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Who is Who: The Importance of an Org Structure when Delivering Projects

Written by Frankie Mouzon on . Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Who is Who: The Importance of an Org Structure when Delivering Projects

When starting a new job or project, it is very important as a Project Manager or Business Analyst to have a good idea of how an organization or business operates.

This helps navigate the internal & external ways of the business, and understand how it affects the customer base. I currently work in the hospital healthcare industry, which acquires several hospitals each year. The more companies that the business acquires, there is a high chance that there will be more growth, responsibility, & opportunities (including problems), but the business can easily become chaotic if not properly structured. On my first day of the job, I did the typical project manager request by asking for an organization structure. Unfortunately, my request was rejected because employees either left, were laid off, promoted, or moved to different departments due to another recent acquisition purchase. As a result, I did not know who to go to for information or to execute certain tasks. Org charts are vital for the following reasons:

1. It helps Project Managers & Business Analysts understand the different functions throughout the business, the team, and team members.
2. It is very important to understand who needs to be involved or the appropriate audience when it comes to sharing information for projects or initiatives.
3. There is always room for improvement.

If organization structures were more emphasized, there would be much more efficiency, productivity, and less stress & chaos for employees throughout the business.

Knowing Your Industry & Business

Knowing your industry and business are super-beneficial in so many ways.

1. It helps boost productivity & performance. By understanding the organization and its structure, the Project Manager and Business Analyst will know exactly who to go to for tasks and get stuff done, instead of going around in circles. It is all about delivering & proving the return of investment (ROI) based what you delivered.

2. It allows you to network outside your team and gain relationships. You probably hear this often, but your network is your net worth (internally [within your team and organization] & externally [the industry & working with vendors]). In a perfect world, everyone has a role and numerous responsibilities, and they are obligated to make sure they uphold their responsibility no matter what. But in the real world, that is not always the case. If a team member on a project does not know you well enough, there is a chance that he or she will be less motivated or enthusiastic to work with you, or even go above and beyond the call of duty to get last-minute extra tasks done for the project. It is also important for the organization to know who you are. You are a great professional, but now it is time for everyone else to know that you are great! Your reputation is everything. If no one knows who you are besides your team, what reputation do you really have?

3. Exposure is key to taking advantage of new opportunities and gaining new insights of what is going on in the organization. If you constantly perform to your greatest height, and continue to have a great reputation across the organization, people will come to you for input & new opportunities. Being a Project Manager or Business Analyst is a wonderful role with great rewards, but always allow yourself to grow when the opportunity knocks. As human beings, we must challenge ourselves often in order to grow and not become stagnant. As you accomplish a major challenge, another will come and that is how you improve physically, mentally, and spiritually. Always aim higher and be better! In addition, if there is a change in operations or process for a department and you have a good working relationship, there’s a high chance that information will be communicated to you, which you can communicate to your team. Yes, spread the word! From a team perspective, you are trustworthy and reliable when it comes to your say-do ratio and knowledge of information.

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Putting the Pieces Together

During the initiation stage of a project after getting the project charter approved, it is the job of the Project Manager and/or Business Analyst to identify the stakeholders, and determine their expectations, influence, & impact of the project. In order to know the major and minor stakeholders, you must understand the structure, culture, existing systems, and project management processes of the company. Below are a few pointers when it comes to identifying the right stakeholders:

1. Understand the problem that needs to be solved. This is very important because it provides an opportunity to understand the current state and the people who are involved in the current process that needs to change. By understanding the current state & pain points, you automatically get buy-in from the end-users, and it is perceived as if you are intrigued and determined to be solving the problem. Believe it or not, this will be in your favor as the project continues. After determining the people involved in the current process, they should be listed in the stakeholder register and evaluated based on their impact & influence of the project. Most importantly, they must be kept in the loop of what’s going on throughout the project no matter if it is a weekly or monthly project status update &/ or meeting.

2. Ask your business sponsor and/or champion. Most of the time, the business sponsor/champion will let you know the details of the problem &/ or project that no one else will know or share, including the stakeholders who need to be involved. As you list these different stakeholders, try to understand their current role & responsibilities, and how they fit into the current business problem(s) that need to be resolved. By doing so, it will show their value & impact to the project. A “good” business sponsor/champion will be your best ally when it comes to the project, because they will provide as much support as possible to solve the problem because of the value added to the business.

BUILD A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR SPONSOR/CHAMPION! I cannot emphasize this enough. In order to build a relationship, you must gain trust. In order to gain trust, having a 100% say-do ratio is necessary. Always deliver what you say you are going to do, and then they will like you. Also, treat your champion how you want to be treated. Key words to apply are truth, respect, enthusiasm, reliability, inclusion, & help.

3. After gathering your initial list of stakeholders, sit down with your manager and review the list to get feedback. This is very important to fill any gaps. Your manager is in that position for a reason, so use them for your benefit. If you are successful, your manager is successful. It is a win-win situation!

There are ALWAYS Opportunities for Improvement

Two of the greatest traits that a Project Manager or Business Analyst should have is being inquisitive & innovative by looking at how things are currently done and can be improved. As you get a better understanding of the organization, and the roles & responsibilities of all teams and their team members, ask questions. Why is the person doing this task? Why is the person doing the task this way? Is there an easier way to get the same output? As Project Managers & Business Analysts, it is our sole responsibility to create value, efficiency, and productivity throughout the entire organization. This might not be easy to get the top people (executives, senior management) on your side, but this is where your influencing skills apply.

Although eliminating waste and creating value should be coming from the top-down, that is not always the case. There are times where you must step up and be a change leader. Yes, you will have to open your mouth & communicate this to senior management, but you can back it up with facts, pain points that affect productivity, the potential solutions, and quantitative benefits (dollar amounts is highly suggested) when the pain points are resolved by one or more a combination of the solutions. By including these factors to your story while presenting the opportunity, you can make a difference & also shift the company culture to innovating constant improvement. So, let’s put on our capes and become change leaders!

Sum It Up

Organization structure is necessary in order to complete projects successfully. According to Rita Mulchay’s PMP Exam Prep Eighth Edition, the Project Manager must “determine company culture and existing systems”. Existing systems include an org chart where you must understand the roles and responsibilities for every team and team member. For business analysts, in order to conduct a successful strategy analysis, they must have the organization chart as part of understanding the current state. If there is no order, there is chaos; and this applies to projects or initiatives, which create tons of value.

The Yin-Yang of Aligning (digital) Business and IT Models

Written by Paul Oppong on . Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on The Yin-Yang of Aligning (digital) Business and IT Models

Yin-Yang is a fundamental concept in Chinese philosophy where seemingly opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent on each other.

These forces complement each other as they interrelate. The interaction between Yin and Yang establishes harmony as well as a needed balance.

One activity that all digital businesses must be good at in order to succeed, is aligning their information technology (Yin) with the business (Yang), to ensure that organizational objectives can be achieved.

This needs to be delivered in a dynamic manner given that the business environment is experiencing tremendous change and is continually in a state of flux.

The move to digitalization is itself one of the most significant and continual changes that the business must adapt to, but there are lots of others. The pressures and ongoing requirement for technological change have led to a need for new collaboration and alignment models, so that the business can respond effectively.

Agility

Given the increasing pressures of digitization on the business, alignment between it and IT is essential. It is important to take a strategic approach towards planning IT so that business imperatives can be met.

One theme of alignment models to support digital which arises repeatedly is that of agility. The days of IT strategic plans spanning several years are over. IT must be able to respond quickly to meet business needs as they evolve over time. This means being able to quickly deploy new technology to allow the organization to take advantage of opportunities. The old model through which IT and the business worked together does not allow this to be achieved.

Old Models of Business and IT Alignment

The traditional sense of collaboration between the business and IT was one where the business required support from IT to install technology which would support business processes. The business told IT what it needed.

Following this, IT would gather business requirements and produce a solution that hopefully met those needs. While this worked for decades in the past, it is no longer sufficient to meet business needs.

The old model does not recognize that technology now has a massive influence over the directions the business can take, and the opportunities it brings for change for the better for the organization.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) bring considerable opportunities for many businesses, but without IT taking a strategic role, the business is unlikely to recognize the importance of these or benefit from them in the ways that it could.

Technology professionals are better placed to be ahead of the game and to help the business identify possible opportunities that could be brought about from leveraging new technologies.

Strategic IT Planning, Digital Business Strategies and Pervasive Models

The new approach for business and IT alignment recognizes that IT is no longer simply responsible for putting in place technology that will support business processes. Rather, technology is a driver of the business and shapes its future directions. Under the new model, business strategy and IT strategy are closely interlinked and aligned. In addition, internal and external drivers for change are considered and addressed.

There are two possible ways for collaboration to come about. This can either be IT driven, where IT strategy leads to the development of the organizational infrastructure or, it may be business driven, with the business strategy helping to define the IT infrastructure. Either way, for the alignment to work best it will be two-way, so that organizations can fully leverage the opportunities brought about by digital and other emerging technologies.

New models of alignment and collaboration between the business and IT no longer view the IT function as just a cost centre, or as an asset for raising efficiency. Rather, these models embrace IT as a force that can contribute to the overall value proposition, and as an enabler or shaper of exciting new business models. This transforms IT from taking an operational role to a strategic one within the organization.

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Most analysts in the IT sector recognize and advocate the need for strategic IT planning. I too also advocate this with all clients. My observation of working with a wide range of customers is that those companies that do not put in place strategic IT planning are less likely to be competitive. This means they are more likely to fail.

These studies have shown specifically that strategic alignment between IT and the business is also linked to a lack of ability to develop an effective digitization strategy.

New forms of alignment and collaboration between IT and the digital business need to recognize that change is ongoing and that this situation is permanent.

This leads naturally to the development of digital business strategies, which arguably go beyond simple alignment between IT and the business. Rather, some research analysts have argued for business and IT strategies that become one and the same thing, working in synergy and cohesively.

This approach to collaboration and alignment between IT and the business enables a proactive approach. Such a methodology allows the business to decide what the future will be and bring it about, drawing on technological development to deliver this destiny. This has already been observed with technology acting as a disruptive driver for industry change in many sectors. Experts refer to this as the “pervasive model”.

The pervasive model is one whereby IT delivers the technological infrastructure, and the business is able to utilize it to meet its needs. Under this type of working arrangement there is a very close relationship between IT and the business. Since IT knows which technologies may be of benefit to the business through its close relationship with the same, it can deliver new technology into the infrastructure. This model is believed by some to be the most effective for anticipating business needs, implementing and supporting the organization and driving disruptive change.

What IT Needs to be Enabled to Do

To allow the business to reap the full range of rewards that technology can bring, IT needs to be enabled to drive change. The close working relationship between IT and the business needs to identify the new technology that could benefit the business and explore how this could add value for the organization. As part of the model, it must be able to implement new technologies into the infrastructure. Further, IT needs to be in a position to continually evaluate the infrastructure. This position both IT and the business to ensure that technologies that are becoming obsolete are replaced before this occurs, and that innovative new technologies are built in instead.

The Benefits of a Strategic IT Plan and Cohesive Alignment Between IT and the Business

It is important to understand the benefits these new ways of working bring about. The overarching benefit of a strategic IT plan which has been developed with a view of helping the business achieve its goals, is that these targets are more likely to be reached. (The act of creating a goal, makes you more likely to achieve the goal)

This is because IT and the business work together to ensure that IT understands the strategic imperatives and is set up to help the organization achieve them. Overall, this leaves the business in a much better position to be able to gain competitive advantage, or to become a first mover with technology in its industry. And once in this position, with the right types of collaboration and alignment in place with IT, it is much easier to stay ahead than playing catch up all the time.

Another important benefit is also that both IT and the business are better able to set priorities for digitization when working together. Research has shown that organizations that do not work towards developing new ways of working like this have been found to not prioritize as effectively. It allows organizations to move forward in new directions, benefiting from the ability to quickly deploy technology that enables cloud computing, mobility, personalization, big data, IoT and AI. Without developing an approach such as that highlighted above, the business may struggle to be sufficiently agile to take advantage of these types of innovations and developments.

Summary

In the brave new world that businesses find themselves in, being able to leverage technology rapidly and effectively for digitization and other purposes is essential to achieving and maintaining competitive advantage.

This means that businesses need to work closer with IT departments than ever before. It is no longer enough for IT to simply provide the infrastructure at the behest of the business. Rather, the two need to work closely together proactively, to ensure that the organization is equipped to take advantage of new technologies and drive disruptive change in its industry. This allows businesses to get ahead of their competitors, but it requires recognition that IT is an integral factor in achieving business success.

You’ve Got Processes With A Capital P and That Stands For Trouble!

Written by Larry Blankenship on . Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on You’ve Got Processes With A Capital P and That Stands For Trouble!

In Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man” there is a scene where Harold Hill, the conman,

attempts to alarm the people of River City about the local pool hall to get them to buy band instruments. The refrain is “You got trouble my friends, trouble with a capital T which rhymes with P and that stands for pool!”

I’m going to turn that around and tell you that you may have processes with a capital P and that rhymes with T and that stands for trouble. When processes become Processes with a capital P, it means that they have stopped being a means to an end and have become the end themselves. They have become enshrined, which is the term I’ll use in the rest of this article. This can get to the point that they impede continuous improvement because the people who do them are emotionally invested in them. This sometimes leads to resistance to change when change is badly needed.

That is not to say processes aren’t needed, only that they should act as a support to achieving desired outcomes, not become the desired outcome. Doing things in a consistent way, using a process, is the most effective way to experiment with changes and understand what worked and what didn’t, but it can become a trap, if the end result isn’t kept in mind.

The first identifier for an enshrined process is its overabundance of documentation. Typically, this involves multiple volumes of manuals, protected by a complicated and byzantine approval process. Any change requires a thorough review by several committees and multiple sign offs, by which time the requirements for the change will have become out of date, and all involved will throw up their hands and claim that the whole process is too hard but won’t do anything to fix that either.

Another sign of an enshrined process is knowledge hoarding. If you find that only one or two people have full knowledge of how things work, and they jealously guard the information, it’s probably a good candidate for an enshrined process. In this instance, there will be very little documentation to enable others to evaluate or analyze the process. SMEs will be reluctant to share or will frequently claim that things are “too complicated” to explain to someone else.

If the work has become more important than the outcomes it produces, then you have encountered an enshrined process. Look at the metrics used to measure the process success. Do they relate to business objectives, or are they measurements of execution? Number of complaints processed with a goal that goes up is a process measurement. Number of customers rating their customer service experience as a 4 or better on a 5 point scale measures a business objective of satisfied customers.

Once you’ve identified an enshrined process, what to do about it? The most critical element in this case isn’t the business, but the people in it. I want to share a couple of techniques I’ve found useful in the past: Acknowledging concerns, and involvement in the solution.

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When acknowledging concerns, the pattern I’ve learned to use is Feel-Felt-Found. I learned this during my sales career. Start by acknowledging the person’s concerns are legitimate by saying “I know how you feel, many of the people I talk to felt the same way about changing how they work.” Then reassure them with other people’s experiences. “People who’ve been through this process have found that it really made things work better. Can we give it a try?”

Involvement in the solution is the best way to build ownership in the new process and prevent people from subverting change by passively or actively resisting it. If you’ve done your job in carefully listening to the people doing the process, and gathering their input, they will feel a sense of ownership in the new process. The important thing is that they will feel that they improved the process rather than had the changes imposed on them.

Assuming you’ve managed to successfully implement a new process, how do you prevent it from becoming enshrined all over again? It’s easy to assume that the hard work is over, but if you fail to plan for changes to the contexts the process operates within, it’s possible that the next change will require you to start from the beginning rather than make another incremental change. Your first objective is to make sure that you don’t rest on your laurels.

If you’ve taken time during your process review and rework to incorporate a continuous improvement culture, then much of your work is already done, as people will already be thinking about how to review and rework the process on a regular basis. If not, take the time now to set up regular reviews and identify metrics that will allow you to validate that the process is achieving its desired objectives. Make sure that you focus on business objectives, not process objectives. If business objectives aren’t being met, adjust and try again. The most important thing is to avoid falling into the same trap of measuring the process not the outcome.

The second objective to strive for is to make change easy. Keep feedback loops in place to allow the people who provide inputs information on how to improve the quality and usability of those inputs. Make sure that any feedback provided from the people who receive the output is reviewed and acted on a regular basis. Try as much as possible to use a “black box” approach. That means that the people outside the process don’t necessarily have to know the details of how the process works, just that it produces consistent, predictable results. Keep your processes as independent as possible to minimize the impact of changes on other business areas when changes are required.

The final objective is to keep documentation simple and readily available. At all times, the current version of the process documentation should be online and available to everyone who performs the process. Sharepoint or an online wiki are great places to keep shared documentation. While it’s important to have version control, it doesn’t hurt to make the documentation easy to change when it’s needed. Focus on pictures and short paragraphs. Avoid writing novels. Flowcharts are one of the best ways to describe processes. Keeping the documentation simple means it’s less likely to end up in a paper copy on someone’s desk, which means it’s out of date by definition.

I hope by following the suggestions in this article, you’ll be able to recognize, fix, and avoid enshrined processes in your projects. I think you’ll find the benefits of doing so are substantial.

Empowering Employees to Drive Continuous Improvement

Written by Vincent Mirabelli on . Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Empowering Employees to Drive Continuous Improvement

Does this sound like you?

“I want to engage my staff to get involved in improving the way our business operates, but everything I try just doesn’t seem to have an impact”

If so, you are definitely in the majority. Businesses in almost every industry and sector struggle with getting staff involved in their continuous improvement initiatives, and wrestle with how to better engage their teams in efforts to improve business processes. And even if they do get that figured out and off the ground, it often introduces a new set of challenges; sustaining that momentum.

First, the good news. Your employees WANT to be given the chance to improve your business, to have a voice in process improvement. Now the bad news (or at least the harder news); your management team needs to make it easy for their teams to do so.

So then, how can you make the path improvement easier for your teams? Here are my top 10 tips, tactics and approaches to empower and enable your staff (and you) excited about driving business process improvements, and on to becoming continuous improvement ambassadors for your organization.

1. Acknowledge the Room for improvement

Q: Do you know what the biggest room in the world is?
A: The room for improvement.

Dad jokes aside, sometimes just acknowledging to your staff that there are opportunities to improve, not just the business, but their way of working, can be of great help in getting them on board. Every business faces challenges, and ignoring them, spinning them, and sweeping them under the rug does nothing to help. Acknowledge the problems, see them as opportunities, and meet them head on. To really amplify the message, create a safe environment for your staff to bring opportunities forward, and even contribute to solving them.

2. Communicate

One of the best ways to build trust with your team members is to be open and transparent with your intentions, your projects, and your progress. Not only will this keep the idea of continuous improvement it top of mind, but your communication tools can be used as a vehicle to accelerate your efforts and impact.

3. Offer employee training

The impact of offering training to your staff is two-fold. First, it ensures your teams have the proper training, ongoing support and the resources they need to get involved with and contribute to, your continuous improvement initiatives. Second, and likely more important (to them at least), is that it also demonstrates a willingness to invest in them and their careers.

4. Make it a part of everyone’s job

“What gets measured gets done.” While the source of that statement is debatable, the sentiment is not. If you want to drive continuous improvement in your organization, make it personal. Establish individual and team performance outcomes and expectations, including KPIs, to obtain the desired effect. The best way to do that is to include continuous improvement objectives in every job description, as well as annual/quarterly/etc. personal development programs.

5. Have leadership set the tone

Most sustainable business transformations start at the top, and trickle down. So, having your organization’s senior management buy-in to continuous improvement, and in more than words, goes a long way in determining success. Their words must be backed up with actions, and those actions and support should be visible to your entire operation. This ensures a strong and visible network of leaders to generate momentum for process improvement initiatives.

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6. Make it fun, but appeal to the spirit of competition

Recognizing that staff engagement in process improvement can be difficult to maintain, many companies have appealed to people’s competitive instincts by holding competitions, both within teams and across their entire organizations. Some businesses have even created games such as process improvement sprints and hackathons, in the spirit of competition.

7. Enable collaboration

Take the “One Company” approach to break down existing silos. The best way I’ve found to do this is to use the customer’s perspective on your business. Do you have a lot of segmented processes, a lot of handoffs, and perhaps overly specific and restrictive job descriptions? Guess what…your customer doesn’t care. They want a problem solved or a need addressed. They see your organization as a single entity, and not a collection of individualized departments and silos.

Further, make sure you don’t squeeze the balloon of pain. In a siloed organization, a lot of problems are solved in one business unit by squeezing the pain up or downstream. Not unlike one of those balloons that clowns use to make balloon animals. When you squeeze the middle, the air doesn’t disappear; it moves to the rest of the balloon. So don’t solve a problem by making it someone else’s.

8. Enforce accountability

Sometimes simply giving your staff the autonomy and resources needed to map, review and ultimately own the processes they have to deal with every day is enough to start them down the road of implementing their improvement ideas. That’s not to say they should have the freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want. You should enforce timelines, but freedom, to force accountability. This will help identify who is really interested in contributing. Everyone wants to have a say when there are no consequences, but when I need to own my actions, only the team members that really want to try making a difference will step up. That being said, you want to empower but not abdicate; make it clear when your team should reach out for help or approval.

9. Recognize and reward

As a general rule, good work should be recognized and celebrated. And by that, I don’t mean a party every time someone sends an email. But ensure that you are giving recognition where and when recognition when it is due. For example, I used to hold a “graduation” ceremony from my classes of Lean Six Sigma Green Belts. To me it wasn’t about grad caps and cupcakes, but was more about giving the new Green Belts the opportunity to present their work to their leaders, and be recognized for their efforts. I now make this a mandatory milestone for all training classes. It’s important to acknowledge all of the good work, efforts, failures, and completion of milestones (like completing training). It all creates a virtuous cycle of learning and success.

10. Offer bribes

Consider this one an absolute last resort. It is, at best, a short-term tactic to drive motivation and participation in your staff. Providing small but meaningful incentives like pizza parties, extra vacation days, or event or movie tickets, may give you a boost. But a warning…use of these doesn’t actually solve your engagement problem, and may actually serve to negatively impact it when these tactics go away. And a second warning…use cash bonuses as an absolute last move, as

The thinking on business process improvement has shifted in recent years. It used to be one that focused on the application of rigid tools and methodologies, and that discounted the role of staff, to the more modern approach, which is one that is better at harnessing the real drivers of change in your organization: engaged people and teams, who want to do good work, and are driven to improve and succeed.

When you instill a strong improvement culture in your organization, and equip and empower an engaged staff with the right tools, learning, and attitude, you can turn their efforts into real, tangible improvements that make your business more efficient and effective, and improve the engagement of staff. All that leads to significant, positive changes for your teams, your customers, and your bottom line.

Managing Organization Change Programs: Clarity, Communication and Respect

Written by George Pitagorsky on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Managing Organization Change Programs: Clarity, Communication and Respect

All projects are change projects. They implement new or changed products, processes or services.

An organizational change project is a special case. It is a project to change the way an organization operates, including its structure, generally, to improve performance or to enable the organization to face external changes in its environment.

Organizational change projects may be perceived as sub-projects in other projects or programs. For example, the implementation of a new business application may trigger significant changes in the way an organization operates, the relationships among stakeholders and its culture. While the expressed focus of the project is the implementation of a new product or application, the real focus is on the improvement of the organization’s performance and that invariably involves organizational change.

People Centric Communication

Organizational change directly effects the people who make up the organization. While it is a critical factor in all projects, communication is particularly critical to success when an organizational change is involved.

Sometimes the very people who initiate and are responsible for facilitating the change forget this simple fact. They view the organization as if it were an entity unto itself, separate from the people who populate it and make it work. When employees, at all levels including managers and executives, consultants and vendors are regarded as “assets” or “resources” or “part of the problem” respect for them and regard for their welfare is diminished. This leads to a change process that is driven from the top or from outside of the organization, often with less than optimal results.

Yes, there are exceptions, if the change is one that will result in the dissolution of the organization, with its capital assets sold off, there is less damage when the staff is alienated. However, even in these situations, compassion and respect for the people who will lose their jobs goes a long way towards moderating the negative impact of the hostile takeover. On another level, there is often emotional and, in some cases, financial impact on those making such changes without regard for the human element.

However, when the change is to result in a well-functioning, optimally performing organization, project managers and professional change agents recognize the importance of cultivating good will, respecting the capacity of the staff to deal with the truth, reducing anxiety and engaging the staff to make them change agents as opposed to targets. Recognizing the importance of these factors, these change agents apply the basic principles of project management and do so with a servant leadership attitude.

Basic Principles of Organizational Change

Organizational change is a program. The basic principles are

  • Know and state values, goals, objectives and strategy
  • Identify and engage the stakeholders – the people who will impact and be impacted by the project
  • Manage expectations with effective/realistic estimates, schedules and plans, including risk assessments
  • Monitor and control and be open to the inevitable changes that will occur along the way
  • Realize that organizational change does not end when the initial change project is closed. The project sets the stage for managing continuous change.

Know and State Values, Goals, Objectives and Strategy

Clearly, knowing where you are going and, on at least a high level, how you will get there is a major success factor.

Yet, there is a potential danger in setting the goal in a way that presupposes a solution rather than the elimination of a problem or the achievement of an objective such as measurably improved performance.

For example, a goal stated as centralization rather than performance improvement may make taking a hybrid or federated approach to achieve the goal of improved performance and greater integration into a wider organization without fully centralizing.

Mistaking a solution approach like centralization or automation for a goal makes for a rigid approach that risks increasing dysfunction rather than improving performance.

Performance improvement would more likely be achieved if values like openness to an evolving approach, continuous improvement based on cause analysis and cause removal, and recognition of the successes of the target organization along with its failures drive the effort.

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Identify and Engage the Stakeholders

Stakeholders are anyone who may affect the project or be affected by it. Engage them, respect their needs and communicate with them according to their roles and the need for confidentiality. This principle is fundamental to effective human relations. People are often averse to change, uncertainty and ambiguity. With this in mind, be both practical, kind and clear. Practicality recognizes that anxiety, rumors and frustration result in sub-optimal performance. Kindness helps to avoid the anxiety and frustration. Clear communications, orally and in writing, helps to avoid ambiguity.

Bottom line: respect the needs of stakeholders and their capacity to accept and work to achieve positive change. Treating stakeholders like children who can’t face the truth or as pawns in a chess game is unproductive.

Manage Expectations

Realistic expectations go a long way towards promoting success. Expectations are managed with effective/realistic estimates, schedules, plans, and risk assessments.

Beware of arbitrarily set fixed deadlines. Even if those who set them are open to flexibility, those who manage and do the work will often plunge ahead as if they can meet the deadline rather than candidly push back with a reality based argument.

Monitor and control

Monitor and control while being open to the inevitable changes that will occur along the way. Managing expectations and steering the program as barriers and successes are experienced requires regular communication of the state of the project. Goals and plans set a direction and a benchmark against which to assess progress. Open to change, leadership will make the adjustments needed to keep the program moving forward to achieve its goal.

Continuous Change is a Fact of Life

Realize that organizational change is a program as opposed to a project. Programs are often open ended, with a series of projects and operational activities. Organizational change does not end when the initial change project is closed.

The initial project sets the stage for the continuous change that is an inevitable part of life. An objective of the change project is to leave a controlled continuous change process in place as an integral part of ongoing operations. That process will spawn multiple projects.

Success

With these principles in mind, change projects become far more likely to succeed. When goals are clearly stated and understood, expectations are realistic and the needs of the people involved are addressed, the threatening idea of change and the knee jerk reaction to resist or run away is avoided.

With the acceptance of the fact that organizational change is a program, all the facets of the process can be considered and woven together into a comprehensive plan focused on the goal of optimal performance.