Change Management Needs Changed!

Earlier this year I was speaking to a room of about 150 leaders and consultants, where I asked the question "how many of you have recently heard the comment  ‘this is going to take a lot of change management.’?”  Every person in the room raised their hand. 

Let’s face it, an organization's ability to change is the last sustainable competitive advantage. If you are here reading this newsletter, my guess is you are first hand feeling and experiencing the velocity (speed and quantity) of change happening in the organizations with which you work.  I would be willing to bet that you have either heard or recently said out loud ‘this is going to take a lot of change management!’.

A 2021 poll from Gartner suggested that the top people concern of 400 CEO’s and CHRO’s was their people’s ability to keep up with change.  Who is responsible for that– helping people keep up with change?  

In most organizations today, we think about change from a project perspective.  We apply an outdated methodology that assumes all individuals need the same communications and similar training.  We paint with a broad brush, sending mass communications out (which are hardly read) and forcing people to participate in training (which feels like stress on time). We fail to consider the unique needs and mindsets related to the individuals' ability to navigate change.  

The role of the Chief Change Officer is to enable change across the enterprise. The role of the CCO is to enable change, not manage change.  A key difference here is in the belief that organizational change is moving at a pace that is beyond ‘managing’ and for organizations to continue to survive and keep changing they must embrace a mindset to ‘enable’ change.  Working with it, as opposed to against it, or trying to keep up with it.  

To do this the CCO needs to create ways to understand how individual processes and experiences change, while holistically preparing them to shift their mindset to better navigate and thrive with change.  Introduce and teach a new dialect for dealing with change across the enterprise and ensure from leaders down to front line employees the language is understood and spoken.  Foster a sense of safety, so that individuals in the organization feel they have a voice, trust they can speak up and if desired play a positive role in change.  

Let’s imagine a world where there is a leader who is responsible for the organization's ability to change. I believe this role would have two major responsibilities:

1. Ensuring individuals in the enterprise can metabolize change

2. Democratizing change across the enterprise
   

How do we ensure individuals in the enterprise can metabolize change?  

Traditionally we don’t think about change as a capability, we think about it as an act or a project management activity.  A big part of being able to transform or change the enterprise, is as a leader being able to transform yourself, first.  The organization can’t successfully change unless the leaders responsible for manifesting change, can in fact change themselves.  I’ve experienced leaders who can’t get out of their own, refusing to acknowledge that they need to change how they think and act first, before they change their organization.  Often they tend to believe ‘what got me here will keep me going’.  The first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have a problem.  A main focus of the CCO role would be coaching and advising executive leaders and project sponsors on how to successfully change within themselves to be able to change the organization.  Outside of helping leaders transform themselves first, the role would also coach them on how to actively shift the culture in favorable ways that help enable the change the organization is seeking. You’ve probably read the famous Edgar Shien quote - “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.  Well this is undoubtedly true when it comes to change efforts.  Culture oftentimes stops change initiatives dead in their tracks.  The role would encourage enterprise programs and tools that would apply to enabling change, by coaching leaders, intentionally shifting culture, and equipping the employees with the information on how to holistically change.  The role would have responsibility for helping the enterprise speak a common and transparent language about change.  As part of this it would be important to have an enterprise measure that would identify the change disposition or capability of individuals to be able to change.  Housing this information and leveraging it for the enterprise change efforts as appropriate– ensuring the support structures are in place and effective for the varying levels of individuals capabilities to change.   

How do we democratize change efforts across the enterprise?  

Well this is a fairly new and emerging concept.  With the emergence of blockchain technologies and the concept of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAOs) participating groups or communities are being provided the opportunity to essentially ‘vote’ on the direction of the community (community = organization).  The underlying blockchain technology acts as the omnipresent ledger that tracks and records how individuals voted, tallies the votes, and then makes the changes to the protocol (this all happens quite autonomously).  In time this technology and capability will be within all of our workplace technologies.  It will be the responsibility of the CCO to harness this power in a way that is ethical, transparent and enables change in the desired direction.  Leveraging these emerging concepts to allow individuals in the community (the organization) a seat at the table and a vested interest in the decisions leadership is making that impact the community (the organization).  In today’s organizations most change programs are run like dictatorships.  A few key project members or project leaders make design and implementation decisions that impact the enterprise.  The role of the CCO will be to ensure that as many decisions as possible are voted on by those who want to vote.  Providing the people in the community the perception of choice.  The democratization of the effort would do a few things for those leading change.  1.) It would allow a better understanding of what alignment for the changes looked like across the enterprise - how many people are in favor and how many are not. 2.) it would surface the pockets of the organization where there are champions and the pockets of the organization where resistance existed, enabling a tailored change plan and tactics for the varying levels of engagement 3.) it would provide the people, those who are being told to change, an opportunity to feel included and have a say in what changes and potentially, how fast.  Now, let’s be honest with ourselves, there are some decisions that the community or people in the organization would not be able to vote on, that is fine.  The role of the CCO is to ensure that the changes that are being rolled out are framed, as much as possible, in a way that the enterprise can feel the perception of choice.  Research in neuroscience suggests that providing individuals the perception of choice, however small, has a major impact in their acceptance and adoption of change.  This research also finds that having the perception of choice helps reduce the stress oftentimes associated with an individual's feeling of a loss of control resulting from change.  Alignment, buy-in and commitment to change are often the focal points of change programs.  By democratizing our change efforts or aspects of them, we can do this more effectively.

Now, I am well aware that in the short term this role is a pipe-dream, but I do believe that over the next five years change is going to be so omnipresent that only the organizations that have a dedicated focus, with an effective strategy and thoughtful approach to changing will survive.  If you are interested in exploring what a Chief Change Officer could look like at your organization, reach out to me.