Recently heard in a company’s executive management meeting was the comment ”we talk a lot about what we must do to respond to these competitive pressures but we never do anything about it.” Not unusual you might agree and it normally takes a comment like this to break the chains of inertia and get some action going.

Similarly, many organisations take too long implementing necessary changes with resultant cost overruns and a failure to deliver what is needed and, indeed, what is expected. Cost is partly due to the actual cost of the business transaction ( restructuring, merger, disposal, downsizing, new system, new process etc.) but it also manifests itself through decreased employee productivity, unstable market place perception, loss of key stakeholders, negative customer reaction and loss of trust in the leadership of the organisation.

These risks are especially high when related to internal change projects which involve complex, matrix-functional systems that all must be actioned within a short time span but can equally apply to redundancy scenarios or when changing the management structure.

Change can be a complex process for organisations, who have to respond to competitive pressures in rapidly changing and sometimes hostile environments, and for individuals, who have to manage their lives more effectively within these organisations in alignment with, say, new corporate goals and values. It is therefore essential to understand the fundamentals of change and, to break down the natural resistance to change, it needs to be both organisational and individual.

To succeed with change, both the hard and soft issues have to be addressed and that means focusing on, for example, not only the new system, process or structure but also the behavioural and culture issues related to it; and it has to be remembered that when the organisational needs and reasons for change become sufficiently misaligned with the aspirations and expectations of employees, the latter can turn totally alien.

In order to accelerate change, an organisation must have a clear market focused rationale for change, a sense of urgency but not undue haste, a well articulated vision of the end game, strong and unified leadership possibly involving an unemotionally involved third party and focused initiatives that clearly outline the journey from A to B. This all requires effective communication whereby the changes needed are well grounded in a rationale which makes them compelling and palatable. It is the behavioural aspects of communication that will accelerate change because adopting and living new behaviours is the goal.

So, amidst all this complexity, what’s to be done?

Well, the essential but not so simple answer lies with strong change leadership.

Change leadership is all about actions which are undertaken by accountable managers and project teams, ensuring that intended changes – the what “we talk a lot about” – become reality in day to day activity. The key words here, of course, are “actions”, “accountable” and “reality”.

It usually begins with senior management sponsoring an initiative and appointing a change leader who will, in turn, put together an appropriate project team. The team will then expand the work to a wider group of stakeholders who, now effectively on board the change bus, will help design and plan the deployment of the resultant change. Ultimately all end users and their respective management become engaged in implementing the change.

Typical change leadership activities will therefore include:

• The creation of leadership commitment
• Validating the business case, concept design and project plan
• Strengthening business case accountability
• Coaching and training the project team (e.g. running change leadership workshops)
• Assessing and leading stakeholder involvement and commitment (including stakeholder surveys)
• Planning and implementing timely and effective communications (i.e. use of an integrated communications plan)
• Coaching and supporting line managers in using change leadership to deploy any new systems and processes effectively
• Measuring and tracking effective deployment

These activities will all add value by building commitment from the project team during the design phase; supporting the implementation of the changes during the deployment phase and the change accountability phase; and maximising sustained involvement of all stakeholders post deployment.

The table below highlights key change leadership events in line with the above major project phases:

CONCEPTUAL AND DETAILED DESIGN PHASE

DEPLOYMENT PHASE

CHANGE ACCOUNTABILITY PHASE

POST DEPLOYMENT PHASE

Such change leadership methodology will get changes actioned and reduce the risks referred to earlier by building clear expectations, effective communications, high stakeholder involvement, strong leadership support and high levels of accountability for implementation.