One of the biggest challenges of change projects is people accepting the change. Change might impact their work greatly, from new procedures, forms, relocations, management or even personal life. How do we make this a success?
When a project is born and planned, evaluated the senior management would see the benefits. This is the reason change projects are born. But people in the organisation might not see it the same way.
One of the first steps making a change in the business is structural change. New management structure might be presented. Too many changes in the organisation can also bring chaos. Generally, a cycle time of a change to organisation should be lower frequency than the cycle time of the function affected. Changes made too often would demotivate staff and may present disruptions. If one successive change is made (for example in a yearly circle) the consequences and success can be more predicted.
In recent years, many IT projects are planned within organisations. One fundamental mistake which is made is that the IT function should act as an enabler to other business functions and not as an objective in itself.
Are we seeing the future?
In managing projects we will need to see a clear picture of what success will look like, then communicate this widely and spread across the organisation. We must ensure that myths and gossips do not overtake it.
We do the "what-if" analysis which can determine what could potentially go wrong. That's where the risk management function of a project is imperative.
People can react to projects negatively and with pessimism. Sometimes failures of past projects make people believe that the failure will happen again. But, some may take the change with optimism and positive outlook. Employees will show confidence and be cooperative.
We can train people to have positive believes. Changes in attitude are based on consistency and communicating new up-to-date facts to influence positive believes.
Push or pull?
The common approach of management to change is telling the manager to "get on with it and just do it!". But this approach is confrontational.
Forcing people to change is never a good idea. Some people might also feel uncomfortable with imposing their change on others. Perhaps we can choose to persuade others based on facts?
One of the push type approaches known is the "carrot and stick" tactic. This impose to people that they have no choice but change and the future is better. But often this type of approach does not bring the expected results. It is forcing people to change and can become rather expensive.
So, what can we do?
Positive change can be achieved by taking some relevant steps:
- designing the future in detail,
- describe how the future will look like,
- communicate the future to all who is going to be affected,
- setting up communication networks to help achieve the change,
- implement change to environment, technology and procedures.
The main act is to communicate the future and try and help people to adapt. They need to reach the future state in their mind before the change is made.
A training video showing how the change would look like might be a good tactic. It might inspire others to act the way future is presented if it is beneficial.
People have the ability to see their life in different state and then adapt their perceptions to match. Perhaps we need not to measure numerical targets, but let people envision of more specific events that will signal the future state.
The impact
Change affects people. When managing projects, we need to understand the impact on them. These might include:
- familiar processes on which we rely disappear,
- skills and knowledge may become redundant,
- habits which has made us efficient will become unwanted,
- relocations and job changes.
This can cause anxiety and stress. To overcome it, we might take the following steps:
- line managers must understand the implication of change and those working for them,
- training must be provided for each individual,
- people must be allowed time for that change,
- time needs to be planned for individuals to adapt their beliefs and attitudes,
- time is to be allocated for implementation and training.
In large projects, this processes might take many months, maybe years.
Failure to plan and manage "people change" will extend failure to the project itself.
Often this the common reason why the projects does not bring expected results. This might damage the possibility to manage similar projects in the future. People might become sceptical to anything new. Efficacy might decline.
People would generally react to change by either perceiving they can influence the change or that the change is out of their control.
Response to change by management is presented below:
Uniformed optimism - at the beginning we know very little about the change and fill in the gaps with optimistic assumptions.
Informed pessimism - we begin to have doubts about the change.
Checking out - we ask challenging questions about the change. Some proposals might seem irrational. We might start to deny that the change will ever happen.
Informed realism - we realise that the change will happen, we have the choice to accept or rebel the change. Some might use their authority to stop the project. We might also acknowledge the change and create your own agenda. Share the agenda with others.
Affirmed realism - we get on with the agenda and start to see positive changes. We might even make efforts to make the change happen. We root-out old traditions.
This process of rooting-our old traditions is very important.
The acceptance part, might be, however different for staff who has no control over the change.
Stability - we do what we do ignoring the change.
Immobilisation - we get the message and we freeze. We might even feel a huge amount of pain.
Denial - you are likely to tell other people that the change is not true. We postpone the feelings to make time for judgement about what actions we should take. Many people in this stage need to seek help.
Anger - we attack the idea of the change. In some cases anger can reflect in violence.
Bargaining - we deal or plead a way through the change with bargaining. Often trying to buy more time.
Depression - we accept defeat and become depressed. People may even leave.
Testing - if we can't get out, we start to explore what the changes mean. We test it to see how we can make it acceptable to our personal advantage.
Acceptance - we start to accept the change.
The important point to remember for project manager is that no matter how beneficial the change may seem to us, we do not know exactly what the change mean to them. We might be even be able to plan and manage the above responses within the project plan.
Motivation
We can motivate the change and manage it proactively. We might be able to create a climate of positive change though:
80:20 rule. Identify a handful of exceptional people and allow them to "infect" others with their behaviour. We should direct our initial communication and persuasion to the opinion leaders.
Make the message unforgettable. Objectives like "improved efficacy", "greater productivity" do not generally get the buy-in. What er need to do is to enter the Stability stage with the vision of the future. It will spread by itself to others. We need to make the change specific and personal as well as unforgettable. Videos might be very effective. Show them unforgettable personal picture, do "one-to-one" and "face-to-face" management.
Change the environment for better. Make the change pleasant. Changing a physical environment is a good way of promoting change in a business.
Summary
Change management with project doesn't stop on completing project tasks. It is also necessary to motivate people to accept change. It requires deep understanding on what is required for them. The project manager has to know how people get motivated. The "pull" approach is far more effective than "push" or "carrot and stock" approach.
Bibliography:
Charvet S., 1997, "Words that change minds"
Fowler A., 2006, Accelerating business and change, Transforming project delivery" , Gower
Smit T., 2002, "Eden", London, Corgi
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