How well organisations do at managing change is subject to a number of variables. At any given time, most organisations apply change management practice to fewer than half of their projects. After 30 years in the industry, change management integration is getting better but most change managers would agree, overall organisational maturity is still low.
Because change management involves people, cost-conscious organisations see change management as an overhead. And the trouble is that when change is going well - you probably can't see it.
Change going well looks like people leaning in, learning and applying new processes, technologies and ways of working.
It's when change isn't going well, that organisations hear the noise and feel the pain. See here for more: https://www.agenciachange.com/post/gut-feel-and-lag-indicators-when-change-isn-t-going-well
Justifying enterprise change management
Change managers are regularly placed in the position of needing to justify change management to their organisation's leadership. Here are some tried and tested ways to have these conversations.
Past project experience. Digging through the organisation's treasure-trove of past failures will inevitably uncover risks and financial impacts of poorly managed change. Whereas, projects that were successful can be demonstrated to have used sound change management techniques.
What-if scenarios in the upcoming portfolio. Quantifying the impacts of inflight projects through risk assessment allows an organisation to anticipate what might go wrong and to quantify the future failure.
Tangible financial impacts. Having demonstrated that strong change management directly enhanced the organisation's ability to achieve their past successful projects, benefit delivery can be quantified in financial terms.
Connecting change management to ROI. Add suitable benchmarks to the organisation's own project history. External research data also shows strong correlations between financial success and the effectiveness of change management.
Building maturity
To build change maturity at an enterprise level, organisations need to move through their paces. From having change management scattered around isolated projects, organisations need to build standards, build competency and ensure that change management is a requirement for new projects. See here fore more: https://www.agenciachange.com/post/what-to-do-differently-on-your-next-project
Focus first on the highest impact activities for deploying change management at an enterprise level.
In many organisations change management is still treated like a trend rather than a long-term, established business practice that when put to mature and refined use will enable significant competitive advantage.
Demonstrate the need for change management by highlighting gaps in current performance and communicating how managing change effectively will address problems like overwhelm, staff turnover, difficulty understanding priorities, etc. For more on this: https://www.agenciachange.com/post/you-re-at-change-saturation-should-you-stop-changing
Develop and deploy change management training to all levels and all employees in the organisation. This may involve tailored training packages for a light touch, a change leader and for staff implementing change.
Expose project teams and business leaders to change management techniques, have them apply their training and use change management methods in their work. Mandate change management on all new projects.
Demonstrate senior leader participation in, and leadership of, change activities - from the individual leading the change deployment through to the various other leaders touched and impacted by the change.
Implement an enterprise-wide methodology that is easy to use, engaging, accessible and well-maintained.
Owning the function
Like any other established business function, change management needs a permanent home in the organisation. Think of it like Accounting. There may be a specific department responsible for collating the Annual Report, but in small ways and large, every employee has touched accounting systems and utilised accounting methods.
The change management function needs to have a home so it's practice can be interpreted for the organisation, and deployed suitably across all relevant areas.
Organisations embark on new projects and programs all the time. Typically the process and technology elements are better understood and planned for than the people elements. However, it is the people that will make the process and technology work. In order to do so, they need to understand it, accept it and have enough reason to adopt it. Implementing change management at an enterprise level protects an organisation's investment in it's priority projects and programs.
Talk to us about establishing change management at an enterprise level in your organisation.
Comments