Change Made Easy - A collaborative change management process
Often, we hear, "Change is hard," or, "People don't like change." Well, maybe people do like change, just not the coercion that often comes with it.
In the world of traditional change management, leaders are the masters of change. It is their job to persuade staff to "get on the board." However, when leadership is confined to the board, the rich, diversified insights of the broader team are inadvertently side-lined. This approach isn't just outdated; it's counterproductive. Even when making decisions in small strategic groups, success is the ability to persuade and convince. Falling short leads to frustration, resistance, and a perception that "our people are resistant to change."
Successful change is not about senior leadership crafting change strategies and selling them to the masses. It's about integrity, structure, methodology, and most importantly, authentic collaboration. It is an invitation to co-create. A change that resonates and perpetuates, isn’t birthed from top-down mandates but one that is woven from the collective wisdom of all employees.
Human Centred Change
The principal value for the new era is that it is human centred. A recent IBM insights report into ‘building a human centred organisation’, defined it as organisations that exist to fulfil a purpose for its users, customers and community and orientates all of its innovation and operational activities around those people. Not only do these types of organisations deliver on traditional business metrics such as 32% higher revenues and 2x faster at delivering outcomes to market. This approach improves the value of the enterprise to its users, improves welfare of its employees and increases the resilience of the organisations. A human centred change management process harnesses these core tenants and as such will deliver the same level of impact.
The structure and methodology are drawn from innovations in deliberative democracy. The core tenants are:
Engaging diversity - Drawing on a diverse spectrum of people from across departments, hierarchical levels and demographics. The best way to guarantee this is to use stratified random selection tools, most commonly used for Citizen Assemblies. This doesn’t just democratise the change in the decision making process. It also helps illuminate the blind spots often overlooked by a homogenous group of decision makers.
Ownership through participation - Through regular workshops individuals are actively engaged in a transformative journey, not as mere spectators but as contributors. They naturally cultivate a sense of ownership towards the change. They don’t perceive the transformation as an imposed directive but see it as a collective endeavour towards which they have significantly contributed.
Transparency - The solution lies in simplifying the strategy and making it crystal clear. When everyone understands what the organisation is and is not doing, it's easier for them to support the remedies and embrace the change.
Avoid fragmentation - Rather than separating strategy, change initiatives and delivery activities. It is important to recognise they are all interconnected. The success of an organisation depends on its success as a whole, not on plans to improve constituent parts.
Why does this work?
I recently spoke with a Director of a leading global consultancy who has started to use this type of innovative approach when helping a large, consequential organisation redesign its operating model. They talked of their initial scepticism to a ‘new way’ of operating engrained in convention through MBA textbooks and billion pound industry strategies. However, the evidence based excitement was palpable. Fundamentally, this human centred approach works. They outlined some of the key reasons as to why:
Pay now or pay later - Naturally, investing time in collaboration and collective effort takes up a lot of immediate resources. For example, taking large numbers of employees away from business as usual activities for multi-day workshops. However, it is better to invest early and avoid costs further down the line. The time taken to structure and facilitate this kind of process is a small price to pay compared to the months or even years of cajoling that traditional change management entails. Especially when this often leads people to revert to type. When nothing changes, everything is wasted.
The hard part of change is the people - Most traditional consultancy is focused on suggesting and implementing systems, models and frameworks, recycled from the PowerPoint of a previous project. However, without convincing the implementers they remain as mere suggestions. People support what they help create. In one example, a middle manager had a role in redesigning their departments and role out of existence. However, lengthy redeployment and redundancy discussions were avoided. By being involved, the middle manager understood the reasoning for the change and their role in the future vision. Someone that could have been an immovable obstacle, both legally and culturally, became one of the most ardent champions of change.
Empowered learning culture - Drawing on diversity from across an organisation to tackle complex problems doesn’t just offer more insight towards the solution. It offers more insights for everyone involved regardless of position or experience. It is a collective learning opportunity from which everyone will benefit. It unleashes a culture of empowerment where employees feel motivated to chart their own course to help the organisation meet its goals. Furthermore, it embeds a culture of agility for future organisational iterations which are able to react to the ever changing global landscape. Personnel will change, but the culture will persist.
In essence, a successful, lasting change is an amalgamation of various perspectives, where each individual has had the opportunity to voice their insights, present their solutions, and actively participate in sculpting the change. This approach not only enhances the quality and inclusivity of the change but also ensures that it is embraced and upheld by all, as they see their reflections and contributions embedded in it.
Through the lens of clarity and wisdom, let’s recognize and honour the profound impact of collective participation and weave a tapestry of change that is not just endured but celebrated.