My Experience With Change

Why is change and change management within organizations so hard? Whether a person goes through buying or selling a home, adding or losing a family member, leaving or advancing within their job, life presents us with numerous opportunities to change, and often we do.

Change agents, however, often find that change, within larger organizations is like the trying to steer a car in a heavy snowstorm. It is difficult to see ahead, and where you steer the car is not necessarily where you will go. In these times, attempting to change realizes rather disastrous results.

Why? What can leaders do to make change easier on an organization?

Prior to working at TSI, I was a Director of Admissions for a large Higher Education / Continuing Education University. During my time there, we experienced significant growth during the online education boom that started in the early 2000s. This rapid growth caused many growing pains for the University to keep up with the rapidly growing number of students, as well as the increased regulatory scrutiny that “for profit” institutions were experiencing.

During this period of rapid growth, the University purchased Salesforce.com for student marketing and admissions in an attempt to control and reduce the excessive costs associated with to the need for many internal resources for system maintenance. Secondly, the new CRM was to stave off the loss of Admission Advisor productivity due to the instability of the legacy CRM that at times did not function.

At this University, the Admissions Advisor position is an entry-level professional position, staffed with educated young professionals from 22 – 28 years of age. As they are part of the Millennial Generation, comfort with new technology was not an issue for Admissions Advisors. In fact, the new CRM, since it would provide a more updated look and feel, excited most Admission Advisors.

Unfortunately, when the new system training was developed, the CRM trainers did not account for the moderate to advanced technology capabilities of Admissions Advisors. The training was extremely basic, designed for those who were not technically savvy and the pace was very slow for the Admissions Advisors. Additionally, the training did not include more advanced features, like the ability to configure views to organize an Admissions Advisors prospect queue (which contained over 1000 potential students), and was a significant issue upon release of the software.

Consequently, most participants in the training were bored and not engaged in the lesson and exploring the sandbox environment on their own, resulting in a reasonable number of Advisors who “knew” how to do a system function better. This gap resulted in many key users failing to have the complete system knowledge and foundation about why that function is completed a certain way.

Unlike many examples of change resistance, Admissions Advisors were eager to use the new system. However, Admissions Advisors did not use the system in a coordinated and consistent manner due to the ineffective training. Admissions Advisors were entering data incorrectly, not following processes followed consistently, or consistently using system functions and features as intended causing delays in application processing, data integrity, unwarranted frustration with the system. In the end, these issues eroded the effectiveness of the CRM and the business case behind it.

What I Learned From This Experience

For the last 2 years, my role at TSI is to help many diverse organizations change as it relates to the process, technology and/or organization structure. I have witnessed what works and what does not with Organizational Change Management (OCM). Through my work at TSI, and research of what past and present change leaders say about change (e.g., Kotter, Pink, Heath, etc.), I noted my many “A-HA” moments regarding my past change experiences.

The four Organizational Change Management concepts that I know now, but wish I knew 3-5 years ago:

1. Change is not something you do “to” your staff. I have encountered leaders who seem to think that people will change just because they said to, or because they were able to provide a logical explanation of why change was necessary.

All of us have had to change our lifestyle at some point in our life due to a relationship, a career, a relationship or family. Why did you change? Was there logic behind this change?

The answer, just like with your employees, people change when they feel the need to do so, and when there is something they want or wish to avoid that will move them.

Two activities that are very beneficial to assist in helping your staff feel the benefit are:

• Tailor System Training to match skill level and with results. As the above example illustrates, the need to develop and deliver training to engage users, especially with teams that are more resistant to the change, you will reduce their “unknowns” which is feeding their fear.
• Establish a Communication Channel for Users at all levels to provide feedback. If users feel that you are not listening to, or addressing their needs and fears, they will more likely feel that you are forcing change upon them, and not allowing them to participate.

A resource I have used and referenced often is Daniel Pinks work around motivation. Especially his book “Drive,”^[1] and his various lectures found online^[2] are very useful to understand why people do what they do. Essentially, individuals perform best when they feel like they have control over their environment and activity. When guiding change, get creative as to how you can influence change, but also give your staff the latitude to do it the best way for them.

2. To help your employees change, you first need to understand them. A period of change is not a time to put your head in the sand. One of my favorite principles from Stephen Coveys “7 Habits” training is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”^[3]

Especially in OCM, listening and engaging end users, especially the ones with the most influence with others will allow project and organization leaders to develop the proper training, the most effective communication, and provide help where it is needed the most.

In my experience, the influential people in an organization (especially the ones that are not managers) often will set the tone for change and can either derail or streamline a change effort. Identify and win over your influencers. If you do, you are already well on your way to your staff feeling this will be a good change and will be more likely to support the change.

3. Knowing where you are just as important as knowing where you want to get to. A fundamental component to change that most organizations either miss or do not focus on enough are the processes (Business or Operations) that are changing. Many organizations I have worked with have no documentation of how their work is being done (current state), or how it is BEST done (future state).

By working with others in the organization to develop current and future state processes, organizational silo’s and inefficiencies become much clearer. People then begin to see how inefficiencies and dependencies within a workflow have wide reaching implications that are not always obvious when doing the work. It is as if light bulbs above peoples head start turning on all around the organization.

Use process improvement to drive change. Involve end users in the development of current state processes to document the “pains” of the current system, and to develop the future state process along with up and down stream stakeholders. Some of the greatest team building I have seen developed out of multi-functional future state process development sessions.

4. Change is an Individual Journey. If there is one concept that I would like all business leaders to know about Organizational Change Management, it’s Organizational Change Management is an individual process multiplied by the number of employees experiencing the change. Ultimately, if you are able to think strategically and plan your change starting at the individual level up to the organization level, you will be creating a strong foundation for change.

Remember, change itself does not need to be hard. People are happily changing all of the time (receiving a promotion, getting married, having a child, buying a new car, etc.). However, OCM is often hard due to leaders trying to be efficient by attempting to implement change en masse, sometimes without having all of the tools. In addition, while mass communication is efficient, it is often significantly less effective in assisting people to change as one-on-one conversations and tailored training.

Train and empower line level managers to have one on one conversations, develop training programs, develop individualized change management strategies, and assist their employees through the change. Especially focus on the “Key Change Influencers” to move in a positive and collaborative direction, and the rest of the employees will likely follow.

To understand whether your organization is ready to change, take TSI’s Free Change Readiness Assessment by visiting our website.

[1] http://www.danpink.com/books/drive

[2] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en

[3] https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit5.php