Following is a curated list of resources that reflect current thinking on a topic of interest to IT leaders. You can assist this effort by contributing insight from your own real-world experiences, and are invited to suggest changes or additions here.
Definitions Include:
Change Management as a topic for IT leaders generally falls into one of two camps: general change initiatives and the processes used to manage them, or infrastructure change management as part of the IT Service Management discipline. This post generally deals with the broader subject of change management.
Change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It is an organizational process aimed at empowering the employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment.
Wikipedia: Change Management (ITSM)
Change Management is an IT Service Management discipline. The objective of Change Management in this context is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes to controlled IT infrastructure, in order to minimize the number and impact of any related incidents upon service.
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Current Thinking Includes:
For the purposes of this document, current thinking includes the suggestions made within the following tenets: (1) That change management should be a process with at least some formalization, and (2) that change initiatives are generally managed by the leadership team of an organization. Within that framework, suggestions include the following:
In the substantial planning that occurs for many change initiatives, the individual human factors are lost or discounted in the process, leading to challenges. The ‘soft’ items that are harder to quantify such as individual goals, motivations and the current political climate will likely be as important, if not more critical to the success of the initiative than anything documented on a Gantt chart or formal project plan. In addition, change initiatives will require executive engagement, authentic passion and the ability to communicate effectively to staff, in the hopes that a ‘critical mass’ will be brought along, who will then assist in bringing others.
Communication is a continuing theme, yet we are warned that failure to translate the big picture down to the individual, and what the change means for them, is a common mistake. In addition to knowing the impact to themselves, individuals also want to hear what is expected of them as part of any change initiative. Lastly, change is a constant in today’s environment rather than a rare occurrence, and organizations are wise to develop ‘change agility’ within their walls, setting an expectation of constant change with staff while increasing their odds of successfully managing change going forward.
CIO Dashboard: Business Change Management Using Weak Signals
Too much emphasis is put on a project’s scope, schedule and budget. We believe that the organizational, cultural, and political issues are as important – a project’s early warning signals, or weak signals. The divisive issues are not technology in nature, but around goals, incentives, executive buy-in, decision-making, resources capacity and skills.
IT Business Edge: Why IT Should Visit Users on Their Own Turf
Most companies promote change by trying to sell folks on the overall corporate benefits of a solution rather than individual ones. Yet few people buy into this approach, Gray says. While it’s important to present corporate benefits in the early, business-case stage, companies should emphasize individual benefits if they want employees to actually use solutions and adapt to change, writes Gray. Traditional change management efforts “treat the community as a gelatinous mass, to be slowly coalesced and pushed in a single direction.” Too often this approach results in unhappy users taking an adversarial position and resisting change.
Gartner Blogs: The Secret of Change Management
True change is never about rational decisions imposed upon an organization. True change results from people joining in the change because it’s the right thing, at the right time and the right place. You don’t need 100% of the people — you just need enough to tip the scales and you get that through creating a shared vision that appeals to both the mind and the heart. And therein lies the second secret — you have to believe in the change passionately yourself or you can’t lead anyone where you yourself are unwilling to go.
All Things Workplace: I’ll Change If You Tell Me What You Really Want
Make your changes specific so that people know what to do and can tell whether or not they got it right. Things like Risk, Communications, and Strategic Decision-Making are great topics for philosophical conversation and painting the big picture. If you want people to change what they are doing, then you need to tell them what to do in a way that they can act on and know that they are doing it right.
Harvard Business Review Blogs: Four Ways to Know Whether You are Ready for Change
In our experience, the companies most likely to be successful in making change work to their advantage are the ones that no longer view change as a discrete event to be managed, but as a constant opportunity to evolve the business.
Change agility represents your company’s ability to engage people in pending changes. This is an internal focus that is critical to the company’s ability to effectively implement identified innovations. A great idea won’t matter if you can’t muster the capacity and commitment to carry it through. An organization with good change agility has the capacity to stretch when necessary and quickly shift resources to the place they will make the most difference.
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Alternative Views Include:
Alternative views may question the tenets listed above, including whether it is possible (or wise) to design processes around initiatives which are, by their nature, messy and hard to control – messy in that they involve people and human behavior. Others point out that in many cases IT leaders assume that ANY management-led change is a good decision, yet isn’t it reasonable to assume that leaders and staff will want to ask that question first and foremost?
The notion that a ‘critical mass’ of supporters can bring along the rank and file is challenged as well, with some believing that organizational change will only be successful when the naysayers leave or are forced out. Lastly, it is pointed out that in many cases, innovation and change leadership can actually start at the staff level of an organization without any management impetus, but IT leaders need to be able to identify and nurture that behavior to take advantage of it.
Change Management Blog: Forget Change Management
Change management specialists have come up with models that help us to understand how systems react, and what needs to be done to transform them. I know around a hundred of them, and new models pop up like crocuses in spring. The problem of models is what they do is reducing complexity to an extent that they have nothing in common with reality.
The idea of change management suggests that given the appropriate resources, a change project can be implemented according to Gantt charts. What a weird idea! Change in social systems is complex because social systems are complex and their behavior is largely unpredictable. How could anybody believe that change management plans have anything to do with organizational life?
Cutter: Change-Resistance versus Doubt
This model, and many others, seem to ignore the question, “Is this a good adaptation?” The entire process is geared to overcoming resistance, and resistance always has a negative connotation. But think about change a minute. Environmental changes create both opportunity and danger. In any business, development organization, or project team there are many, many changes: market, economic, competitor, team member, business objectives, and so on. For any one of those changes there may be multiple possible adaptations. With hundreds of changes, large and small, and hundreds of possible adaptations to each, again both large and small—how do we weed out the adaptations that are wrong choices?
Differentiating between resistance and doubt leads to a couple of outcomes. First, we should approach any adaptation process, even implementing an agile methodology, with a certain amount of doubt and skepticism—it is very healthy. Just like cancelling a project when new information indicates the benefits no longer outweigh the costs, opting out of an adaptation when new information indicates the change won’t meet the objectives is a positive, not a negative outcome.
Enterprise 2.0 Blog: There is No Such Thing as Culture Change
Kodak CEO Antonio Perez is credited with a refinement of the idea: that any change or adoption will face a population with 3 segments: the people who buy in immediately, the people on the fence who can be convinced, and the people on the other side who will need to be waited out.
IT Business Edge: Change Management 101: Put Your Ego Aside
It really does begin with the leadership. They’ve got to be willing to make sure everybody has access to critical information, and they’ve got to be willing to listen to suggestions and experiment. You can get innovation from anywhere if you’re open to it, and willing to put resources behind it. Let me give you an example.
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