Chapter 1: A Roadmap to Change

Change in organizations can be big, complex, confusing, and yes, probably, sometimes a bit frustrating. One of the best ways of feeling better about change is to get involved, which this book wants to help you do.

Bigger and smaller change

Change in organizations can follow several patterns, mostly dependent upon how large and widespread the change initiatives are. In smaller, local, change projects, you probably know who is involved and why it is all happening. In larger changes, management may be more remote and there can be longer delays before you are affected. Bigger changes, however, are also an opportunity for you to learn about other areas and perhaps help your career by getting involved and noticed at higher levels.

Figure 1.1 - Big and small change

Smaller change

Smaller changes appear in single locations, teams, or processes. They are often initiated and run by individual managers or management teams. They are usually relatively straightforward and do not last for long. They are managed in the same way as other tasks, with people given activities to complete and reviews done in existing management structures. Helping is easier too, as you probably know everyone and can take on tasks with just the approval of your manager.

In short:

Manager says, "we need to change" and directs people to specific activities.
Manager provides resources and checks on progress.
HR only involved in personnel changes.

Bigger change

Larger changes are typically organization-wide, are often complex in scope and can take months or even years to complete. These can be very disruptive as they require semi-permanent management and support structures to be set up. Communication is especially important here as people easily misunderstand messages through their local perspective. Helping can be harder to agree in bigger change, but with the many different things to do, there may well be a greater overall potential to get involved.

In short:

Senior management team realize the need for significant change.
Consultants may be brought in to help plan the change.
New management structures with dedicated job roles are set up.
HR, IT, and other support areas deeply involved in helping the change work.

4D stages

Large projects often progress in stages, which can be described as the "Four Ds" as in Figure 1.2. Smaller projects can also helpfully ask the same questions. Although your organization may follow other frameworks, this can still be particularly useful as a thinking framework. Even smaller projects may use this as a checklist.

Figure 1.2 - The 4D project stages

Discovery: Understanding the real-world situation, what change is needed, who the people involved are, and their views on the change (which may be quite different).
Definition: Deciding exactly what will (and, often harder, what will not) be done, based on available resources, timescales, and support.
Development: Designing, building systems, creating training, and generally getting ready for the change.
Deployment: Making the change real, implementing systems, changing jobs, training new people, and making sure it all works!

About Active Change

Active Change is about you, the individual in an organization, getting involved in change, whether it is big and organization-wide or not.

Figure 1.3 - Active Change

Active Change can be summarized as in Figure 1.3. First, you need to get your head around the situation, understanding what it all means. Committing to the change is then an important step of really getting into it, as is practically engaging with what is going on. Change can be difficult, and it needs persistence. Those who keep going through the tough times are those who succeed.

Like all models, this helps to make sense of what you should do and so helps you plan and work in change. It is not, however, a lockstep "do this and then do this" process. You may have to go back to understanding quite often. Sustaining the commitment of yourself and others can be an ongoing task. You may well have to find a working balance between engaging in the change and doing the "day job". And persistence can, at times when things get tough, be the hardest job of all.

Understanding

It is easy to jump right into any piece of work and get on with it, eager to show results. Change, however, is different. It can be confusing, worrying, and political, and can lead people to behave in ineffective or inappropriate ways. It is therefore important to start off by asking questions, listening, and looking.

There are two sides to understanding. The first is logical and reasonable, understanding facts about the organization, its purpose and plans, and the environment in which it works (and which may well trigger the need for change). The second is about people and includes emotions, deep needs, and character, which can all lead to the many different responses to change you may see.

Commitment

Commitment is a surprisingly important activity as it drives much human action. Indeed, many jobs (including management) are mostly about working with commitment. If you are to be involved with the change, it is important for you too, both personally and in what you do.

Personal commitment is a deep internal process of making a lasting connection between yourself and the change. It also means building connections with other people who are affected by the change or who are working on it.

You may also need others to commit to you and your plans. This does not come free and may need you to spend time getting them through the Active Change process and ensuring that you have sufficient organizational and managerial support to legitimize and enable continued commitment. You may also need to work on the commitment of others includes your direct manager, whose active support may well be needed for such as allowing you time to work in the change and persuading others to engage with you.

Engagement

Engaging with the change is where the "rubber hits the road" of positive action. It includes connecting not only with individual other people but also with the overall organizational systems. Such systems include the way that change gets done, even if it seems less effective than it should be. If you need to change a system, you need first to engage with it and the people who feel ownership for it. You may also need to engage with the organizational systems for motivation, such as pay and performance management. Even if you have little influence yourself on such systems, it can be important to understand how they work and hence what you might do to work with or around them.

Engagement is also about people, starting with your inner self and your very real concerns about the change, and maybe what you think you are capable or not of doing. The key secret of making change work is in engaging with others, connecting with them in ways such that they become committed and engaged participants rather than suspicious or critical opponents.

The central aspect of engagement is with the work to be done, understanding the day-to-day practicalities of it and the essential question of "what should I actually do today". In the end, all you have is time, and your first job is to determine how best to spend this. In change, this may include spending time learning new skills before applying them. This book can help you here, but in the end the best teacher is experience.

Persistence

Working in change, like in other areas, is sometimes interesting, sometimes concerning, and sometimes just plain boring. Yet change works when people persist, digging deep for grit and determination to see the job through. It is a measure of character that you retain the courage of your convictions and do what you know needs doing, even if you do not always know it will work.

Times when persistence is needed include:

When you cannot get through to people with whom you want to talk
When people seem less interested in the change and your work in it
When ideas that at first seem great turn out to be more difficult in practice
When managers who expressed early enthusiasm later shift change work to a lower priority
When work is taking much longer than you had planned
When people resist, oppose, or ignore changes that need their attention
Handing things over, turning pilot projects into everyday work
At the end of the project, completing documentation, reviews, etc.

Persistence can be particularly hard when others around you are complaining and pulling back. Your main job then may be as cheerleader, encouraging others and showing through your actions that there is a way through. It is an act of real heroism to stay true when others are fading, and we each have the choice and ability to remain this hero to our commitments. It is a part of heroism that in the moment heroes who simply do the right thing are not recognized as such. Only later is the power of committed persistence realized.

Given all this, there may still be a point when it is prudent to stop. While there are no hard and fast rules for this, the most common time to do this is when managers redirect you away from the project or when they simply do not give you enough support to let you do what you know needs to be done.

Navigating this book

This book is arranged in chapters that help you through the periods of a change, including:

When you first hear about the change
Helping out in preparing for the change
Helping to make the change work
Getting to completion

Figure 1.4 shows how these chapters map onto the Active Change stages of Understand, Commit, Engage and Persist. This gives you a useful guide to knowing where in the book to look for help in getting through each stage.

Figure 1.4 - Active Change and book chapters

While matching tools to times can be helpful, this is a guide and not a magic formula. When you are more familiar with the tools and techniques in this book you may well find some of these applicable at many different stages. While offering a wide range of tools, the book also makes no claims that these are all the tools that you will need. Indeed, there are many other methods out there that you may find useful and it is always a good idea to be open to new inputs while not blindly applying techniques without understanding why and how they work.

Chapter layout

This book is divided into sections that map directly onto some of the stages that happen during change work, with practical tools and techniques being offered in each section.

Each chapter is divided into three sections:

What typically happens: What you might see in this part of a change, what people might say, and how you may actively respond.
Where it can go wrong: A checklist of common problems at this stage, which you can use to help see early signs of issues and so raise due concerns with your manager.
How you can make it go right for you: A set of positive tools that you may actively use to help the change succeed (and so also succeed yourself).

Tools and techniques

Figure 1.5 shows a map of the main chapters in this book and the tools in each chapter.

Figure 1.5 - Tools and techniques in this book

Next:

2. When you first hear about the change