H4Change Management

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“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” 

- Albert Einstein

"If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter" 

- Mark Twain

Managing change involves moving an organisation or group of people from the current setup to a new (preferably optimized) state. 

Project leaders often believe their teams are comfortable with ambiguity as they are familiar with creating new or changed outputs. Failing to consider whether staff are conforming or choosing to adopt new practices can kick conflict or output rejection down the line.  

Effectively managing change involves engaging with the engagers, providing user familiarisation time, pilot projects, barrier identification, acknowledging extra effort is needed, and providing employee briefings beyond written summaries, town hall presentations or management cascade bullet lists. 

Enabling managers to fully understand the change, confidently explain the impacts and benefits and empathize with their teams will empower your change.

"Design is not just what it looks and feels like, Design is how it works" 

- Steve Jobs

Managing Change means dealing with ambiguity but also focusing delivery teams on unity - of the outputs and with each other - as the end state may be undefined at the outset.  

Business change can involve changes to operating models (organisation, business, team or governing structures), adopting new work practices (technology, process, procedures); or people (rewards, capabilities, culture, team values) but who is assuring how they fit together? 

Programmes can overlook dependencies between systems and how changing one element impacts another. Having an integrated team  clear scope and governance for change as dependencies arise will equip your business case to support through emerging change.      

Balancing the effort of change means keeping your eye on the change's drivers and a clear governance structure for identifying and dealing with emerging scope. Avoiding silo working, managing tranche and project interfaces and integrating teams through collaborative leadership helps prevent new news emerging when testing final solutions.

One person's rebel is another's freedom fighter

Change impacts individuals differently based on their values, beliefs, safety in the current setting, personal situation, learning aptitude and capabilities. That also includes your Change Agents. Change resistors shouldn't be dismissed as only conscientious objectors. 

Ignoring key stakeholders can mean potential solutions are overlooked and overly focusing on outputs can alienate users. 

Effective Change Management provides a focus on the human factors. It's not about agreement but alignment. Align stakeholders and users with change by understanding their obstacles and helping to overcome them. 

Successful change means teams are ready and willing and able to move to a new normal by  helping you resolve what may get in the way. 

“It always seems impossible until it's done.” - Nelson Mandela

Has gathering feedback lost the drivers for change? Is consultation introducing scope creep outside your business case?

Project Managers can get lost in ambiguity, and Change Managers can get lost in consultation. It takes both HARD and SOFT management skills to make change stick.    

 Balancing the effort of change means keeping your eye on the end goal as well as the journey and mapping the journey. H4Change can help by providing frameworks, stage gates and transparency to your change journey to keep teams on track.

Effectively managing change requires clear roadmaps, defined outputs,  a focus on people and functional capabilities,  real-time testing and willing to take challenging feedback from trusted working groups.