Change Rules Everything Around Me, CREAM!, Prep Your People, Better Happy Org, Y’all.
An intro to driving successful change, alignment, and stronger business foundations for and with your people when organizational changes are on the horizon
This is the follow-up to this piece about building Communities of Practice, and the content below and from the post above is all from one deck I developed, on my own time, for a previous org to pitch change as a capability and client offering. It went all the way to the top, getting inspired thumbs up from one office GM, the head of design, and the company founder. It’s one of those “could have been so beautiful” stories where people get excited and then one dude decides he wants to keep the gate closed.
I pulled it back up because I just completed my Prosci Change Management certification (today!), and I feel … validated … and confident in the research and thinking I put into that deck — a treatise in slide form, which has been brooding with other decks-for-the-good-of-work in my personal Google drive. Like the first piece, this post is a collection of organized content, without any writer finesse. It’s a long, but hopefully helpful checklist, some proof points, a genericized Google Slides deck presentation, and a shared Google Sheet with a few starter project plans. I also made graphics. Links are at the end.
I put myself through the Prosci program after yearning to do it since finding it a few months after my meeting with the aforementioned gatekeeper. The investment was 1000% worth it. This was a pivotal week of growth for me. Yes, I have some new tools and knowledge. But the ideas I had before were reinforced and strenghthened. I feel like the Dennis Rodman of change management, and I just got to Detroit.
But the program wasn’t cheap, and it took me years to buck up and do it. And I imagine the cost is a barrier to most. So, I share these free and newly validated resources from before*, hoping they might spark some good in the world. A butterfly effect of intention and goodness that grows through the worlds of work we live in. Then maybe the future of work might look a lot better for all of us.
*Nothing from Prosci is being shared here.
Begin with the Culture
Depending on where you heard “culture” associated with the workplace, you may instantly experience fatigue or dread. But “culture” is the only word I know for the collective values and behaviors that drives how things get done in an organization. It shapes attitudes and behaviors in wide-ranging and durable ways. A healthy culture provides the unspoken code of conduct that steers individuals to act appropriately and make choices that advance the organization’s goals and strategy. Cultural norms define what is encouraged, discouraged, accepted, or rejected within a group.
Benefits of Focusing on Your People When You’re Going Through Changes
- When properly aligned with personal values, drives, and needs, culture can focus effort and enthusiasm toward a shared purpose.
- A healthy culture empowers people to deliver results faster.
- A high-performance culture attracts talent.
- Culture can evolve flexibly and autonomously in response to changing opportunities and demands.
- Culture can fluidly blend the goals and intentions of top leaders with the knowledge and experiences of frontline employees.
By ignoring the culture part of change — your people — your organization risks transformation failure. Whether that’s an acquisition, a merger, a change in org structure, a new offering, a change in tools, etc. A healthy organization will empower its people to deliver those changes and outcomes more successfully, faster. A high-performance culture brings talent in, and retains it.
What is the most significant challenge to organizational change?
Not starting with the people.
“Leaders won’t achieve the speed and agility they need unless they build organizational cultures that perform well across functions and business units, embrace risk, and focus obsessively on customers.”
January/February 2018, Issue: The Culture Factor, The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture, Harvard Business Review
The Process of Alignment
Developing a Cultural Integration Plan
Variations of process to identify, implement and evolve your team(s) culture to support organizational transformation
The Three Critical Attributes of a High-Performance Culture
- Employees and teams are engaged to achieve results, committed to their work and dedicated to the organization’s purpose and goals.
- Individuals and teams work in ways to advance the organization’s strategy.
- The organizational environment, or “context” fosters engagement and encourages behaviors that advance the organization’s strategy. This includes the following.
- Leadership
- Organization design
- Performance management
- People-development practices
- Resources and tools
- Vision and values
- Informal interactions
BCG People & Organizations / BCG Analysis / April 13, 2018 : It’s Not a Digital Transformation Without a Digital Culture
Steps to Integration
Engage + Articulate
- Engage employees in the process for alignment and buy-in
- Articulate the vision for the future — communicate the reasons for change and why the team should support the integration effort
Define the Current Culture and Target Culture
- Examine and define your current culture (history, values, subcultures, leadership styles, team dynamics)
- Formulate a target culture around the styles that best support future the changes/vision (if you’re combining cultures in a merger, bring in the best styles from both to start from scratch)
- Define the current culture and the target culture and map them next to each other
- Where are they not aligned?
- Determine differences
- Be clear, direct and transparent about disparities
- Where might we run into problems?
- Ideate opportunities to bridge the gaps
Use the Target Culture to Develop a Cultural Integration Plan
- Leaders to align and clearly articulate the company’s aspiration for the future
- Leaders to model target culture behaviors
- Co-create and implement measures and incentives that will fuel the behaviors to drive the new culture
- Dedicate the resources needed to create tools for facilitating cultural integration, measurement, incentives, management, and reward
Review and Iterate
Project Plans for the People — Initiative Planning in Google Sheets and Google Slides
There’s a handful of ways to approach all of the above depending on your organization’s size, resources, understanding.
Part of the deck I created years ago also came with unused project plans I put together. I put effort into them, and I’d love for y’all to put them to use — so your people might experience the thought and intention they were made with. Don’t judge me if I’m missing any key project management things, I’m no PM. I’ll take suggestions, though!
At minimum, these resources might give you a head start. Screenshots with detail in the captions below.
Speaking of Systems Change Frameworks and Alignment
This is one of my all-time favorite models. You can read more about it in this PDF. It helps us to think with intention, through what we need to achieve change successfully — and what results we might get when we’re missing one of the five key elements to change. A shout out to Nick Vrana for introducing me to the framework.
