Gaining support from managers and supervisors during change is a fundamental role of a change manager. We need people at all levels of the change to accept it, engage with and adopt it. But we need more from leaders. We're really asking people leaders to model their acceptance publicly of something they don't have a great deal of control over. For some leaders this can feel like over-promising and is a risk they may shy away from taking.
There are a number of methods we use to ensure people leaders are involved in the change including:
Engage them actively in project planning and design
Have them act as a spokesperson for project communications
Gain their input on scheduling key team activities like training programs and consultation on decisions
Invite them to lead meetings with colleagues to facilitate shared project outcomes
This isn't an exhaustive list: there are other effective ways to ensure people leaders are actively engaged. The main thing is we need them to be able to provide a through-line of continuity so that when the change goes live their sponsorship remains in place.
The risk inherent for people leaders
We need to keep in mind that operational leaders who are somewhat removed from the day to day work of the project may not fully appreciate it's methodology or commitment to deliver. We need to build trust with leaders in the delivery and change processes the delivery team will be using.
Enter the Engagement Plan
A formalised engagement plan that identifies key leaders, matches them to a compatible, change champion, project leader or change manager and establishes a regular face to face meeting schedule is an effective way to ensure coverage.
Sometimes teams are reluctant to do this, thinking that meetings scheduled in advance run the risk that there will be nothing to discuss. However, remembering people leaders need reassurance that their sponsorship is fully backed by genuine work and outcomes, regular engagement meetings effectively serve stakeholder needs - even when the meeting outcome is only to conclude all is going to plan.
Key ingredients of an Effective People Leader Engagement Plan
Industry experience has shown us time and time again that stakeholders will often say they're too busy to add more meetings or working groups into their schedule. Another common objection is that with agility in modern project delivery, an advance schedule of working groups feels like ponderous overhead. Who wants more meetings, right? But as a change manager or change leader, you need to think about how you'll deliver the change effectively without regular engagements formalised into a plan. What are your other alternatives? For more on relationship building, have a look at: https://www.agenciachange.com/post/go-slow-to-go-fast.
To support people leaders in effective change sponsorship is to help them understand the realistic progress towards solution delivery, and encourage engagement with their role as vocal and supportive change leader.
Change champions. Have a designated representative assigned to key leaders and teams to coach on the facts, benefits, features and details of the change. Ideally these would be subject matter experts with the ability to mentor leaders, and the willingness to operate as part of a network that shares information and collaboratively resolves any issues raised. This may be a member of the change team, a member of the project team, or subject matter experts selected from within impacted teams.
Support materials. If engagement sessions are set with the expectations that they will include a discussion of milestone achievement, updated talking points and time to hear feedback from the leader and their team, they can serve well throughout the change effort.
Talking points. Provide leaders with communication tools that can be cascaded, readily worked into existing meetings or adapted for one-off events. Include presentation decks, FAQs, case studies, reference articles, information about the features and benefits, and information about the team delivering the project.
Data gathering and sharing. Collect information related to the change from surveys, feedback forms, online polls, email inbox, questions and objections raised in meetings. collate this information regularly and share the feedback with managers and supervisors throughout the organisation. Make sure there are answers prepared for any questions and objections raised.
Milestone achievement. Share progress information with leaders and keep them informed of how the team is tracking towards milestone completion. Even if this isn't seen as 'good news', its preferable to share it proactively rather than have a leader be blindsided by it later. The fact that milestones slip may not be of concern to leaders, as long as there are reasonable explanations and plans in place to re-baseline or steer back on track.
If you can bring together your key stakeholders with an appropriate change champion, set up a calendar of advanced engagements and provide the materials and inputs on time, then voila! you have an engagement plan.
In an engagement with a major Australian university, I set up regular working groups that continued at agreed intervals. They started hot and action-packed with much to discuss with the delivery team. Then as time went on, the agenda was mostly just an update on readiness and delivery details. The project's regulatory requirements started to delay so the working groups slowed down in terms of cadence, but we still ran them regularly.
By the time the regulatory requirements were back to full speed, the stakeholders in the working group were supporting peak student enrolments and otherwise would have been disinclined to support an implementation of this nature.
However, because we'd been carrying through a very effective engagement plan, the stakeholders saw the inevitable and were already prepared for it. There was no resistance whatsoever to implementing new student reporting requirements - many of them manual processes - during peak enrolments.
Give an engagement plan an try - you may have to fight through initial objections, but it will be well worth it in the long run.
For more on change management and leadership, go to: https://www.agenciachange.com/blog
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