That probably sounds like an odd question; especially when you consider the amount of disruption around us (digital, climate, regulation, technology, consumers, aging, etc. etc.). The pace of change just gets faster and faster.
We are nearly all going through some kind of change, perhaps constantly. If we’re not, our organisations are likely to become irrelevant soon.
How do we change?
The discipline of change management, much like project management 15 years ago, is still largely taught and run using formal plan-driven tools and methods. This assumes we have to follow the traditional unfreeze–change–refreeze approach to change.
Is this approach still valuable and appropriate? Born in an age where all initiatives were largely plan-driven, this probably made total sense; however, today we see that an increasing number of organisations are adopting different ways of working for product development and more broadly.
We have seen an increasing use of more feedback-driven approaches in product development for over 20 years. In this, we typically break product releases down into the features we need, prioritise and co-design them with the customer, build something small to see what works and build on it, and if it doesn’t we throw it away and start again. You’ll know this as agile product development.
When you want to start building your products that way, why would you still follow a plan-driven approach? How can you know everything that will happen up front? How can you know how people will respond to change?
What are the alternatives?
I saw this cause so many issues, and chose to make it the focus of my MBA research, at the University of Auckland in NZ. In my masters thesis, ‘The Paradox of Agile Transformation‘ (2015), I established that too many organisations were following very prescriptive plans for becoming more agile, and failing! While those adopting more feedback-driven approaches were typically more successful.
Like many others, when helping an organisation through major change, I have found it better to break the transformation down into small increments of change, work on those with the people affected by the change, then experiment with some discrete new behaviours, see what works and build on it, and if it doesn’t work roll it back. Sound familiar?
We call this lean change management, firsts defined around five years ago by Jason Little (author of Lean Change Management, 2014) and Jeff Anderson (author of Lean Change Method, 2013). We have a collective identity, through leanchange.org, run workshops in becoming a lean change agent, and have adopted digital accreditations rather than formal certification schemes.
Of course, this is not a one-size fits all solution. If you are not in a disrupted industry and are not needing to change rapidly in ways you cannot fully understand up front, then it is still perfectly acceptable to ‘plan the work’ then ‘work the plan’. Just as traditional project management is still suited to certain types of construction projects, so too traditional change management still has its place. However, the time has come to acknowledge that an increasing number of organisations need an alternate approach.
So while ‘traditional change management’ is not dead, I believe it is time to declare:
long live lean change management.
Want to know more?
If you are keen to know more, and would like to attend a lean change agent workshop near you, then please check out the lean change training schedule.
If you are based in New Zealand, then we have some workshops running in the next few months. February in Christchurch, March in Wellington, and May in Auckland.
Notes
- Article first published on LinkedIn Pulse on January 16, 2018