Posts tagged strategic change

Are You Ready for Change?

Change Management Strategic Planning Think Big February 22, 2014 19 Comments

Strategic planning, as a structured and systematic process, is successful when it is leader-led and overcomes the five reasons 70% of all strategies fail. Learn how to see your plan through to success. The strategic planning process is where leaders of an organization establish the vision of the organization’s future and then develop and implement the actions necessary to achieve that future. This article expands on the strategic planning concepts addressed in Think Big, Take Small Steps and is designed to help you achieve success in your strategic planning process.

Understanding Your Company’s Readiness for Change Prepares for Strategic Planning Success.

It always amazes me that people don’t inherently understand that strategic planning equals strategic change.

If you have a “vision” then that means you are looking to go somewhere in the future that you aren’t at today. If you live in Kansas and have a vision of moving to California, do you think anything is going to change as a result of that move? Unfortunately, many executives fail to understand the magnitude of change that they are embarking on when getting into serious strategic planning–I say serious because many are not and this is the primary reason plans fail as I pointed out in The Importance of Strategic Planning.

Like many companies, we foray into changes without even considering the readiness of our organization for that change. Some of these changes are small, like moving a few executives around, creating a new product, or improving a process. Some are rather large, like mergers, organizational changes, and layoffs. However, nothing is quite like strategic change. A strategic plan is a long-term project–what I like to think of as the “forever project.” Your organization, when embarking on a serious strategic planning effort, needs to be ready for constant change forever.

Managing the change after you’ve started implementing a strategy will probably fail. At the onset of your assessment you need to assess the readiness of the organization to make the changes that will ultimately be required.

There are many Change Readiness Assessments available for free on the internet. I encourage you to look for one and apply what you think is best, but I’m going to share with you some basic questions that might help you assess without using someone’s tool (free or not).

First, do the senior executives in the organization understand and agree on the need for change? Are they happy with the status quo or do they feel that something big needs to change? Are they engaged in the direction (vision) that the organization needs to go and do they agree with it? If the leadership don’t feel that there is a need for huge change in the organization, they won’t support it. The shadow they will cast on their people will ensure heels dig in and strategic change, if possible, will take much longer than necessary. More than likely, the strategy will be abandoned the first year because you can’t get leadership traction.

Once you’ve defined the direction the organization needs to go and the executive leadership is behind it, how well do the employees understand and agree with the direction and need for change. Is it a predominate opinion across the staff that everything is fine and they are doing well? A good factor to analyze is the longevity of the employees. Long-term employees are much more resistant to change because they have a lot more invested in the organization. Strategic change usually means that people will move, organizations will change, lots of new skills will be introduced, etc. You’re not thinking about moving someone’s cheese here–you’re looking at throwing away the old moldy cheese and making new cheese–a much stronger version no less. You can always expect some resistance to change, especially in the employees, but massive resistance will cripple your effort. Understand it up front.

Before you really sit down and consider the strategy going forward, think about how things on a high-level need to change. Your organizational assessment should show you this, even though you haven’t formalized anything. Consider what potential knowledge, skills, and abilities will be required of your leaders and employees. Then assess if your leaders and employees have these things. For instance, let’s say that the consensus is, based on what you’re seeing in the organizational assessment, that your company needs to consider outsourcing several non-core functions to focus on core activities and the core activities need to be more process-focused activities. The overall plan would be to redirect non-core employees to the core activities as you outsource so employee strength remains the same, but capacity increases and you envision obtaining industry expertise at a reduced cost through a managed services model. Do the employees left behind to oversee the managed service have the current capabilities to perform this partnership management role? Do the non-core employees need to learn new core capability skills to be able to operate? If everyone is going to be process-focused, do you have a small team of expert practitioners and is there appropriate process-related knowledge, skills, and abilities at all levels of the organization?

The last major point of this type of assessment is if the organization has any current way to effectively recognize and reinforce successful change? It is important to leverage these opportunities throughout a change effort and if they don’t exist, then they need to be created. Positive reinforcement of successes and dealing effectively with resistance (negative reinforcement) are key to the long term success of strategic change.

Having a plan isn’t enough–being able to implement that plan is where the strategy emerges. However, strategy means change–change like you’ve never felt before. If your organization isn’t ready for that amount and type of change, your first strategic activity might be to build the organization’s readiness for strategic change. If you ignore the organization’s current readiness, then more than likely your strategy will fail.

So, 70% of all plans fail to some level; however, by following these guidelines you can help ensure your strategic plan will be one of the 30% successes that everyone reads about.

2. http://www.lencd.org/learning/howto-readiness

3. http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109019/chapters/The-Organizational-Change-Readiness-Assessment.aspx

Implementation of strategy is barely visible by the naked eye.

Change Management Meandering Genius Strategic Planning February 16, 2014

I think that one of the reasons most people see strategies as a failure is because they don’t ‘see’ them unfold when implemented.

Strategy is not about massive change, it’s about strategic change. Massive changes are tactical activities that slowly bring about the vision over many years.

Honestly, the best vision is a lasting one that you don’t have to change every three to five years. The Air Force Sergeants Association’ purpose is to fight for Air Force enlisted benefits on Capitol Hill. Their vision is simple, To be the professional organization of choice to Air Force and the families. This is a measurable long term vision that AFSA will strive to, but may never achieve.

So, why do I say that strategy is invisible?

Strategy is about placement and preparedness. To implement a strategy, normally, you are (to use a military term) prepping the battle space for operations. The strategic actions in themselves are seldom that noticeable, but what they do is prepare you for opportunities that are sure to reveal themselves–opportunities that probably would not have shown themselves if you were not prepared.

Recently, I had a senior leader tell me that all the successes the group I’ve been working with was happenstance (i.e., luck). I disagreed. The strategic activities that we were intertwining over the last two years allowed for the successes to occur.

This is why people who are implementing strategic plans seldom see the forest through the trees. They have to go on faith that what they’re doing will have impact. Even to the employees, they seldom see the subtle changes taking place in the organization.

It is the leader and the strategy experts job to watch for these changes and to stand on the mountaintop and scream out these changes so everyone will know what has happened.

Strategic programs being put in place, strategic organizational changes, strategic development of employees… These things happen over time and when something happens over time, it is often. Viewed as ‘normal operations’ — just part of the daily routine.

This is so far from the truth. In my current role, we started two years ago to “improve document management.” Today, everyone in the document management space meet once a week under a developed governance structure. Today their is a six-person team that matures the do unenthusiastic domain slowly every day. Today there is a 26-page document strategy that highlights how we got here and where we’re going. Today there is an end-to-end understanding of the document life cycle. Today there is a robust document metrics program with accompanying metrics collection strategy.

Those things were strategic in nature and have produced tactical actions, which will lead to us moving closer to our vision of being the leader in document management.

Strangely enough, after two years of discussing and working with ten to twenty industry consultants, we are beginning to think that we are already a leader in this space. The beauty of our strategic effort is that we see how far we have to go and if we can achieve that over the next several years, we will not only be a leader, but ‘the leader!’

A year ago, we researched the only book written on document strategy–written by Kevin Craine. Kevin is a nice guy, who wrote his book based on a Master’s program. Today, he has a blog and regular pod casts about document management and strategy. That’s the authoritative leader in this space.

The harder you look at your strategic implementation the clearer it will become that you are improving. Take the time to understand why you are doing the things your are doing and look for the subtle outcomes. You just might find out you’re well on your way to your vision already and you just can’t see it.

The Importance of a Stakeholder Assessment

Change Management Strategic Planning Think Big February 15, 2014 2 Comments

Conducting a Stakeholder Assessment When Developing a Strategic Plan is Crucial

I see a “strategy” being made up of three things: A mission, a vision, and goals on how to get from where you are now to where you are going. Those goals represent CHANGE in an organization–strategic change.

Anytime there is a change, there will be people who are for it and against it. The rest are the movable middle. Anytime you are planning a change, you need to analyze the audience that will be impacted by that change and continually manage that audience through the change.

Case in point: One of my clients had the words, “Meet customer’s expectations through product delivery,” in one of their goal statements. The strategy had been in place for several months, and the head of their operations was not supportive of the strategy–he wanted to create it himself versus as a leadership team. He also liked living in the realm of strategy because then he really wasn’t accountable for doing anything. Note that ‘accountable’ is a key word here. I was in a meeting with the head of the strategic planning department and the operations director and he said, quote, “I will not hold my people accountable for meeting customer expectations.”

Who, in the right mind as a leader, can say something as ludicrous as that? By this time, the strategy was really rolling out–plans were in place and changes were occurring. All this went on regardless of how much he tried to stop it. This was the cry of a desperate man. As a result of the shadow he cast, one of his directs was responsible for deploying part of the plan–specifically under this goal. We were attempting to establish actions and dates, when he broke down in a whiney voice almost on the edge of tears, and cried, “But, I don’t want to be held accountable to this.”

These situations are real. Strategy–good strategy–means change. If you are not prepared for this type of behavior from people that have influence and you require to make the strategy reality, then you will get stopped by this type of behavior.

I know in Good to Great, you are supposed to get people on the bus and off the bus to make things work, but in the real world, some organizations don’t have that luxury. Then you have to determine how to deal with them.

In a strategic change, there are four potential groups that you have to consider. Obviously, first are the stakeholders–those who have a vested interest in the change and impact of the change. Second are the customers–those who direct your organization to deliver goods and/or services. All customers are stakeholders, but not all stakeholders are customers. Two other potential groups are Partners and Suppliers. Partners and Suppliers are those you work with to deliver your goods and services to the Customer. Sometimes they can be everything, or sometimes, not. Understanding who they are and who of them are key–make a difference and can impact the change–is important. Note this Venn diagram and how these audiences interact.

Once you know who they are, list them out and try to determine what you know about then and what you don’t know about them. List out what stake they have in the change–what will be impacted and how they feel. On a scale of 1-5, rate their level of support of the change and on the same scale rate the level of influence that can have to impact it–1 being lowest. This tells you where you potentially could have your most difficult problems. As you can imagine, the Operations Director in my above example was low in support and high in influence–not a good combination. Those that are high in both can also become your greatest champions. Those who are low in both probably can be ignored–best to spend precious resources on the most important stuff.

With those that are important to this effort, plot them each on this continuum:

If they are low, or not even on the continuum, then, strategic activities designed to raise them on the continuum might help their acceptance and assistance. Sometimes they fully understand what is going on, but, getting them higher is impossible. In the case of the Operations Director, we basically forced him to retire and the next director that was hired supported the strategy. The bus activity; however, this took time. Obviously, if someone is simply aware of the strategy and doesn’t understand why it’s being done and what its impact is, then desiring advocacy and ownership is impossible. So, if you have someone at awareness, but you need them as an advocate, then you need to first get them to understanding, and then next to acceptance. Makes sense, right?

This is also helpful to determine if you already have someone at advocacy and that’s where you want them, then you don’t need to do anything. If someone has little influence on the strategy and change, then maybe awareness or understanding is fine. These decisions again allow you to focus your efforts in strategic areas.

Another way to map your audience is through this tool:

It’s a bit simpler in its approach, but can be effective. For a strategic plan, which takes years to implement, I like a much more detailed assessment and action plan than this, but you can choose. I also am Prosci certified in ADKAR, so I like to use that approach, but I am not free to share their proprietary process on this blog. You can read about it in books from Amazon and their certification is very effective. The approaches I’ve shared here are based on my Master’s-level Change Management certification from Georgetown University and are not proprietary.

So, you can see how important a Stakeholder Assessment is to develop during the Organizational Assessment. This, like any change effort, when done early, helps to prep the space and get people on board quickly or identify those you need to work around. This tool, is a lasting assessment that you may revisit regularly to see how things are progressing.

So, 70% of all plans fail to some level; however, by following these guidelines you can help ensure your strategic plan will be one of the 30% successes that everyone reads about.

2. http://www.amazon.com/Change-Management-The-People-Side/dp/193088561X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1392477543&sr=8-2

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_analysis