Abstract
This paper describes our thought leadership, experiences, and suggestions for agile teams and coaches to better leverage organizational change management tools and techniques to maximize team performance and address cultural challenges to obtaining agility. It uses a humorous perspective, comparing change management with things we all learned from our mothers and try to apply to business settings. It also highlights common methodologies for change management (including Prosci's ADKAR Model and PeopleFirm's Disciplined Approach), organizational psychology topics about human and team behaviors, and concepts of unlearning, and flavors these topics with applicable experiences from our consulting and coaching careers. The final section of the paper brings everything together with some proposed work solutions, actions, and discussion about how agile coaches and change management practitioners bring a host of complementary skills to managing project teams and bringing agility into an organization's culture.
Introduction
Thank you for reading this session paper! We appreciate your interest in our topic and hope that reading this paper provides as many insights and as much entertainment as the actual session and we hope you enjoy it! The paper shares our experiences, challenges, and expert opinions about successfully adopting true agile or Lean methods among project team members and company culture. We discuss key organizational change management methods and science, share techniques for using them to foster agility in your team, and use the metaphor of mothers to add some levity. The presentation also included two interactive games for participants to learn and apply concepts, which have been excluded from this paper. It is important to note a few other disclaimers as we get started:
- No mothers were harmed in the making of this presentation
- We love mothers – especially our own
- As consultants/coaches, we especially love the things that millions of mothers have said out of frustration and a fierce desire to make us ‘behave’
- Things that made absolutely no sense and actually resulted in the exact opposite behavior mothers really wanted
- And providing us with amazingly rich content for today
- THANKS MOM!!
Change Management “Momisms”
In the beginning, long before there were formal models and methodologies for managing change, moms across the globe were mastering this science. We have reflected on our American childhoods and have some memories that should resonate with the notion that mothers are natural-born change agents! Prosci™ uses the ADKAR™ Model of Change Management, which many companies use and hopefully most of you have familiarity with (Prosci, 2009). We think we know where these ideas may have come from, as you can see here:
Table 1 – Momisms for the ADKAR Model.
| Awareness of the Change – Your initial exposure to the need to change | |
| Desire for Change – Motivation to consider changing and why it's a good idea | |
| Knowledge of the Change – Understanding what you will need to do to change | |
| Ability to Change – Learning what you will need to know to be able to change | |
| Reinforce the Change – Practice or consequences to keep the changed behavior | |
| And we added Sustain the Change – Rationale or longer-term investment in the change |
To bring this closer to home, we can see these Momisms show up in our agile project teams. They seem to sound reasonable (just like when Mom said them), but somehow don't actually achieve the results we are expecting when we leverage them…Do any of these look familiar (See Exhibit 1)?
Exhibit 1 – Agile Team Momisms.
All humor aside, it's important to note that we often resort to what we know from our past experience and make assumptions that clearly don't always translate in the present business environment (see Exhibit 2).
Exhibit 2 – Not As Easy As Mom Did It.
Truths about Organizational Change Management
Take it from this expert in change management (or any others) – changing behavior is hard (Killpack, 2012). There are some basic time-tested truths that set the context for our next discussion:
- Change is a process – it takes time
- Everyone changes differently – paces and cycles vary by person
- Change is not linear – it does not start and end in a single point for anyone
- People can get stuck along the way – it gets hard and sometimes we quit for a while
- People do have a choice – they can refuse, give up along the way, turn back, or keep moving forward
- Change can be effectively managed – there are proven techniques to make it a little easier, less scary, and faster to adapt to
Knowing that change is a complex process is fundamental. It is also an emotional, personal journey that has some predictable phases and infinite possibilities for how those are experienced. This is often represented in a ‘Change Curve,’ which illustrates the phases of change across time (similar to the ADKAR™ model), and the ups and downs of emotions and thoughts that a person might experience during the change process. When you understand this, you can begin to see WHY structured methodologies were created to support the effort (see Exhibit 3).
Exhibit 3 – Change Curve.
Are you curious about HOW we developed structured change methods? Well, legend has it that scientists studying and measuring this psychological change journey realized it was similar to grieving, suffering a loss, accepting it, and then moving on. This grieving process was studied and adapted by organizational psychologists and engineers (more likely it was project managers in engineering fields) and this formed the root of today's modern day organizational change management (OCM) theories, methodologies, tools, and practices.
A formal definition of OCM will help us further this conversation as it relates to agile teams. Most experts agree: change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations_from a current state to a desired future state. It is an organizational process aimed at empowering employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment (Wikipedia, 2012).
Aside from Prosci's ADKAR ™ Model, several other scientists and consultancies have developed similar methods that structure activities, incentives, and learning to foster behavior change. All of these models are designed to minimize the time it takes to adopt change and the risk to an organization that changes will be everlasting.
PeopleFirm™ has a disciplined approach to change management, which includes some differentiating elements worth mentioning. We have all experienced projects that fail or fall short of realizing the business value they predicted. These project bruises are often related to underestimating cost, investment, and resources in user adoption and behavior change; so, the PeopleFirm™ methodology includes more power tools to engage and encourage employees to adopt change; see Exhibit 4 (PeopleFirm, 2012).
Exhibit 4 – PeopleFirm's Disciplined Approach.
It is important to note that many companies have change methodologies they use (e.g., Kotter, Prosci, Bridges, and so forth) or adapt and commercialize (e.g., Accenture, Deloitte, PeopleFirm, and so forth). They all contain similar stages or phases and have congruent activities and tools. PeopleFirm™ offers additional tools in engaging leaders at all levels, as part of any change effort and also measuring progress toward change adoption along the entire ‘change curve’(Wikipedia, 2012). These additional tools seamlessly integrate with other common project tools, such as steering committee updates, project management tools, data/interface conversion activities, readiness scorecards, performance measurements, and go-live checklists. Remember: there are many versions of OCM methodologies— all of them a little different. A seasoned OCM practitioner can help you navigate the options and help you choose what will work best for your project or company.
Achieving Agility
Now that you know a bit more about the OCM landscape, are you wondering how you can use OCM methods, tools, and techniques to get your people to change their behavior and adopt Lean or agile methods? Well, let's think about ‘your people’ and how many different groups of people are impacted if your project is ‘going agile’ (and yes, we are using that term somewhat sarcastically). Exhibit 5 helps illustrate this point as follows.
Exhibit 5 – Going Agile.
If this slide resonates with you and your organization, you can quickly see that a structured approach to changing behavior would be helpful and very complex (hence, the need for an experienced OCM practitioner to help you). But there are some things worth knowing that project managers anywhere can leverage to encourage behavioral change. Specifically, work motivation, locus of control, and self-efficacy are the key drivers of workplace behavior and should be leveraged accordingly for different types of employees (Killpack, 2012).
Exhibit 6 highlights these concepts. There are also other personality considerations an expert change management practitioner or a project manager can leverage to engage employees and assist in the change process; those require knowledge of the limbic system, neuroscience, biochemistry, and models of team development. These topics were highlighted in the session, but will not be covered here. Suffice to say, we can leverage other elements of human behavior to encourage behavioral change in a desired direction.
Exhibit 6 – Personalities Matter.
Unlearning
When we consider applying these concepts to helping our team or our company culture adopt agility, we realize that a puppy learns a new trick much faster than an older dog. Why? Because of a concept called “Unlearning,” which is becoming mainstream, by Jack Uldrich. Uldrich purports that in order to learn something new, you have to unlearn what you already know to allow the new teaching to stick (Uldrich, 2011). If applied to project teams, Exhibit 7 lists some learned ideas that we think should be forgotten. What comes to mind for you?
Exhibit 7 – The Neutralizer.
Agile Coach and OCM Practitioner
We know there is a lot to think about in this paper and hopefully we have given you food for thought about being agile, what that really means, and how OCM concepts and practices can help you change the behaviors of those around you. Most importantly, we hope you realize that agile coaches and change management practitioners can work together to improve the project team or the organization. Exhibit 8 clearly shows how much fun it can be to help each other get the best possible outcomes for our business!
Exhibit 8 – The Crossover
Our Closing Offer
Thank you and we sincerely hope you enjoyed reading our paper! We are interested in continuing these types of conversations with our readers and session participants and welcome any feedback you may have on the paper. If you are interested in more discussions about your specific workplace challenges and how any of these topics could help you, please tweet one of us: @KatrinaBales or @DrKeelyK.