Picture this: Your company needs a radical overhaul of its e-commerce strategy and supporting cloud infrastructure. This transformation initiative is being led by IT. Finance is trying to figure out the margin and cash flow optics. And your product and marketing teams are partnering on the digital stack and experience. The CEO has promised investors this new strategy will add 13 points to the bottom line and will ensure you can compete with the digital-native vendors in your market. The entire company (and investors) are banking on this change strategy delivering big results. What could go wrong?
Most transformational initiatives fail NOT because the idea missed the mark, the strategy was off base, or the tech didn’t deliver. Rather, according to McKinsey, more than ¾ of company strategic initiatives don’t deliver on the objectives because company leaders fail to manage change properly. It’s only after postmortem analysis that leadership teams understand the real reasons why the initiative failed. In retrospect, the most often cited shortcomings are:
- Not considering your company cultural values or readiness for change.
- Top-down change is forced onto the teams, employees and/or customers.
- Poor leadership communications before, during and after the change initiative.
- Not setting proper expectations or planning for inevitable resistance.
- Over reliance on tech and system implementation versus adoption by key stakeholders.
Companies use change management strategies when projects are complex and when initiatives have a significant impact on the company and on large groups of people. Today, change management is non-negotiable. It is the must-get-it-right secret sauce to make business and market transformation happen. At first glance, it may feel “soft.” But you can tie change management directly to “hard” ROI. How? Effective change management has a significant impact on meeting a project’s short- and long-term objectives, keeping costs within budget, and staying on schedule to deliver company needs and market opportunities.
Below are essential drivers and levers leaders can use to drive effective change management for the next strategic initiative. Change management must be infused early, often, and throughout the entire process –business case, project scope, implementation, adoption, and continuous improvement.
Change Management Starts with and Relies on Culture
We hear repeatedly about the strong culture requirements to drive business growth and guide employees. Game-changing, strategic change initiatives are where company culture and values get tested and exposed. Before starting, be honest in assessing your culture and company readiness for change. For example, if your team is not used to disruption or transformation, you need to spend considerable time with small-group employee education and communications. Also, you should listen and understand past big project successes and failures. What went right? What went wrong? It is important to adapt based on past project learnings and to acknowledge past successes and failures in your communications throughout the lifetime of the initiative. No need to apologize or harp on the past. But you should identify and amplify what the team is doing differently to address past shortcomings.
Another important factor is aligning the change initiative with your company culture and values. For example, if your company values are around “performance” and “accountability”, it is essential to set clear, visible, and measurable goals. Another example is based on the “innovation” culture value. You want to emphasize the breakthrough work that needs to happen and the realities of the project to build excitement and employee buy-in. This approach allows you to inspire team members to create breakthroughs and to set high standards without overpromising and losing employee and stakeholder trust.
Empower and Immerse Your Teams to Create Change Ownership
The best way to get buy-in and your team’s best work is to get key people involved in the change initiative. More emphatically, seek out and find champions and advocates by empowering them to shape, own, and drive the initiative. Champions are trusted by others, have unique domain expertise aligned with the change initiative, and/or exhibit passion for the business project and change. The most important element is to empower champions with the right project roles, giving them ownership and accountability for specific areas. Empowerment also aligns perfectly with setting specific and measurable goals you are looking to achieve.
Effective change management also requires a variety of voices. Diversity not only gets more people and functions on the mission and behind the change initiative, but it also provides multiple views from different functions and departments who can see things from much-needed multiple perspectives. The opposite happens when only small circles of people are included in the mission. Select inclusion can create cliques, naysayers, and/or distrust amongst the professionals who will be interacting in the evolved world you are creating.
One final thought on inclusion and accountability. Empowerment is impactful, however, change management must be funded appropriately. Experts recommend including roughly 5- 10% of your initiative budget to change management programs, communications, and vehicles that will be used throughout the project lifecycle.
Frequent, Clear and Authentic Communications Makes Change More Tangible
Maintaining focus, support, and engagement for the change initiative requires regular and clear communications. Different stakeholders will also require different levels of detail and information at various times. As such, developing a communications plan, including communications cadence, contents, and channels is essential to keep the right people informed and the momentum going. To achieve buy-in and trust, authenticity and clarity are important attributes in all communications. Stakeholders need to understand where the project is today, what’s happening next, and when, and specific updates should be tailored to the various players and groups involved.
Frequent communications on project status and updates are also important. Clear comms with stakeholders starts before the project is launched, establishing the mission, business case, and key project success metrics. The launch should signal and celebrate the official initiative kick-off and include key milestones, timelines, and the value to each stakeholder/group. One communications technique that is effective is the “infomercial” approach. This technique introduces and brings to life the change initiative and what their world looks like before and after the strategic work. In other words, what our business and environment look like today contrasted with what their world will look like once the change initiative is in place. Using both a story format and providing metrics and expected outcomes engages and appeals to both left and right brain thinkers.
Craft and Deliver an Adoption Plan, Not Just an Implementation Plan
Change management must focus on achieving buy-in and user adoption. Technology-centric projects often are heavily influenced by tech teams so the initiative can unintentionally over-emphasize the implementation phase. Getting systems up and running is imperative. However, your internal teams and customers adopting and using what you have created is often the difference between meeting your objectives or not.
An adoption plan includes all the elements we have outlined above and adds important pieces to ensure optimization and impact:
- training and business and system competency
- certification programs
- help desks and resolution teams
- internal and/or third-party support teams
- rewards and recognition for change impact
Change is Constant, Change Management Should Be Too
Change is constant in business and life. We as humans don’t always deal well with change. For this reason, change management is a science and art that must be baked into every strategic business initiative. The good news is because market and business change are constant, you and your company will benefit as adapting to change becomes a company value and part of the culture.
