The saying “Change is the only constant in life…” is a well-known and somewhat overly used quote that has been bandied about global change management fraternities for some time now. And while the Greek philosopher Heraclitus has certainly been proven right over the centuries, it is important that we understand that there are periods in history where change is far more amplified than others.

We currently find ourselves in one of these periods… largely due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. A recent paper published earlier this year by Oliver Wyman (2021), discussed how the pandemic had exposed our world and key industries as being susceptible to the “… ripple effects of the pandemic”. Their paper, which looked at managing change risk, referenced for example, how the financial services industry has had to manage factors such as “… downward pressures on net income due to record-low interest rates and increasing delinquency rates, the need to trim costs quickly along with how new remote working routines were further accelerating digitization and automation. And that as a result, business and operating models were desperately trying to adapt to this “new normal.”

One of the key findings of the study, spoke to how organisations that were able to effectively deliver change… thriving, and being more likely to emerge stronger from these changes (Oliver Wyman 2021).

This study resonated with me as I had watched our clients grapple with unprecedented levels of emergent change, while simultaneously trying to deliver on existing strategic and regulatory initiatives across their businesses. Many of them faced with an almost unfair conundrum… where to focus? Because their strategic initiatives were still key to the success of their organisations, and the ongoing cycle of regulatory change, that forms part and parcel of doing business in mostly regulated environments, could not simply be ignored or deprioritised.

On top of this, local and global businesses also had to pivot and address a host of socio-economic and politically driven emergent change. Brexit. The US elections and the ongoing US / China trade wars have naturally affected businesses around the globe. And in South Africa, the recent political and socially driven riots on top of ongoing lockdowns have resulted in an almost incessant barrage of emergent change, which let’s face it, does not seem to have an end in sight….

So we cannot escape the fact that the rate and scale of change is increasing incrementally, and organisations are being forced to take a long hard look at whether their current change capabilities are sufficient to navigate this maelstrom of change coming their way. As a result, we are starting to see an increased interest and focus on change management, supported by a significant shift in the number of companies prioritising change management as a key business capability, crucial to the very survival of business as they know it.

Now, I know that some of you may be saying well what’s new? As many of us make our living out of providing specialised change management services either as internal or external practitioners. However one of the key differences that we are noticing, is that there is a significant shift in focus from change management practitioners to business leaders now becoming the new enablers of change. And again, we all know that the research has been highlighting the critical role that leaders play in the successful implementation and adoption of change for years! But there has still been a disconnect between what the research says and how organisations have responded to this.

We have seen this shift through the number of organisations who have been reaching out to us for leader-led change management learning and development solutions. A common theme across all these clients has been the expectation that leaders start taking on a more active and involved role in driving change. And we are increasingly being asked to intervene and support these businesses in helping their leaders become future-fit. This is fantastic news for us – we all know how much more likely we will be at delivering successful change with a change-literate leadership community behind us. A community that not only appreciates the value of change management, but who also really grasp the role that they need to fulfil in ensuring that change is successfully embedded.

That said, there is still a lot of work to be done. Because when engaging businesses in preparation for our Change Leadership programmes, some of the key challenges and feedback we are receiving are firstly, that leaders are often unwilling to acknowledge that there is even a deficit in the way that they manage and drive change.  This may be due to a number of factors. In certain instances, leadership capacity issues and the sheer magnitude and impact of the many changes underway may make the task of driving change one that appears to be outside of their span of control. Another factor is the prevailing expectation that many leaders have, that the ownership and delivery of change management should reside with either HR, project teams or change practitioners and not them. So our work needs to start with educating leaders not only around the important role that they play as change enablers, but also the required behaviours and skills that they need to develop to become future-fit change leaders.

So what does a change fit leader look like?

We have identified 4 key domains that we believe leaders should be prioritising and focusing on if change management is to become an embedded capability across all organisations. These are integrating change management as a core leadership competence; adopting a collaborative approach to change; understanding how data and metrics enable change and leveraging insights driven technology for decision making and change prioritisation.

1. Integrating change management as a core leadership competence:

Change management needs to be viewed as a core leadership competence and as such, included in standard leadership skills development initiatives across the different levels of business. Leadership role profiles should in turn include standard change management skills, behaviours and responsibilities, and these should be linked to KPIs and performance scorecards. “What gets measured, gets managed…”, a quote often attributed to Peter Drucker, speaks to the importance of metrics in helping drive organisational performance. And if we really want leaders to start taking an active role in driving and embedding change management as a long-term, sustainable capability, then we need to include change related behaviours and responsibilities into leadership scorecards.

2. Adopting a collaborative approach to change:

A study published by Gartner in 2019, found that a number of top organisations had made a marked shift away from the traditional top-down, leader-led change management strategies by relying on their workforce, and not just executives, to lead change. To directly quote the authors, “When top-down changes fail to work, leaders most often blame the workforce. Yet 64% of employees surveyed already possessed the skills required to change successfully, and 74% said they were willing to support the change. Despite this, only one-quarter of employees were actually able to change the way they work when managed from the top down”. Therefore key to driving successful change is a greater inclusion of employees in the change management process and this requires a lot more than isolated engagement sessions and involvement in user-acceptance testing. The study identified three key shifts required to bring about positive change:

• Leaders need to engage and involve employees in co-creating the change strategy due to their valuable input and understanding of customers’ needs and how work gets delivered on the ground. This does not mean that all employees need to be involved, rather the most relevant individuals to the change. While leaders may be concerned that this approach will slow the process down, the reality is that the increase in time spent on improved decision making translates into increased time savings later on (Gartner 2019, pg. 4).
• Leaders need to shift implementation planning to employees as many leaders admitted to not knowing what employees needed to do differently during change because they (the leaders) were too disconnected from the work. The study found that ‘…successful organizations that empowered employees to experiment with solutions and new ideas (while also setting guardrails to prevent actions from derailing the change) were able to boost the probability of change success by 12%, as employees were able to quickly execute change, spot the barriers slowing implementation, and share best practices throughout the company’ (Gartner 2019, pg. 5).
• Leaders need to refocus the way that they communicate with employees and focus more on real collaboration and engagement and less telling. The study found that “… top-down communication actually reduces employees’ understanding of change down the line and increased employee anger, anxiety and resistance toward the change.” Workshops that instead encouraged authentic conversations and even the expression of anxiety as a group helped to personalise the change and gave them a sense of ownership for it. By acknowledging employee resistance first, individuals were then able to move forward and “…begin exploring rational responses to change” (Gartner 2019, pg. 7).

3. The importance of leaders understanding data and metrics that enable change:

Many of the leaders we engage as part of our Change Management Leadership programmes admit to not knowing, understanding or being close enough to the business, operational, project and change metrics when implementing change. Decision making, resistance management, implementation effectiveness, business benefits and true levels of employee adoption are just some of the measurement domains that leaders need to understand and actively track in order to successfully navigate and manage change. Defining and understanding these metrics does not have to be a difficult or complicated process. And should point back to why the change is being implemented in the first place. What is it that we are hoping to achieve or shift as a result of the project or change? What does success look like? By conducting your due diligence upfront and early on in the change, these metrics can defined and communicated accordingly. And if you cannot define what success looks like or what the actual business benefits are, then should the change be initiated in the first place.

In addition to this, these metrics should be defined early on in the change and not at the end of the project if this data is to yield the desired intention of actively tracking and managing the implementation, adoption and benefits of the change.

4. Insights driven technology for decision making and prioritisation:

One of the major challenges facing the majority of the clients we meet with and engage is the issue of not being able to have sight of all change initiatives and associated impacts across their organisations at any given time. Innovative technology such as our ChangeFolio App, can now assist large and complex organisations with such a view.  Bold and decisive decisions can then be taken regarding prioritisation of change initiatives especially if the volume of change has become simply impossible to successfully effect.

The reality is that there are limits to how much change people can absorb let alone adopt and there needs to be a greater recognition by leaders regarding this. Just because an organisation has gone live with 20 change interventions does not mean that they will be or have been successfully adopted, so there is a real risk of these initiatives failing. These volumes of change also have a direct impact on employee change fatigue and no… throwing another wellness programme at the problem won’t help.  So by having an enterprise-wide view of current changes underway per stakeholder group, leaders can start assessing and prioritising change based on those deemed mission critical versus those that may need to be pushed out.

In part 2, we will explore what some of the key shifts are that change practitioners need to make to remain future-fit.