Right now I am writing this article from a Four Seasons resort in Hawaii after having 3 flights cancelled in a row. It has been quite a stressful experience as you can imagine and it’s the fourth day of delay. I’m not able to get back home! However, this started to get me thinking about the change experience for the employee or the customer. As change drivers or leaders we tend to focus on how to design the change at a program level and it’s rare for us to really get down to the lowest level of people experience and how this is perceived at a humanistic level throughout the change process.
In the past I’ve used the airport analogy to describe the change journey and how we work to design each of the elements of the whole ecosystem, including pre-departure, transit, in-flight experience, runway preparation and post-landing experience. To read more about each of these elements refer to this article on Landing multiple changes in a complex environment.
Now let’s take a look at my recent bad flight experience and you will see that this easily translates to a typical change experience for those impacted. My first flight was cancelled, and after several hours all passengers were feeling frustrated, wondering what was really going on, and when or if the flight will take off. The announcement did not provide any substantive information and so as a result each passenger had to queue up to ask for further information. This is similar to a restructuring announcement or other major changes whereby there is a generic corporate email sent to all impacted, however the information is so generic that employees will need to resort to their managers (or rumours) to get further information that will meet their individual needs.
For the managers, they often don’t receive the right information or it is insufficiently tailored so that they are not able to translate the organisational level impact to how their specific department or team will be impacted. This could be due to lack of information or skill set in translating the impact for their teams. To this end, we need to ensure we engage with those managers to ensure that their questions are answered and that they’re able to field employe questions, versus having no information.
Part of a good change experience is in anticipating any reactions, feelings and designing an effective process that tackles these head on. To do this, use a human-centred design approach of observation, interviewing, analysing precious incidents and basically adopt a human-centred mindset to pick out key experience insights that need to be addressed. To read more about the human-centred design process please click here.
So what can we learn from the bad pre-departure experience when applied to change?
1. Provide managers and leader with sufficient information so that they are able to engage with and consult with their impacted employees to ensure that their needs are met
2. Conduct a detailed analysis from an end-user perspective to pre-determine potential humanistic needs and reactions and address these head-on. For example, What types of information are needed? What are potential employee questions? How do we provide them with effective engagement prior to them asking for it?
3. Proactive engagement to manage potentially negative feelings. Being on the receiving end of a flight cancellation or change initiative is often frustrating and stressful. How do we anticipate these experiences to redesign it into a more positive one? For example, are there certain employee groups we can garner to be change champions to provide additional people support? What artefacts can we provide to shape these experiences? Visually-catching cheat sheets, posters, branded sweets, morning-tea, etc.
4. Involve all layers of management so that they are well-equipped to support the change and are clear with their role in the process. Are we simply asking them to be on-hand to answer questions? Or do we expect certain layers of management to be change coaches to guide first-line managers on how to lead change. What are we asking our Human Resources colleagues to be doing? Or our Risk partners or Finance partners? Be explicit about what specific behaviours and outcomes we are asking for.
5. Empathy. When people are frustrated, feeling vulnerable or stressed, the most important thing to do to address their feelings is to acknowledge and address these feelings by showing empathy. After all we are dealing with people’s emotions. Emotions are not logical and therefore data and facts usually do not create empathy. Empathy is between two individuals. One person showing another person that their feelings are valid, acknowledged and supported. Empathy is best demonstrated through verbal or nonverbal behaviours rather than through emails and online information. This is about a leader or another colleague showing genuine acknowledgement that a fellow colleague feels a certain way, without providing any judgment or even advice. During one of the days when the flight was cancelled, a staff walked around and chatted to everyone in the queue to just listen to them and acknowledge their frustrations – this did more good than anything else the airline did.
6. Create an element of surprise in designing the change process. Most corporate change processes are similar in that they follow a set way of engaging with employees according to the corporate norm of what has worked in the past. However, there are some organizations that keep follow norms and do not create a good change experience and keep repeating the same mistakes. I’m sure we have all experience this J. For example, it could a senior leader walking the floor to connect with impacted employees during the change process, or corporate artefacts that were not anticipated and could be perceived in a positive light.
7. Appealing to the senses. A lot of people remember sensory information more than data or facts. How do we leverage this to create the overall experience? Retail stores often dispense aromatherapy scents to create and environment or calm or excitement depending on the desired experience. Visual information is also important to create the right imagery so that employees can visualise the light at the end of the tunnel and be inspired to go through the tunnel. One can design visual images that help employee remember themes, or analogies that are easily understood and visualised (and therefore easily memorised).
My experience with The Four Seasons hotel from when I entered the hotel through to using its various amenities is that there is significant care and detailed anticipation of user needs. From personal interactions with staff that show care and rapport, through to facilities that are carefully designed to incorporate guest needs. For me the surprise element was the room iPad greeting me with my name and giving me a run down of the weather, things to do and other location and hotel references. The challenge for us as change leaders is to learn from this and think through how we design great change experience that are out of the ordinary and far from the typical ho-hum corporate approaches in initiative roll out.
How the sea inspires a different way of managing change
In taking my vacations in Hawaii I thought I would start a series of Change Management articles inspired by my trip to Hawaii. For those who have not been to Hawaii or have only stayed around Waikiki, the Islands of Hawaii is quite astoundingly beautiful. There is something magical about Hawaii that inspires the mind and soothes the soul. It’s welcoming people, amazingly jagged mountains, fantastic beaches, and sensational food is enough to bewitch any visitor.
As change or project managers we usually plan our approach in managing change from a top down perspective. We look at what senior executives would like employees to change, how much change is required, what benefits would be achieved through change, and which parts of the organization would need to change.
There is the usual focus that change leadership is critical and that without strong senior sponsorship that the initiative will fail. The senior leader is expected to have all the answers, to know exactly how to steer the employees towards an end state and be able to convince them the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the change. On top of this, if there is any resistance, the leader needs to identify these and overcome them in order to successfully drive the change successfully.
This all sounds like the standard recipe for change success does it not? So what is wrong with this?
Hawaii and leading change
When I was snorkelling in the North Shore of Oahu Island I was amazed at how much tropical fish I could see literally just metres from the beach. In fact, as soon as I had put my head down I could see the various sizes of amazing tropical fish. And the farther I go the more I notice at the abundance and variety of fish and coral around me.
When we surround ourselves purely with the top down approach of change, we start to develop a fixed mindset of how change should be done. Most of change literature resolves around adopting a top down approach. However, when we start to adopt a user mindset, an employee lense of change, we start to see things very differently.
The diversity of the ocean and the diversity of employees
Similar to the fish in the sea, there isn’t one type of employee. There are many types of employees with varying interests, backgrounds and preferences. It is easy for us to interview employees through conducting surveys and declare that we are intimate with employee concerns. However, in most situations there isn’t just one set of employee beliefs and concerns. Different employees have different concerns, just like in the ocean there is star fish, tetra, gold fish, carp, etc.
Whilst we cannot cater for every type of individual employee concerns and interests, it is also important to be able to see through impacted employees and what they are seeing. I became amazed at the wonderful world under the sea and how colourful and stunning it really is. If we really start to see through the different groups of employees, sense what they are sensing, we can really harness their power to drive change.
How do we leverage different employee groups in driving change
For example:
For employees who are change champions and early adopters – How do we harness their influence and positivity to quickly spread the word, and advocate for the change?
For those who have had bad change experiences in the past and are cynical and critical – How do we involve them closely to design the change process, so as to avoid any past mistakes and leverage to enhance success?
For those who were agnostic and did not either support or resist the change – How do we give them accountabilities to progress and promote the change
For those who strongly resist the change and actively counter against the change – How do we listen to them and address this head on. And leverage the influence of other employee groups such as the change champions?
For those who tend to be overly cautious and do not feel confident when there is change – How do we actively identify them and spend more time to nurture their confidence, or leverage change champions to hand-hold them?
Dipping below the surface of what various senior stakeholder groups are looking for in change, we start to see a different picture of what employees see. Let’s open our eyes to the various colours, shapes, and sizes of the attitudes, preferences and feedback of employees. When we start to see the diversity of different types of employees and where they are at, we can then leverage them to better drive and position the change for success.
I recently went to a concert to see some of the super soul bands of the 70s and 80s including The Jacksons, Sister Sledge, The Village People, and Pointer Sisters. In addition to funk and soul, there was a big component of disco music as well. I started becoming more interested in the history of disco music and how it came about. According to Wikipedia, disco music emerged in the late 60s and 70s and started as a mixture of music from venues popular with African Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Italian Americans, and the LGBT. “Disco can be seen as a reaction to both the dominance of rock music and the stigmatisation of dance music by the counterculture during this period”.
This led me to think more about the dominance of one idealism or concept over others and how limiting it is to only be able to operate with one concept, whether it be dancing or a way of working. I often hear in organizations that we should aim for ‘one-way, same-way to simplify things for people. Do we really think that one way of approaching something is the best for developing that particular capability? And do we really believe that people can only ever handle one way of doing something? Yes, in the beginning, taking a step-by-step process and not introducing multiple concepts may make sense. But in the longer term would we not benefit from different concepts, different methodologies, and different ways of working? (I.e. more diversity vs. no diversity).
Most large organizations are focused on ‘diversity’ within the organization. Diversity can be in the form of gender, sexual orientation, cultural background, age, etc. Having diversity in the organization is premised to provide a richer set of perspectives and points of view and therefore an important part of building talent. Diversity is also critical from a PR and public perception perspective as it paints an image of the type of organization and the types of people in it. For example, a company with a low percentage of women in senior leadership roles or management roles could be seen as one where women may have equal opportunities. The same can also be said for other diverse areas such as age, sexual orientation, and ethnic background.
Why do we need diversity in change management?
Change management, like other disciplines, such as IT management, HR, or Project Management is an area that cannot be fully covered with one singular framework or perspective. Just as there are countless frameworks, concepts, and methodologies in HR so is the case in change management. Models include Kubler-Ross, Lewin, ADKAR, Bridges, Kotter, etc. Different models may suit different types of changes. Please read our article ‘Diagnosing for change‘ on how different change management models may be better for certain types of changes.
By using just one singular model we could be restricting our organization’s change management capability. At university, we study different theories and concepts with the goal that by understanding different approaches, we start to build our understanding of the whole discipline. This allows us to pick and chose one or a combination of different approaches based on the situation. The same applies to change management. It is by understanding different change management approaches that we start to be able to tailor our approaches given any change situation.
For leaders across an organization, many would argue that it is best to provide only one framework or concept for all of change management. If it is really the case that all leaders have never been exposed to any change management frameworks at all (which is unlikely to be the case for large organizations) then starting with one framework may be a good idea.
However, a business leader may need to understand:
leading people from an engagement and emotional connection perspective
How initiatives are implemented and their role in it to make it a success
How to coach others through the change process
How to track, measure, analyse and report on change and embedment progress
The art of how to communicate in a verbal and written way using the right words and tone
All of these could have different concepts and frameworks to provide the richness of building understanding and skills. Yes, it is possible to simplify different frameworks and connect them. However, as leaders continue to grow, they will need to be exposed to different concepts and approaches. In the past, projects used a waterfall methodology where tasks were planned in detail and there was little room for plan changes. Now, most organizations utilise some form of agile methodology for many of their projects. For some projects, waterfall methodology may be more appropriate and for others agile. Having diversity helps organizations achieve more successful initiative outcomes.
How do we achieve diversity in change management?
Here are some areas in which to build diversity of thinking and approaches to enrich your organization’s change management capability.
1.Change management frameworks
As mentioned before, having several change management frameworks build a richness of understanding of different approaches
2.Change analytics
Collecting a range of change management data is incredibly valuable. Data on the impact of change across the organization enables leaders to make effective planning, sequencing, and prioritisation decisions on how initiatives should be rolled out. This includes impacts on stakeholder groups such as employees, third parties, partners, and customers. Other data such as change readiness levels for initiatives, initiative benefits, and business performance indicators are critical to ensure initiatives will land effectively.
3.Change leadership
Managing change is a part of leadership. Therefore, just as there is a big range of leadership frameworks so is the case in change leadership. For example, Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence, Situational Leadership, Kotter, etc.
4.Change service offering
Providing a rich set of change services can also help build change capability. Change services may include such as:
Initiative change management
Portfolio change management
Change leadership capability development
Change analytics and decision-making support
Change coaching for leaders
Business-as-usual initiative coaching/support
Change communications support
5.Project delivery methodology
Change management should also be geared to support a range of project methodologies that the organization is using to implement its projects. The richness of being able to flex between different project methodologies means greater value and overall Organizational capability in managing change. Different project methodologies could include:
Most of us work in organizations where change is the constant, and where at any one time there is a myriad of changes. What happens when there is a lot of changes being worked on? How do effective organizations manage change within this common environment? And what plays out when an organization adopts agile within this environment? Here we will illustrate how one organization effectively manages lots of changes within an agile environment.
Meet company A which is a typical financial services organization. They, like most other financial services organizations, are undergoing multiple changes. In change management theory land most are concerned with managing one change at a time. The reality for a lot of organizations is that there are lots of changes, some times up to hundreds of changes at a given point in time within an organization. This is not taking the lens of formal ’projects’ that would have formalized governance and resources in place to plan and deliver the initiative. From a user-centric lense, change is any initiative that involves changing a current way of working. These includes product changes, marketing campaigns, process changes, and role changes.
Like other organizations, company A has several business units, each of which has a range of initiatives that mainly impact their own business unit. However, some of these also impact other business units. At the same time, there is a company-wide body or governance group that determines which intiatives are to be funded centrally and are of higher priority, depending on the initiative benefit case, strategic importance and overall business value.
Towards the end of the year every year, there seems to be a phenomenon emerging in this company. Within an agile environment there are many agile teams are working in self-driven teams iterating on various changes. Many of the initaitives are also focused on delivering changes that impact frontline staff that work directly with customers. Most of these initiatives are aiming to implement the change prior to the end of the calendar year as the peak customer volume for this financial services firm tends to be between December and February. The idea is that if the changes were rolled out prior to December, then the change would take place in time to capture the peak volumes and therefore provide a quick realisation of benefits.
However, the scenario is that in true agile form, there is bound to be delays in each iteration. As each agile team starts to work through and iterate on the change, often there are technical delays or that the team realizes that the scope of the project requires a longer period of time to deliver. As a result, it is common to delay the eventual initiative go-live. When there are several initiatives aiming to go-live prior to the December period, this becomes a peak change impact period for the business. This means that there are simply too many initiatives trying to launch at the same time, causing operational performance challenges and business risks.
So how has Company A managed this situation?
Data
Armed with the quantitative data of the impacts of every initiative, programs, projects and initiatives, the picture was clear in terms of what this meant to the business. The frontline staff, as well as team leaders of the frontline, will require significant time away from their normal duties to understand, digest and embed the various changes. This presents real challenges in terms of ensuring the right resourcing given the number of hours required to undergo changes. The business also has historical data of what happened last time this level of change had impacted the business and what this meant to business performance. The data also included the overall operational environment and any challenges including customer volumes, performance trends, etc.
Governance
A series of governance session was organized to zoom in on this specific scenario consisting of project delivery managers, change management, business leaders and other support professionals (e.g.initiatives risk). The session focused on discussing the various business risks and how to mitigate these risks, including prioritizing agreed critical initiatives, understanding sequencing implications, and de-prioritizing non-critical initiatives. With each meeting, there was also continuing delays for some initiatives (again, in true agile form). As these potential or actual delays were socialized and shared, stakeholders kept updating their plan of attack to ensure the was an effective way of managing the situation.
The role of the change practitioner
The change management professional’s role in this context is to lead and facilitate the discussion of the governance and stakeholders so that there is clarity of what the data is telling us, what options we have to deal with it, and agreed actions forward. Program managers play a role in sharing ongoing progress in initiatives. Business stakeholders also play a critical role in understanding, accepting and agreeing to any actions, as well as sharing any shifting business performance priorities. However, the change professional plays a key role as the core of the problem as about managing and coordinating the amount and pace of change at a given point in time.
The solution
There was a series of solutions proposed to manage this overall peak change period:
1) Less critical initaitives were either pushed out or stopped. This lead to various re-planning exercises
2) Higher priority initaitives were clarified and agreed
3) A set of communication and engagement actions were proposed to better engage the impacted teams to help them joint-the-dots around the myriad of changes and what these meant
4) Careful and continual monitoring and reporting of business performance was emphasized to track the outcome of the changes
The illustrated case for Company A is a very common scenario for a lot of organizations within an agile environment. Initiatives cannot operate in silos if we adopt a user-lens in managing change and the impacts of change. This case illustrates how critical it is to have strong data that tells a clear story of what is going to happen to the business and what it means. Data enables effective and strategic conversations. Data also provides significant power and value in putting change management at the driving seat of business management.
