Changing the Change Management Process
Advice from Joseph A. De Feo, President and Executive Coach
Wikipedia defines “change management” as a process of requesting the change, determining attainability of the change, planning the change, implementing the change, and evaluating the affect of changes to a system. It has two main goals: supporting the processing of changes and enabling traceability of changes, which should be possible through proper execution of the change process.
Many organizations want change and therefore want change management. Your organization may be one of them. This month’s Juran News is highlighting the benefits and pitfalls of the change management process. We hope the lessons we have learned and are presenting here can help your organization improve its change management process.
Not all performance excellence programs like Six Sigma, Lean, and other improvement methodologies understand the necessary tools for supporting change beyond the process that is being changed. There are many human factors often left out of the program. Some of them are simple, like changing job descriptions of new positions to drive change. Others are more complex, such as how do we reward and recognize improved individual performance. These issues tend to be an after thought rather than a planned event leading to angst in the organization at a time when change is rapidly taking place and there is little time to address them adequately.
In our experience all performance excellence and process improvement programs should consider a change management component. One of the most common change management tools has been the GE Accelerated Change Process. This process is included in the training of GE Green Belts and Black Belts as a means to expedite changes that are required to facilitate process enhancements. GE provides Belts a set of tools to overcome the common obstacles to change. Dealing with slow moving stakeholders, understanding the impact of change on other departments, and getting management to cooperate are typical obstacles to change. Unfortunately Belts are not trained in all the tools required to enable an organization to overcome the difficulties facing them when attempting change. In this case, we as Belts are amateurs at change.
Dr. Juran identified long ago that the technological changes required to change a process or an organization almost always lead to a social consequence. This consequence is often regarded as a negative impact on the people – the culture. He also made it clear that one must first define what a culture is to better understand it. He kept it simple. A “culture is a set of habits and beliefs that the organization operates to every day.” Any disruption to this set of habits and beliefs is often refuted as “hogwash” by the very people the beneficial change will impact.
Here is an example. For many years, engineers drew on drafting tables. These tables were their tool bench. A new technology came out called “cad cam.” This computer aided design technology now required the engineers to use computers to do their drawing. The computers were faster and took up less space than the old tables did, but the social consequences were so great it took a number of years before the old tables were removed and the engineers converted to using computers. In today’s organizations, only a few years ago, the use of “virtual meetings” was unheard of. Today they are the norm. Overcoming the technological change was the first part of adapting to this change. The social consequence of the change created fear that managers would not be able to completely manage their staff if they were not in the office for meetings. You may recall many similar positive changes that started out as a negative consequence of change that required additional organizational support to overcome the consequences.
This is where the change management process and tools come into play. Having a process that deals with the proper planning and implementation of change beyond the technological component will accelerate your improvement and gain greater acceptance to the new changes.
John Kotter's highly regarded books Leading Change (1995) and the follow-up The Heart Of Change (2002) describe a helpful model for understanding and managing change. Each stage acknowledges a key principle identified by Kotter relating to people's response and approach to change, in which people see, feel, and then change.
Kotter's eight step change model is summarized along with Juran’s tactical recommendations to incorporate change into your performance excellence program:
- Increase urgency - Inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant.
Tactic: Assure the organization’s vision, strategy, and annual plans include this sense of urgency. All employees must be assured that upper managers are in this too. If not, it looks like management is just trying to get lower levels to work harder for less.
- Build the guiding team - Get the right people in place, with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels.
Tactic: Select the right Champions and Experts to lead the improvement efforts. Do not waste time on managers that are not ready to change. Work with those that want to change and let the others come along later.
- Get the vision right - Get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy; focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.
Tactic: Vision can refer to the project team’s goals. Make sure each “vision” is in line with the company strategy and the team sticks to it. Do not let them wander. Remember every process and every problem is tied to each other. The team’s vision is to put their arms around their component and deal with it.
- Communicate for buy-in - Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and appeal and respond to people's needs. De-clutter communications - make technology work for you rather than against you.
- Empower action - Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders - reward and recognize progress and achievements.
- Create short-term wins - Set aims that are easy to achieve - in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones.
- Don't let up - Foster and encourage determination and persistence - ongoing change - encourage ongoing progress reporting - highlight achieved and future milestones.
- Make change stick - Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, and new change leaders.
Tactic: Upper management cannot communicate how the organization is going to change and then hire employees that do not support change. Management must reinforce the change in what they do day to day - not just in the newsletters.
Tactic: Communicate in as many ways possible the activity that the organization has committed to for assurance change happens. Do not just talk about the results. Activity is important to demonstrate organizational commitment to making change happen. Employees will know management is serious when they hear and see the same messages.
Tactic: In addition to large Lean and Six Sigma Projects, create departmental teams that can take corrective action, clean up old policies and procedures, and remove obstacles to pending improvement and have employees decide the appropriate means to be rewarded and recognized. Do not leave it up to just the Human Resource folks.
Tactic: When creating project charters break them down into smaller bites and repeat them rather than tackling world hunger in one month. We have an expression - there is only one way to eat an elephant - bite by bite. Break large problems into small ones and shoot for quick wins.
Tactic: Review your results annually and adjust the annual plans. As soon as the annual plans exclude goals related to change the organization will become complacent and resume old ways of working. Communicate program failures as well as successes.
Change management does not have to be a program in itself, but it must be a part of your overall strategy. Organizations are a lot like human organisms – change happens slowly. Anything you can do to optimize the social consequences of changes will only add to your success.
If you would like to comment on this article please send me your thoughts: jdefeo@juran.com.
(800) 338-7726