THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Contents

  PART 1: What is Organisational Change Management?

  PART 2: How Do You Overcome or Manage Resistance to Change?

  PART 3: Why is Change Management Important?

  PART 4: Change Management vs Project Management: What's the Difference?

  PART 5: The Best Change Management Models or Frameworks

  PART 6: How to Measure Change Management Success (or ROI)

  PART 7: The Change Management Process Steps for Agile and Waterfall Projects

  PART 8: What is the Role or Responsibility of a Change Manager?

Bonus

Check out my YouTube channel below for loads of great content on nailing Change Management right from the word go.

Why do people resist change? 

Quite simply, because most people don't like change. Our brains are hard-wired to resist it because when things stay the same, we know our place, can plan for the future, and feel good about ourselves, our positions and our power. 

Change, especially organisational change, threatens this and triggers our survival instinct - our fight/flight/freeze response. 

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming we say: "When emotions increase, intelligence decreases." And it's not really intelligence, but instead our ability to choose our response, to comprehend, process and make new thoughts and decisions. 

So when change comes a' knocking, which it inevitably will, the survival instinct means they can literally close their ears to all logical, rational reasons why we need to do this change. This is why it's so hard to get change adoption in the short- and long-term.

What to do about change resistance

In Change Management, we often talk about getting our stakeholders to "buy in" to the change. Being an accredited Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner, I know the power of language when it comes to creating meaning... and destroying it!

Because the problem with talking about "buy in" is that to buy something, it implies it must be "sold". And a lot of us have a real aversion to being "sold to".

It conjures up images of sleazy car salesmen glossing over broken motors and fudged odometer readings.

It brings back memories of clothing store owners telling you: "You look fabulous!" when the mirror is reflecting back an oversized tangerine marshmallow (#truestory - puffy orange sleeves are NOT flattering on L'il Lata).

It reminds you of tech company reps pushing their shiny object platforms on you despite half the features and functionality not being fit-for-purpose for your needs (and perhaps, in the background, not even ready...).

And of cheesy coaches and experts sliding into your LinkedIn DMs with silky promises (haha, that was probably me BACK BEFORE I KNEW BETTER! Apologies!).

Hell - I'm a business owner and I MYSELF still feel awkward selling my incredible Change Leadership program, even though I watch it helping amazing women change their leadership and lives every day. These days, I tend to "invite" people to the program instead (seriously - my sales page is actually called the "invitation page"). I let them know it's there and if they want to join, they do.

Because I hate being sold to. 

As I'm sure you do, too. 

And if WE both do.

Then your stakeholders probably do as well...

So why on earth would we want to "sell" our change to leaders and employees by trying to get them to "buy in"?

Leading your change from a place  of "buy in" energetically breaks down trust, rather than building it. It puts your people on high alert and wary of false promises.

The beauty of going for "engagement" over "buy in" with your change is that engagement starts from a different place. It starts from within. It starts from a choice by your leaders and teams to decide for themselves that this change is going to be meaningful for them, and what that meaning will be. It goes from being "sold to" to being "engaged with".

Change engagement is like an actual engagement - a commitment a stakeholder makes to the change, not just now, but well into the future. It symbolises the hope and promise of good times to come and a willingness to give it a go.

And why would they make such a commitment?

Because their head is engaged?

No - because their HEART is.

Leaders and teams engage with a change when the meaning is so compelling for them that to resist the change would break their little heart.

So how do you do it?

In Coaching, we say: “All change is a change in meaning.” We want to actually change the “meaning” in order to change the emotion that's attached to the change. 

As we change the meaning and change the emotion attached to the change, they are then going to open up, be more open to hearing what it is that you have to say, and maybe start to consider: 

• “Maybe this isn't going to be so bad?” 

• “Maybe there is something in it for me?” 

• “Maybe I do have a future here?” 

• “Maybe this could be a good thing?” 

I like to call this: “the magic of the maybe”. Because all you need is that “maybe”. That's the only thing that you're trying to do and then you let people get the rest of the way on their own, you give them the support around the environment but ultimately you get people to bridge that on their own. All you want to do is bring that “maybe”. The magic of the maybe.

I use and teach powerful engagement tools such as Benefits Mapping and Vision Setting that draw on Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Coaching techniques to switch on hearts and mind, engage from the inside out, and get a real emotional connection to change. 

It's not rocket science, it's neuroscience!

In a nutshell, Project Management is focused on delivery of the "thing" (be it a new process, system, product, service, team structure etc) by managing scope, budget, time and quality to realise the business case.

Change Management is focused on helping people feel informed, inspired, confident, and ready to understand, adopt, use and embed that "thing" to realise the business benefits. 

But there's something that connects both Project Managers and Change Managers and I think all the Project vs Change discussions neglect this point: stakeholder engagement. 

 Stakeholder engagement is the bridge

It's essential that Project Managers engage not only business stakeholders who need to be involved in designing and signing off their solution, but also their OWN project team to deliver it. Without it, they'll often struggle to get people to attend workshops and sessions, to make decisions in a clear, timely and efficient manner, and manage resources and their own energy effectively.

PMs do sometimes forget about the teams that are actually going to use the solution... but that's sort of where Change Managers shine and step up to the plate - we got your back :)

But regardless, CMs are also super focused on business stakeholders and getting them onboard to make the solution land better and last into the future. 

So I've definitely worked on projects where the line has been blurred: who's going to do stakeholder engagement? The PM or the CM?

The most effective approach in my experience has been to work together and partner, to show a united front and to tag team for important sessions and briefings, workshops and trainings. To respect and honour what the other does, to try to understand and support each other's goals and outcomes, and to learn from and build from each other, too.

The reason for engagement is different - PMs want participation and CMs want adoption. But nevertheless, there's more in common than we tend to think. 

How Change Managers and Project Managers can work together 

It reminds me of an interdependent relationship.

• An independent relationship is when two people live pretty separate lives.
• A co-dependent relationship is when two people live over-connected lives.
• And an interdependent relationship is where there's some things the two do together, and some they do separately.

Sort of like how a PM and CM can work together :D

PM and CM isn't a battle - it's a dance and the music is stakeholder engagement!

Change Success vs Project Success

Most Change Management occurs in the project space, so it's easy to assume that Change success and Project success are the same thing. 

**SPOILER ALERT**

They're not. 

In a nutshell, Project Management is focused on delivery of the "thing" (be it a new process, system, product, service, team structure etc) by managing scope, budget, time and quality to realise the business case.

So Project Managers tend to measure project success as: a) delivery, and b) meeting the business case. 

The business case is usually something along the lines of:

• make money
• save money
• save time

And occasionally: because we have to (otherwise known as "compliance", but really falls into the above buckets because companies can get fined, have to provide payouts, or lose brand trust or maybe even their license to operate if they don't do it).

A business case is designed to get a budget signed off and prove there will be a return on investment so it makes sense these are what most "business case benefits" ultimately refer to.

So what about Change success?

Change Management is focused on helping people feel informed, inspired, confident, and ready to understand, adopt, use and embed that "thing" to realise the business benefits.

Obviously, we also care about reaching the business case benefits. Change Management is an approach where we balance people and results. It's not one or the other.

Where the difference occurs is the more holistic and expanded view of what we include in "results".

We measure Change success with adoption - are people actually using it?

We measure Change success with embedding - are people going to keep using it and is the business going to keep this change updated and improving in the future (after all, if there's one thing we know, it's that things change!)?

We measure Change success with overall transformation - the way we positively impact the experiences and lives of employees, customers, clients, shareholders, and community. 

I always think about that old adage: "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" 

We could ask the same about a project: If a project delivers its solution and there's no one around to learn it, love it, use it, and extract value from it, was there a point in doing the project at all?

Delivery for the sake of delivery is not success. 

Everything we do in this world is for people.

And the vision we create of a bright and positive future because of our efforts. 

That's how we measure success in Change.

A massively major part of Change Management is not the communications, not the training, not even the business readiness, support, embed, handover or stakeholder management. 

It’s measuring success. And so often, this crucial, critical part of Change is ignored and forgotten for the shiny object of change going live.

Change = People x Results

I love to define things really simply and I define Change Management as “moving people from one way of doing something to a new way of doing something through communications, training and business, in order to realise the business benefits of the change.” It’s not just for the sake of moving them and it's not just for the sake of people, it’s always to realise the business benefits. Change is not one-sided, it's not purely focused on people, there's an equal balance with results.

It's not one or the other, because what's the point of doing all of this change if you're not actually realising the business benefits off the back of it? 

Benefits realisation as a discipline

Benefits Realisation is actually a skill set in and of itself, there are roles out there occasionally called things like “Benefits Realisation Managers”. You might actually have somebody working in your change, project or team whose sole focus is “benefits realisation”. But what does it mean? Put simply, it means achieving the results in the short- and the long-term that you said that you would. So both the: 

- short-term results – i.e. at launch or directly after launch; and,

- long-term results - i.e. what was in the business case originally as to why the business wanted to do this change? 

It's not just the short-term results of the change and the results of launch where Change Management really can support a project, it's also then realising those benefits over time usually to add something that usually gets missed. 

Measuring beyond launch

Projects have a very strong reputation of: 

- launching and leaving

- setting and forgetting

- delivering and disappearing. 

So many projects focus on just getting it out the door, delivering the thing, and then walking away. I've worked on projects where I have literally left the project two weeks after we launched. I've worked on projects where I know that the project continued on without me, and people were moving off the project *before* it even launched!!!

Feeling good isn’t enough

Benefits realisation is such a big factor of Change Management because in Change we're always trying to realise the business benefits. We're not just trying to make people feel good, we're trying to actually get that equal business outcome off the back of it, the return on investment, the long term growth and/or saving, the improvement to customer and team experience, the expansion of culture. But the project often doesn’t hang around long enough to do that. From a Change perspective, we want to make sure it’s set up for success. People feeling good is going to help you get that business outcome, but essentially and maybe even more importantly, we want to make sure we’re achieving the results in the short- and long-term that we said we would.

So what about Change success?

Change Management is focused on helping people feel informed, inspired, confident, and ready to understand, adopt, use and embed that "thing" to realise the business benefits.

Obviously, we also care about reaching the business case benefits. Change Management is an approach where we balance people and results. It's not one or the other.

Where the difference occurs is the more holistic and expanded view of what we include in "results".

We measure Change success with adoption - are people actually using it?

We measure Change success with embedding - are people going to keep using it and is the business going to keep this change updated and improving in the future (after all, if there's one thing we know, it's that things change!)?

We measure Change success with overall transformation - the way we positively impact the experiences and lives of employees, customers, clients, shareholders, and community. 

I always think about that old adage: "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" 

We could ask the same about a project: If a project delivers its solution and there's no one around to learn it, love it, use it, and extract value from it, was there a point in doing the project at all?

Delivery for the sake of delivery is not success. 

Everything we do in this world is for people.

And the vision we create of a bright and positive future because of our efforts. 

That's how we measure success in Change.

3 categories of Change Success Metrics

What are the types of results that we might look at in change when we're trying to measure success, we've got three categories that we can really look at. 

• The first is change delivery. 
• The second is change readiness 
• And the third is change success.

So we'll step through each one of these. 

Change delivery

So the first category - change delivery. This is how you're delivering the change. Or what did you say that you were going to do to help deliver the change? And what were the key steps along the way? What were the key deliverables from a change perspective that you had committed to? One way of being able to measure this is to actually take your change roadmap and to look: “How did you track to the change roadmap?” It would often have your key deliverables, maybe some of your key milestones, some of your key communications, training, readiness.

Change readiness
The second one is the change readiness. With change readiness, we are thinking really “business readiness”. Like I talk about change readiness and business readiness, hand in hand. I use those terms interchangeably, because change readiness is for the business. I don't know what else there would be except technical readiness, which the technical team or the IT team would take care of. 

Now, readiness is anything. Often, we talk about business readiness ahead of a go live or a launch. So when something is actually being launched, or when a system is going to go live or a new operating model is going to take effect, whatever is the change that you're working on. That's how we often think about doing a readiness check. But the truth is you can do a readiness check before ANY key change activity.

Change success

Then finally we have the change success. This is actually the success of the change itself. Remember the business benefits? These could be the things articulated in the business case (often financial or process-related), as well as the change benefits you mapped and the ones that came out of the vision setting that you did and particularly the goal's you had for improving people's experience.

And so when we are thinking about change success and trying to measure the success of change, we have these different buckets and we have different ways that we can actually measure them.  

A Change Manager will usually do the following things:

1. Set up the change for success: Map business benefits, do vision setting, create change roadmaps, instill change best practices

2. Get stakeholders on board: understand the different types of stakeholders, complete impact assessments, do stakeholder mapping, understand and manage different personality types

3. Craft incredible communications: Draft, design and craft winning communications formats and engagement from communications planning to delivery

4. Build training and capability: Complete training needs analysis, create training plans, build training content, deliver training and capability

5. Measure success and embed: Change measures, business readiness, support, handover and embed

6. Inspire through change: End-to-end change planning, playbooks, communities, resources

What would your first 4 weeks in a Change role look like?

A few of my Leading Successful Change students once asked me: if you were starting out in a Change Management role and coming into a new company and environment, what would your first four weeks look like? And it was a great question, so I thought I’d share my thoughts here. 

Week 1: Make the most of onboarding and induction

The first thing to consider is that it really depends on the maturity of the company. For most corporates and certain industries such as Financial Services and Government, they might have you needing to do some formal onboarding and induction. Particularly if it’s a highly regulated industry such as Aviation, or department such as Supply Chain, there may be several compliance modules and e-Learnings you might need to sit and do, even if you’re a contractor. Occasionally if you’re an independent consultant you may need to do some minimum mandatory modules too depending on how regulated the industry is and what level of system access and security you may receive. But if you’re an employee or a contractor, it’s highly likely you’ll have a raft of induction modules and potentially even onboarding activities set up for you for the organisation (for example, in one contract I moved to an organisation that used Google Suite so IT-led trainings to learn to use this software efficiently were mandatory) or by the team (it might be expected that you’ll do meet and greets with representatives from key functions, even if they are not impacted or involved in the change). Make sure you use this time and these opportunities. Doing the eLearning and onboardings, meet-and-greets and briefings are a great way to familiarise yourself with the culture, language, operating model and reporting lines, policies and regulations that can help you draft better communications, create more on point training, align with corporate brand guidelines, speak the language of stakeholders more easily, understand where change impacts might hit or change support might be found, and obviously help you do your work with internal tools and avoid breaching any policy or legal risks. As well as onboarding and induction, I would always spend the first week just meeting as many people as possible. Sit in whatever project meetings there are and just absorb things in (it's the best time because you're not expected to deliver anything yet but just enjoy it) and just go for coffee with people. And get all your tech stuff set up. That'll likely be your first week, regardless of how you've been hired.

Week 2: Understand the project and the change

The second week is when I'd probably start speaking more intentionally with the project team and scheduling meetings with members to understand what the project is and what it’s about. I may have received a briefing from my leader / client, or the Program / Project Manager, or a fellow / previous Change professional, so Week 2 is where I’d start to go broader and start speaking with other people involved in the project. This would help me gauge where the project is at, what priorities I’d have, and allow me to start setting up the Change Management tools and templates I plan to use (because the way I lead and teach change is practical and fit-for-purpose, I select and tailor tools and templates by change rather than having standard mandatory set). I like to add value really quickly and understand the change as fast as possible. This could be a Change on a Page. But by this stage you'll already have a gauge, especially when you've done a few changes, as to what the Change Roadmap and Change Plan will look like, so I can pull that together within the second week usually. Which is good - whatever quick wins you can offer to just give a high-level overview. Change Roadmap is a nice one too because you can plan out what you think you'll need to do along the journey, given you’ll have when the project delivery dates are. You can be like, “Here's when I can do Change Impact Assessment. Here's when I can do Training Needs Analysis. Here's when I can do x, y, z etc.” That gives them a good view and also sets you up as an expert that, “Already in Week 2 they've already given me a draft Change Roadmap.” Giving value early, even just high value, reinforces they made a good decision not just to hire you specifically, but to have Change Management support on their project. 

Week 3: Start stakeholder engagement

If it’s appropriate, Week 3 is when I'd start talking more widely with business stakeholders. It might not be an impact assessment yet, it might just be meet-and-greet coffees with stakeholders and starting to shape up your Change Management tools and templates.

Week 4: Run your first workshop

It might take you until Week 4 to get a Change Roadmap up and running and that's okay as well. Sometimes you'll walk into a project and it's just not as far along as you thought it was, because it’s perhaps not as well-run as you expected it to be. It's just a lot of exploratory stuff. So if by Week 4 you could be doing either a Change Risk Workshop or a Change Plan Workshop, you're doing pretty well. Obviously as an independent consultant, I work really fast. But even when I was a contractor, on say a 6-month contract, by Week 4 I’m usually running a Change Workshop or at least booked it in. Because you already met the stakeholders, you can get everybody together and engaged. If it's appropriate, you can do a Future State Workshop with Change Vision Setting and Benefits Mapping using the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Coaching exercises I share in my Leading Successful Change program. If a project's already in flight that might not be appropriate. But if you haven't started the project at all yet, that could be something that you do - schedule it in Week 2 or Week 3 and run it in Week 4. 

Fit-for-purpose = flexibility

So you can see that your first 4 weeks is really fit-for-purpose and what feels right to you, how far along the project is, how mature they are in delivery. But if you can start to at least frame up what you plan to do by the end of Week 4, that's pretty good. And if you can have a Change Planning workshop either scheduled or completed, or even just started (it might be in two parts) and the first half is done by Week 4, that’s pretty good because Change Management often gets hired late. You are usually behind the eight ball by the time you've already walked in the door. There have been projects that I’ve worked on where they were planning their go live to be within a month of me starting my contract. I could see from the moment I started that the technology wouldn’t be ready, even though I could rally to get the change delivery done in time. So in Week 2,  I’ve run a Change Planning workshop asking them to share their technology lead times and gently suggesting, “Heads up - I don't think you’re going to be ready.” And then they were like, “How dare you! … But yes, you're right.” And then they’ve pushed their planned go live out by another month so I didn’t waste time trying to scramble to create a Change Plan that was doomed from the beginning. There's been other projects where I’d been hired just two months before a go live that would affect 100,000 people's pay, on a project without a Project Manager. So I ran a risk workshop very quickly to get remediating activities and built the Change Plan off the remediating activities, explaining we didn’t have time to do the full end-to-end change process. That's the beauty of Leading Successful Change. You'll learn all the tools that are available and then you'll build the confidence as to which tool to use when with how much time you've got available and what the project's doing and where it's at.

If you’re unsure how to lead engaging and practical change delivery but know deep down it is the path to a successful and impact-filled career (Change Management is a highly-paid, female-dominated career after all!), well now is the time to do something about it. Now is the time to break through that. 

I’ve found over the years that leading change successfully has nothing to do with methodologies, theories and models. Or even getting a certificate or accreditation. In fact, you can have a Change Management certification and still struggle to get job interviews or offers, be unable to keep Change roles you do land, and get passed over for the promotions and pay rises you deserve. If you're a business leader, you might never really get stakeholders onboard properly or truly prepare leaders and teams for what's coming down line. Why? Because you aren't adding real business value and doing the things that actually move the dial during organisational change.

It all comes back to practical change delivery. You need the tools and the templates, the techniques and the approaches, and the confidence to know what to use when to add value and make a difference. 

Until you learn and do this, you'll struggle to convince your leaders and peers of the need for Change Management, to get and keep Change roles, and to build trust and collaboration through the change process. 

The reason I became a successful Change Leader so quickly is because I focused on practical, fit-for-purpose change delivery, bringing in advanced Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Coaching techniques that transform the experience of change for yourself and your teams into something magical. 

It’s normal to be confused or lack the confidence to lead change. Especially if you want to have a financially abundant, flexible and fulfilling career and life.

Know this! You're allowed to lead change in your authentic and passionate way and bring others on the journey with you.

If you'd like to step into your leadership and your light by making the career change to Change Management or bringing change skills and tools into your leadership today, join us in Leading Successful Change and transform the experience of change for yourself and the people you want to help.