Professor Todd Jick – 25 years Retrospective of Change Management

Professor Jick, one of the pioneers of Change Management opened the conference with a 25 year Retrospective of Change Management.

He pointed out there’s an ever-growing number of Change Management models – a body of knowledge, then asked: do we have the skills to implement and use these models successfully? Have we learned from our successes?

He suggested the next phase of the profession is about training others to manage change. (This is certainly what we are seeing in Australia).

Australia and New Zealand are up with the leaders

Speaking to other delegates, I found there was a mixture of experience levels and interests. The common feel from the European delegates I spoke with was they were still at the ‘what is change management?’ stage, and dealing with the challenges of educating business leaders about the value that can be added through better managing change.

Many delegates from the USA were rebuilding after the impact of the GFC on projects, budgets and Change Management resourcing.

I believe we’ve made good progress in Australia and New Zealand in educating Senior Executives and Project Managers about the value-add of Change Management. We have many experienced and qualified Change Managers on major change projects (both in the domestic and global fields), who are achieving excellent results for projects and people.

It’s a great time to be in Change Management – we are seeing a larger edge of the wave.

SAP and ERP Change case studies

• Many case studies focused on SAP/ERP implementations and other integrations.
• In one example of a SAP implementation – 19.3% of the project budget (which was $USD2 billion!) was dedicated to change management activities.
• The common themes about what made these projects successful were:
  • Communication from the beginning about what is in and what is out
  • Involving the business teams in designing the solution
  • Making it ‘real’ for each and every person – what will they gain from the new system? One company offered the ‘Impact, Education and Support’ model to move people through the process successfully

Change Management in the US States House of Representatives

Darlene Meister, Director, Unified Change Management, for the United States House of Representatives shared their five 5 core techniques that form the basis of their work:

1. Committed Exec Sponsors
2. Flexible and nimble change team
3. Strong stakeholder management plan
4. Honest and frequent communications
5. Proof in measurement (KPIs etc)

Integrating Project Management and Change Management

• Start on some key initiatives, pilot and build momentum
• Make sure the project team has change management training and don’t focus on too much at once – they are learning new skills, too
• Consider locating the Change Management team in the Strategy Group group, not the PMO
• Include results in Project Managers and Change Managers KRAs
• First improve predictability of PM delivery, THEN build Change Management (we have seen this work well, many times, here in Australia!)
• Help the PM through the change of change management

Project Fairs – a successful communication, with pizza

Bayer shared its success with Project Fairs (like a science fair idea with pizza) where six key initiatives had booths, staffed by a mix of the project team, change team, SMEs and Sponsors to make sure people could see the link to company strategy and the importance of all initiatives. Employees could also ask questions straight to Senior Executives. Lesson learned – take it on the road! They then took the Project Fair to six sites.

Senior Sponsors had three key messages and committed to speak to at least one employee every day about the project and help them connect the dots and reduce anxiety.

Measuring the success of change & upskilling managers – a work in progress

A common issue that organizations and universities are still grappling with is measuring the return on investment or success of the change in real terms for their organization.

Scorecards and dashboards were frequently discussed and many presenters were working on these issues but none felt that they had cracked it yet. Several suggested involving customers and staff in identifying the measures that will mean something to them.

Perhaps the most consistent element of success (and frustration) was the ongoing issue of manager skill and engagement. Capturing, and keeping, the time and focus of managers was talked about as a major issue by most presenters yet, where is has been achieved, the results spoke for themselves.

Anthony Greenfield: 5 Forces of Change – Work WITH the grain of human nature.

This was an interesting presentation and I recommend the book.

The five forces of change are:

• Certainty: leaders need unswerving direction
• Purpose: be clear on the purpose of the change
• Control: need a sense of control
• Connection: stay connected to people and things
• Success: persevere

Christopher Worley: Built to Change

This was my favourite presentation – it challenges the ’edge’ of some current thinking and I found it challenging to apply it to some of the projects on which we are working. I read the book a few years ago and, having re–read it, had a new perspective. The Built to Change Model says the concept of stability is a pervasive assumption in principles of organisation design and buried deep in the managerial psyche. Most organisations are ’anti’ change.

Yet, the key to strategic advantage is "How can we be different?" How can we be innovative and nimble when it is the opposite we crve?

Agile organisations are change friendly, future focused and have values that allow change with flexible leadership models. Worley lists some interesting examples.

Happy reading!