Change Management
Implementing changes in organizations is always challenging, but with some planning ahead many pitfalls can be avoided.
The change management effort must be able to motivate people to execute on a common vision. Almost all change requires consistent communications across the organizations, and behaviors from management that are consistent with the desired vision. Over-communication is used to determine whether there is buy in from the formal and informal leaders within, and in certain cases outside, the organization. When buy-in is lacking, the real reasons for lack of support must be identified and dealt with, and sometimes this is easier discovered utilizing a non-involved third party such as us to ensure data integrity.
In this area we can help implement the change and align this with the existing systems and processes. We can develop business case, stakeholder analysis, resistance analysis, development of approaches to address resistance, approaches to gain agreement and test for commitment, communication, metrics, implementation and followup. We will also identify the current systems and processes that will need to change.
Challenge: An organization had no formal development process at all, which led to complete chaos and inability to produce predictable releases.
Action: The process development team met regularly to discuss objectives and solutions. Members would solicit the input of affected individuals and thought leaders, and sort through the inherent conflicts. The team made sure that every item in the process was addressing a specific need of the organization, and nothing else was introduced. The team first met with individual stakeholders, then with line management, then senior management, then informal leaders, each time adjusting and/or explaining, from the learnings about the care-abouts of these stakeholders. By the time the team took the designed process to the entire department, the issues were well understood and had answers that all the formal and informal leaders understood and could support and explain. Tracking systems were put in place so that noncompliance could be identified and dealt with. A line level committee was formed and empowered to make changes to the designed process as necessary; this was a key point in addressing fear that the new process would be bureaucratic and inflexible.
Response: The development process was adopted with some pain and tuning over the years. But the entire organization understood the concepts and could easily execute the process.