Leading Change Management with Continual Improvement approaches ... its the new glue!

The next phase in Change Management is about embracing Digital Agility and continual improvement practices!

My recent observations across digital transformation engagements in many industry verticals have delivered deepening evidence for organisational change management practice transformation. The big reveal, is no great surprise, that bolt-on change activities weaken the delivery of transformation outcomes. Conversely I see embracing Continual Improvement alignment is the OPUS that Change Management practices have been looking for in the era of Digital and Agile and this has irreversibly impacted key performance measures as OCM digitises itself and gets ready for always on Change.

Enterprise IT has endemic issues around buying through technology agendas, loosely adopting the Digital Business enablers in Platform as a Service or scaled solutions aligned to aging strategy, complex conflicting strategies and/or poorly navigating the less technical outcomes of key programs. For more than 20 years I have been part of organisations innovating to reinvent and create new digital capabilities and at its core these processes are best when seen in a continual improvement light. This is by far the agile iterative approach most organisations struggle with and must keep developing as a capability.?

In those 20 years many doubting industries have stalled on the promises of Digital Agility. The past era of Tech down ownership has moved on to coaching business organisations to realise value in more integrated release trains, there are certainly many versions of these. From Customer experience solutions, Services as Product Design or even deeper automation adoption in DevOps through to intelligent automation-self healing systems. Controlling the repeatable delivery of value driven outcomes seems still often out of reach of many scaled enterprise transformations.

It begs the question why human centred outcomes results are so often unrealised despite so much visible intelligence, so much direction?

In the Digital landscape it is maturity of the Change and Product Management strategy combined within the strategic roadmap that is the melting pot of perspectives. That series of executions is where there is a lot of collaborative tension and where individuals come together to represent there individual needs. Where Business requirements meet the reality of technology delivery and adoption. Here what digital leaders perceive as critical is often tainted by our historic viewpoints and the needs under their individual KPIs. There is often a lot of ambiguity as you step into the detail about what good looks like, and we might see the mix of innovation maturity, perhaps human centred research and needs, technology product owners planning their next design and solutioning sprints, risk measurement in program management approaches, portfolio budgets cycles, new compliance regimes, stoic process architecture, new era technology platforms ... the list of perspectives and demands goes on forever! REcently we have seen the mix of scaled agile play a more serious role in how the organisation considers its Agility... I would suggest that all Digital era organisations need to look at their own hybrid model to assess where there are gaps and keep this in mind at all times. It is not about dogmatic practice but far more about understanding what transformation needs are in light of the present hybrid state (See below Lean Enterprise Agile SAFe 5.1 model)

In the Web 3.0-4.0 era, (Customer experience and data addicted should be evident) there is a doubling down again where we see the entry of robotic automation and AIML influenced Business Intelligence and emerging AIML-Data Operations. All on top of mobility and better enterprise services. The mix is by definition complex, often mirroring the matrix of internal functional capabilities in the organisation before we even start to perceive a solution or a path to enterprise Agility for any line of business. The need to be familiar with Digital stepping stones here is critical, and Change Management must be part of this transformation story. In complex systems Value delivery necessitates systems thinking, it is an agile hybrid, value delivery is Designed, it is iterative ( and messy at times) and it is not only the tech management down implementation of user stories. If it is programs will bleed outcomes and spinning of wheels will occur.

Creating services to meet these gaps in prioritisations

Very recently I have been shifting my viewpoint from Design and Product coaching to deepen my practices in Change Management as I help to grow another part of the Consulting Businesses in APAC region. That is, Digital Product Management with deepening recognition of some of the above in Digital Program Management, Change Management and Organisational Agility capabilities.? It has been another tier of learning in how we can avoid poor outcomes and open the minds of key influencers in organisations and programs. One reoccurring thought comes to mind with the above collection of influencing needs I mentioned above.

It is the lack of flexibility in integrated Digital Operations in scaled client organisations which has held enterprise back from being able to repeat their assess and pivot actions, the basics of Agile continual improvement. The sum of the parts often has not equalled the aspired set of outcomes. Meaning as the transformation and its many innovations mature there is a lack of visible, traceable understanding about how to bring innovations to life across the lifecycle of maturation. About seeing the dependencies in the emerging ecosystem (*System thinking approaches), about seeing the life-cycles of value functioning in their flows both macro and micro. It all points to the need for Scaled Agile planning life-cycles in Big room planning at the product level and along with it Performance measurement that not only looks at the user story points achieved in new automated delivery but also the value flow.

So what ... that's just Agile product management lifecycles, right?

It all points to enterprise learning opportunities not yet realised in the Customer Product Management vs Integrated operations landscapes

Getting back to Change Management in the digital era, many would argue that customer facing and business facing are not the same disciplines or outcome types at all. That Consumer facing and Employee/Services facing are light years apart. But as we see Digital approaches becoming more dominant for B2B apps and UX relevant for Employee Outcomes, I would argue that on the ground Digital Program activities and the challenges in services or internal channels need more iterative yet lean agile product sprints to keep up pace. Where user needs focused development is critical, with this more integrated and faster paced Change Management. Pointing to more Digitized Change Management approaches that engage as part of all Transformation programs, that fit to the agile needs, that evolve with time and that are continual in their approach.?

Within this framing there are many hidden gaps and more pitfalls aligned to the entrenched cultures and behaviours of organisations, processes and the key leaders cultures throughout organisations.? In the Workplace and employee transformations we see the opportunity to unpack the operational ontologies?that are so often a hyper-sensitive mesh of dependencies, often out of bounds or off limits. My experience here is that these limits where dependent or providing alternate pathways for process can kill or at least deplete outcomes realisation and adoption alike. These are often pitches as de-risking and in the end more frequently never retired and left in situ to undermine and add to business as usual costs.

Budgeting across these gaps drives the need for agility

'The great resignation' era we currently are in, in 'post COVID re-emergence'?easily aligns to the organisations whose non-realisation of?operational and employee outcomes sees significant gaps. Gaps that shape the very reasons why one would stay with an company or not.?After all, filling the gap, making the change is very much harder and fiscally challenging than most leaders estimate. Few of those leaders actually have reasonable?overhead budgets that do align to the long term challenges beyond a vendor product support phase.?No matter which side of the fence you sit, there are gaps. If you are not budgeting and doing procurement for outcomes you are off target. Especially right now in 2022!

As a services vendor it is particularly common to see that consultancies or services providers are procured to cost reduction strategies and that utilization numbers are the status quo. Embedded value is sold in these procurement cycles, but often seems a dream to buying client lines of business rather than a reality. Poorly understood and non-integrated Design to DevOps on the side of the client organisations leans towards transactions, capex and opex cycles, these being the marker of procurement and the mandate to get things done quickly. Often supersedes the change or transformation benefit outcomes case or the way the client organisation tracks value flow. (Google *Dora agile DevOps framework)

Switch to post COVID and great demand is motivating some very fast change ... so what we have learned at last?

In enterprise scenarios it is arguably competitive nature of viewpoints in enterprise management that holds up benefits. The changemakers hopefully see this and attempt to break the cycles by flattening to a more scaled Agile Organisational model, perhaps even pushing the big room planning and holdup up some of the strategic change agendas. In turn more agility, perhaps faster delivery life-cycles but has the aligned change management caught up. Is there a continual improvement approach in place that helps nurture the change, the training platform that automates self service needs intelligently and does this explicitly hook into the change network agents and leads for the programs of transformation with needs based design, behavioural outcomes and support to match. This in most cases is a very big leap from a communications plan, a microsite and some PDF documents.

In the Change Management?capability of yester year we have seen masses of program aspirations unrealised.? Bolt on change agendas sacrificed in?program approaches that met all of technology SLAs?driven by procurement checklists but not the value outcomes or the Human Centered adoptions and aspirations. This has literally seen Billions if not Trillions of dollars worth of program outcomes unrecognised in the ICT and Business landscape.

So why the Change Management GAP with legacy change approaches?

I see amazing passion in the Change Management community at the moment. In the past bolt on Change approaches have not really embraced the levers of digital agility or product innovation enough (in my view) and this type of Change program often tends to

• Deliver late start to change strategy
• Bolts on?to technology program which lacks end to end support or budgets
• Suffers under tightening KPIs in programs, which reduce even further
• Has many unrecognised and untreated behavioural and psychological insights
• Is often second rate on instructional design approach
• Skips real Change impact analysis
• Is reduced through weaker leadership Change commitments
• Uses underdeveloped Digital practices,
• Lacks benefits realisation measurement? in either Program or at the Portfolio level. This often stops post support. So not continuous in focus.
• Promotes slow culture growth and lacks diversity of viewpoints too

So where to for Change Management strategies

All Change Managers are now challenged to work in innovation, in design and in digital delivery where their roles are diversifying their toolkits improving and self service digitization/automation is the status quo.

The Future of Change Management approaches are Data & Experience Design driven for Business to Business and Business to Employee outcomes, for innovating from old to new. This is where Experience is the new and Data is the oil driving your engine, along the way people are recognised in both the Innovation Product journey and the Human centred delivery, success and failure stories to the learning benefits of the organisation. Of course effective organizational mapping and building Change networks is still a must but the focus on agile approaches to HCD and value through the network of change capabilities is a key differentiator.

In this future state, aligning human centred outcomes with stronger understanding of the key analytics and measurement activations are going to be enabling programs through the right, inclusive, diverse collaborations. These analytics baselines are operating guardrails that will change business, transform enterprises, impact societies and influence our collective sustainable futures. Here the likely levers of Change will lean to the use of more activated Machine Learning capabilities, and artificial intelligence influencing alongside the transforming value chains and business capabilities. For all Change Managers embedded in the innovation opportunities there is a pivot point, to also design and innovate for better solutions, to engage and advocate to better measurement supported outcomes earlier and as guardians to call out poorly aligned approaches.

Overall it is an exciting time to be collaboratively working in the now continuous mixing pot of Digital Acceleration, Human Centered Strategy, an un-ending portfolio of change agendas, with deeper Digital and Data driven problem solving. With this excitement and the market demands that accompany enterprise appetites in digital outcomes Change Management has a much bigger part to play. These changes are cultural, continual, transformative and very possibly without limit.

Hence in the broader fraternity of Change Management practitioners (behavioural and psychological expertise, Experience designers, Instructional trainers, Digital Program & Project managers and Agile coaches) will all lead the way in benefits realisations, in the adoption of new approaches that ensure a continuity in meaningful transformations of all types. In all organisations there are programs crying out for leadership it is Change Management that will have to stand up and be the glue that makes these new things stick, to bring together the many lenses and make clear what is more often than not complex and cloudy.

Finally as a guide of all Change leaders

Embrace the complexity in each and every program, lead with data, be agile and be more about continual improvement.

(Next: Effective use of Data in and beyond Change Programs for Benefits realisation.)

(References : https://acmpea.org.au/, Systems Thinking ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking, Google Dora Framework https://www.devops-research.com/research.html, Agile SAFe 5.1 ; https://www.scaledagileframework.com/)