Change management: it’s not always about the whole organisation

Brian Jones at iManage debunks the myth of change management as a grand-scale exercise

 

For decades, change management has most commonly been perceived as an immense, grand-scale undertaking, often involving the assistance of internationally renowned consulting firms to orchestrate transformative overhauls.

 

The truth is, there are several different types of “change” that companies need to manage, and not all of them require turning the organisation upside down with a small army of consultants. In fact, most of them don’t, and understanding this distinction is the key to putting organisations on the path to success.

 

No “one size fits all”

What types of change do organisations undertake to better adapt and respond to rapidly evolving external and internal conditions? Many types, both large and small.

 

Take the example of a manager who leads a small workgroup that – for whatever reason – has to change its procedures to match business conditions. That’s a procedural change. Maybe a senior director has several employees who are very argumentative in meetings; managerially, that director’s goal is to change that behavior by effecting a behavioral change. Rolling out a new platform or product is an example of a technological change that needs to be managed.

 

The bottom line? Different types of change management are happening all the time in businesses. And yet: The first place that many senior executives’ minds jump when someone mentions the need for change management is “organisational change management” (OCM).

 

Unlike the other types of change, OCM actually is a grand-scale exercise. It involves the Deloittes and KPMGs of the world coming in and making massive organisational shifts, adding and eliminating roles, restructuring the management team, holding lots of company-wide all-hands meetings, and so on.

 

The connotations that OCM comes saddled with are precisely why it’s important to qualify what “change management” actually means in any given scenario. More often than not, change management is on a far smaller, more specific scale, especially if it’s a procedural, behavioral, or technological change.

 

Better still, once you’ve clarified what kind of change you’re actually talking about managing, then it’s simply a matter of following some best practices to help usher that change along.

 

The playbook already exists

For decades now, there’s been a very straightforward and reliable process for any organisation that’s undertaking some sort of procedural, behavioral, or technological change – in other words, any change that isn’t OCM.

 

It begins with defining what your outcome will be. To determine an outcome you will need to answer the following types of questions: What is it precisely that you want to happen? What problem do you need to solve? What change do you want to see? Note that this step typically costs your organisation very little, and in many instances, it takes anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to figure out.

 

After the outcome has been determined, the next step is to figure out which people are best positioned to drive the change. That usually includes executive sponsors as well as subject matter experts who can use their knowledge and influence to help drive the change.

 

Next, you want to equip the change drivers you’ve identified to communicate about the change. This means, at a minimum, providing them with talking points that keep them on message, and a recommended communications cadence to keep the change top of mind for the workforce.

 

After that, you want to make sure that all the tools, policies, and training programs – if and as required – are in place so that the workforce knows how to change.

 

Finally, after the change takes place, you want to go back to those managers or influencers and make sure that they are monitoring the output so that they can make tweaks and adjustments if they’re not getting the expected results.

 

These five steps are tried and true. They require some focus and diligence, but any business that performs them should – all things being equal – achieve the change they’re looking for. Moreover, they don’t have to hire a change management consultant and disrupt the organisation to do so. It’s just a matter of thinking about the problem and managing people until you get the results you want.

 

Qualifying the change gives clarity

A little misunderstanding around change management is perfectly understandable. Technologists within the business, for instance, might think that “change management” is the same as user adoption – when really, successful change management is what helps them achieve successful user adoption. Senior executives, on the other hand, might have their own predefined notion of what change management is (read as OCM).

 

The lesson here is that you need to qualify the change you want so that everyone’s on the same page. Is it grand-scale OCM? Or is it something more targeted – like the change management around a newly introduced technology?

 

There is a time and place for OCM, but that’s not the change that businesses encounter on a routine basis. Typically, they’re dealing with small, focused, and targeted change management around a procedure or technology – and if organisations can master that, they’ll find themselves positioned for success.

 

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Brian Jones is Senior Director of Customer Adoption at iManage

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com