We are living in an uncertain world, where the one thing that organisations can be sure of is that they will need to respond to change, and those organisations that are more equipped to respond to change have a competitive advantage.
Change programmes can come under many guises, from tactical short term change to strategic change which alludes to a permanent shift within an organisation typically as part of a wider programme such as Transformation, Digitisation or the implementation of an ERP system.
The focus of this article is strategic change which is a in reality is a component of a process, with steps that broadly conform to Kurt Lewin’s three step model: unfreezing, changing and refreezing. What is accepted is that such programmes are a significant challenge, often over run and frequently do not embed the sort of sustainable change that they set out to do.
We should seek to implement a change programme that initiates change that reaches a tipping point at which it becomes self generating, something that we might call sustainable change?
How do we implement a change programme for sustainable change?
We must resist the temptation to inflict change on an organisation, and build a change programme from the core. This is more likely to fit the inherent culture, more likely to achieve continuous change and therefore a greater likelihood of achieving longer term sustainable change.
What should we be looking for from the change team?
Collectively we should build a team that has the competence and maturity to do the following:
- Maintain authority without wielding power by proxy
- Work in the white space
- Bridge the gap between technology and the business
Maintaining authority without wielding power by proxy requires a combination of sapiential powers and independence that are accumulated with experience and some attribution to the school of “hard knocks”. The benefits of finding solution without wielding power, is well understood at C-Level, but less well understood more widely within organisations.
Work in the white space in organisations where roles structures are less formal requires a specific set of skills. Whilst we are naturally drawn to work within the structure of an organisational chart it is noteworthy that at the edges is where some of the biggest gains are to be found.
Bridging the divide between technology and business creates an interesting interplay between the realisation of solutions and the art of the possible. The technology sector has been struggling with this for the past 25 years to my knowledge, with the power shifting back and forth. The universal truth that a good worker “looks after their tools” holds, perhaps with the addition and “understands how to use them”. What that means for professionals today and tomorrow is they are being increasingly challenged to have in depth knowledge of the application of technology. That does not mean that everyone has to be able to “cut code”.
Where do we find the people?
We need a hybrid team built from a combination of internal people seconded to the change programme and external resources. We need to identify people within the organisation who are well respected in the organisation, and are representative of all levels but not necessarily people who have fully bought into the change programme. People that are slow to embrace change – the sceptics are often the latent leaders within an organisation.
External resources as contractors or vendors should be retained to back-fill the internal resources, and provide expertise.
Conclusion
Organisations can achieve sustainable change by building from the core and putting together a change team to deliver the program comprising internal resources combined with external third parties.