Change Management Professionals Meet up
Change Capability Workshop Notes Document
Thursday the 02nd of August 2012
Change Capability Workshop Notes Document 02/08/2012
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
Meeting Minutes ............................................................................................ 4
1.1
Meeting Details ..................................................................................... 4
1.2
Agenda .................................................................................................. 4
1.3
Minutes ................................................................................................. 4
Introduction (This and following sections written for blog post) .................... 6
No Trust = Minimal and ineffective change .................................................... 7
How to communicate building change capability to a customer..................... 8
We’re getting to the bottom of it! .................................................................. 9
5.1
Communicating to executive management their role as “Sponsors” ..... 9
5.2
Middle / Line Managers need to get their hands dirty! ....................... 10
5.3
Workshop with staff to explain the benefits to them .......................... 10
How are we doing? (Keep the conversation going) ...................................... 11
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Change Capability Workshop Notes Document 02/08/2012
List of Tables
Table 1 – Meeting Details ..................................................................................... 4
Table 2 – Agenda .................................................................................................. 4
Table 3 – Minutes ................................................................................................. 5
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Change Capability Workshop Notes Document 02/08/2012
1 Meeting Minutes
1.1 Meeting Details
Meeting Date
Meeting Time
18/07/2012
18:00 – 20:00 in 24 hour format
Meeting Venue
SHK
Level 11, 520 Collins St
Melbourne, Victoria 3000
Australia
Attachments
Table 1 – Meeting Details
1.2 Agenda
Item
Presenter
How do we transfer Δ (change capability) into a client
beyond borders of individual projects?
What defines Δ (change capability)?
Method for transfer?
Success stories
Barriers and resolutions
Rebecca Cattran
Rebecca Cattran
Rebecca Cattran
Round Table
Rebecca Cattran
Table 2 – Agenda
1.3 Minutes
Details
How do we transfer Δ (change capability) into a client beyond borders of individual projects?:
 By building change capability
o Natural + Viral
o Scripted?
o Δ network (Structured training / induction)
 Managing expectations
 Transferring Skill
 Transferring Knowledge
 Transferring Experience
What defines Δ (change capability)?:
 Who defines Δ?
o Line Mgrs
o HR
o Recruitment Managers
o Dependant on Scope / Type of Δ
 Attributes of Δ:
o Flexibility
o Adaptability
o Resilience
o Agility
 Values of Δ:
o Personal accountability
o Integrity
Method for transfer?:
 Responsiveness to Δ needs
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Change Capability Workshop Notes Document 02/08/2012
o




Maturity of customer?
 Understand the importance
 Buy or build
Best practice example
o % Passionate about end game? E.g. Δ champion
Structural
Tools
Methodology
o Does having a Δ mgr inhibit capability?
Success stories:
 Minimal “success” stories
 Success Factors:
o Diagnosis; Expectation; Scope; Pragmatism
o Post Implementation; Leadership; Trust / Desire for Success
o Public Sponsorship; Framework / Common Language; Clarity of Δ roles
Horror stories:
 ERP – 8hrs to go, cancel training, trust was gone, Δ down.
 Previous go-live only focused on system no ongoing support.
 Private conversations of approval; Public silence of fear and concern
Barriers:
 Lack of trust
 Poor communication (over-complicated terms, or forcing terms stakeholders reject)
 Poor post implementation investigation
 Lack of leadership sponsoring Δ
 Poor support
;and resolutions:
Resolutions in discussion of “Success Factors” in above agenda item.
Table 3 – Minutes
*Refer to Action Items List for updates on each individual item
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2 Introduction
( This and following sectio ns written for blog post )
Recently I attended the July 18 - Melbourne Change Management Professionals Meet up,
allured by the promise of Building Change Capability over a glass of red wine. As a Business
Development Manager, I went along with an open mind to see what I could learn from
others my senior in Change Management and I wasn’t disappointed!
Below are some of the notes from our Meet up and I can’t wait until the next one. Big thanks
to Rebecca Cattran for chairing the meeting and leading the discussions into something
really meaningful.
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3 No Trust = Minimal and ineffective change
Not to oversimplify the whole evening into one overriding theme, but the
importance of “trust” for effective and meaningful change management was
right up there. How do you build, manage and reward “trust” through successful
engagements and implementations of change?
Take the horror story shared, of “a large-scale ERP implementation that with 8
hours to go until commencement of training, cancelled the training courses and
disrupted delegates who were flying from across the country to attend.” The
client never regained trust in the solution being delivered or the solution
provider managing the change.
Lack of trust can lead to a horror story, or like with the story above, a horror
story can lead to a lack of trust. Either way, trust is vital to not only ensuring a
client gets the most out of change that we’re implementing for them, but also to
ensuring that they are willing to work with us to build change capability wit hin
their organisation for after the project at-hand is finished.
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4 How to communicate building change capability to
a customer
What isn’t communicated is pretty difficult to be understood by the customer. So
as change management professionals, let’s nut out some common language that
customers can understand when it comes to change management and change
capability – it was suggested. What followed was a really interesting open
discussion about the terms we all use and what works best, given our respective
experiences. What language do you find effective?
Adaptability, flexibility, resilience and agility were all nominated as attributes of
change capability. But who defines change capability? More importantly, how is
it defined within the organisations we deal with? Internally is it the line
managers, HR, recruitment manager? Well, that’s our job to find out!
I admit that it might seem a little ambiguous to say that the answer to these
questions depends on the scope / type of change, but that ’s the truth of it and
that’s where we put our change manager hat on and go to work for our client.
What you might find yourself, and a lot of the workshop attendee’s have found in
the past, is that our job is made harder by the fact that sometimes it ’s best not
to call change “change” and it can be difficult knowing when and who that rule
applies to.
Even when you are able to identify an individual within the customer
organisation that is passionate about the end game (e.g. Change Capability
Champion!), you’ve got to be mindful that often even they don’t want to be
associated with the change by title. It’s as if labelling someone a “Change
Capability Manager” or “Change Champion” gives the rest of the organisation
the right to lump that person who has “change” in their title with all the stuff
they’d rather not manage themselves.
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5 We’re getting to the bottom of it!
Later in the evening when we broke into groups: something I took away as a nice,
practical tool for communicating change lifecycle to stakeholders, staff and
particularly to management was shared by one o the participants. Here’s how I
understood it (below) and [while we’re on the topic of communicating] forgive
me if I’ve miss-communicated the diagram in any way!
Fig 1.1 “Individual stakeholder stages in change lifecycle”
5.1 Communicating to executive management their role as
“Sponsors”
The role we want executive management to play in building change capability
ongoing or even for one particular project is nine times out of ten to be
“sponsors of the change.” It sounds like an easy role and it can be if you can build
the confidence within the executive management team to carry out this role
properly.
In a nutshell what it means is that they will have an understanding of how to
gauge the individual stakeholder stages in change lifecycle (Fig 1.1) and if
anyone at [particularly in the “Aware” or “Understand” stages] questions or tries
to derail the project/change, the executive management team will sponsor and
support it just by saying “this is important and it needs to be done.”
Give them KPIs to understand what their team of line managers are doing and
explain that with their support, a really important behavioural “tick box” is likely
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to be checked by those responsible for embracing the change further down the
line.
5.2 Middle / Line Managers need to get their hands dirty!
Explain to middle management and get them on-board with interacting,
understanding, committing and internalising all aspects of the change ahead of
their staff. The important thing: make sure they are further along the change
lifecycle individually, than the staff they manage and you’ll make their life
easier.
5.3 Workshop with staff to explain the benefits to them
Staff may want to know how they’re affected directly, but try and relate benefits
to them, with engaging the staff member in the bigger picture and end-game
benefits of the change for the organisation.
Encourage staff to follow, adopt, internalise, teach and share. Initially they will
need to take the lead from their line manager (provided their Line Manager is
doing their job, as above). You want those with initiative who are early adopters,
to feel good about providing some tuition to their peers, where it makes sense
and doesn’t disrupt that person’s own job function for the organisation.
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6 How are we doing?
(Keep the conversation going)
I think in the two hour catch up we had recently; the change management
professionals group had a pretty good scratch at the surface of building change
capability.
But if you’ve still got an itch for digging into change capability or other areas of
change management, post here and share your thoughts, we’d love to hear
from you!
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