Organisational Change Management 2020 From A Distance

Virtual Change Management 2020

At the start of this year, I was engaged to undertake organisational change management (OCM) on a significant project for a very large organisation in Australia.

The first physical meeting with the project sponsor was on 2nd January 2020. It was also the last!

The entire organisation change has been conducted virtually.

 This was the feedback received.

 “Your change process is the best I have ever experienced. I have been in this organisation for nearly 10 years and endured many changes and their associated change management processes. 

Never before have I felt:

·         So, informed (of good news and bad)

·         So, consulted, and

·         Like I have been a part of the whole journey

I am impressed with the way that all feedback from all participants has been discussed and incorporated into the process/solution as appropriate and that so many concerns have been addressed so early in the change process. The communications plan is second to none that I have experienced, and I would like to congratulate both you on how you have conducted the whole process. The process has been fantastic, and for that you should be commended.”

Upon realising that the entire project, including OCM, was going to be delivered virtually, I wondered (and worried) about the impact of no physical face-to-face contact.

I think the following factors can be attributed to the results.

Back to basics 

I went back to basics. There are so many organisational change management approaches and methodologies out there. It can seem like a minefield.

Go back to the fundamentals. What do people need to know?

They need to know WHY we are making the change. They need to know what’s in it for them (WIIFM)

When we forget to tell people WHY, that is when we get the resistance.

When we tell them why, we mitigate the resistance, if not eradicate it all together.

If I said to you, the version of the platform we are using is no longer supported, we will no longer get updates, if it breaks there will be no one to fix it, and it won’t interface with our new systems – you know the WHY.

If I said to you, we are going to get new features and functionality, the workarounds we have put in place will no longer be needed, it will be faster, and we will keep getting enhancements – you know the WHY.

Explain WHY as early as you can.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

There is no such thing in my book as over-communication. As long as your content is of quality.

No-one ever left and organisation because they were told too much!

The communication has to be a conversation.

“We sent them an email” is not communication – it is a broadcast.

Keep telling people where we are at, what progress has been made. If there is no progress, tell them that and explain why and actions being taken.

Be open, honest and transparent.

Keep everyone in the picture.

When you stop communicating, you create a vacuum and people will fill it with rumour and conjecture. The rumour and conjecture then turn into a perceived reality. You need to avoid this at all costs.

If you have nothing to tell them – tell them you have nothing to tell them!

Communication is a Conversation

Communication is a conversation – a two-way engagement where people can ask for clarification and can ask questions.

We collated all the questions that were asked and created a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) repository which people could easily access.

Often people are afraid to ask a question because they think they should know the answer. Those people can access the FAQ and are likely to find the answer they are looking for.

The FAQ is a living document and continually updated.

When people can see that we are hearing their questions and collating them for everyone else to access, it encourages others to ask more questions and contribute to the effort.

Make sure there are channels through which people can ask questions. We didn’t have access to great collaboration technology, so we had a dedicated and monitored email address. We ensured all emails got a response and utilized whatever channels were available to use.

Consistency

I kept communication and engagement consistent. Everyone knew what to expect and when. There was some concern from certain stakeholders that we could over-communicate. It was felt that when things slowed down on the project, we should reduce the frequency of our engagement as we had less to say.

I pushed back and won making the argument that people want consistency and when it isn’t there, they will make assumptions – and often the wrong assumptions.

I still did a stakeholder engagement plan and impact assessment, but they were plans on a page and changeable as circumstances changed. I took an agile approach to the change.

There were no 30-50-page documents signed off in triplicate before we could commence.

I instigated what I termed a Pulse Check.

This was a fortnightly telephone call check-in with all of the key stakeholders to give them a project update and find out if they had any questions, concerns or queries that I could answer. 

As an indicator of communication and engagement success for the project sponsor, I asked the stakeholders, at the end of each call, to give me a score on a scale of 1-5 where 5 was great.

In the Pulse Check report, I included a graph to show how I was tracking. This was how we were tracking up to the start of December 2020.

 So, measure how you are tracking and be consistent.

Let’s Talk

My hope was once the key stakeholders had received their Pulse Check, they would cascade that information to their teams. I also provided the update via email to make it easy for them to forward it on.

Most stakeholders did cascade but rather than assume every person impacted by the change was receiving regular updates, I conducted a Let’ Talk session each month.

Run via MS Teams the session was an update on project progress, organisational change activities and technical aspect of the upgrade. An invitation was sent out to everyone impacted or interested in the project.

After the updates, there was then an open Q&A session for anyone to ask questions of any of the project team.

Every session was recorded and located in a repository along with all other resources in regard to the project. This meant that no-one would miss out on access to monthly updates.

Summary

The key messages are:

·     Keep it simple

·     Go back to basics

·     Use plans-on-a-page for artefacts such as stakeholder engagement plans, communication plans, impact assessments etc.

·     Communicate, communicate, communicate

·     Be consistent

·     Do not think you can every over-communicate

·     Measure your progress

·     Just keep on having two-way conversations