Miniseries | Transformation, change & fatigue (5/7)
Transformation and changes initiative have been commonplace in modern enterprises for many years, and they are increasingly met with change fatigue. Its causes are complex, and understanding and addressing these causes requires understanding the most relevant challenges in transformation and change management (TCM). Participative change approaches were proposed to mitigate change fatigue. However, they can only be part of the solution, and instead of just looking isolated at certain process frameworks, principles, best practices, and critical success factors created and measured for transformation and change management an integrated map combining all learnings may help to design holistic transformation and change initiative reducing unnecessary change fatigue.
Previously published in this miniseries
Part 1 | Innate & acquired behavioral change drivers – Part 2 | Decision-making drivers – Part 3 | Modern work environments – Part 4 | Analyzing and monitoring change needs
Part 5 | Participative change approach & change fatigue.
The goals of a participative approach are to enable consistent, efficient, and fast transformation and changes initiatives, by addressing risks created in traditional top-down transformation and change management approaches e.g., wasted time and efforts, change resistance, change fatigue, unsuccessful change efforts, and oversimplification leading to catastrophic failure However, most leaders believe top-down transformation and change management drives the above noted goals and avoids these very risks. A would be Adopting a participative transformation and change management approach e.g., via co-created change strategies, employee-owned implementation planning, and two-way communication could be a chance to resolve these challenges.[1, 5]
Co-creating change strategies. It is hard for leaders to determine who to include in the decision-making process and how to do it. Teaching leaders how to include the right people at the right moment and in the right manner for co-creating change strategies would be a middle ground between including everyone or no one. This could be accomplished by enabling organizations to track and coordinate change initiatives throughout the enterprise, to and manage pace, durations, and phasing of change, and to prevent or reduce change fatigue; by providing leaders with a ‘Change Enablement Toolkit’ containing methods like soliciting feedback on gaps between the leader’s vision and reality, like targeted questionnaires enabling leaders to decide which employees to include in decision-making, and like using experienced-based metrics for change success to instill trust and to drive adoption; and by enabling managers and employees in holistically diagnosing change needs, in anticipating change effects on different employee groups, in diagnosing fixed mindsets and behaviors, and in promoting experimentation.[1, 3, 5, 7]
Employee-owned implementation planning. Implementation planning is predominantly done top-down, while the likelihood of failed implementation increases the further away from employees day-to-day it happens. Shifting change implementation planning to the workforce, with senior leaders and middle management just supporting, could mitigate here. To drive employee ownership of change implementation managers and employees could be enabled on employee-ownership drivers’, on confident implementation decision-making, on developing and communicating compelling change cases, on implementing evidence-based interventions, on assessing change readiness, on measuring deployment and adoption outcome-focused and employee-centric, and on institutionalizing change.[1, 5, 6]
Two-way communication. Top-down communication that focuses on iteratively telling employees a positive story with a clear and consistent message was shown to have no significant impact on change success. Establishing two-way communication to improve employees understanding of change by supporting peer-to-peer interactions, by allowing room for building dialog, for expressing and addressing negative emotions openly and can help them to move one from related negative emotions and finally to embrace it. To accomplish this questionnaire-based communication planning, change reaction workshops, questionnaire-based action plans or a guide for personalized change action planning could be employed.[1-4]
In summary, the key to successful transformation and change management seems to lie in encouraging and enabling collaboration and compassion,
Derived TCM challenges:
(12) Avoiding change management approaches that create waste, change resistant, fatigue, that fail or lead to catastrophic (company) failure
(13) Determining who to include in the decision-making process and how to do it.
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(14) Including employees involved in day-to-day work in change implementation.
(15) Communicating about changes in an upfront, honest, and dialogic fashion.
References
[1.]???CEB Corporate Leadership Council, A. Kissel, B. Kropp, L. Johnson, A. Brinegar, A. Joseph-Little, C. Kang, M. Stengel, B. Horstmann, M. Chiu, C. Dutkiewicz, N. Daniels, B. Fritz, R. Griffler, and S. Ashwell. Open Source Change - Making Change Management Work CEB, Inc., (2016) CLC163221PRINT link.
[2.]???HR Practitioner Research Team. Ignition Guide to Building a Change Communication Plan (updated 2020).?Gartner, Inc., (2019).
[3.]???Adnams, S. and S.S. Mohal. Lead Change by Building Leadership, People and Process Capabilities (updated 2023).?Gartner, Inc., (2021).
[4.]???Human Resources Research Team. Ignition Guide to Successful Change Management.?Gartner, Inc., (2022).
[5.]???Human Resources Research Team. Bolster Your Change Initiative Success With Open-Source Change Management.?Gartner, Inc., (2022).
[6.]???Hancocks;, M., D.S. Reina;, N. Solanki;, and A. Roy;. The 12 Principles Every Organizational Change Needs to Succeed.?Gartner, Inc., (2022).
[7.]???Human Resources Research Team. Drive Change Management Success With an Open-Source Approach?(updated 2022).?Gartner, Inc., (2020).
[Contents were developed and edited by myself, in April, May & Juli 2023 for publication in form of seven LinkedIn articles. I adapted and extended here a work paper submitted this May for my MBA’s extended elective on transformation & change management. The section sequence was changed and part 4 & 7 are new additions.]