Chinenye

Chinenye

7 Key Factors of Sustainable Change

The Key Factors of Sustainable Change

Naturally, we’d need to take a long term and wide-ranging view of the outcomes and purpose of a change management program, so knowing the key factors of sustainable change is crucial. Let’s keep in mind the most common very high-level reasons change management is undertaken:

  • strategic alignment (business objectives and how we get there so we can ‘boss’ our category)
  • benefits realisation (change drivers, problem statement – all the things we do not do well, that we fail at and that we need to start doing better and all the things we want to be able to do, now and in the future)
  • sustainable change (how we achieve our business objectives and keep getting the benefits but also be structured to make new changes at scale and pace and continue to improve)

In other words, do better, compete stronger, sell more, have a favourable and high profile and lead in our sector – all the things businesses want and need to do. But far too many don’t get there. Far too many fall over. It all gets too complicated, focuses on the wrong things and that’s a shame. The following article is lengthy, although I may break it into 7 separate articles for each area at some stage, but this is not a topic I plan to take a bite-sized approach to. It should all be known, so it all needs to be said.

The purpose of business transformation is to enable optimised business performance and human capability so the transformation process must deliver that. Clarity on the factors that increase this likelihood is highly beneficial. Implementation’ describes the phase of enacting the changes scoped, planned and created within a business and implies an embedding but embedding is not complete without adoption. Adoption must be persisted which means that the change is actually implemented rather than just installed. For this to be true, behaviours, attitudes, processes etc must be modified enduringly, through all the interdependent elements of the change management process, to get the necessary buy-in from savvy sponsors, engaged employees and functions who will protect the brand standards.

 

Why you need a framework that ensures the change delivered will be sustainable

If as Change professionals, we get to the end of our implementation and

  • we have left people behind, or they leave us in spirit or otherwise
  • the technology we have invested in and implemented is not utilised to its fullest extent by all of its target user groups
  • our overall culture is not improved and the key prongs of change are not fully adopted
  • we do not have day one excellence in people transition, system and tool adoption, and clarity on what they need to do, how to do it and how to remediate,

the change and benefits delivered are NOT sustainable, and we have manifestly FAILED.

Chinenye Ikwuemesi

 

The backdrop to this is that the absolute failure rates for change programs are staggering, over 70% fail.  However, as the requirement for, and rate of change continue to go up, change management is a far more frequent exercise than not for businesses who want to stay on top. So it’s definitely worth understanding the factors that make success more likely, especially for smaller companies and professional services firms, whose businesses may possess some built-in advantages, if the pitfalls are clear.

The right framework integrates the key factors of sustainable change, helps with embedding systems and processes as well as the behaviours and actions of your people. Make no mistake – this is the brass ring. Change equals new operations, systems and processes but sometimes also entail massive upheaval for people like restructuring, merging and new organisational design that means significant and stressful people changes. I do not want to gloss over this and you shouldn’t want me to.

Ok, so we need to accept that change is pretty much unavoidable but we along with that also must accept that with full-scale transformations, the people side of this process must be prioritised, especially if your business is smart enough to consider your employees as the assets they are and can be. This is because some of the all-time biggest reasons for the failure of change projects are to do with people -a) resistance to change b) badly managed people change c) no specific, focused business transition management d) toxicity arising in relationships or environments.

People! It is absolutely vital to prioritise people and get them on board. You need them engaged, invested both rationally and on an emotionally. Change that can be sustained is very rarely imposed on people with agency. You have heard this before, but how do you do it and why does it matter?

How?

It’s a series of actions across the dimensions outlined below that together accomplish this important goal, not a single step. You can’t do it without vision, but you do not get that without a leader and he cannot sell it if he is not accountable or communicating with people or without an end to end business transition plan . People are central to the process but without the right motivations and mobilisation and a clear and common view of the vision and the role they play, it’s a non-starter.

It matters

Successfully managing change is predicated on putting together strategy, structure, processes and infrastructure to move people, with their consent and participation with vision, clear messaging and communication to a desirable outcome – the gain of something or the avoidance of something or both. If anything in the chain of any of these critical dimensions fails, everything breaks down. A really good example of when a communication breakdown led to other systemic disintegrations in, that does not demand a business hat or experience to understand, is what happened when the British Government varied their message and slogan as well as arguably behaviours that they expected during the COVID19 crisis and how this changed the rates of adherence to societally accepted norms of lockdown etiquette. An almost wholesale breaking of lockdown and widespread risky behaviours that endangered everybody and created disruption. The primary goal was to do with people and modifying their behaviour so that new processes and new IT could be adopted and work. Likewise, if your organisation manages to deliver the non-people elements of change but leaves people behind, it is indisputable that the change exercise has failed.

1. Visionary Leadership

Leaders are responsible for so much, not least many of the other factors on the list, so it not surprising that they are the top key factor of sustainable change. They are responsible for articulating the vision, objectives as well as the strategy for attaining them and for making sure all transitional activities are detailed and focused on engaging people and driving participation and commitment. Leaders are the central function that blends and catalyses the key factors of sustainable change management so that the assurance of benefits delivery has a centrally positioned and powerful champion.

The main purpose that all the leaders of change have is to anticipate and have a plan for countering, mitigating or ameliorating the responses that employees of the business are going to have to change. Empathy is critical as is a commitment to making this process as thoughtful as possible. Implementing sustainable change is tough so it needs to be worth it and it’s got to stick.  How you can make it stick in a positive and favourable way should be an upfront consideration. There are themes around motivation, integration, mobilisation and innovation with making change stick but it all starts with leadership. The right leader to champion and push and never lose sight of what the promised land looks like.

Leadership’s Transformative Change Opportunity for People Empowerment

Visionary leadership is a key factor of sustainable change but leadership in this context isn’t just owners/directors who commission the change but will in time include your members of the Change Management Team, Program/Project Managers plus senior change agents including but not limited to the programme executives/board/steering committees. These change teams along with primary leadership – owners, directors – should ensure that change teams reinforce the necessity of change and communicate the components of change.

Transformation is an opportunity for fostering innovation and teams that are fitted and empowered to attempt innovative ways of doing things but this needs to be a goal and cannot occur as a side effect. To make this a possibility, the way that employees are treated and engaged throughout the process is a huge dependency. Because the sheer necessity of transformation does not preclude it from being a traumatic process, leaders need to be visible, available, empathetic, accessible, in control but collaborative and must obtain buy-in not just from senior management but also employees. The leader’s job is to help to shape and manage prevailing attitudes to change and create useful and reasonable counters to fear and resistance to change. Leaders should be kind and they need to listen.

  • Enabling ABC – Attitudes, Behaviours and Collaboration

Leaders are responsible for enabling the behaviour that not only that allows the change to happen but also that will constitute and support the changes the change process is supposed to embed. Change management as a discipline reminds us that change is about managing people and their responses as they go through changes that have the potential to be highly impactful to them, and change management focuses on behaviours. It’s necessary that the leader (s) ensure that the levels at which behaviour change must happen are planned, resourced for and enabled through the business transition, from changing the target operating models, redesigning processes, changing roles, responsibilities and descriptions, etc. 

Attitudes to the coming change and participating in it can really be shaped by the messaging and stance taken by the leadership. Empowering teams to collaborate can create greater transparency and efficiencies throughout the process, reduces rework and Chinese whispers as the right people are privy to information as soon as it is relevant, rather than hearing it too late and receiving an erroneous reinterpretation.

  •  Vision

What does the vision need to have and do to be useful? It should be clearly and vividly articulated vision of the required changes and their fundamental dimensions. The conviction and commitment of leaders will create the necessary drives to modify behaviours and people. 

Why vision?  Without vision, a vacuum arises into which chaos, confusion and variegation of objectives can take root. With vision, a story and a picture of required and desired outcomes can be shared. With vision, comes optimism and positivity that will help to mobilise and motivate employees and will help to engender engagement and support, which are necessary. The leader has to ensure that this vision of the future state is well communicated and shared by people in the organisation. The next important piece is organisation architecture and target operating model that enables continuous improvement and innovation ecosystems.

  • Motivation

Motivation, as anybody who has ever lacked it knows, can be a great catalyst and makes momentum and maintaining focus easier. Properly managing the human side of change ensures that thought is given to how people can be motivated and supported to generate buy-in and engagement. Include communications and activities that support these in the change plans. Great leadership and a compelling vision, of course, helps with this. Employees who are motivated will be more effective and productive and will lubricate the transitional rails as it is easier to have a shared sense of responsibility. 

  • Human Side Agenda Change Management

Make your people co-creators of change to make it sustainable and motivate them as such, both through political (new responsibilities), monetary (promotion, pay increase) and psychological (incentives) means. Their experience and involvement in the process of change are a leading KPI.

  • Engaging all areas of involvement in the change 

Through events, seminars, talks and break out meetings, presenting the change and giving an opportunity for feedback, engage all areas of involvement and any who are impacted, as this helps to ensure employees are part of the planning and transition strategies. This helps to increase participation, valuable procedural information and unstinting knowledge transfer, all of which actively combat fear and resistance to change.

  • Communication

As can be imagined, communication must be integral, running through and powering all of the other factors, from vision to post-closure sustainability activities. The other key factors of sustainable change do not get locked in without the leader and a solid, strategic communications plan. As evangelists of the change, the leader and other leaders he delegates authority to must be excellent and prolific communicators. They will need a detailed plan for engaging with all employees impacted by the change to hear and answer queries and concerns and take on board suggestions, which will help them receive instant feedback on how aspects of the change are landing and allow the opportunity to clear up any rumours and confusion. It allows a much more collaborative approach and avoids the impression of imposition.

2. Alignment of Change Strategies to Business and Brand Strategies 

While you will find numerous articles and ideas on these popular subjects of how to ‘do’ change successfully and do it sustainably, the brand dimension to change is unique to me and it is why my particular change management focus and passion is on Business Transition Management, Cutover Excellence and Key Success Factors for Business Change Adoption and Implementation. Focus on the brand helps to align minds and methods to the protection of the brand at a minimum and to its elevation if opportunities are available. The very fact of paying attention to the brand dimension means that the change teams and employees are alive to opportunities for innovation as well as risks to reputation.

  • Brand Reputation Protection

As there is no greater reason for the drive for sustainable change than growing, solidifying and maintaining a brand, knowing and deploying the key factors of sustainable change should be underpinned by brand considerations. The strategy must include and allow long term thinking and strategies for inculcating change capability to absorb, adopt and deploy change as necessary within the organisation. This safeguards your brand. Yes, sustainable change safeguards your brand, and therefore knowing and implementing the key factors of sustainable change is so important. Change is an opportunity to do things better and move into different modes and markets but it is change, and as such represents a major risk to the continuity of your business and to your brand’s reputation if continuity, quality or reliability is in any way affected. Manage Business As Usual (BAU) and the transition and cutover to the target state with extreme care with regard to the disruption and new operations of your company.

Your Brand Strategy and Change

Paying attention to the brand dimension of change means that consideration is given to how things change for the customers of the organisation. The goal should be that it changes as little as possible for them, otherwise, you would need in some way to bring them into the change management process/narrative/messaging, which would need to be extremely well targeted, clear and consistent.

When change management strays too far from the brand strategy, the brand risks losing resonance and authenticity and it is easy to be ridiculed. When change is not managed well, you do risk damage to the brand perception and reputation, A good example is when people leave an organisation in numbers and with negative reports or the organisation suddenly retrenches or changes how customers access services without sufficient warning or training. This puts some focus on the Employee Experience of change which as a key factor of sustainable change is also a key success factor and element of cutover excellence.

  • Brand Purpose and Principles as part of Change Governance

As we pilot and manage the change that your business needs, we must consider and inculcate in practices and outcomes, all that your business says it stands for, what its purpose is and the guidelines and ethics by which it does business to ensure that the transformation process and ethics do not contravene these. Leaders should appoint a transitional lead that is squarely focused on protecting and maintaining brand standards, along with contributory customer experience and employer experience.

During a business transformation, when so much upheaval exists and so much is being overhauled to revisit your business’s brand purpose and principles and ensure they are still valid and explore if they do require an enhancement or extension. It makes sense to examine and identify any parts of the transformation affects your brand’s perception and positioning. The overarching question that should always be asked while reviewing the objectives and implementation plans is whether your company will still be able to keep your brand’s promise, in the way your customers desire and expect? A connection must exist and be established to brand purpose and objectives through aligning transformation strategies to long term brand strategy, in order to protect brand reputation.

Mapping Actions to your Brand’s Promise

This is done by mapping change drivers and desired outcomes to brand strategy and principles and mapping change streams to how they better help to deliver the brand’s promise through all levels of the customer journey and experience. There should be clarity on whether and where there are changes to these and ensure that the TOM addresses and optimises this process. It’s very common in transformation projects to just take an insular view of the transformation required and not only lose sight of the customer and any change impacts to them but also the employees.

3. Skilled Change Management Expertise, Tools and Frameworks

With something as integral and important to the future performance and survival of your company as change, it makes sense to get the right people. Whether the change is for a functional area or business unit or more, the right people will know, understand and be able to deploy the tools and frameworks to make the required transitions. Whatever that change is that you decide to undertake, you will need people to help you manage this change of your functional area or business unit that have, understand and can deploy tools and frameworks required to make the required transition. Business Transition is fraught with risks and the risks arise out of the various change components stakeholder management, resources, people and resistance to change and ultimately management of the risks themselves.

  • Holistic Stakeholder and People Management

People, their feelings and attitudes about change are central to the efficacy with which that change management can be carried out and ultimately, to its sustainability. Change is never successful without the buy-in, support and facilitation of people who are customers of your change. Stakeholder management allows us to group and control for the impact of change, power in the process and how much communication and attention leaders therefore ultimately need to expend on them. However, a primary stakeholder strategy must flow from beyond the stakeholder management plan. It must emanate from the business transition management plan in the strategies that it employs in integrating users and all those impacted right from the inception of the program. Stakeholder Management, especially in the context of the Employee Experience is an absolutely critical factor of sustainable change.

  • Resources, Risk and Dependency Management

Resource Management

It is well recognised that one of the main factors of failure of change programs has to do with resources – the lack of resources, the inadequacy of resources, the mismanagement of resources which can be just as devastating as the first two, having the wrong mix of resources or misunderstanding where they can best add value.

What are Resources?
Resources are your people/staff first and foremost – naturally, nothing else can be started or done without them and the change program’s integral dependencies are on the actions that people have to take for things to happen. Other resources are space to accommodate people who are not part of the BAU collateral, such as implementation partners, analysts, developers etc, the budget for hiring people and buying in the other resources, developing and implementing the solutions, like tools, software, technology, hardware, architecture, peripherals etc. Sounds simple, right? Not always. A good example of this – I once took over a program where all the stakeholders who needed to see our projects plans on MS project, didn’t have the licenses for it rolled out and resource requirement was not on a dependency list anywhere…. and yet, the program plans lived in MS Project and they needed access to the plans to scrutinise, challenge and prepare! All these necessary resources need to be available as needed which means being planned for to get that availability. It means that planning and identification of resources and smart estimates of when they may be required are necessary. Dependency management discussed below, is a key part resource message and as such, of the change management toolset.’

Resource Challenge Summary

As noted above, human resources are the most important link in the resource chain. Change leaders must ensure that the right people have are available throughout the project post-closure period to persist and assure the transformations that significant sums are spent to deliver. There are significant challenges, for instance, surrounding the availability of resources to continue to persist change post-implementation, especially when these resources have a separate BAU role. If their time and use of their expertise isn’t planned for and accounted for in the original change architecture, this obviously creates pitfalls. Business and people transition plans must include teams who have responsibility for benefits delivery and sustainability. People may need to be seconded from other teams or hired for the specific processes, operations and systems that either run a function or that assure the proper working of that function.

Risks and Dependency Management

Dependencies, risks and issues will affect a range of phases and projects, in a program and may arise through means internal to the project or external to it. They can be very complex and numerous as a result and require organisation, often where the PMO – the Project Management office function is extremely valuable.

Interlock

Interlock defines the process by which the owner of a dependency and those who are beneficiaries and receivers of the dependency being in place agree the definitions, dimensions and timings of the delivery of a dependency. The interlock process allows granularity, transparency and better tracking of dependencies which is critical for avoiding risks, understanding the scale and impacts of obstacles and embedding accountability. In any change project at all, there will be numerous dependencies both internal and external, and large transformation programs have a higher order of magnitude with regards to dependencies and risks. Likewise, risks must be clearly defined with clarity against areas of impact and significance, priority, with owners of it and contributors to the resolution or mitigation. Risks must be aggressively tracked, and once they become issues, must be escalated. Dependencies risks and issues can be tracked and managed with the help of any a number of tools which makes it easier to see, update and report the status of each on a frequent and proactive basis but there should be a standardised process for doing so, agreed at the outset of the project. A clear agreed and common view of all dependencies must exist and be updated through change governance and tracking processes. This helps to reduce slippages, operational and functional gaps and reduces blame, especially important when cultural aspects form a key part of change drivers.

  • Change Processes, Measures and Tracking

It’s worth noting that these processes help with all of the primary responsibilities that the leadership have by helping track against the vision, stakeholder management and as a result, helping accountability. Measurement of process, progress and transitional elements and the program’s capital and revenue expenditures. Constant scrutiny and review of these metrics enables proactive corrections,  and progress against objectives.

  • Communication

While we have discussed communications above, it is worth mentioning it as part of the skills and expertise change professionals need to employ to achieve progress, solve problems and keep risks and issues top of mind amongst program stakeholders. Communication is a constant component of the ongoing process of managing change. The urgency and clarity on motivations and actions mapped to them arise from the change management communication actions through directing the projects, governance and of course reporting. 

The role of communication is integral and powers all of the other factors, from vision to post-closure sustainability activities. The change leaders need to be excellent and consistent communicators. As evangelists of the change, they need a detailed plan for engaging with all employees impacted by the change to hear and answer queries and concerns and take on board suggestions. This also helps leaders have instant feedback on how aspects of the change are landing and allow the opportunity to clear up any rumours and confusion. It allows a much more collaborative approach and avoids the impression of imposition.

4. Business Transition Management

For me, Business Transition has at its forefront, the obsession with people – we make the change ultimately so that people can do their jobs better and take our business to the next level – so it’s for people. People must feel valued and engaged with, throughout the process. As a people person, that is undoubtedly what draws me to it. I never, ever forget that we must deliver something valuable and fit our people to take advantage of, and be an extension and even core dimension of that value.

Why business transition is indispensable, and why with it, success is inevitable

Change initiatives that do not prioritise and highlight and integrate the business transition process through all threads and workstreams have yet to commit to success and sustainable change. It cannot be done without.

  • Transition and the Design of change

Business Transition ensures that the Change Design is focused on people, integration and transition elements from project inception to cutover to post-project closure. Business Transition outlives the project itself, as a construct and continues to ensure that the benefits created and delivered by the change project are absolutely sustainable and that the capabilities created are extensible.

With the vision shared and communicated and a change team being assembled, there will be a process of making and matching actions and deliverables to the target state, which will mean there is necessarily a gap between what is the envisioned and desired target state and the existing operating model, with its shortcomings, risks and problems. Business Transition is the process of moving the business from where it currently is to where it needs to be as seamlessly as possible with all the constituent components in lockstep to deliver a full end to end solution for all of your people, the processes they manage and the technology and tools they use to do that. Business Transition is therefore the linchpin of implementing sustainable change

It encompasses and should be integrated across all workstream deliverables to be highly effective and manage readiness and cutover risk. This includes operational readiness which is a fundamental risk management strategy for change design and implementation, the TOM, the output and integration of cross-functional and diverse teams as well as post-closure sustainability planning. BTM functions as a problem resolver, removing obstacles like conflict or spotting and working to ameliorate toxicity arising in teams or with team leader-team dynamics. It helps to ensure that back covering and blame is not the order of the day because of its unerring focus on Day 1 excellence.

  • Knowledge Management and Transfer

A good way to think about transition is that the project builds a shell of a house, plasters and ensures there is paint and some core infrastructure – for example, a repository for data, platforms, tools and technology and of course the users, the occupants of the house. Business transition delivers the connections between the parts of the infrastructure and also exhaustively tests the integrations between the services and the people who pull or push switches. This requires putting pre-requisites in place or ensuring they are in place – knowledge, data, skills. All critical services that make the house habitable, seamlessly secure, safe and delightful.

Part of this process is identifying the gaps in skills and knowledge of individuals, teams and functions. If operations have been moved or transposed, it needs to be identified that knowledge transfer, upskilling and training are necessary, and then they need to be delivered. User privileges and accesses and system and data roles must be defined and implemented across the board and tested and transitioned. The testing of all component integration takes place during Dress Rehearsals.

TOM to BAU – The Target Operating Model to Business-as-Usual

Skills transfer can be team to team or from the change team to BAU employees, achieved through information seminars and training.

One key deliverable of Business Transition Management is a Knowledge and Skills Transfer plan which informs all stakeholders the full scope of what is planned and when it will take place and whom the participants of each phase need to be. A lack of knowledge and a plan for getting it, during change process can cause anxiety. It is necessary to capture, document, codify and store the knowledge that is necessary for the TOM BAU from suppliers, the change teams and within the organisation. A plan must have parts dealing with disseminating and using this knowledge. A clear view of what the current situation looks like and all that needs to be documented and prepared for is critical. The number of moving parts to make this happen illustrate why business transition is an absolutely key factor of sustainable change, that is quite often overlooked or implemented only thinly. 

  • Business Transition Plan – a Multi-layer of View of the Journey to Cutover … and Beyond

A Transition Plan is necessary to plan, communicate and manage the transition activities requiring coordination and integration as it can be destabilising and disruptive to business as usual. One fundamental purpose of Transition is to safeguard BAU As-Is continuity until parts of the To-Be process are fully ready to be cutover finally and fully over to the organisation’s new state. The transition plan will communicate the timelines of transition, the transition components threads/workstreams/capability like ‘new reporting platform, data dictionary, teams, individual processes’ etc.

5. Diverse Cross-Functional Teams

Lip service is increasingly paid to diversity and inclusion, but a look at the company profiles show that the diversity rates have not changed very much over time in several sectors. This shouldn’t be controversial, but it is in some quarters however anyone looking for a sustainable change should want to know that there is actually power in diversity and that you need to harness that. We know that business transformation change programs fail an awful lot and a lack of inclusivity in the leadership, process and change agents is a key reason. While paying lip service to the idea of inclusivity, most – 97% -fortune 500 companies decline to share their diversity data, hardly indicative of diversity levels to be proud of and worldwide, C-suite leadership are still extremely homogenous being predominantly white, male and from very similar backgrounds, education and networks.

  • The power of Diversity 

McKinsey found that companies with higher diversity profiles outperform those with lower diversity by 15%. When you consider that diversity is still relatively low overall that is striking. While you may not have the diversity you may aspire to yet, the change management process is a great opportunity to get the benefits of diversity in your change program. I believe strongly in the increased value that can come through having a diverse team, that pulls in a proper mix of people across races, backgrounds, personalities and approaches and the creativity and innovation that you get from that. If you really want to push the envelope, ensure diversity at the top levels of your change leadership because inclusion at the top shapes the power of diversity in the organisation.

  • Intentional Inclusion

It’s instructive that the profile of the top leadership in many of the leading management consultancies with a few exceptions has barely changed in the past 70 years. It may be that achieving sustainable change with organisations who have not been able to change themselves in a century is perhaps problematic. The homogeneity at the top will tend to colour a lot of the output at the lower levels. It makes sense to seek out implementation partners that demonstrably value diversity and inclusivity. When there isn’t a commitment to this, it creates long term problems, so it does pay dividends to consider diversity a key factor of sustainable change.

Diversity Now

Even when a business may recognise that there will be value to be driven from a more diverse team, they may not have the capacity in the immediate term to resource a change management team, and this is one important area in which a change and implementation partner can be of help, especially one that really is intentional about diversity in hiring and building diverse teams. Beyond that, a business transformation process is a great opportunity to create and foster a culture that values and grafts in people from a more diverse background, both from a background perspective but also from a socio-ethnic one because it has been proven this can lead to stronger business performance.

A culture that values inclusivity is more likely to learn lessons and make gains in paying attention to diverse and less authoritative voices when managing change resistance and the feedback loop.

The Pursuit of the People in the Margins

Inclusivity is also a strong concept on its own. It’s about recognising that our teams are made up of, and enriched by different kinds of people in terms of temperament, presentation, personality and confidence. People who are introverts or naturally quite quiet, for example, must still be heard. They have valid and relevant experiences and contributions that we should want to hear. It is very easy to just listen to those who will speak up and have the confidence to complain, but we really also need to seek out those who do not. In making large scale changes in your organisation, it’s necessary to hear all voices.

  • Empowered teams with innovation and continuous improvement frameworks.

What’s the big idea? Well, a better question is apparently where is the big idea? Good strong performant teams are responsible for great ideas, according to this Wall Street Journal article, excellent article, not only conceptually but in implementation methods, leading to improvements and innovation, exactly what you want some of in a change program. As recognised above, great leadership in this, or any context especially with the diversity dimension must foster the right attitudes and empower the right behaviours. This is nowhere more important than on teams. The leaders need to show that they value the people in the team, their differences in what they bring to the table, and enable them to innovate.

  • Cross-Functional Teams

Cross-functional project teams are constituted of members of the project who have been assembled for the sole purpose of delivering the sought outcomes of the project, from within the business as subject matter experts in their functional areas, as well as external people like business analysts, modellers. developers and data, data scientists, testers, workstream leads, trainers etc. They all, of course, are working towards the same established goals and usually represent not just a mix of skills but also of experience in years and seniority. The teams are usually grouped per workstream and directed by the project manager in charge of a particular workstream, with tasks assigned in delivering a particular element of a ‘sprint’ for example, on an Agile project.

Cross-functional teams help to reduce friction in projects through constant collaboration, integration and time taken to discuss problems and make decisions. Diversity and inclusion of cross-functional teams are key factors of sustainable change because people are more likely to be creative and innovative.

  • Reducing Blame Culture and Toxicity

Toxicity. Ugly but it happens and it can really derail things. Awareness and proactiveness go a long way for avoidance and mitigation. In a recent article in Fast Company, Meghan E Butler explores the causes and impacts of a toxic work environment, highlighting that leaders trying to deal with chronic stress, avoiding conflict and not rising above office politics can allow the poisoning of bullying and…. to flourish and create a toxic work culture. Too often, this can arise from some of the leaders of the change who seek to lead by diktat and believe fear, pitting people against each other and having a hierarchy of staff who are in with him and those who aren’t can motivate both sides of the equation to bring their best to the table. Leaders – CEOs, directors and business sponsors must be made aware that this is a credible and highly likely risk and be ready to implement teams in ways that reduce this risk and have a plan to deal with toxicity within the project environment.

People should be empowered to report inappropriate conduct, both from leaders and team members and must believe that action will be taken, or it reduces willingness to expose themselves for what may be perceived as for no good reason.

Problematic working situations could easily take hold in a project where people are thrown together with no clarity on roles, responsibility, limited transparency and conflicting directives, and also where diversity and inclusion are not a stated and intentional objective of the team. This also means that you must be ready in case the problem arises within the ranks of leadership. Honesty, respect, integration plus clear and accepted norms that everybody needs to abide by in the same way plus behaviour that aids and supports inclusivity is necessary. Butler recommends the SCARF model for dealing with a toxic environment when it arises but it can also be very useful in planning team norms and guiding principles that can help head off some problems and help leaders to be proactive about people showing certain propensities without being judgemental.

6. Target Operating Models and Business Architecture

 

The fifth key factor of sustainable change is the Target Operating Model and associated business architecture because it stands to reason that for the ability to grow and meet your strategic objectives, you need to map and implement a structure that will enable and support that. The Target Operating Model (TOM) depicts a future state that your business will be moving to for its future goals and is often presented in the context of the As-Is Target Operating Model.

The TOM is the shape of the Change

The target operating model drives change because it is literally the shape of the change, the embodiment of the structures that will facilitate the strategy. There is no sustainable change without it because it represents the best organisation your business must adopt across its people, process and technology to meet your business goals of survival, growth and supremacy in your sector. The TOM will need to be graduated for different audiences in the organisation from a conceptual level, all the way to very detailed process designs that show handoffs, interdependencies/interfaces and functional and role level interactions. It is a powerful tool for depicting different perspectives of the organisation that should elicit incisive questions on the suitability of the planned TOM and form a touchpoint and focus for discussing how the change will really look and whether it is viable and can be made to ‘stick.’ The TOM will need to be developed graduated levels of detail in concert with the various business areas, be presented, walked through and agreed. Because a TOM is used to address a wide range of strategies across the organisation, eventually all people in the organisation will need to be privy to the TOM and where and how their role and function fits into the value chain for the future of the business.

The Target operating model provides a standard and integrated view of the business, aligning operating and functional structures with strategic business objectives for the business’s people, processes, technologies and tools. It will show all the interactions, integrations, roles, responsibilities and handoffs across functions and lines of business.

  • Target Ops Model Design and Implementation

If the purpose of business transformation is to leverage technological advances in the industry and rearrange your business to compete better and grow, an adequate business architecture and capability underpinned by the operating model. Your business capability can be optimised by your business architecture in order to attain your strategic objectives. Operating Model design ensures that the necessary capabilities are identified, roles created and instituted and integrated at the requisite levels across the organisation to allow the business to operate in optimised process flows that will facilitate success.

  • Operating Model Considerations

Current State Operating Model Review

Review functions and process at the business division level, roles and responsibilities and identify the capabilities required across people, tools, process, technology, infrastructure and data to meet them.

As-is Operating Model Review for strengths, weakness and gap analyses to highlight where problems exist, what the root causes are and generate options for resolving issues which can be used as a baseline for designing the To-Be Operating Model.

As well as a core alignment process that needs to take place, you need to assess a bunch of elemental dimensions that will assure the engineering of roles and procedure, specifically scope – areas of involvement, skills required versus what is in place, identify opportunities and necessity for standardisation and candidates for custom procedures and exceptions.

Business Case and Objectives and Gap Analyses

It will be necessary to access and quantify the gaps between what exists and what needs to be created.

Develop Operating Models at Levels 1, 2 and 3

Agree templates and level of detail in supporting documents like SOPs, standard operating procedures 

Map Functional Objectives for each area to process steps and actions.

7. Sustainability Planning

This part of the process is the part that truly requires long term vision and a willingness to build capacity for change into the organisation, and is why sustainability planning is a key factor of sustainable change. It involves recognition, at the outset of the change program that the change your business is now going through is unlikely to stop here and requires an investment in a change capability and infrastructure at some level within your organisation to enable your business to adapt to change as necessary, through, for example, continuous improvement and increasing your organisation’s capability maturity. This change capability will help your business to be more agile, and adopt innovation, which may mean a more robust and competitive company. Successful change initiatives will contribute to instituting a change structure and that change structure is more likely to lead to further successes as more change projects are undertaken as needed.

You will need a plan that considers and documents the strategy, timelines and responsibilities for all of the considerations below:

What

  • A Business Transition Management plan with a COM (Change Organisation Operating Model) proposal plus clear post-close transition activities
  • Ensure that the Target Operating Models and Business Architecture are shared, visible, understood and signed off, pre-implementation and cutover
  • Establish the Change Capability for post-implementation change initiatives.
  • Continuous improvement frameworks
  • Knowledge transfer and upskilling support, training and coaching
  • Post-go live incident management and feedback loop
  • Confirmation of Knowledge Management and Training

Who

  • A strong change organisation ‘marshalls’ or agents; internal people who have through the transformation program have received training and experience in change and project management and analysis. Their upskilling should ideally also be part of the knowledge transfer and training portfolio.
  • Empowered teams who have the confidence to assess their areas of work for requirements and opportunities for improvement

How

  • Set long term sustainability goals and metrics at the outset and know what to evaluate and measure post-adoption
  • Implement checks and Measurements of post-closure performance
  • Log, discuss and transition Team and Personnel Changes as it is very likely that how people and teams were previously arranged have also gone a change
  • Work with HR Workstream to help transition change roles and compensation if new change responsibilities are given
  • Ongoing Communication regarding potential change and improvement opportunities with clear roles and responsibilities for who attends review and assessment meetings where these are discussed.
Graduated Change Sustainability Plans with Post Closure Details

It is customary to create detailed project plans but there must equally detailed plans for post-closure activities that assure the implemented changes and supporting are further embedded and persisted. There must be clear activities and responsibilities and dates and durations for each activity plus a mechanism for capturing and communicating the issues and ideas to the right people.

 

Keywords – #peopletransition #businesstransition #targetoperatingmodels #operationalreadiness #sustainablechange
#sustainablechange #changemanagement #projectmanagement

Table of Contents

Why CSR without Justice and Purpose is SophistryWhy CSR without Justice and Purpose is Sophistry
Why Project Change Transition Assures Sustainable TransformationWhy Project Change Transition Assures Sustainable Transformation

Related Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: