Recent Change Management Lessons Learned

We have summarised some key learning points from our recent change and transformation assignments.

We hope you find them useful, especially if you can relate to facing similar situations.

Change Forum- A method to ensure your change will be fully effective and ready to land using key checkpoints and playbacks to the business owners.

On a recent assignment, we were set up as the change function to embed a technology solution, where by we were straddling the business and tech areas to ensure the change was not just thrown over the fence and the business left hoping for the best.

We quickly spotted that some of the change aspects were being delivered in phases without any business assurance or oversight of its impact. It was not only the impacted business areas but without wider visibility of what other changes we were cutting across during “delivery” that could unpick all of the hard work and dilute quality. We quickly developed a “change forum” that we could feed in updates on tech deliverables to help not only communicate the change more widely (*with the key business stakeholders in the same room) but also to carry out the necessary business/cut over reviews to help with any such go/no go decisions to prevent any unnecessary blockages further down the track.

In identifying such a gap and key piece of missing governance, it presented an ideal opportunity to elicit real time feedback on tech features. Acting as a “playback” to double check that all key areas of the business and impacted teams understood the drops of delivery rather than feel let down with lack of communication and being done to.

We were able to develop a clear road map of change states and bring to the table any necessary change impacts that we could overlay, with any such wider business change conflicts to ensure we could manage the oncoming traffic of change.

Big bang v phased delivery drops- Always consider the people impacts and your training delivery requirements

We stepped straight into a potential challenge when the delivery method was pre-agreed as “phased” due to de- coupling risk and giving the opportunity to learn after each drop and evaluate by function and business area.

Not only did we firstly identify a key risk around such an approach and with elongated time frames, testing, etc but then when we overlaid the communication plan and training requirements it looked like a very knotted ball of wool. So many business areas and separate functionality/process changes to align that it made better business sense and more importantly change logic to deliver with a “big bang” for smoother training and comms work packages. This approach did carry some risk with a larger mass and the need to ensure all delivery ducks would be in a row for a singular delivery date but the alternative carried greater risk and wide reaching impact.

The single delivery was a success in that all impacted areas had the new solution and functionality together and meant for a larger group of change champions, helping each other and feeling like a real (change) community spirit with genuine excitement and anticipation for the date to arrive. (Christmas day in a change sense)

Model Office- A chance to road test changes and iron out creases in process, systems, skills and training.

Another key introduction we made for a recent client was to set up a model office to road test a number of people, process and small tech changes. They wanted to better optimise the organisation and with PCP support had developed the focus areas and opportunities available but wanted to now take a step further toward implementation on a larger scale.  We looked at business impacts of the proposed changes and took a sample of skills, systems and people from the organisation who would become the guinea pigs that we could baseline and measure performance improvements to better understand benefit and priority.

It gave the ideal opportunity to prove a number of concepts and also “test” some system functionality in a safe environment alongside drafting standardised operating procedures (where gaps were apparent). It also allowed the organisation to play out some “what if” scenarios to develop future strategic direction and see where and how any scale up activity could maximise future investment.

Clear and transparent reporting- Don’t be afraid to call it RED (But be ready to justify its impact)

Don’t just use it as a way to grab attention! Although if you don’t have a mandate or base lined plan then milestones will be very hard to call out as “off track” if the journey has not been clearly defined.

We observed certain attitudes and behaviours when asked recently to audit a governance and reporting framework that was not fully effective. We found that some corners of the business were uncomfortable presenting plans, risks and issues showing as RED. There seemed a reluctance to flag high risk and almost felt a sense it reflected as negative or a failing on the change/delivery team.

Identifying risks and issues is a fundamental part of any project, programme or change. If categorised correctly and justifiable it gives the sponsoring group and stakeholders the severity rating and urgency required to collectively resolve, reduce or remove.