What is a practical five-step method for tackling complex organisational change?
Simplicity. It doesn’t seem like we often encounter simplicity in business, especially at the higher levels of large organisations. In Edward DeBono’s book Simplicity, he rightly says, “Almost everyone sees a value in simplicity. Why?”
Yet what happens when decision-makers put forth a new change initiative? There may be a decent high-level plan and considerable energy and effort invested in socialising this plan at the higher levels of organisations.
Employees in the organisation may also seek this very change. They may even have considerable knowledge and motivation. Further to this, the organisation may invest in specialist capabilities to help socialise and cascade this change.
So far, it appears that there are many predictors of success for this particular change initiative. Yet two years from now, where is the organisation? The idea of this specific change is still there — as platitudes. A worn poster about the change greets employees in the hallway and has been long-forgotten. The executive team championing this initiative shook their heads a long time ago, wondering why the idea didn’t quite catch on.
They were perplexed given the many roadshows, posters, mousepads and big thumbs up from change champions throughout the organisation. Countless executive-level labour hours invested in something with so much potential. Yet ultimately, the initiative fizzled after making a brief impact.
The world of organisational change is rapidly maturing and has become a profession in its own right. Change professionals from both remarkable and varied backgrounds provide a fascinating, trends-disciplinary lens to how they manage change delivery.
My early academic background was in marketing. While I never did engage in a marketing career, I find exciting parallels between marketing and organisational change management. Around 25 years ago, having graduated with my marketing degree, I asked marketing executives how they knew the actual effectiveness of advertising and brand changes. Advertising agencies can now quantify their effectiveness — sounds great to me!
Marketing science was still in its infancy, and I remember the varied responses from various marketing professionals. They were a persuasive bunch, and not one of them could tell me that they didn’t know for sure. Nowadays, there is arguably more rigour around the actual measurable effectiveness of marketing campaigns. We have the marketing Effie’s (or “effectiveness”). This is a panel-based award given to the most effective marketing campaigns measured by many dimensions.
These dimensions speak to how the marketing campaign increases revenue and shapes consumer behaviour. Why don’t we have the same for organisational change management? Is this something I should spearhead, or can someone else in the Change community have a crack at this one? I’m not fussed either way.
Going back to our poor organisation — there were so many factors heralding a likely success. Therefore what could have gone wrong?
The same wide-scale change problem exists at an individual level. Think of New Year’s resolutions?
“This year, I’m gonna be fit/lose weight etc.”
Maybe during January, you pride yourself on your valiant effort to make changes. You go through the discomfort of change.. and things are going swimmingly for a while. A friend checks in on your progress in late February… and the conversation quickly goes elsewhere. Your change initiative failed to thrive. Don’t worry — it’s not just you. It’s millions of others, including me.
In his book Why People Fail, Siimon Reynolds speaks of 16 reasons for failure. One of these stands out for both individual and organisational change — an unclear purpose. But the intention was crystal clear and razor-sharp to the executive(s) who started this change initiative?
Maybe the executives assumed that employees would easily understand expectations. The high-level vision statements readily translate into action. Middle managers would help with this process, and employees would conscientiously study and accurately interpret high-level platitudes.
This in itself is a huge assumption.
Maybe change communications cascaded on time to all employees. Specialist resources to help facilitate change tick the right boxes and use the “right” change methodology. So the cooks toiled in the kitchen and produced meals accurately and on time. So why was the flavour in the food missing?
Could vital context for individual teams or worksites be overlooked?
Were the change team incentivised to do things by the book and get those communications at the door without considering context? It could be that the messages landed, and for a brief moment, they had each employees attention span. Yet, the messages perhaps spoke of abstract concepts rather than concrete behaviours or calls to action.
In other words, well-intentioned employees received the message yet put it in the “too hard” basket. Think of how busy most employees are. Could they already be reaching or exceeding their bandwidth for absorbing and interpreting new information? Without a well-targeted message that acknowledges their context and specific behaviours, is the likelihood of change communications success a roll of the dice?
Both behavioural designers and psychologists obsess over behavioural change. People’s response to change may be due to a composite of their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Given that we are also social beings, our team and organisation hold sway over change responses.
The framework presented here is one that I have used for a few clients now. It helps me move away from doing “tick a box” change management to more of an iterative way of translating the abstract into concrete and simple steps. If I have targeted my audience well and chosen representatives to check each message, my likelihood of success bumps up a little. If my audience knows what they need to start, stop and keep doing at appropriate points throughout the change, my audience is slightly more likely to adjust to the change. You can see the language I use -
Some of my words are “marketing speak”, such as targeting. I could take things a step further and use terms like segmentation or psychographics. These are approaches that marketers use to help understand their market. Why can’t organisational change managers take this approach? We are marketing changes to the employee experience.
While this framework is far from perfect, it is similar to frameworks advocated by behavioural designers. Frameworks like this can help you evolve from feeling stuck with the enormity of a change to someone serving to break down and work with specific behaviours. Surely this can help you find the fun in leading organisational change?
I hope you find the above approach useful when influencing mass change, whether you are in organisational change, marketing or another field.
Preview the first chapter of my book — The Change Manager’s Companion.
My book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now.
Want to learn organisational change management techniques in less than two hours? Check out my online course on Change Management.