Rethink your change management

Like so many organisations, you have performed a barrage of Lean Six Sigma and other improvement projects and now after all that activity you are ready to reap the benefits:

* The objectives, as listed in the project charter, have been achieved through detailed analysis of the problem with value trees and cause and effect matrices.
* The physical office layout has been changed.
* You have asked and answered the 5-Whys.
* You have identified and addressed the 8-Wastes.
* You have implemented the selected improvements, which are being monitored through your detailed control plan.

Then why have the huge projected time-savings not been realised? And where are the additional zeros that should appear on the bottom line? Worst of all, why is staff morale down rather than up?

The answer lies in the following. There are three core elements which must be addressed in any change or improvement work:

1. Operations and processes
2. Management infrastructure
3. Paradigms and behaviours

Operations and processes are analysed, improved and changed during your improvement project, and this will be the same for 50% of your management infrastructure.

But what can you do to correct the paradigms, behaviours and the remaining 50% of management infrastructure?

Unless you had a focused change management programme, you will almost never effectively change behaviour, shift paradigms or realise how much support and development your leadership team actually requires.

Figure 1 shows the issues associated with improvement projects that are normally found at the different organisational levels.

How does a planned and structured change management approach address these issues?

It will enable the organisation to:

1. Develop and agree on a change management charter so that executives and management know how long effective change actually takes. Make it very clear that benefits can only be realised through the effective institutionalisation and internalisation of the required new behaviours.

2. Conduct a detailed impact and change readiness assessment in order to accurately identify any possible risks and obstacles that may exist. Management will then realise that in many cases it will get worse before it starts to get better and that the long-term benefits will out-weigh the initial perceived downturn.

3. Mobilise and align your executives and leadership to a common vision - and if a vision does not exist, develop one! Support your leadership team and where necessary take the required steps to develop them. Remember that unless your aligned leadership team walks-the-talk, your improvement interventions are almost guaranteed to fail.

4. Use the information from your impact and change readiness assessment and build on them to develop a comprehensive stakeholder matrix. For effective change and improvement, you must identify each and every entity that has influence over your initiative.

5. Create and manage a detailed communication plan involving all your stakeholders. Every single employee must at least be aware of the basics of what is happening in the organisation. It is only through continued two-way engagement and consistent, transparent and repeated messages that behaviour changes can be initiated, driven and internalised. Employees will not be worried about losing their jobs if that is not part of the proposed changes, and if it is, they will know why and how the process will be dealt with. They will know what the “fuss” is about, and they will know what the impact of the “fuss” will be on them.

A focused change management effort, integrated with your business improvement project, is the only way to achieve sustained internalised behaviour change. And behaviour change is at the root of realising the identified and proposed benefits of business improvement.