This week I attended the 2021 CIO Priorities Report – An ANZ View webinar from Info-Tech Research Group.

You can view the supporting report here.

I was more than pleased to see “Strengthen OCM Capabilities” as one of the five CIO priorities for 2021. Organisational Change Management (OCM) takes its rightful place.

OCM IS #3 PRIORITY FOR THE CIO

This diagram shows the CIO’s top priorities according to Info-Tech Research Group.

Image: Courtesy of Info-Tech Research Group

I am sharing with you my 5 key takeaways from the report in regard to OCM.

1. The Importance of Why

Back in May 2020, I introduced my readership to one of the superpowers of The Resiliator™ - The Director. The Director ensures that everyone understands the “why” of change.

Executives often start with the “why we need to change” and then forget to communicate this in conjunction with the “what needs to be done” and “how we are going to do it.”

They make the false assumption that the “why” is a given. It is not.

 I often use the simple analogy of a colleague saying to me:

“Hey Karen, we are driving to Sydney tomorrow, we will take my car, and I will pick you up at 9am.”

I am not getting in the car and going to Sydney because I have no idea of “why” we need to go. All my colleague has told me is what and how.

I am a firm believer that if you provide employees with a clear reason we need to change – the “why – you will reduce, if not mitigate, resistance to change.

People resist change when it is done TO them – not when it is done WITH them.

When COVID-19 hit us in early 2020, the direction was that for most employees they had to immediately work from home. They did not resist the change, however disruptive it was, as the “why” was so clearly understood.

We need to make all change like this.

Enabling agents of change to have meaningful conversations about the “why” of change is part of my Change Network Enablement program.

2. Engage a wider change network

I could not agree more.

OCM can no longer be left in the hands of a few.

An enterprise-wide change network is needed.

The network is the operational and tactical arm of organizational change leaving the change management centre of excellence to create a strategy that builds, maintains and sustains a workforce resilient in the face of constant change.

Rapid adoption of change is achieved when the change capability moves from episodic or sporadic to a competent capacity that can pervade every level of the organization.

The enterprise change capability assures a workforce that is motivated and inspired.

Increased employee engagement and an increased speed in the adoption of change both have a positive impact on profitability.

The approach I use is to imagine the workforce as a soccer team. Every game they play is different – the location, the pitch, the supporters, the opposition, the weather and the game tactics. They do no resist change. They say Game On!

This is the workforce we need. It is enabled by managers who are our change centre of excellence and a truly enabled network of change coaches who ensure the players are game ready.

Have a look at my “Game On! New Constructs for Effective Change” program.

 3. Change network enablement

Following on from the call to action to “engage a wider change network” we need to also enable it.

We need a change network, but more so we need one that is enabled to carry out the change management activities needed for a workforce to be resilient in the face of constant, unprecedented and disruptive change.

Many of the organisations I have observed, say that they have a change network but on further investigation the most they have done is to ask for volunteers and, after a brief introductory presentation, given them a lanyard that says “I Am A Change Champion.”

There has been no provision of ongoing education and awareness around change, no enablement and no provision of tools and techniques. In essence they are left high and dry without any sense of direction.

When a network has the capability, competency and capacity to manage change across the enterprise it is an extremely powerful force and a massive competitive advantage.

It maximises the return on technology investment due to rapid adoption of change.

Check-out my program “Change Network Enablement.”

4. Change is everyone’s business

Earlier this week I talked about creating a change trilogy of managers, coaches and players. The coaches are the enterprise-wide change management network that ensures the workforce (players) are game ready. The mangers are the existing change management centre of excellence.

“Game ready” means that the workforce is resilient in the face of constant, unprecedented and disruptive change.

The crux is that you have to have organisation-wide buy-in and commitment to invest in the resilience of the workforce, and their mental wellbeing.

There has to be understanding at every level of the organisation about how people react to change and why. 

You need education and awareness raising to take place across the organisation so that everyone has an understanding of change – what it means to them as an individual, what it means to their colleagues and what it means the organisation.

Everyone needs to know that change is their business.

I provide customised presentations and facilitated workshops to raise awareness of organisational change management across the enterprise.

5. Resilience - beyond unexpected change

The Info-Tech report has the following as a key insight.

“At its heart, resilience is having the capacity to deal with unexpected change. OCM can help build up this capacity at the organization level by helping to strategically plot the known changes while leaving some capacity to absorb the unknowns as they appear.”

I believe that resilience is beyond just having the capacity to absorb the unexpected change. It is about the ability to adapt and adopt to all change. The expected, unexpected, unprecedented, the black swan and more. It is the ability to cope with events like COVID-19.

At the core of resilience is the mental wellbeing of your employees.

The Info-Tech report contained statistics including:

Sixty-seven percent of workers report higher levels of stress since the outbreak of the pandemic; 57% report higher levels of anxiety (Statista [stress, anxiety]).

Whilst stress, anxiety and mental wellbeing can be adversely impacted by rapid change there are many more factors at play.

Employee wellbeing can be impacted by factors both inside and outside of the organisation.

It will be impacted if there is a stigma around mental health in the workplace and a lack of psychological safety.

It will be impacted if leaders are not empathetic and caring.

It will be impacted if there is not organisational wide education and awareness about mental health.

It will be impacted if there is not a holistic approach taken to looking after employee mental health. Point solutions are window-dressing.

You cannot mediate your way out of burnout.

It will be impacted if there are not the right tools and resources, available to every employee at the right time and place.

It will be impacted if there is not a movement to reduce the causes of poor mental wellbeing as well as addressing the effects 

We need to act and we need to act now.

Check out my resilience programs for your organisation.

Summary

This is a call to action for not only the CIO but the entire C-suite. Organisational change needs to be a competency at every level of the organisation. It needs sufficient capacity to manage all change - not just large projects.

It needs to work with HR or People and Culture to enable employee resilience at work through a holistic program of work.

OCM and rapid adoption of change is your competitive advantage.