This is the first in a series of Industry Insights that looks at John Kotter's eight stages of change management, and explores his timeless blueprint for effective change leadership. These change management principles can gel with an enterprise architecture (EA) roadmap to achieve business transformation.
Establishing urgency (stage one) and creating a guiding coalition (stage two) set the foundation for this transformation - moving the company from its current state to a desired future state.
The company's EA practice is viewed as the engine room that powers the move towards transformation, and not the end-goal in itself. However, Kotter's eight stages have a huge role to play in the development of an EA practice.
Stage one - establishing urgency
The journey begins with breaking new ground, jolting people out of their comfort zones, and forcing them to deal with often uncomfortable realities. Change, in general, is something people tend to resist - and one of the first tasks for change agents is to overcome the powerful forces of tradition.
This stage requires executives to arrive at a brutally honest assessment of the company as it currently stands. It means exposing issues that may hinder growth and adaption in the future. It involves assessing the market realities, confronting macro, global forces - and identifying all the possible crises, barriers, sources of resistance, as well as potential opportunities.
Most importantly, it requires leaders and change agents to start removing the sources of complacency within the company. In other words, they must refute the reasons that some use to believe change isn't necessary, or that the cost of change will be too great.
Establishing (or reinvigorating) the company's EA practice is vital in making a successful start on the change journey.
EA rises to the fore as the primary toolset that will enable lasting positive change. It guides the company from a state of fragmented applications, organisational structures and processes - and builds an integrated and optimised environment.
In short, EA fuses the business model imperatives and the IT portfolio.
Establishing a sense of urgency among key stakeholders (a process that is triggered by the company CEO) makes the formation of change leadership structures possible. From an architectural perspective, these are bodies like business architecture governance committees, architecture review boards, and IT steering committees.
Without adequate governance, enterprise architecture will remain a theoretical concept that will fail to deliver any transformational business benefits. This, in fact, moves the process neatly on to stage two...
Stage two - creating the guiding coalition
Kotter shows that a strong, core team (the "guiding coalition") lies at the heart of any good change strategy. From there, the message of change radiates outwards to stakeholders throughout the broader company and its extended ecosystem.
One of the first tasks for change agents is to overcome the powerful forces of tradition.
Importantly, this coalition must possess people with one or more of the following characteristics:
* Position of power... from executives, to line managers, to others with an influential stature in the enterprise, it is essential to enlist the support of decision-makers at an early stage.
* Expertise... team members with diverse skill sets and points of view, and experience in many of the key areas of the enterprise.
* Credibility... those involved in the coalition need to have strong reputations and the ability to sway the mindsets of others that are hesitant to buy in to the change strategy.
* Leadership... it is essential for the team to include proven leaders who are capable of the kind of visionary, strategic thinking that the coalition will demand.
The team is pulled together by mutual trust, a shared vision for the future, and a passion to achieve these common goals. While at this stage the end-state of business transformation may not be in view, there is a shared recognition that the company needs to change the way it operates.
From an EA perspective, this guiding coalition sets the tone where EA starts to be viewed as a business entity of sorts. In a fully functioning EA practice, the company manages its 'stock in trade' (the corporate intellectual capital), and assembles the various components into EA products and services that address specific stakeholder requirements.
By starting to run the EA practice as if it was like a business in itself, even at these early stages, the coalition sets out on the right path - one that will eventually see the company formalising and packaging intellectual capital, and turning it into a corporate asset.
The business model will work if the various stakeholders within the company receive more value than their perceived cost of contribution. For example, HR may benefit from having a clear map of everyone's role profile; internal audit may value the accurate view of weaknesses in the company's internal processes. Something of a virtuous feedback loop develops.
In my next Industry Insight, I will explore the next step: establishing the vision and strategy.
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