Mastering Organizational Change Management

The types of organizations that could benefit from enterprise change management, that’s not a trick question. Of course, you’re going to think that I’m going to say all organizations can benefit from enterprise change management and that’s true. I do believe that all organizations can, but I do believe that the size of the organization matters as far as the rigor you might want to put on it or the type of process you might want to put on top of your enterprise change. So, some companies might want a very light process. Some, you know, companies that are heavily audited might need a little bit larger or more robust change management system. So, I think that it's not a trick question. I think all can benefit from some type of change management, but it depends on the size. 

I get asked quite a lot how I would suggest getting started with organizational change management and my answer is always the same. It starts with the people. When you talk about organizational change people tend to think about implementing a new piece of software or a new working process or a new system, but that’s just change management. That’s just the physical stuff that happens. Organizational change management is about acceptance, adoption, embracing and responding positively to change. Having a positive reaction and a positive mindset, a positive perspective on what’s happening. Never forget when it comes to change management, the most critical piece is always the people. Organizational change management is almost exclusively about those people – work with them don’t do things to them. Whether that’s internal or external people, if they feel like partners to the change it’s much easier to buy into it and see past challenges and look forward to see past them and work harder to make the most of it. It’s absolutely essential to make sure people are at the core of everything that happens with organizational change management. 

The most common challenges that I’m hearing about enterprise change management, at least myself as a practitioner within the organization that I’m in and some of the other project management leaders and change management leaders that I work with, is trying to get that true gauge on how much change is active. Notice I didn’t say how many projects are active because change can be a project or not, right? How much change is truly going on in your organization. Getting that true enterprise view so you can understand the impact that it has to whomever is using the “fill in the blank tool” that you guys are using. So that is one of the most common challenges that I see in enterprise change management today. 

You might have heard me reference that, you know, organizations should have a true enterprise view of what all change is happening. So, you might ask me, well, what is the definition of change? What type of change are you referring to? So, I think it’s important to back up for a second. There’s project management and then there might be change management. So, I’m not talking about changes that happened within a project. Maybe you have a scope change and you’re going to log that change within your change management tool that you use to say, hey, this project was X and now it’s x plus two. That has a process underneath the project management umbrella. What I’m referring to is that overarching umbrella of enterprise change management and project management might be a leg of that but what about the smaller changes or the initiatives that might be happening in your organization. So, I think just having that really good view of everything that’s happening and how you are impacting the folks that are using “fill in the blank” change. I think that’s important. So that’s why I think enterprise change management is important. 

When organizations are looking to put an organizational change management framework in place, it’s critical that they look far enough ahead. We are talking about organizational change in terms of people, in terms of customers, employees, and those people that are affected by what it is that is changing. That means you have to focus on communication and helping people understand what’s happening, why it’s happening and how it’s going to make things different and why those differences are positive. That takes time. You can’t just load up a piece of software and say here you go! You’ve got to allow people the time to think it through and consider the implications and play around with prototypes or mockups and see what they think of it. Consider the implications and whether they are comfortable with them.

You must also consider things like training or maybe hiring additional people to support what happenings. At the end of the day, it’s about creating an environment that sees the change positively, so you have to look quite a long way ahead. At the same time, you have to make sure you’re scheduling changes in such a way that you don’t create hot spots. That’s another part of planning ahead. If you’ve just dropped a new piece of software into an internal department that supports customers, it’s probably not a good idea to launch two new products the next day that’s going to results in customers phoning that support group to try and handle it because that becomes a whole lot of change in one very tight timeframe. You’re creating a hot spot. You’re creating an environment for problems. It’s much better to give people a week or two, maybe a month, to understand what’s happening in the new system and then implement the new change. You have to prioritize changes that way.

But you have to look at an organizational change framework not as work in isolation, but the work across the entire ecosystem of change that’s happening. 

The biggest challenge to organizational change management is getting buy-in to its importance across the organization. We see that organizational change management is tied to project adoption and success rates, but we also see organizational leaders not value it and struggle to support. Until we all rally around the importance and build this into how we deliver our projects, they we will continue to see these challenges.

When organizations are looking to put an organizational change management framework in place, it’s critical that they look far enough ahead. We are talking about organizational change in terms of people, in terms of customers, employees, and those people that are affected by what it is that is changing. That means you have to focus on communication and helping people understand what’s happening, why it’s happening and how it’s going to make things different and why those differences are positive. That takes time. You can’t just load up a piece of software and say here you go! You’ve got to allow people the time to think it through and consider the implications and play around with prototypes or mockups and see what they think of it. Consider the implications and whether they are comfortable with them.

You must also consider things like training or maybe hiring additional people to support what happenings. At the end of the day, it’s about creating an environment that sees the change positively, so you have to look quite a long way ahead. At the same time, you have to make sure you’re scheduling changes in such a way that you don’t create hot spots. That’s another part of planning ahead. If you’ve just dropped a new piece of software into an internal department that supports customers, it’s probably not a good idea to launch two new products the next day that’s going to results in customers phoning that support group to try and handle it because that becomes a whole lot of change in one very tight timeframe. You’re creating a hot spot. You’re creating an environment for problems. It’s much better to give people a week or two, maybe a month, to understand what’s happening in the new system and then implement the new change. You have to prioritize changes that way.

But you have to look at an organizational change framework not as work in isolation, but the work across the entire ecosystem of change that’s happening. 

So, how might change management need to be addressed differently for different levels of PPM maturity? There’s PPM maturity and then there’s change management maturity. And I think we’re going to talk about change management maturity a little bit. But, you know, depending on where your project management or program management office might be on the Gartner scale, it’s a one to five. And Gartner might say that there’s really no such thing as a five, so most companies, I think fall around a three. But you might be just getting started. So, you might be a one or a two, or you might be really good in your maturity and be a three or a four. I think one of the things that I would ask you to address differently is avoiding the silos as it comes to change management maturity. For example, some companies have multiple project management offices. They might have a marketing project management office, a human resources project management office and then a technology project management office. So, you got those in that example, those three project management offices. How are you looking at all of that change because there might be some departmental really important changes that are not rolling under any of the three of those particular three PMOs. So I think just avoiding silos. Number two, I think focusing on how does your organization accept change? I think that’s another thing that we need to look at differently because a lot of times, companies do a one size fits all – they send out a memo saying this change is coming. Get ready everyone. Be excited. And does that work for everyone? For myself, I get so many emails that I can’t read all of my emails in the same day. It’s almost physically impossible. So that mode of communication might not work for someone like me. Maybe you have to look at learning styles of the folks that you’re trying to train to use the change. Do they learn better by doing, by reading or listening? So, I think multiple modalities of releasing the communication about change is a must as we’re moving forward, and organizations are trying to become scalable. I think organizations doing that next step of trying to understand how folks really accept change because they might accept change a little bit differently. Those are two things that I might recommend that you do differently as they relate to enterprise change management.  

I can’t, I have seen very few companies that are embracing it with an all-in approach to organizational change management. What would move the bar and what would I need to see to say a company is doing it well is they have an OCM and a PM on the same project and that OCM lead is following industry recognized best practices from companies such as PROSCI.

That’s very clear, that is around project failure, lack of adoption, high turnover, and overall dissatisfaction with the products and projects being released. We see this a lot in companies that are early in their recognition of organizational change management.

Organizations that are seeing success with organizational change management are understanding the foundational aspects of change. First, they understand that you shouldn’t just change to change. There should be a strategic vision or reason for said change. Maybe it will improve efficiencies, increase ROI, eliminate inconsistencies, or improve overall performance, but without a reason for change – you shouldn’t do it. Second, organizations that are successful with organizational change management include key stakeholders prior to the change, during the change and after the change. By including key stakeholders organizations are solidifying a group of change agents that will be advocates for the change to other team members because they are included in the decisions along the way. Lastly, organizations that are seeing success with organizational change management are providing the team with quick wins based on the strategic vision or reason for the change in the first place. They are communicating the story and celebrating the wins along the way. This showcases change as a positive thing rather than something team members and stakeholders resist. 

We could talk about this for a while, but I’ll give you some nuggets that I’ve seen in my travels. Having all the visibility underneath one umbrella so you have one place to look for all of the change going on in the organization. You will have better prioritization because you can look and see what you want to prioritize and what you want to move forward, not just the special projects that you might have going through your project management function. You might have better reporting and visibility including the metrics that include what’s going on with the changes, the impact of those changes, the risks to all of those changes, not just the projects but all changes. I think those types of things impact the change. That’s what’s going to help you drive your goals and your strategy with your company. I think those are small things to a list of many, but those can help drive success. I’ll close with this. The thing to remember about doing change in an organization. You want to bring folks along with you with the change, no doing change to your organization. If you can figure out the magic sauce with that, you’ll be successful. 

The steps that you can take to solve for enterprise change management is do them in bite sized chunks. Simple answer. And you say, but Jenni, is an organization going to say, hey I need enterprise change management? Likely one, but what you will hear are some of these symptoms and the symptoms might sound something like this. We’ve got so much active right now. You might hear a symptom of our projects, our initiatives, our changes, are just taking too long to get done. You might hear some of your resources saying I’m over allocated. I can’t take on any more work. Even if you have a resource management tool, some people say resource management tool will solve that – it will give you visibility to it, but I don’t believe that it solves it. So over allocation might be another symptom you here. Another problem you might hear is we’re chasing moving targets, or our scope changes a good bit. We have a lot of scope changes within the project. There’s many more, but those are some symptoms that you might hear. People aren’t going to say I need enterprise change management. That’s just not the vocabulary that they are likely going to use. So, I think doing that type of assessment, and it doesn’t have to be a formal assessment, but that type of assessment to say they here’s some of the symptoms a potential solution could be. Usually, the goal of the project management office is to manage projects, right? It’s the P in PMO. But, what about other changes that don’t come through the desk of the project management office? How does the executive team manage all of the changes that are happening in the company. So that’s what I mean by enterprise change management, having that good visibility to be able to understand that track that, prioritize that, govern that. And a project management office might be a place that could help you solve that. But it’s a choice. It’s a choice for your executive team on what you might want to do to solve for enterprise change management. 

The tools and processes organizations leverage to solve for organizational change management are critical, but it’s not so much single platform but the integration. You need to have an effective project portfolio management system, but you also need to have accurate information on the people in the system. You need to integrate with HRS – HR information systems because that’s going to tell you the skills and experience in the different departments that you’re going to be able to leverage in the new system or new process. You have to integrate with your CRM system – you have to make sure you have the information on your customers is current, clean and accurate so you  know what’s happening there. It’s not just a the product mangers job because when you implement change it becomes something that is important to consider. Make sure you’ve got the tools for change management. Make sure you’ve got the tools for people change but also make sure you’ve got all the data that impacts all of those users through integrations in your enterprise. You really need a single integrated organizational backbone for the entire organization. This will allow you to see all of the information in one place, which is absolutely essential. 

When it comes to improving organizational change management, the PMO has a critical role to play. The PMO is an overarching view, an overarching monitor of everything that’s happening. If you think about projects and programs and products, those are all vehicles for delivering change and there is not many changes that happens to the systems, the processes and the things that don’t also impact people and organizational change. It’s absolutely critical to make sure the PMO is a key stakeholder in this. They can work to build a cadence into organizational change that the organization can absorb. They can start balancing the organizational change cadence with the organization’s strategic needs cadence. How much do we have to be able to deliver? And how fast can we deliver this without causing disruption? They can work with HR and leadership, procurement to start looking to increase the ability to implement more change in less time or implement larger changes. They can work to understand how change can be broken down into different modules to prevent disruption. They can look at dependencies of different initiatives to make sure we are putting in the right changes in the right places to make sure everything is being absorbed. If you’re trying to implement organizational change management, you need a dedicated organizational change professional – that’s critical success. But, if you don’t also engage very closely with the PMO then you’re never going to be able optimize your change delivery because the PMO has the best comprehensive view of the change that’s actually needed. That’s the driver of everything else that happens in the organization.

Some of the common pitfalls of ECM or enterprise change management, and I’m thinking about from the very beginning, not necessarily in the middle of enterprise change management. A unique answer from my standpoint, but it’s thinking that there is a problem. Right? You heard all of the symptoms. A lot of companies have those symptoms and maybe the PMO leader suggests enterprise change management and the company pushes back a little saying, we don’t need that. You know, the departmental managers can manage their things. The marketing PMO can manage their things and give you a portfolio report. This happens for each department and you have nine to ten portfolio reports trying to figure it all out those value streams, where and how budget is working, what problems are happening, what risks, shared resources are being strained. You often just keep doing what you’ve been doing because maybe that term of enterprise change management just sounds like something that you have to go spend money on. Which is not necessarily true. It’s really retraining your brain to think differently about change. So, I think one of the biggest pitfalls about getting started is not thinking that there's a problem, but yet you’re hearing all of these symptoms.  

When trying to get better at organizational change management, there is a lot of roadblocks that different teams face. A lot of it comes down to differences in perception. I’ve seen many organizations where strategic leaders are looking to push more change more quickly because that’s what’s necessary to achieve the goals and objectives. But, you can’t hit your goals and objectives by forcing change. You can only hit the goals and objectives by implementing change that is accepted. If you try to do too much too quickly to the same parts of the business or to the same customer base it will get rejected. It will cause problems. It will cause mistakes to happen to systems and processes. It will cause customers to reject what’s happening. It will have a long term impact on your ability to deliver. It’s much better to throttle the amount of change, so that it is all accepted in the least possible time. It has to be done in conjunction with the stakeholders or groups that are having to absorb the change, but the biggest problem by far is this attempt to accelerate the amount of change without the consideration of whether or not that amount of change can happen. The only reason that race car drivers can drive fast is because they have a throttle pedal and a brake pedal. If they only had a throttle pedal, it would be really quick for a really short amount of time and then bad things would happen. The same is true for organizations. You have to know when to accelerate and when to slow down to make sure that everything is accepted properly so you are ready for the next acceleration. It’s the only way. 

So, the key term there is decisions. I think it really depends on if you’re trying to get enterprise change management started. Of course, you have to get executive buy-in. Absolutely, that’s a no brainer. But then, I would hope that the organization would give people within the organization authority and empowerment to make decisions. Executives should be setting the goals and setting the strategies and empowering other people within the organization to go and chase those goals. I would envision it looks something like this. You have a change committee that comes together, whether it’s your change control board, it might be your steering committee, that are really looking at all the things that are active in the things that are the backlog. Now that’s really more of a waterfall answer and you may say but hold on, Jennie my shop is not waterfall it’s agile. I still think that there is importance in having a big room mindset. You have the mentality to say how much change we are truly trying to introduce to the organization to make sure you’re not pushing too much and over burdening or over allocating resources. I think the stakeholders differ per organization, but I think you should give people trust and authority to make decisions. 

Oftentimes companies will think this thing that sound fancy called enterprise change management that it has to be really complex. It doesn’t have to be. We often in project and change management might make it too complex. The agreement from the company to centralize visibility of all change is a huge first step. The framework that you use for that doesn’t have to be complex. That’s number one. Keep it simple. Number two is understand the differences between project management and change management are cousins, but they are not the same thing. They can be all underneath the same department. I’m often times seeing job openings for enterprise change management but you will see that PMO is not always a requirement. Project management type things might be one bullet under the entire job description. Understand the difference between change management and project management or what they are. It’s a must. Get yourself geared and equipped with the tools and understanding and training of what good project management and what good change management looks like. So those are some must haves that I would recommend for any organization considering enterprise change management.