Getting Others To Engage In Change

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Learning Tree

Management Insights Expert Advice from Today’s Top Professionals Getting Others to Engage in Change: The Five-Step Process When it comes to implementing large-scale internal changes, most organisations are reasonably good at kick-off but falter when trying to sustain employee commitment over the life of the project. In order to succeed, it’s critical to apply a strategy that facilitates communication and keeps people engaged during each stage of the change process.

To be fair, the affected departments hadn’t been completely ignored by the project team. About eight weeks earlier, they had been given a generic roll-out briefing. However, there hadn’t been any contact since then. Worse yet, there was no plan established to keep them informed on—or engaged in—the project’s progress once it was set in motion.

The importance of applying a strategy was confirmed for me recently: A project team was implementing an end-to-end integrated logistics process that would affect several jobs across multiple departments. Having all their process charts ready, the equipment ordered and the plan “up on the wall”, the team was looking forward to the start date just three weeks in the future. My responsibility was to review the team’s plan as part of their due diligence.

In my role as advisor, I decided to propose a simple five-step process that would enable all parties to embrace the change and execute a successful transition.

Unfortunately, what I found was a classic case of a team focusing so narrowly on the details of the plan that they were overlooking what was really important for any successful change: motivating the affected parties to take a personal interest in the success of the project.

Bob Black

Organisational development consultant Bob Black offers a simple process for change management in this edition of our Management Insights series.

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Learning Tree

Management Insights

Expert Advice from Today’s Top Professionals Getting Others to Engage in Change: The Five-Step Process Once I provided my observations to the project team and their senior management, they quickly adjusted to achieve a more balanced focus. I then recommended the team adopt the following five-step process that would engage the people affected by the change:

Step 1: Create a People- and Process-Change Plan When creating a project plan, ensure that it is a balanced plan that gives due attention to both people and process. To ensure that balance, begin with the people first and do the process second. When looking at the people side, drill down to the individual level in order to establish a strong connection between the planned change and its implications for individuals in the organisation. In other words, answer the “how will this change affect me” question.

Step 2: Perform a Time-Sensitive Stakeholder Analysis Stakeholder analyses tend to start by identifying the key players. Unfortunately, this narrow focus doesn’t take into consideration that the roles of individual stakeholders change over time. There are those who are immediately critical, those who will be important in the short to middle term and those who will be key in the latter stages. In practical terms, the level of information required by each stakeholder will differ based on the immediacy of their involvement. A timebased analysis allows you to develop an engagement plan that recognises short-, medium- and long-term communication requirements for each of the stakeholders.

(and adopt) the vision. This assumption in no way ensures engagement so bring everyone into the development of the vision right from the start.

Step 4: Plan to Manage Conflict Conflict is inevitable. How it’s dealt with determines whether you reach a positive or negative outcome. The team must agree up front how they will deal with conflict—both internal and external—throughout the entire process. Don’t allow “optimism bias” (the belief that things will be better this time) to cloud the ample evidence that conflicts always arise in projects.

Step 5: Engage through Communication Finally, you must ask for feedback from the affected parties at every stage of the project. When you receive it, always acknowledge and respond, even if it’s only to say “we’re thinking about it” or, more importantly, “we’re not going to do it and this is why”. Following this clear set of steps, the team set up a preliminary series of face-to-face meetings with one key goal: convey the message of why the change was needed and the benefits of the change in both personal and individual terms. Then, by continuing to follow the steps, engaging the stakeholders and adjusting the message as the changes progressed, the team was able to maintain buy-in through the life of the project, thus including everyone in its successful completion.

Step 3: Get Involvement Early The more people are involved, the more opportunity there is for getting their emotional buy-in, which in turn affects their motivation and support for implementation. A good opportunity for early involvement is during the creation of the “Change Vision” (or “Mission” or “Project Brief”). Unfortunately, the vision is often created by a select few and then distributed throughout the organisation without the involvement of the many who are affected, assuming all will agree with

About the Author Bob Black is a principal partner in the firm People Skills Organisational Development Consultancy, specialising in organisational change management and leveraging project management techniques as a change agent. He is also the author of Learning Tree Course 288, “Change Management: People and Process”, and Course 341, “Negotiation Skills: Achieving Successful Outcomes”.

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