Leadership techniques to empower people during change initiatives.
By Jonathan Gilbert,
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Every organization is affected by change, especially during times of economic volatility. However, project managers tasked with leading change initiatives are all too aware of the alarming failure rates that can occur. The critical missing piece is frequently the failure to take into account how change affects an organization’s people.
According to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, nearly 75 percent of all organizational change programs fail because they don’t create the necessary groundswell of support among employees. When organizational leadership employs a three-phase Organizational Change Management Lifecycle methodology and techniques to address the stages of change, change management initiatives stand a much greater chance for success.
Phase I: Identify the Change
While it may seem obvious, clearly articulating the proposed change in common, consistent language is the fundamental first step for any change initiative. Leaders need to identify and communicate the need for change so that it is understood and supported by people at all organizational levels. Project leaders should also be aware that there are intellectual, psychological and neurological responses that people have regarding change that can be addressed with the following recommended techniques:
Get People’s Attention — Change distracts and disturbs human beings, so directing their attention in a positive way will help them focus on the proposed change. Introducing the initiative in a setting away from people’s daily routines, off-site if possible, will create a shared sense of urgency and ownership in the change.
Align Their Disturbances — A disturbance is a neurological term for the conflict or gap between a person’s current mental map of thinking and the mental map required to operate in a changed state. To align disturbances means to create agreement among the individuals in an organization so they have a common gap between their current way of thinking and the mental state needed to adopt the change. This will enable them to agree on the direction and organizational response needed for change.
An important technique leaders should use to align disturbances is to create a compelling vision of the future state and continually communicate it. The vision should take into consideration the change needed at every organizational level so that the day-to-day work experience of the staff is described along with high-level change goals.
Phase 2: Engage the People
The next step in the change management lifecycle is to engage people in the planning of the organization’s response to the change. This concept is the antithesis of a top-down rollout strategy in which a change initiative is delivered to the people expected to implement and adopt the change. Giving people the opportunity for intellectual, emotional and psychological reaction to the proposed change enables them to become accustomed to the idea of change and begin thinking in ways that can identify potential trouble spots and contribute to process improvement. It is critical to their personal stake in the proposed change.
A technique project leaders can use to facilitate adoption of a change is to conduct organization-wide workshops on appropriate change response. These sessions enable people to participate in the dialogue about how a deliverable should be used in the organization, and contribute to the emergence of an aligned approach for managing and adapting to the change. Aligning reactions and encouraging involvement in the change response typically moves people’s behavior to addressing the problem and creating a direction to facilitate change.
The implementation strategy for change response can then be developed at a high level. The people executing the strategy, as well as those who will be impacted by it, should be included in the strategy development. The strategy needs to be acknowledged by all involved as a flexible plan so that changes can be made once implementation is begun.
Phase 3: Implement the Change
During the final Implementation phase, change strategies developed in the Identify and Engage phases are translated into actions for achieving the proposed future organizational state. If the first two stages were effectively addressed, people will be well prepared to participate in the development and implementation of new processes and technology, and the implementation should essentially be a monitoring activity for leaders. However, most organizations spend the majority of their time in the implementation phase and don’t adequately address their people’s role in change. In such instances, successful change adoption rarely occurs.
Prototyping is a critical technique to get the change under way incrementally without waiting for a highly detailed, master plan that can potentially stall the change initiative, while allowing flexibility to respond to changing conditions. Prototyping takes into account people’s thinking and activities as new processes and technology are deployed. Since their thoughts and actions are used in developing the change response, it further increases people’s ownership in the change initiative.
The urgency of circumstances that precipitate change results frequently in the introduction of new processes and technology which are doomed to failure without the input and buy-in of an organization’s people. Leadership that recognizes the importance of making change a personal commitment for all its people — not just executives and stakeholders — will be more successful at implementing change. Using the Change Management Lifecycle methodology’s three phases of Identify, Engage and Implement and related techniques provides organizations with a framework for creating a receptive environment for positive, lasting change.
Jonathan Gilbert, PMP, Executive Director of Client Solutions for ESI International, has more than 30 years of experience as entrepreneur, educator, CEO, construction manager, management consultant, project manager and engineer. He earned his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park, concentrating in project/construction management and environmental engineering. For more information, visit www.esi-intl.com.
