to what extent impacted employees are able to carry out new tasks assigned from a skill perspective. Training or coaching may be required. The other area to address is workload concerns. The perception that heavy workload is required will hinder their likelihood of carrying out the additional responsibilities. Workload prioritisation and protocols are key topics to talk through to reassure employees how workload may eventuate during heavy periods.
Trigger: Different triggers may be designed to remind and reinforce the uptake of new accountabilities. These may include manager 1:1s, team reporting, open visual display of performance indicators, email reminders, colleague reinforcement/coaching, etc.
According to the Fogg model if the new accountabilities are significant it would be best to break these down into smaller behaviour increments vs a ‘big bang’ transition. It could be that there is a gradual transition whereby a period of continuous coaching is required after gradually introducing new sets of tasks for the employee to uptake and practice. After the transition period is completed, the employee then formally uptakes on the full accountabilities.
According to research findings, it is much easier to adopt the new behaviours if the discrete behaviours are broken down to small increment behaviours. Fogg has used lots of different example of this one of which is doing push-ups. He started by doing 10. Then he would add 1 more every day to the push-up exercise, eventually getting to 100 push-ups. Adding a trigger to the new behaviour is also critical. For example, Fogg gave the example of doing sit-ups first thing in the morning as soon as you get up or to do pushups after going to the toilet. The event of getting up or going to the toilet then becomes a trigger for the new behaviour.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach to behavioural change
Cognitive Behavioural approaches to behaviour change.
Cognitive behavioural therapy is a widely established clinical approach to changing behaviours in patients suffering from various psychological conditions or disorders. Cognitive approaches are based on the fact that the way one thinks determines one’s reaction and therefore one’s behaviour. For example, self-talk is a mechanism to change one’s opinion or perception. By constantly reinforcing and verbalising positive statements about oneself may improve one’s own perception of oneself. Alternatively, constant negative self-talk leads to negative self-perception.
Behavioural approaches are based on research that started with Pavlov’s research on dogs where he associated bells as a trigger for food. After a period of time, every time the dogs heard the bell they would start salivating, with salivating being the behaviour. This process of associating a trigger with a behavioural reaction is also called ‘conditioning’. The process of conditioning is to ‘re-program’ the subject so that a new behaviour is introduced in reaction to a trigger.
There are many ways in which cognitive behavioural approaches may be applied to changing a person’s behaviour. For example, lets use the previous example of implementing a new system.
Creating or changing impression of the new system
A communications campaign may be devised to create or change existing impression of the new system. This would be similar to any marketing campaign that associated particular imagery or messages with a feeling or impression. Over a period of repetition, the employees will start to associate positive impressions and key messages with the new system. Any tag-lines that are reinforced by manager briefings or town hall sessions would also act the reinforce the same messages.
As a part of the training of the new system, it could be that other than learning the ins-and-outs of the operating the new system, that the employee needs to be more proactive to look at customer information so as to provide more value-add suggestions to the customer. Practices during the session, with subsequent reinforcements by the team leader or manager would act to build the behaviour change.
The trigger for new behaviours could be any acronyms, diagrams, tag lines or pictures created as a part of the campaign or training content. It is however important that there is a period of reinforcement or else the behaviour may not occur. The reinforcement may take form in terms of manager support, communication messages, prizes, competitions and reporting on behaviour progress.
This is why post-release embedment is so important as the embedment process focuses on constantly reinforcing the behaviour so that it becomes second-nature. Without this, the newly acquired behaviour will not be sustained. This is like exercise. Exercising a few times and your body starting to get the drift of what to do is just the start of the change. Without a period of constant exercising it will not become a habit.
The other important cognitive behavioural approach of embedding new behaviour is ensuring adequate and effective social support. Whilst some employees may be quite self-sufficient and are able to resolve any system issues themselves. Others may require a lot more hand-holding. This is why it is critical that there are change champions in place who can coach and support employees to support the right behaviours and resolve any obstacles in adopting the new system fully.
How to measure behaviours
Measuring behaviours is absolutely critical because without effective measurement it is difficult to ascertain to what extent the desired behaviours have been obtained and sustained. It is the old adage “what gets measured matters”.
So what are some of the ways in which to measure behaviours? These are some common examples.
Manager rating based on observation
Video recording
Phone/call listening
Attendance (e.g. training)
Test
System/digital reporting that tracks behaviour in a system
Employee-wide surveys specifically designed to focus on targeted behaviours
What categories in which to measure behaviours?
There are many considerations or dimensions in measuring behaviours. The following are some of these:
Time: How long would you want to measure the behaviours to ensure that they have fully embedded and incorporated into business-as-usual. Typical practice is several months after the ‘release’. Tracking reinforces behaviours. This means the longer the tracking mechanism continues – the more likelihood the behaviours will last longer
Level of behaviour change: Is the behaviour being measured black and white in its determination? I.e. is it easy to categories if the behaviour has occurred or not? Or are there different levels of behaviour achievement? E.g. If you are measuring if call centre staff has exhibited behaviour is reviewing customer data and offer suggestions, are there different levels of ‘value add’ behaviours based on customer data, in which case there could be a scale to rate this. Alternatively, it could also be a yes/no type of classification
Frequency: How frequent is the behaviour being displayed? Is it that the goal is to promote the frequency of the desired behaviour? Or are there certain limits expected? For example, if we would like call centre staff to offer value add calls with the customer, are there particular ‘ceilings’ or limited after which it may no longer be valuable for the customer?
Situational considerations: Ranking and classifying behaviours should also always consider situational factors. For example, it could be that the customer was not in the right emotional state to receive value-add suggestions and therefore the behaviour would not be appropriate for that situation. It could also be that the call centre consultant has been suffering from sickness or has been struggling with family difficulties and therefore for a period of time was not performing effectively. As a result, previously acquired behaviours could have dropped temporarily
How do we drive full embedment of behaviours?
These are some key call outs in ensuring that the behaviours you have set out to transition to not only are achieved but are sustained. Pretty much all aspects of change could determine the extent to which behaviours become adopted or not.
1. Executive sponsorship and drive. You will hear a lot of this in literature and articles that with executive sponsorship and drive it is much easier for behaviours to be sustained.
2. Employee community support and reinforcement. This point acts almost as the balancing point of the previous one. With sufficiency employee community support and reinforcement it is possible to drive continual behavioural reinforcement even without strong executive sponsorship.
3. Measurement and reporting. With the right measurement and reporting, employees receive feedback on what the performance has been and this constant feedback act as a strong reinforcement. This is especially the case if everyone can see others’ behavioural performance. It could be by business unit or individual, but ‘naming and shaming’ can work if that is consistent with the organisational cultural values.
4. Early and continuous engagement. This is a change management 101 point. With early and continuous engagement impacted stakeholders will feel much more engaged with the change. As a result, they will want to exhibit the desired behaviours to make it a success because they feel that they are the ones driving the changes. Alternatively, if the change is perceived as designed and implemented by another party without consultation with the impacted group, there could be resistance or lack of embedment.
5. Focus on continuous improvement. A culture of continuous improvement can also support continual and full embedment of behaviours. If there is a strong culture of analysing the current performance, working on root cause analysis and team work on actions to improve performance, then behaviours will be adopted. In this situation, any situational or personal factors or not exhibiting behaviours may be called out and addressed to achieve the targeted outcome.
Complexity of embedding multiple behaviours across multiple initiatives
Most organisations are implementing multiple initiatives at the same time. This is the norm as organisations stay competitive, stay relevant and in business. When there are multiple projects going on all driving seemingly different behaviours.
How do we embed multiple behaviours?
1. Understand the different behaviours across initiatives. Rather than focusing on every single behaviour driven by every initiative, the key is to capture and record the top few behaviours targeted by each initiative. For large organisations with lots of initiatives, this may seem like an impossible feat. It could be organising 1-2 workshops to capture these behaviours. Do note that different initiatives may be at different stages of the product life cycle and therefore it may not be possible to capture all behaviours at a particular point in time. Having a regular change portfolio meeting where this could be discussed and captured iteratively would be ideal.
The Change Compass has just released a feature to aid the collection of core behaviours across initiatives so that these may be analysed, understood and linked to aid better implementation alignment
2. Analyse and group the captured behaviours. After compiling the behaviours across initiatives the next step is to group and understand them.
Are there behaviours that are part of the same theme? For example, what are initiatives that are promoting a closer focus on the customer by promoting better listening and empathy skills?
Are there any behaviours that are ‘contradictory’ to other behaviours? Here is a real example. For a bank, one initiative was tasked to retire and close off a particular credit card due to a lack of profitability. However, at the same time, the same team was asked to try and sell more by their business unit head to meet their sales target.
3. Examine behaviours that are grouped into the same theme and think of ways to better align and join the dots to improve execution and behaviour embedment. This step is the most crucial step and involves running workshops across initiatives to better align approaches and plan for synergistic implementation of change across initiatives. Key discussion points or opportunities may include:
Aligning key messages and positioning for common behavioural themes. For example, if 2 initiatives are focused on improving customer-centric its, how might these better align their communication activities, look and feel of communications collateral, wording and positioning of behaviours.
Align, cross leverage and cross reference learning content. If multiple initiatives are all driving common behaviours, can content be cross-reinforced across multiple initiatives to drive a consistent and aligned user experience. This also ensures that there are no duplication of efforts in covering the same content
Align the sequencing and implementation of change activities. If 2 initiatives are both driving similar behaviours, can the various change activities be better sequenced and aligned to drive a better outcome than 2 separate siloed approaches. For example, can the executive sponsor speak to both initiatives in their town hall address, and can change champions be cross leveraged to talk about both initiatives to help impacted teams join dots around the common behaviours?
Successful and fully embedded behavioural change is the epitome of successful change and transformation initiatives. Achieving this is not always easy but having the right focus and adopting a structured approach to design behaviour change will ensure initiative success. Don’t be afraid of experimenting to test different ways in which to drive behaviour change. Keep iterating with different approaches to drive the full adoption of behaviours, which in turn will then ensure the full achievement of initiative benefits.
