Change Management: Lessons Learned

HR - Managing the Chaos

Dealing with change is a way of life when you work in human resources. People come and go. HR tech is constantly evolving. Employment laws are refreshed or created anew. The recruiting flywheel spins tirelessly. That next employee relations bombshell is hiding around the corner. Adaptability is a way of life when you do this for a living, and we all have to have a little octopus in us. How you manage change in this field can make or break your career, but that isn't necessarily unique to HR, it applies to all of us. If you have worked in a start-up or high growth business and you hear someone reference the tornado, hurricane, or whirlwind you know exactly what they mean. Change comes at a blistering pace. Meetings are endless, the day job gets chipped away at on nights and weekends, and you can feel like you can barely come up for air. Ever get quadruple booked for a meeting because people just stopped bothering to check your availability? Which of these should I decide to open?

Change is hard. Managing change effectively when you have been sucked into a monsoon as described above is harder. One thing I have learned time and time again throughout my career is if you do not pace yourself and plan for a significant organizational change it can have disastrous consequences and wreak havoc on employee morale. I have always had a pre-disposition toward action. I once worked for a leader whose mantra was "when you are stuck just do something." That has always stayed with me, and I think at times I have followed that advice too closely to the letter. Good today is better than perfect tomorrow, you can always change direction, etc. It's a creed I have lived by, but as you move up the org chart and start leading masses people expect more than the shoot first ask questions later approach. They want to understand the why behind what's coming. They want to have some involvement in the process. After making some major missteps with the change initiatives I have led I have found myself doing a lot of studying on this topic.

One of the best change management models I have come across is The 8 Steps for Leading Change by Kotter. Those steps are below:

1. Create a Sense of Urgency - Inspire people to act – with passion and purpose – to achieve a bold, aspirational opportunity. Build momentum that excites people to pursue a compelling (and clear) vision of the future… together.

2. Build a Guiding Coalition - A volunteer network needs a coalition of committed people – born of its own ranks – to guide it, coordinate it, and communicate its activities.

3. Form a Strategic Vision - Clarify how the future will be different from the past and get buy-in for how you can make that future a reality through initiatives linked directly to the vision.

4. Enlist a Volunteer Army - Large-scale change can only occur when massive numbers of people rally around a common opportunity. At an individual level, they must want to actively contribute. Collectively, they must be unified in the pursuit of achieving the goal together.

5. Enable Action by Removing Barriers - Remove the obstacles that slow things down or create roadblocks to progress. Clear the way for people to innovate, work more nimbly across silos, and generate impact quickly.

6. Generate Short-Term Wins - Wins are the molecules of results. They must be recognized, collected, and communicated – early and often – to track progress and energize volunteers to persist.

7. Sustain Acceleration - Press harder after the first successes. Your increasing credibility can improve systems, structures and policies. Be relentless with initiating change after change until the vision is a reality.

8. Institute Change - Articulate the connections between new behaviors and organizational success, making sure they continue until they become strong enough to replace old habits. Evaluate systems and processes to ensure management practices reinforce the new behaviors, mindsets, and ways of working you invested in.

Wins are the molecules of results. I freaking love that! This is an exceptional list that is beautiful in theory, but incredibly difficult to execute correctly. If you have worked for a huge company, you have felt the weight of organizational inertia. There is typically a communications team peppering your inbox with constant updates, but actual change feels like a slow-moving oil tanker turning in the night. There is usually a correlation between employer size and how long that company has been around. When you work for a huge employer existing systems are deeply ingrained into the fabric of your organization and there are a lot of people with tenure dug into their way of doing things. Pride for what has got your company this far can sometimes be your opponent when you are seeking to create.

Act. Communicate. Rinse and Repeat.

Whether you work in the tornado or the oil tanker, as I reflect on Kotter's list, I think you can really consolidate his system into 2 categories: action and communication. You have to have both of those things working together synchronously to create any lasting change. I don't think it's a coincidence the odd numbers on this list are related to movement i.e., 1. Creating urgency, 3. forming strategic vision, 5. removing barriers, and 7. pressing harder. The even numbers relate to communication - 2. building coalitions to communicate activities, 4. enlisting volunteer armies to get the word out, 6. communicating wins, and 8. articulating the connections to reinforce the behaviors. You do, then spread the word. If you are not in a position where you have the luxury of completing each step in Kotter's model thoroughly and you remember to communicate your actions you will generally remain above water with how you are managing change.

Organizations and people run into trouble when one of those things is happening without the other. If you are making a lot of decisions in a vacuum your employees are going to let you know about it. If you flood your communication channels with information and nothing happens, or the actions don't match the messaging your employees are going to let you know about it. Pull cross functional teams into your organizational decision making, follow through, and consistently communicate throughout the change process and you can get just about anything done while keeping morale high. Leading change effectively can greatly impact the success of your organization and credibility you have with your employees. If you have a large people project coming up or could use a hand getting a significant change off the ground reach out directly through my website or subscribe to my newsletter.