Digital Change Management

I was asked, the other day, how “Digital Change Management” differs from traditional change management. It sparked an interesting conversation – so perhaps this will be of interest to others.

The issue with the term “Digital Change Management” is that it can mean either of two things:

• The change management aspects of Digital projects and programs; and/or
• Using Digital techniques as part of your change management toolkit (regardless of the type of project or program).

These two definitions are closely related, but different.

Just because it’s a “Digital” transformation, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the (traditional) change management basics. Those basics include:

• Top management leading the change;
• Creating and communicating a clear vision;
• Taking steps to ensure that all stakeholders are kept informed and bought-in; and
• Ensuring that the recipients of the Digital changes are ready, in terms of both their capabilities and their buy-in, to put those changes into practice.

However, Digital transformations almost always require changes to a company culture. For example, our clients often realize that, as part of becoming “Digital”, they need to become more agile and more comfortable with “failing fast”. They need to lose their fear of trying something new, but figuring out quickly what needs to change for it to be a success, and either making those changes or else dropping the idea altogether.

You can’t make changes to culture just by saying, “Make it so.” You have to change the fabric of the organization to make the changes stick.  As just one example, you can’t create a “fail fast” culture (as described above) without changing the performance measures and targets that typically discourage that approach.

So what about the second version of the definition - using Digital techniques as part of your change management toolkit?

As consultants who believe in the power of Digital transformation, we often do this with our clients - introducing Digital, and Digital-enabling, techniques as part of the change management streams of all sorts of projects (whether Digital or not).

For example, if you’re communicating to stakeholders about a Digital Transformation, why use old-fashioned emails and memos? If you take a multi-channel approach to communications – using videos, discussion boards, web-based demos, and apps for example – people start to live the change, not just read about it.

At Capgemini we’ve also moved the management of change projects from a white-board-and-paper environment to an online, digital environment - digital Scrum boards, digital issues logs, digital decision logs etc. Which means that project members are no longer tied to the office. Instead, they can be out in the field where the change is happening, and can help manage those changes far better.

What about Digital-enabling techniques? These can also be powerful agents for change.

One insurance client of ours, for example, had only ever used Agile in an IT context, and was dubious as to its value outside of technology projects. So we used Agile techniques, including two week Sprints, for the Digital Strategy phase of our work with them. They were amazed by the benefits gained in terms of transparency, flexibility and speed – and they started adopting this cultural change more widely.

In short, therefore, some aspects of Digital Change Management are no different from what we've seen before. But there is an opportunity to use Digital, and Digital-enabling, techniques to increase the likelihood of successful change.

So that’s my point of view on Digital Change Management. What’s yours?