Change management doesn’t have to be a drama
Nothing can set the workforce atwitter and spark gossip around the water cooler like the announcement there is some sort of “change management” afoot. But, as Brian Jones of iManage says, maybe it’s just time to tone down the drama around something that’s simply inevitable.
Change management doesn’t have to be a drama
Nothing can set the workforce atwitter and spark gossip around the water cooler like the announcement there is some sort of “change management” afoot. But, as Brian Jones of iManage says, maybe it’s just time to tone down the drama around something that’s simply inevitable.
For most of the past 50 years, change management has conjured up the type of top-to-bottom, grand-scale re-organisations that involve a huge shakeup of “business as usual”, including significant staffing changes at all levels (read as: people being shown the exit).
Fairly or unfairly, the words “change management” evoke these types of scenarios, and even uttering the words can have a chilling effect on workplace morale and the existing culture.
But maybe what’s needed is simply a better understanding of what change management actually is. Yes, it sometimes means the large, wholesale transformation of an organisation – but just as often it can be something much smaller and offer nothing to fear.
Whether you’re a law firm, accountancy, engineering business, or some other professional services provider, it’s worth understanding this distinction and getting a better handle on what it does (and doesn’t) entail.
Change comes in many forms
Change management is actually happening all the time in professional services organisations – it’s just not always recognised as such. This “change management” encompasses all the tweaks and adjustments organisations are constantly making to better adapt and respond to rapidly evolving external and internal conditions.
For example, think of a manager in charge of a small team or department. Maybe, due to a change in business conditions or in the regulatory environment – GDPR anyone? How about Brexit? – that team needs to make a change to its normal procedures and ways of working. That's a form of change management – a procedural one.
Alternately, maybe a sales manager has several members of his team who aren’t hitting their quarterly sales targets and are resistant to advice and guidance on how to more successfully close deals. The manager needs to effect some change around how these employees perform. That too is form of change management – a behavioural one.
And then there’s change management around technology. To stay on the cutting edge and make sure their teams have all the tools they need to do their best work every day, professional services firms are frequently rolling out new products or platforms, and that technology needs to be managed accordingly to make it mesh with existing people and workflows. This is technological change management.
“What’s needed is simply a better understanding of what change management is. Yes, it sometimes means the large, wholesale transformation of an organisation – but just as often it can be something much smaller and offer nothing to fear.”
“What’s needed is simply a better understanding of what change management is. Yes, it sometimes means the large, wholesale transformation of an organisation – but just as often it can be something much smaller and offer nothing to fear.”
Making it happen
We see, then, change management can actually be something small and specific, and it can be procedural, behavioural, or technological in nature (for example, it doesn’t have to be organisational). The next logical question is: what’s the best way for an organisation to go about undertaking change and managing it?
Right at the beginning, organisations should define what type of outcome they’re hoping to achieve. Typically, this is determined by asking what problems you need to solve or what type of change you want to see. This is a critically important step, but – in a bit of good news – it actually doesn’t cost very much or take very much time for organisations to figure out. Anywhere from a few minutes to a couple hours ought to do it.
After zeroing in on a desired outcome, the next step is identifying the individuals within the organisation who are in the best position to help drive the change. Having an executive sponsor on board is a good idea; it also helps to have frontline users who can apply their knowledge and influence within the organisation to help drive the change. Simply put, you want the people who can help make this change happen.
The next move is preparing the change agents that have been identified on how to communicate to the organisation about the change. These communications can take on a number of forms, but they should be informative, undertaken on a regular cadence, and bi-directional.
Critically, they should unambiguously answer several questions that are undoubtedly floating around in peoples’ heads: Why is this change being undertaken? Why is it beneficial to the organisation as a whole? And what does it mean for individual’s daily lives and daily workflows? Does it somehow simplify or streamline the work they do every day or deliver some other tangible benefit? If so, let them know – don’t make them guess.
From there, the next step is to ensure that all the tools, policies, and training programs are in place to help the workforce change. Speaking of training: avoid overtraining users! Overtraining can quickly overwhelm users, having the opposite effect of what is desired, which is that they will be ready to embrace the change and hit the ground running. It’s important to only train users on the capabilities directly applying to them. This is truly a situation where “less is more” – users can always be directed towards online resources for further learning.
Last but not least, organisations will want to make sure that they are monitoring the output to see if they’re getting the expected results. “Set it and forget it” is not the way to go, especially for any sort of technological change. Organisations should constantly be making tweaks and adjustments to optimise the results they’re getting around the change they’ve implemented.
Less of an overhaul, more of an optimisation
Grand-scale organisational change management is a real thing. It exists. It is not a figment of anyone’s imagination.
However, when the members of professional services firms hear that “change management” is afoot, that shouldn’t be the first place that their minds go. More often than not, it’s referring to small, focused, and targeted change management around the introduction of a particular procedure or technology rather than a huge production that overtakes the entire organisation.
Simply understanding this fact can remove a lot of the apprehension professionals might hear when they learn their own team, department, or firm is undergoing some sort of change management. It’s merely a process of optimising workflows and – ultimately – delivering better business outcomes.