Change Saturation is a concept that describes our capacity for change as limited … like a cup. We have a limited amount of capacity for change. When there is too much change going on the cup spills over and there is ‘change saturation’. When this happens with too much change then there is stress in the impacted stakeholder groups.
It could be that there is intense increase in workload or work complexity. Performance could drop as a result. When frontline staff experience change saturation it could be that they don’t have the capacity to support all the customer enquires leading to longer customer wait times. Customer satisfaction levels could be impacted. Employee satisfaction could also be impacted.
What causes it?
There are 3 causes for change saturation
1. There are too many initiatives going on at the same time. The totality of changes across multiple initiatives leads to the cup being overfilled. This is the reality of corporate life. There aren’t many organizations that are only executing one initiative at any one time. However, it also depends on the level of impact within each initiative and not just the number of initiatives in total. If every initiative has very little impact it could be smaller in total than a very large complex change initiative with very high impact. It will take a lot of peanuts to fill up a jar, versus a few large biscuits.
2. The change initiatives are occurring too fast. We have all been through highly agile initiatives that have short sprints, that pivot quickly and implement the change quickly as well. Often due to discoveries and learnings along the way there are project delays as the project figures out how to get itself on track. However, the original go-live date has not been changed so as to meet senior stakeholder expectations and to manage project cost. What this means is that the impacted business suddenly has much less time to get ready for the change compared to the original timeline. This condensed timeline to go through and embed the changes leads to increased change saturation.
3. Business circumstances have lead to the cup being overfilled. In the case of COVID19, most businesses are going through challenging times. Some are struggling to cope with increased customer volumes, whilst others have lost significant business and can no longer operate. During these times businesses revert to survival mode, or their business continuity plan. The top focus remains to delivery its core services with all other priorities to take a back seat. The very nature of this environment means that a large part of the organisation is under immense pressure to perform. The cup is saturated even before any additional planned initiatives. To read more about Planning for change during COVID19 click here.
How to measure it
Every part of the organization may have a different level of change saturation. This is because different teams play different functional roles by definition. As a result one department may be impacted by the same change differently compared to another.
Therefore it is important to be able to measure the change saturation point for a part of the business if we are aiming to manage it. Change saturation should not just be a point of discussion just based on feelings and perceptions.
How do we measure the change saturation point for one part of the business? Measuring change saturation is not purely a science but more of an art.
Take for example, you have been working closely with the call centre team and have monitored their business performance across different initiatives over the past few months. Last month you noticed that they had reached a point where there were more initiatives being implemented than previously.
On top of this you noticed that some of their performance metrics that may be linked to change saturation were negatively affected. These included increased call waiting time, decreased customer satisfaction, increased staff turnover, and challenges for planners to schedule sufficient resources to cover shifts and undergo allocated initiative activities such as training. Team leaders also provided feedback that there was too much change going on and managing workload was challenging.
You can then calculate this change saturation by assigning a weighting to each change initiative in terms of its change impacts on the business. Then adding the various change impacts for last month will give you a total factor of change saturation. Last month your assessment, together with the call centre business, is that there was definite change saturation. So, if you see this level of change approaching in your planning coming up, then this would be a red signal for you to start to work with your stakeholders on managing this upcoming Change saturation.
Here is an example of measuring change saturation with The Change Compass.
The green line depicts change saturation for this department
It is important to note that some businesses may be calling out that they have change saturation simply to lower the expectation bar. By lowering the bar expected to undergo change volume, it is then easier for them to meet their performance targets. This is why it is important to measure change saturation. Anyone can claim that their cup is overflowing with change without data to support.
How to manage it
There are 2 main ways to manage change saturation. Either you reduce the change saturation level or you increase the change capacity (increasing the size of the cup).
Short term – Reduce change saturation
1. Stop all change initiative roll out during COVID19. If your organization is undergoing significant challenges and it was deemed that the cup is already overflowing in terms of capacity, then work with your business to determine how long of a period would there need to be a hold of any change implementation. This decision may be reviewed on a monthly basis or fortnightly basis to enable careful monitoring of the development COVID19 impact on the organisation.
2. Delay the roll-out of change initiatives to reduce change saturation. Work with your stakeholders to re-prioritise certain initiatives and push out others to better manage the change saturation. During COVID19 your organization may have a significantly reduced level of change tolerance, whether its because everyone is adjusting to working from home or its ‘all hands on deck’ in serving the customer. Work with your stakeholders to understand what initiatives are critical in order to meet any shorter or medium-term business objectives or deemed a priority by senior managers. Then determine the roadmap of implementation taking into account business change capacity.
3. Use a scenario approach to model the period in which COVID19 may be impacting your organisation and therefore model the recommended change implementation sequences. This approach requires that you have a good awareness of the existing planned initiatives across the business. You may need to adopt a logic-based approach to assess the change saturation points if you have not collected historical data. Here is an example of a scenario planning feature from The Change Compass where you can visually model likely scenarios of change roll-out sequences.
Initiatives may be dragged around to model different change scenarios
Long term – Build change capacity and resilience
1. Hire more people. For some parts of the organisation where there the change saturation is on frontline consultants servicing the customer. It may be possible to increase change capacity to some extent by hiring more staff to serve the customer. However, this depends how effective the organization is in quickly hire and onboard frontline consultants to reach ‘time to performance’. For other parts of the organisation where the subject matter experts may be in short demand because of COVID19, leveraging potential business substitutes where available may be an option. This approach may be used in conjunction with other recommendations to reduce change saturation.
2. Improve the change capability of leaders. One of the most important levers in building change capacity and resilience is the effectiveness of leaders. We have all seen how some leaders who are engaging, open, actively make way for the change, and address any obstacles, have led teams to undergo significant change journeys. Other leaders may be undergoing the same change journey but somehow have not had the same success. Instead, they could be plagued with change resistance and stagnation due to the ability of its leader. Change leadership development of leaders is a long term play and not a quick win by any means.
3. Work on change maturity. Organisations that have higher change maturity have more capacity for change and are more resilient to constant changes. Change maturity measures such as change leadership capability, business change readiness and project change implementation maturity. This is also a long term play, requiring significant focus and time investment.
Is your business re-planning existing initiatives or in the middle of reverting to business continuity plans?
What is the role of the change practitioner in the midst of coronavirus? In all the chaos and sudden shifts in organizations around the world in response to the implications of the virus comes significant opportunities. The change practitioner can be well-positioned to provide significant value to guide the organization in planning for change.
Listen to our recorded webinar to gain a broader understanding of…
How to help your business re-plan a portfolio of changes
How to ensure that your project’s timeline fits in with business changes
Helping your project to deploy and maneuver around limited business capacityTweaking your change approach when everyone is working from home
Engaging various stakeholder groups during these times
Plan for change scenarios to anticipate impacts from coronavirus on your organization
“When disaster strikes, it tears the curtain away from the festering problems that we have beneath them,”
Obama
Most of the world is now shrouded in a thick cloud that is the coronavirus. It is shaping a lot of our daily lives, from shopping, travelling, visiting friends, work, economy and not the least health. Some businesses are going under whilst others struck with sudden increased demand. Chaos and panic abound. There will certainly be significant levels of economic and therefore industry impacts resulting from the virus. As a result of the sudden shifts in business decisions, what is the role of the change practitioner? With the right tools, data and approach, the change practitioner can be the lynch-pin to enable the organisation to plan effectively through the impacts of the virus.
Let’s outline some of the current landscape and what a lot of businesses are undergoing.
Offshore staffing changes
Many companies are impacted by quarantine decisions. In certain countries such as the Philippines there is a significant presence of offshore operations. To rapidly contain the spread of the virus the Philippines government on Monday has ordered community quarantines covering half of the population leading to business shutdowns. What this means is that many companies have suddenly found themselves in the position of having to rapidly ramp up their onshore operations to deal with customer call volumes.
Even those who have other offshore operations not in the
Philippines will be wise to review their business continuity planning in the
event that their business partners are impacted.
Work from home
To protect employees from the spread of the virus a significant
number of companies have asked all of their employees to work from home where
possible. This also leads to a
significant shift in the ways of working for these organisations, especially if
the core skills of leading and managing workforce virtually are new skill
sets. To read more about how to deal
with the impacts of the virus go to our article Managing
Change During the Cornoavirus.
Restricted travel
Most companies have also implemented restrictions on
travel. Some countries have even
implemented international travel quarantines, essentially reducing the majority
of inflows of visitors.
Resource ramp-up
For those companies who need to ramp up onshore operations, this presents challenges in terms of the speed of resource ramp-up to meet customer demands. Challenges include the availability of technical equipment such as headsets and laptops, as well as finding the talent pool when there is restricted travelling.
Other companies are significantly benefiting from the current
situation, for example, digital retailers such as Amazon, Ebay or medical
equipment providers and suppliers.
Resource ramp down and cost containment
A lot of retailers are hard hit by the sudden slow-down of retail
foot traffic. Airlines have drastically
cut flights and travel agencies are hit by the lack of travel bookings. Some have started to lay off staff in anticipation
of continuing downturn in customer numbers.
Even for those who have not yet laid off staff, there is focus on cost
containment amidst cost challenges from declining revenue.
Business continuity plans
Most of the businesses negatively impacted by the virus in a
significant way are resorting to their business continuity plan. This means that the chain of command may be
different from business-as-usual and decision making may be faster or slower
depending on the nature of the decision.
This also means that any business plans in place may change. Focus and resources may be shifted leading to significant
change for employees.
Business replanning implications
Given significant disturbances to business-as-usual activities, what are the options in terms of existing change initiatives? Most organizations will be in the middle of reviewing or re-planning existing focus areas including change initiatives. The following are some of the likely scenarios.
Prioritise or re-prioritise existing initiatives
Defer existing initiatives as needed
Resource planning: Subject matter expert or
business representative availability given any business continuity challenges,
project resources (increased or decreased demand)
Scenario planning: Some companies are modelling
various scenarios of the impact of the virus on the business in order to make
arrangements from a risk and mitigation perspective
The role of the change practitioner
Impacts of changing plans
Given most large organizations are already undergoing various
change initiatives to stay competitive, the changes caused by the coronavirus
adds to the volume and pace of existing planned set of changes. The project management office, as well as
other planning teams will benefit significantly from access to change impact
information and data to make balanced decisions on any business replanning activities.
Some of these include:
Initiatives and impacts from a business unit
perspective
Geographic differences in planned initiative
impacts
Planned customer impacts
Visualisation of any existing black-out periods
and other periods of high customer volumes or high employee workload periods
(e.g. quarter-ends for Finance and peak customer policy renewal/purchasing
periods)
Stakeholder group impact, e.g. customer-facing
vs. non-customer facing staff
Hot spot analysis of team capacity impacts on
top of existing planned initiatives
Impacts on customer segments
Impacts on partners and suppliers
Example of data visualisation from The Change Compass
Model likely scenarios of moving initiatives
The other area in which the change practitioner may add
significant value in the business replanning exercise is in helping to
articulate and visualise the impact of moving initiatives. As outlined previously, these could be the
result of re-sequencing, re-prioritisation or scenario planning to better
manage risk exposure for the organisation.
In modelling the impacts of various scenarios, key call outs
include:
Resourcing and capacity challenges
Change volume hotspots
Change velocity against existing business change
capacity
Feasibility of allowing embedment of change between
initiatives
Advantages or disadvantages of any change release
‘packaging’
Example of data visualisation from The Change Compass
Plan restructuring exercises
Often restructuring exercises are lead by senior managers with the guidance of human resource partners from a people and HR policy perspective. However, the value of the change practitioner is in designing the restructuring as a project, containing scoped phases and planned according to a sequence of logical steps based on sound change principles. After all, restructuring exerts the highest impact on individuals more than other changes.
Restructuring is no different than other change
initiatives. There needs to be clear
articulation of the reasons or the ‘why’ behind the restructuring, logical articulation
of how decisions are made, clear detailing of impacts to the organisations and
people overall, and a series of planned steps in which to engage impacted
stakeholders to support them through the change.
Adjusting change approaches to fit in with virtual working
With the sudden switch to working from home or virtual
working, some employees may not be familiar or comfortable with this way of
working. Existing change initiatives may
have been designed with face-to-face sessions such as town halls, training sessions
etc. With the virtual working
environment change practitioners need to readjust the change approach and think
through ways of driving effective change virtually.
These include such as:
Effective virtual facilitation
Ability to use technology to aid engagement
More frequent communications than previously planned
Allowing more implementation time due to the challenges
of virtual working
Continuous engagement of employees during this change
In order to proactively engage the employee during this time
of change, follow core change principles.
For example, engage early and continuous to outline the direction of the
organisation, and check-in continuously to gage employee sentiments to assess
their change journey. Adjust and pivot
as needed to provide any additional support.
Share any wins such as examples of effective virtual working tips and
employee profiles. Share stories of how effective
teams have overcome the potential challenges of social isolation and still deliver
solid business outcomes.
The world is now watching and experiencing an emerging
coronavirus pandemic. There is
widespread anticipation and fear in many parts of the world, especially those
with higher rates of infection. This poses an interesting scenario of testing
the capability of organisations in managing change during coronavirus. And in fact …. the virus itself is a change
that forces organisations to work and organise itself differently.
The change caused by coronavirus is vast. Travel bookings are cancelled and prohibited. Employees in highly infected areas are told
to work from home. Expatriates are sent
home and many face forced quarantine. In
Australia, Australian evacuees from Wuhan in China (where the virus was first
spread to humans) are placed in Christmas Island detention centres. In many parts of the world, cities have
become ghost towns. Soccer stadiums lay
empty. Some countries have even closed borders
to countries infected with high rates of the virus. In Hong Kong office staff are working from
home, along with their partners. And
often within close proximity of where their children are playing, which can be
challenging.
No doubt about it – the coronavirus is one of the tests of
an organisation’s ability to undergo change.
Some are more prepared than others.
So how does an organisation manage the changes inflicted by
coronavirus?
Change leadership
Most companies follow the usual approaches of sending out
notifications on company policies and any restrictions such as business travel
and working from home policies. However,
in this time of uncertainty leaders need to stand out and help navigate through
the various changes caused by the virus.
This means communicating early and frequently about what is
happening and relaying any useful information as needed such as travel and
technology needs. Leaders need to gage any
employee sentiments and concerns about what is happening around them. Promote discussions as needed to sense-check
any employee concerns and offer support.
Effective change leaders also need to proactive interpret what the changes mean to the team and assess the various impacts of the change. Does it make sense for all team members to work from home? Are there any connectivity issues? Does the team have the skills to work virtually? How are the team’s deliverables going to be impacted by the virus in terms of potential increases or decreases in workload? What other teams might benefit from the support of the team in the current environment?
Rules of engagement
With any significant changes in ways of working and
operating there needs to be clear rules of engagement set for employees.
For example:
To support virtual working what are the ground rules if any in terms of responsiveness and virtual engagement? Does there need to be regular individual checking throughout the meeting to ensure everyone has a chance to speak?
Are there meeting rules that are required to ensure the team remains cohesive and engaged? Does there need to be a separate minute taker, time keeper, etc.?
Do individual expectations need to be reset within a changed workplace? How does everyone show their work output within a virtual environment? And what is the expectation on virtual collaboration?
Are there rules of expectations for those who are sick or have a cold/flu in terms of not being in the workplace?
How is performance evaluated within a virtual working situation?
Agile organisations can easily bend and flex according to
changing industry pressures and customer requirements. If business volumes drop, what are the ways
in which the organisation can scale down as needed to stay afloat? This is more than just about business
continuity plans as it is about the flexibility of the operating model and ways
of working to undergo rapid change.
Using virtual tools for collaboration
When the previous epidemic SARS hit back in 2003 working
virtually was less prevalent. Now,
equipped with a range of technological tools, organizations can easily make
things work much more effectively in a virtual environment.
The trick is not to assume that one magical tool will meet
all of your needs. Instead, use
different tools for different purposes.
Here are some digital tools that may help:
Telecommunications: Google Hangout, Skype, Zoom
Project tracking: Basecamp, Trello, Jira
Online discussion boards: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Yammer
Virtual collaboration: Draw.io, Google Docs
Visual graphics: Canva
Working virtually can also mean that some of the body languages cannot be seen and therefore using visual aids is more critical in a virtual working environment more than in a face-to-face situation. Using visual aids helps to make communication even clearer and easier to follow for the audience.
Draw.io is worth mentioning as it is free and also super
easy to use. There is a range of
different templates that are ready to use.
A team can use this to start brainstorming ideas, work through a logic
tree, fill in a flow-chart, develop a project approach, define a timeline, etc.
Balancing planned initiatives
Most organisations are already balancing multiple changes at
any given time prior to the arrival of coronavirus. What this means to most organisations is that
the impact of coronavirus is one more change that piles on top of existing
change initiatives.
Organisations need to carefully assess the planned set of
changes and ascertain to what extent existing changes may need to be tweaked as
a result of the virus. Do initiatives
need to be delayed or paused? Or will the
implementation approach need to be different as a result of the virtual nature
of work for more targeted employees?
Will communication mediums need to change as a result? What about learning mediums? What are the feasible learning platforms and
how effective are these for targeted employees?
Data visualisation tools for change such as The Change Compass can provide a visual way of understanding the volume and pace of change across the organisation. In particular, assessing the collective impacts of events such as the virus on the employees given other planned changes. This, in turn, can help with business decision making regarding the roll -out of the various changes to maximise business readiness and adoption.
