Today’s post is about Leading Change in a Business Environment.
- Topics that will be covered
- Defining Change Management
- Roles and Responsibilities for Change Management
- Significance of the Sponsor
- Most important activities when planning for change
No truer words have been quoted like this one from Warren Bennis.
The reason I say that is I’ve been with the same company for almost 20 years and I’m still learning new things and staying challenged due to the continual change.Businesses have to change in order to stay competitive.
What is the meaning of Change Management?
The Wikipedia definition of Change Management: Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support and help individuals, teams and organizations in making organizational change.
I want to point out a few words in this definition. Individuals and Teams – Change is the people side of project management. How will the impacted people adopt the change?
Therefore, my definition of Change Management is slightly different and a little more simplified and practical. See the image below for the breakdown of the real meaning of Change Management.
5 most important roles in a Change Management
It’s at this point where we need to address the most important roles in a Change Management project. See above for the 5 roles I’ll go over.
Let’s skip the Sponsor role for a second and let me jump into the details about the other 4 primary roles within Change Management.
The Change Manager, similar to a project manager, the Change Manager is usually someone close to the project. This key role authorizes change plans and activities, motivate and creates adoption of the solutions. The change manager is the voice for impacted employees and responsible for communication to the stakeholders
Project Teams – This team is responsible for creating the solution. Your project team develops and implements the tasks on the plan. These folks are the doers. They collaborate with the Change Manager to understand key deliverables, document project success, and deploy the solution to employees.
Mid-Level Mangers / Supervisor – Change Advocates that lead by example. It’s important to ensure they are communicating to their staff and sharing details of processes & areas of opportunity. Managers should be helping their employees adapt to the change by managing questions and facilitating the transition, listening, being empathic, and asking questions.
The Employee – Main role is to speak up and share what they know. Learn as much as possible before resisting or accepting the change and engage in the collaboration along with helping peers understand.
Finally, let’s deep dive into the Sponsor’s role. I’m highlighting this role because it’s the most important and sometimes the most challenging role.
A sponsor is the cheerleader for your project. They believe in it wholeheartedly and tell everyone about it to motivate them. Sort of like a proud mom at a baseball game! This is their baby and they want everyone to know it.
The Sponsor is the primary Change Champion. They support everything about the Change initiative. They listen and participate in the project meetings, communicate and motivate others, they are the first to adopt the change, therefore lead by example. They continue to be visible and passionate about the change.
4 activities that are the critical when starting a Change Management project
- Communication – You must communicate the why, when, and how to the employees
2. Analysis and Assessment – Understand your current state in order to determine all the steps needed to ready the employees for the change
3. Building trust – Be visible and approachable, speak honestly and openly to employees so they understand what is going on. Meet regularly with stakeholders to share progress, ask questions, and listen to their concerns
4. Ensure your sponsor is fully committed and engaged on every level of the effort.
Alright, let’s go a little deeper on the 4 activities
1 Communication
You will need to build a communication plan
This is a schedule of events – “The What” that needs to be communicated and “When” you need to do it
Make sure you are speaking in Laymans terms so people understand
Be clear on expectations from the team it may be good to set rules upfront at the start of the project so everyone knows their part and they know what to expect
This is probably the most important. Know your audience. Who are you communicating to, leaders, or front line level? You will want to be able to address the (What’s in it for me?) question.
2 Performing a gap analysis and assessment
First, know who your stakeholders are. This can be done through a stakeholder analysis (Who needs to know) – I will go over how to do a stakeholder analysis in another blog post
After knowing your stakeholders, define what the end state looks like and what success looks like for this project.
Then figure out measurements that will help you determine if your project has been successful along the way.
**I will go over how to Identify success measures in a later blog post
Complete Change Size and and Business Readiness Assessments – These will be covered in another post but basically these give you the details needed to understand your scope and the company’s capability to implement the change
In order to get an idea of what has happened in previous change projects, it’s always good to look back and review other change efforts to gain lessons learned
3 Building Trust
This can be difficult for some people. I think it’s a natural skill that few people just seem to have from birth. It’s the skill of being able to easily talk to people and having the energy and positivity to influence others. Sometimes it’s about being a good story teller, but regardless this is an important skill to have in order to level set with those impacted by the change
A few tips on how to build relationships and trust are listed here.
- Be visible. This can be face to face, or virtual
- Meet with stakeholders often (at least 1x a week)
- Pinpoint who you think would be a good person to establish a relationship with on the project team. Someone with connections, influence and knowledge of the business.
- Make note of who you think is going to cause issues and address that head on . the team will appreciate you more if you can handle the conflicts and break down any issues they may be experiencing with a certain person
- Develop a team of change champions (shares message about change)
4 Sponsor Engagement
Ensuring Sponsor Engagement is definitely your responsibility as a Change Leader. It can sometimes feel like babysitting and hand holding.
The sponsor needs guidance from you to know what story to tell, how and when to communicate, and needs to be present for the team to break down barriers.
It will be crucial for you to setup regular meetings with the sponsor to go over everything needed from them.
Picking the right Sponsor is #1. You want someone high enough in the hierarchy who can make decisions, influence other decision makers and remove roadblocks. Then get commitment from them.
If the sponsor is new to the project, meaning it wasn’t their idea, you will have to be the influencer for the sponsor. It will be up to you to gain their buy-in so they can influence everyone else. You also have to share all the details with the sponsor to ensure they are on board with the plan for implementation
Ultimately find a sponsor who is high energy and make a plan to keep them engaged and visible throughout the project
Check out my YouTube video on this topic by clicking here.
