Introduction
Ensuring that change succeeds is arguably the most important work of leaders in organizations today. Leaders must shoulder most, if not all, of the responsibility for initiating, implementing and following through on change throughout their organizations. Leadership, by its very definition, involves the movement of people from one place to another, or from one way of doing things to another, often when people would not likely go there on their own. If people are not willing to be led, the leaders have failed to create the necessary conditions for success.
In over two decades of helping changing organizations, the situation has been very consistent. Of course there are always specific things that make each situation different and uniquely challenging, but the common themes are always present in some form or another.
The Old Way Isn't Working
While the following scenarios are no doubt a broad generalization and based solely on my own experience, every organization has exhibited some, if not most of these characteristics:
- The senior executives have shaped a new strategic direction or major change initiative for the organization, and developed some form of high-level documentation for this plan. The executives have made some kind of formal announcement, usually in the form of all-hands meetings where they show a seemingly endless series of slides with little or no time given for effective question and answer or explanations, followed up with either broadcast e-mails or “change Web site” executive messages. The executives have usually anointed a change champion, or project leader and project team, to go through the detailed planning process. Executive frustration is mounting, as it seems the people clearly aren't getting the urgency of the situation and making the change happen. Their assumption is a good strategic plan, and the handoff to the change/project leader is all that is required to ensure a successful change. They see their role as initiating and sponsoring this change, but with the change/project teams responsible to make it all happen.
- The change/project team is a group of outsiders brought in specifically for planning and implementing a change. In other situations it is a group of hand picked insiders, and in some cases it is a mix of both. The team is struggling with the development and implementation of the change plan. Often they have sequestered themselves from the rest of the organization in order to be more focused and effective. In other situations, they are still trying to accomplish their “day jobs” while trying to contribute to the work of the project team. They are dealing with either the detachment of the executives, who have washed their hands of all responsibility and ownership after handing the change off to the project team, or the intense pressure that comes from not enough evidence of success. They are also dealing with mistrust and skepticism from the middle leadership levels and staff, who see them as those “change people” who are no doubt going to significantly disrupt their lives. All of this, along with not having any formal reward or punitive power to go along with the burden of being accountable for making the change happen, is weighing heavily on their shoulders. They see the formal announcement day, when they proclaim their plans to the organization at large, as the time when they can breathe a sigh of relief and congratulate themselves on a job well done.
- The middle managers are often feeling like cheese in an overcooked grilled-cheese sandwich. Daily they are trying to ensure the work of their department, group, or team is accomplished to the best of their ability, not always aware of or caring about the work of the larger organization. Pressure and heat from the top is likely coming from broadcast e-mails, all-hands announcements, and newsletters. Those “change people” are buzzing around like annoying mosquitoes. Pressure and heat from below is coming from staff who are unsettled and have lots of questions the managers can't answer. An overabundance of rumors and uncertainty persist.
- Staff and employees are trying to maintain the day-to-day work of serving the customer as best they can. They come away from large group announcements where they hear detailed information about a strategic plan they really don't understand or care about. Some get it, some don't and likely won't, and the majority have lots of questions and would really rather just get back to work.
- The communications, human resources, and organizational development professionals are trying to be helpful in whatever way they can. The communications group is often frustrated, as they are usually responsible for external communications and public relations, and have now been asked to be responsible for communicating this change throughout the organization. They are using whatever media they have at their disposal—e-mail, Web sites, or newsletters, but none of them seem to be having much positive impact. The human resource people are trying to encourage all managers and leaders to pay close attention to all the people issues throughout this process, often losing focus on the strategic business imperative underlying all the change. The organizational development people, often calling themselves change agents, are trying to be helpful with some kind of models, interventions, or anything that will improve the organization's ability to manage this change more effectively. Each group is often working with different clients, with different mandates and challenges, unaware of whom is doing what with whom throughout the whole organization.
The end result is that two out of three major changes fail. Clearly, what organizations have been doing is not working. Some of the problem lies in current assumptions organizations use when trying to change.
Senior executives who see themselves as the initiators and sponsors of the change lack a real understanding of the ownership that is required throughout the entire process to ensure success. Sponsorship all too often means simply signing off on it, allocating some money out of the budget, and turning it over to the project people. Change agents are out there trying to change the system, the people, the processes, or whatever needs changing. They see themselves as igniters or instigators of the change, but rarely understand the time frames, roles, and requirements over the long haul to make change succeed.
One of the problems is that so much of the work of helping organizations change is done under the mantra of change management. Change management is an oxymoron. Management is about effectiveness and efficiency in maintaining status quo, getting the work of an organization done through the efforts of others. Change is about doing that work in a different way. Successful change requires leadership, not management.
There is a Better Way
Exhibit 1 – The integrated approach to leading change™
Complex change succeeds when leaders weave together a comprehensive approach to leading change from (1) effective strategic leadership, (2) implementing successful change, (3) engaging communication and (4) leading people through transition (see Exhibit 1). Organizations must intentionally develop leaders throughout the organization, regardless of roles and positions, helping them understand and embrace their critical roles in leading change effectively using four essential competencies.
Effective Strategic Leadership
Strategy is the clarification of choices that determine the nature and direction of any organization. The strategy of an organization provides answers to some core questions every organization must answer:
- What purpose do we serve, and how must we differentiate ourselves in the world?
- Who benefits from what we do, and how can we best meet their needs and wants?
- What are we trying to create as a result of our collective efforts?
- What values guide our decisions and actions?
- What internal capabilities do we require to make all this happen?
Effective strategic leadership provides this focus, intention, and direction for the overall enterprise. It requires leaders to continuously clarify the desired future for the organization, and the broad goals necessary for the organization to get there. Effective strategic leadership incorporates strategic thinking into the ongoing operations and progress of the organization, ensuring it is at the foundation of every organizational activity.
Strategy is the intellectual thinking process behind every successful organization. Strategy is really all about intention—what does the organization want to become and why. All complex change begins with the discernment and clarification of its intentions. Everyone then must be engaged in understanding and supporting those intentions. Until the strategy/intentions are determined, none of the changes will make sense, or likely succeed. People must see a logical and clear link between the organization's strategy and all the changes that are occurring.
Implementing Successful Change
Exhibit 2 – Implementing successful change
Change, at its simplest form, is the act of making something different. If strategy answers the “why” and “where to” questions, change answers the “what” and “how” questions. Change is the external event or series of events that must be planned out and implemented successfully in order for the new strategy to be realized. Change consists of two steps or stages, usually clearly defined—something old stops and something new starts (see Exhibit 2).
There is an endless array of changes occurring in organizations these days. Implementing successful change involves the planning, decision making, and initiation of all the details, budgets, timelines, responsibilities, accountabilities, and activities required to ensure the change will actually take place in the world, not just on paper. It involves effectively communicating with and engaging everyone throughout the organization about their specific roles relating to the successful implementation of all this change.
If strategy is the “intellectual thinking” aspect of complex change in every successful organization, then change is the “physical doing” part of the process. If strategy is intention, then change is action. Without action, intention will never manifest itself in real life. In order for complex change to be successful, everyone must understand the intention (strategy) and be able to make direct links between that intention and all the actions (change) taking place around them.
If organizations simply focus on improving their capacity to clarify their strategic intentions so everyone can understand and support them, and clearly align all the actions (changes) to those intentions, the success rate for organizational change would improve. However there is another dimension to leading complex change that must be addressed in order for the results to significantly improve.
Engaging Communication
Communication is the act of transmitting information between individuals or groups. When it comes to change-related communication, the information shared must include strategy, change, and transition messages.
Unfortunately and all too often, change-related information is “cascaded” down through the organizational structure using e-mails, memos, all-hands meetings, or Web sites that have proven to be woefully inadequate to the task at hand.
Engaging communication requires an effective and enduring connection between the senior leaders, project leaders, and all the first-level supervisors or local-area leaders. This connection must be continually supported by face-to-face dialog sessions and supported by up-to-date briefing notes.
Leading People Through Transition
Exhibit 3 – Leading people through transition
Transition is all too often the missing piece of any complex change process in organizations. In many situations, transition is used as another word for change, assuming they both mean the same thing. They don't. Transition is the inner journey that takes place inside individuals, teams, departments, divisions, and entire organizations. Transition is the internal re-orientation we go through when something external to us changes. It is the psychological adaptation that begins well in advance of any change, and continues on long after the actual change has occurred. This journey has three phases that are never clearly defined, but rather overlap and flow along an invisible path.
Leading people through transition requires leaders at all levels of every changing organization to help people disengage from the old world, leaving behind those things that are no longer required for the road ahead. It requires leaders to support people through the chaos and confusion of the time in between, where trust is often at an all-time low, and so much learning is necessary (see Exhibit 3). It requires leaders to do everything possible to ensure people become fully integrated into the new ways of doing things the change demands.
When organizations effectively weave together all four essential competencies of leading complex change – effective strategic leadership, implementing successful change, engaging communication, and leading people through transition – they will achieve the results they set out to accomplish. Those results mean they reach the goals or outcomes of the new strategic direction, in a timely manner, within the established budgets, people come through the entire process ideally in better shape then when they began, and the entire organization benefits.
Every organization has some kind of methodology or approach to addressing their ongoing strategic thinking process. Unfortunately, many aspects of strategic thinking have to be updated and evolved from the traditional approaches to strategy that organizations have relied on in the past. Every organization has some kind of a process for planning and implementing change. However, many aspects of planning and implementing successful change must be updated and improved as well. A few organizations do address the transition challenges in their organization, although most don't. Unfortunately, sometimes transition solutions are being used to address strategy or change-related problems, and of course they don't help. It is only from an approach that integrates each of the four essential competencies—strategy, change, communication, and transition—that organizations will begin to significantly increase their long-term capacity to make complex and constant change succeed.
Project management has long been an integral part of a changing organization. In fact, project management has evolved into a sophisticated science over the years, with the help of organizations like the Project Management Institute, the world's foremost advocate of the project management profession.
Project management can take several forms in a changing organization. In some cases, there is a permanent project office that exists solely to work on the never-ending sea of projects. In other cases, project teams are formed for a specific change and act as a temporary structure for the duration of the planning and initiation of the change, or project teams are made up primarily of outside experts with specific content knowledge.
Whatever the makeup of the project management function, project teams have a crucial role to play in helping any organization to change. However, given the statistics that an average of two out of three major changes fail to meet the desired outcomes, project teams are a key part of ensuring that change succeeds.
Rarely does change fail because of a flawed project plan. The challenge is making the plan come to life throughout the organization. Project managers must not only fulfill their mandate of developing the plan and initiating the “change,” they must become more sophisticated in viewing their particular project from a systems perspective – seeing how their project fits into the grand scheme of the organization's journey as a whole. They must learn to develop their project plan from an integrated perspective—getting beyond just developing the tactical plan to include each of the critical components required for successful change.
What follows are 10 essentials for improving project management by considering the essential principles of leading change—dealing with the bigger picture, as well as the softer side of project management—the two dimensions project management could stand to improve.
10 Essentials for Improving Project Management
1. The project team has a clear mandate. There are two dimensions to a project team's mandate. First, they are responsible for developing the plan for change. This includes all the detailed work of determining the problem to be addressed, mapping out the scope of the project, getting input from as wide a variety of sources as necessary, running cause-and-effect analysis, and putting the actual plan together.
The second part of the mandate is to help engage the entire system with the willingness and ability to actually implement the plan as designed. This is usually where most project teams fall short. In order for project teams to become more effective, they must spend more time and effort on engaging the entire system.
2. Senior executives are the ultimate owners of the projects success. Project teams rarely if ever have sufficient formal power and authority to provide the necessary incentives, consequences, and focus to ensure that their project succeeds. The people that do have the necessary authority are the senior executives. Senior executives must see themselves, and be seen throughout the organization, including the project team, as the ultimate owners of this project. Everyone must understand that the final responsibility and accountability for the success of the project lies firmly at the top of the organizational hierarchy. Unless this project fits in with the normal power and authority flow of the organization, it will not achieve its goals.
3. The project team consists of the right people. Project teams should consist of a good representative mix of people who will ultimately have to implement the project and who will be directly impacted by it. They should come from a variety of functional groups throughout the organization and should represent each level in the organization's hierarchy. People with the specific technical expertise required for the actual change must be on the project team to guide the planning and decision-making process.
4. The project team has access to all the resources they need. The senior executives must set the project team up for success by ensuring that they have everything they need to fulfill their mandate. Usually, the most important resource that project team members need is time. They should be able to fully focus on the task at hand, and should be temporarily or in some cases permanently pulled away from their normal duties, so they can commit to the success of the project.
5. The project clearly supports the current priorities and direction of the organization. Projects must be directly connected to the current strategic priorities and overall direction for the organization. All too often, people see projects underway that appear to be stand-alone efforts. However, when faced with limited resources and many other changes underway, a project that doesn't fit into the overall direction of the organization will hinder rather than help the forward progress.
6. Every project fits in and is coordinated with all the other projects underway. Rarely is there only one project going on at a time in a changing organization. Usually there are several projects underway, all competing for a finite amount of resources. What is required to avoid this competitive situation is to ensure the projects are coordinated with each other on a regular basis. This is the responsibility of the senior executives, who ultimately own all the projects and all of the project leaders. This requires all the project leaders getting together once a month or so to compare notes on their project requirements and how they overlap.
7. There is a solid strategic foundation supporting this project that is understood by everyone. Every project must be built on a solid foundation, a solid rationale clearly supporting the time and energy required. If everyone impacted by this project does not understand it, there will be insufficient motivation to invest the time and energy required to ensure that the project succeeds. A solid rationale consists of truthful answers to three simple questions:
- Why are we undertaking this project at this time?
- What will happen if we either don't do this now or fail in our attempts to make it work?
- What does the successful outcome of this project look like?
8. There is a comprehensive project planning methodology being used. Project planning methodology consists of developing the actual plan for the change to be implemented. A few of things required for a good project plan are defining the scope of the project; clarifying roles; assessing the requirements, impact analysis, benchmarking, and resource allocations; determining training requirements; and establishing controls.
9. The project team incorporates transition-related activities into the project plan. This is an area where most project teams fall short. When project teams clearly understand what transition is and include transition-related tactics right into their project plan, everyone involved with the change adapts to the new reality much faster and with considerably less stress and confusion. Transition-related activities can include clarification about what must be left behind and what must come forward in order for the change to succeed, or scheduled opportunities for the senior executives to spend consistent face-to-face discussion time with the first-line managers throughout the organization to ensure they have all the information they need to lead change in their respective areas.
10. The project team consistently communicates its process, progress, and decisions effectively throughout the enterprise. Most project teams intentionally build communication tactics into their ongoing planning and implementation process, but usually underestimate the insatiable appetite people have for change-related information. Project teams must understand that communication is the vehicle to ensure the second part of their mandate, helping engage the system with the willingness and ability to change.
Project teams also must understand they are one of the three most important communication groups in any changing organization. The other two groups are the senior executives and the first-level supervisors. All three groups have key responsibilities in ensuring that key information is communicated and understood throughout the organization: the strategic rationale underlying all the projects, how all the projects move the organization toward its desired future, the details of all the project implementations as they become available, and what is required to ensure everyone gets through the accompanying transitions.
One of the most helpful communication tools project teams can develop and use throughout the cycle of their project are one-page briefing notes. These are point-form updates, in an outline format, that are developed on a regular basis to connect the project team, the senior executives, and the first-level supervisors. They evolve from less certainty, with a variety of possible options being considered, to more certainty and specific decisions as they are made. They are a simple tool that ensures everyone is on the same page with regards to the projects and what everyone must do to move the organization forward together to achieve the overall outcome they seek.
Conclusion
Project management will continue to become an ever more integral aspect of every changing organization. As the pace and complexity of global change increases, the cost of unsuccessful projects becomes even more staggering. Project management must become more completely integrated into the organization in order for complex change to be successfully initiated and sustained. It must get beyond the science and the details of planning and implementation, and must weave in the strategic and transition dimensions more effectively.
Compare how projects in your own organization measure up against the 10 essentials for improving project management, then make plans to improve change leadership and project management in your organization.