Wisdom of change

The slideshow (above) shows just some of the ‘top tips’ we received from members of our Change Directors Forum.  We used 10 quotes to create giveaway cards for our event on 25 June (Emily Landis Walker speaking on “Engaging People in Change: leading through uncertainty“).  I used www.moo.com to print the cards – a really great site for creative, value for money printing…

We asked event attendees:“If you could give one piece of advice to fellow Change Directors on managing organisational change, what would it be?”

1. “Win the hearts, and the minds will follow” – i.e. build (ideally collaboratively) a compelling vision and a sense of purpose, get your stakeholders wholly engaged and they WILL move heaven and earth to deliver it [or they'll leave and be replaced by those who share such a vision....!]
2. “Make sure the programme structure is kept as simple as possible and easily understood – you can’t eat an elephant whole!”
3. “Set down and agree a clear communications plan and do not ignore it!  Clear concise communications will be key to the success of the plan”
4. “I believe that people are fundamental to successful change and therefore my tip would be to:  ‘engage, explain and enlist’.  A change programme needs buy-in from all those it touches”
5. “Ensure that you have top level sponsorship and that they are, and will stay, truly committed to the change”
6. “For anychange programme – always ensure you have clear & measurable objectives and the active & vocal support of the business sponsor throughout.  You may have been given responsibility for delivering the change but you are not accountable for the rationale and those that are must stand by you”
7. “My advice on managing organisational change is not to direct from on top, but have the change leaders drive change from the ground.  By-in is critical or it won’t happen.  They must think it is their idea or has benefit to them”
8. “Keep it simple:  People are continually looking to overcomplicate things in order to justify their existence.  Often this will be contributed from people who are apprehensive about change and their unclear thoughts feed into the programme from workstream level up.  I am currently managing a very complex programme and find the landscape will change from a clear direction through to an unclear picture in a matter of days.  In order to mitigate against this I have a delete button in my head that removes the confusion and focuses on the deliverable at its most simple component level.  By doing this it helps me plan out using logic rather than the “proposed process or complex proposals.  This is invaluable as it saves a lot of time in decision making and enables me to identify potential obstacles (such as we don’t have any specialist IT resources to build on this new platform) and therefore put the necessary steps in place today so that the problems of tomorrow are mitigated.  The ‘Keep it simple’ mantra is keeping me on the right path”
9. “Communicate!”
10. “Never underestimate the importance of getting your communications strategy for the change sorted out well in advance, even small levels of org changes can send disrupting “ripples” round the unofficial internal grapevines within organisations.  If at all possible get some input from dedicated and experienced communications professionals to work with / within the change team to help build a comprehensive plan and then continue to monitor and adapt it regularly as circumstances change”
11. “Pull a great team together to manage the change, with complementary skills and a common vision”
12. “Take the people with you: share the vision, make it something everyone aspires to achieve.  People committed to a cause can overcome almost every hurdle and fast”
13. “Ensure you have balanced metrics to ensure you end up delivering what you intended – get very clear on what “better” looks like”
14. “Set and gain consensus with the key stakeholders around a clear vision of the end state for the organisation.  Once you have this agreed, the debates focus on the journey rather than the destination – and it is usually easier to resolve different views about priorities, routes or modes of transport than destinations!”
15. “…have the patience of a saint, the toughness of a rhino, the resilience of Ayres Rock and the soft touch of goose down!  Aside from working that miracle, my main top tip would be to make sure you have at least one senior top team sponsor behind you all the way – it’s impossible to drive serious change without that driver at the Exec level”
16. “Ensure you have the right people (including the right sponsor, which may well be the CEO if its a big enough change) on whatever governance body is responsible for implementing the change (e.g. usually a Steering Group) and don’t start any serious work until you do – you need to get the right commitment at the outset”
17. “Tackle the recurring underlying issues as they emerge.  If you ignore then they will sink the transformation – in fact, tackling them IS the transformation”
18. “If you can’t write it down you don’t understand it.  And if you don’t understand it, why should you expect anyone else to?”
19. “I try to remember the Chinese definition of madness!  They say that to keep doing the same thing yet expect a different result is madness.  It helps me recognize when I need to try a different tack, to be creative”
20. “Spend time on risk management, and have deep conversations about potential “unintended consequences” of the change”
21. “Successful change is a balance between the desire to succeed, complexity of the task, variance from today’s world and the time to start realising tangible results… only focus on changes which yield significant benefits after thorough evaluation and planning…”
22. “Do a few targeted/ prioritised interventions well, rather than a large number – adequately”
23. “Engage staff early, set a timeframe for the changes and communicate regularly throughout the process”
24. “Seek to understand the business you are changing before you seek to be understood by the workforce.  Your diagnostics and fact-finding efforts in the early stages are critical to your future ability to be seen as knowledgeable about the business.  You may face comments challenging you on your role, your ability and your knowledge about the business.  You will be able to handle the points about role and ability quite easily but business knowledge is often the one that will be exploited against you.  Try to get to know your business in depth before you start to change it”
25. “Frequent, informal face-to-face communication through a well-managed network of influencers is the most potent of change levers – often this trick is used poorly”
26. “Do not be afraid to challenge the senior stakeholders with your views or proposals as those individuals usually need that independent stimulus to drive successful change”
27. “Leverage combinations of change interventions through a well managed portfolio”
28. “Understand your stakeholders – those supporting the change, resisting and the ones who do not care!”
29. “There is nothing more constant than Change.  Having the right team with the right attitude and the desire to make Change happen is a critical success factor.  Driving the Change is the easier element, changing the culture required to make the Change successful should never be underestimated and should form a key part of the Change strategy”
30. “Review the internal and external landscape, and get very clear about the specifics of what your change programme is going to deliver that will take you way ahead of your competitors.  You need to continue to evolve this, and manage against it tightly to ensure you get to a better place, not just a different one”
31. “Spend time up front on creating a better visions for the future, so the emphasis is on getting to a better place rather than focussing on getting the old out”
32. “Think deeply about organisational capability, and what gaps are going to be their in your new world … put actions in place to start bridging these sooner rather than later”
33. “Learn from other organisations who have faced similar challenges – work out what are you going to do better, to “leapfrog”  where they have already got to.. (don’t spend years getting to where your competitors are today!)”
34. “Set up the right change management organisation and governance with champions for each aspect of your change plan.  Use steering groups wisely and regularly review scope and purpose at different phases in the plan so the roles are clear and participants can see how they are adding value…”
35. “Engage the end users as much as possible, to ensure what you end up with is “better” and not just different”

Thank you to everyone for sending us their top-tip – it was a great event!