SPARE YOUR PEOPLE FROM THE FATALITIES OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT, GO FOR BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION INSTEAD!

It is hard to ignore the breakneck speed of change and dynamic rigors of uncertainty.  

Yes. Leaders have a million items pilling up. We are hard pressed for time and under pressure to squeeze every drop of efficiency in gearing our business to the next level of success.  

In our busyness, we fail to account for staff members, who are struggling to keep up. Being part of a dynamic organization ecosystem, staff members can get lost when your management has bold ambitions to go beyond incremental change.  

Staff members may feel sidelined when their leaders are rethinking business and operating models to deliver breakthrough value, as proposed by Deloitte (2016). 

Caught between the devil of uncertainty and the big blue sea of change, leaders and teams may not share the same enthusiasm toward a change opportunity.  

Despite business transformation appearing above the corporate radar of late, leaders, managers, management consultants (inclusive of change managers) and HR practitioners were already involved in transformation under the guise of change management for many decades.  And more should be done for the fuzzy side of people management under the business transformation banner.

Perish or Prevail: The People Proposition 

Many leaders and management consultants still prefer either one of change management or business transformation. Both seems ideal for organizations to propel beyond existing challenges. However, research findings do not favor a high success rate for both.  

 Would you believe that “Years of research on business transformation have shown that the success rate for these efforts is consistently low: less than 30% succeed” (McKinsey & Company, 2017).  

That is surprising when you read about organizations tirelessly jumping on the change management bandwagon to increase the company’s competitiveness in order to ensure its survival (InsideBoard, 2018).  Some may even hold a belief that purposefully change is a cycle of continuous improvement.

Unpredictable quantum of change can send your staff members feeling out of touch from the business-as-usual routines.   

Changing to Transform or Transform with Change?  

Consider that Deloitte (2016) preached about business transformation to involve “strategic decisions that affect where you’ll grow, how your organization operates, and what kinds of performance improvements you can expect.”  Precisely for Wanda, she came into the global education institution to ease the organization to enter a digital age in service to customers.  

 A change consultant seasoned with countless international transformation projects, she bagged the lucrative deal on the backbone of “Employees must therefore receive personal support and guidance, whether the transformation impacts the organization, management, corporate culture, IS or business processes” (InsideBoard, 2018).  

Confident and assured, Wanda acted like many change experts following a bagful of change management tools gleaned from years of business experience and people management skills. 

All is possible on paper, as Wanda would attest at the beginning of her change management journey. 

The first six months witnessed Wanda meeting with leaders for strategic planning and roll-out decisions, conducting focus group with selected staff nominated by the senior leaders, and rallying the troops of employees from every organization level. She preached tirelessly about a new way of working to teams at each social event from townhalls to birthday bashes. Wanda was gaining confidence as the months passed.   

All appeared well until she noticed a disturbing trend of fire-fighting during business as usual when teams were forced to commit to the change project at the same time.  

Somehow, the frenzied pace of change initiated by Wanda lost steam after seven months. Nearly, it halted to a stop. 

Growing frustration from staff members went unnoticed because Wanda, as the change expert experienced in numerous change management processes, chose to concentrate fully on “helping” to reign in digital technology to the client’s organization.  

Several teams echoed a common concern about Wanda and the management focused too much time on near-term results of change in executing a seemingly endless list of tasks and projects in an ever-increasingly complex and matrixed business environment. 

Cries of burn out went unheard. Done differently against business transformation, Wanda had adopted a top-down change management approach that expected a selection of senior leaders and managers to represent the voice of lower-level team members.  

Over a series of meetings with senior management, Wanda like most consultants, would rather focus on the easier road of reformulating SOPs, launching user guides, acquiring teamworking systems, and automating repeatable tasks. Senior leaders work with Wanda on tweaking high level structural constructs. 

Unfortunately for Wanda, she was the last person to notice the signs of people being left behind in the business transformation exercise.  

Many staff members quit from the change project, either by resigning or tuning-off altogether. Before long, Wanda’s change management project paused to a standstill. 

Lessons Learned  

Countless publications cited for business transformation that “Since its success is closely linked to the commitment, engagement and empowerment of the employees involved; it is imperative that they are placed at the heart of the transformation project (InsideBoard, 2018).   

Dismayed with mounting delays with change project timelines, Wanda, as with many other change specialists, can revisit a change management project from a business transformation lens by drawing from several fields of Human Resources Development and Human Performance Technology.  

Right At The Beginning

As a change specialist, Wanda mistaken change management to interchange with business transformation, although, both are more different than similar. 

It is here that self-proclaimed change maestros can tripped on overconfidence in managing change for business transformation.  

Absence of a formal shared understanding about her project, Wanda realized some leaders and teams expected any one the following: change project, a people transformation exercise, a transition, a cost-cutting exercise and that was to name a few. Missing round-table discussions with senior leaders, Wanda jumped straight into the project, unaware of the potential discord later on.  

Confusion colored many of Wanda’s meetings when ideas and discussions went like a merry-go-round. Back and forth shuffling was a norm with a few leaders in decision paralysis.   

She was still caught off-guard when it dawned that everyone had different understanding of the change exercise.   

Upon discovering the multiple definitions, Wanda figured that the ship had sailed for the leaders and team to be on the same page.   

Defining the project from the leaders’ and teams’ point of view was important in order to avoid different levels of effort, conflicting measurement of milestones, and vastly different implementation ways.  

By definitions alone, change management is known as structured methods and manners in which a company describes and implements change within both its internal and external processes (ASQ., 2021). All teams are disciplined to observe stages of change so that change consultants can quantify the results as the project progresses.   

The other perspective that Wanda could pitch for “Business transformation is all about identifying techniques, new processes and technologies that aren’t being used to their maximum capacity. It requires understanding about how alternate solutions can be applied to further gain market share, increase revenue and customer satisfaction or reduce operating costs” (Smarp, 2021).   

In fact, business transformation serves to arrest the decline found by Innosight’s (2017) survey about the shrinking lifespans of companies of S&P 500 companies caused by “a complex combination of technology shifts and economic shocks, some of which are beyond the control of corporate leaders." Wise executives should rightfully recognize the need to respond in turn. 

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Differing Expectations of Outcomes 

Senior management set change management as the priority for Wanda to drive throughout the whole organization. Past successes in change management narrowed Wanda’s focus on executing sporadic and standalone mini-projects from a standard change management toolkit. She repeated past change initiatives with clear-cut to-do lists and one-dimensional execution of defined deadlines. 

Sole emphasis by Wanda and top management was meeting milestones at team level. Staff members were caught with day-to-day job while adding hours to pull off the change project at the same time. Team meetings are peppered with ad-hoc motivational message. Future details were lacking to prepare the team to feel reassured on the next course of direction of the project.  

The cookie-cutter approach prescribed by Wanda left little room to improvise the change game-plan.  

Top management and leaders were constantly reminding Wanda and team members that senior management and steering committees were in direct control. Key message is about predictable change management process typical of a change maestro's toolbox. In time, the team members lose steam to follow the change project.  

Teams are bogged down with mountains of work that are disconnected under separate change initiatives like setting up sub-teams to deal with revising department level performance development, shifting from HQ centralized to department decentralized administration, installing a new ERP system from the parent company overseas, and utilizing new technology-based team productivity tools.  

In short, Wanda was running a shopping list of separate items to achieve. And, everyone had different and opposing opinions about how to fulfill the list.

Changing Parts Prevent Transforming Whole 

Current uncertain business conditions prevent a selective change management approach because any number of successful executions under certain change initiatives within the overall business transformation portfolio could still end up with a loss for the overall transformation exercise. For instance, customer complaint resolution training would not increase the overall customer service score without a responsive service delivery system.  This is similar to a competent driver struggling to win a race with an outdated vehicle model when running on a best-in-class fuel comparative to competitors.  

Unlike change management exercise, business transformation refrain from running a few discrete and well-defined shifts at structural level. Rather, business transformation presents a carefully thought-out portfolio of team initiatives.  

High stakes and compressed deadlines are acknowledged with a transparent blueprint laying out the interdependent or intersecting relationship. An alternative example for Wanda can appear as project matrix chart produced through a design thinking session. This step is crucial to obtain diverse feedback from a multi-level group of top management, leaders, managers, supervisors, and staff members.  

More importantly at the start of the business transformation project, the whole organization is clear about the overall goal of transformation. Expanding this with Wanda’s project is about aiming to reinvent and innovate at the same time. She should be open to extend out of a defined sequential change route. In this way, the business transformation of an organization leads the staff members on a people development journey of discovery that trains on coping with unpredictability. 

In short, a successful change management impacts on a limited number of tasks when compared with overall transformation of the business leading to a reimagined portfolio of services and solutions. Experimental nature of business transformation portfolio entails higher risk, although, its returns are also higher than a defined change effort. 

People Focused Transformation 

Strategic leaders devising conceptual components throughout a defined change journey tend to forget various physical pathways forged by the ground level staff. More often than not, all roads driven by the staff members do not reach a same destination determined by senior management.  

In Wanda’s case, senior leaders concentrated on an overarching change management approach from an ivory tower.  They preferred staying at an-arm's length instead of understanding the enormous number of tasks created, debated, and tracked in Asana or Trello project management platforms. Senior leaders and steering committee turned a deaf ear to staff members’ feedback.  

Drawing from Wanda’s case study, the change management was circling around forming a new business structure based on a new way of working for staff members. This departs from a business transformation of echoing “The people power of transformations”, as mentioned by McKinsey & Company (2017, February 10).  

People component at the operational levels were forgotten. The spotlight was eyeing on structural change. Strategic helicopter view focusing on a new organization structure filled every senior management meeting.  

No matter how much Wanda sold the concept of a new way of working as the change management theme, there was no attitude change because the staff members saw the superficial change exercise as removed from the realities of work. 

While structural change like revising organization setup and carving new positions have lower risk of failure, they are cosmetic facelift much like a new coat of paint on an old building.  

The trade-off for exterior change is organizational efficiency remains stagnant or deteriorate. In essence of the changing the structure of a company, staff members remain operating the same ways as before.  

Expecting staff members playing an old game in a new playground to achieve better outcomes is simply insufficient foresight. 

Broad changes by leaders to the operating structure can be disruptive for ground level staff. Contrary to Wanda’s belief, any change project should have a business transformation angle in line with McKinsey & Company’s (2017, February 10) survey that suggested for business transformations to succeed, the “organizations need employee buy-in at all levels, consistent communication, and better people strategies.”  

Paying attention to the challenge of undergoing significant organizational changes, a business transformationalist recognizes cooperation from various quarters in an organization. Less mechanical than a change management exercise is the business transformation of dealing with “identifying techniques, new processes and technologies that aren't being used to their maximum capacity” (Smarp, 2021).   

Cascading from a flexible perspective of growth mindset in possibilities, business transformation strives on opportunities and improvement. Everyone chips in to work as a team when transitioning to a new way of working, despite their organizational levels.  

People build the foundation for creativity and innovation. Both intellectual assets are ingredients in the recipe to transform your business. Being inclusive of everyone minimizes alienating any particular group of staff from contributing, even at the lowest levels. Disregarding the people transitioning component in a business transformation causes more peril than promise of success. 

Cues and Signs of Fatal Miscommunication 

The human factor is often overlooked in a change initiative. Even for an expert like Wanda, she misread the one-dimensional signal of “healthy, real and predictable reactions of normal people to disturbance of their routines.” Addressing observable team behaviors like anger and frustration caused Wanda to miss her own point that effective communication is one of the most important success factors for change management. 

Over time, Wanda realized a widening communication gap when tasks remained unfinished at the ground level. After a series of meetings at a much later stage, Wanda was horrified that change messages were filtered or miscommunicated from the management to operations teams. Left unchecked in Wanda’s case, her communication setback caused a change management project to run its own course towards a sorrowful demise.   

Speculations about a widening rift between management and staff members were hidden and left unmentioned in Wanda’s meeting. Feedback and comments were reserved to positive comments glorifying the strategic change framework. Moreover, Wanda and top management distaste any negative thoughts. Ruffling their feathers were the last on the staff members' minds.

Focusing on tasks to work in a new way harms the change project if the people development component is neglected. 

The best executors of change for short-term success are the staff member while a culture of transformation carried by the staff guarantees long-term transformation sustainability. 

Whereas, business transformation exercise carries across the dynamic nature of communication for effective engagement and alignment between people involved. Not all of business transformation efforts are of equal impact. 

Digging under the tip of an iceberg can assist Wanda to pry open the seldom seen bigger portion of underlying emotions and intentions contributing to human-centered innovation in a business transformation.  

Business transformation handles the lack of employee communication, engagement and alignment with the new goals, as these are the main reasons for its high failure rate (Smarp, 2021). An example, a group meeting conducted by Wanda with senior leaders concluded with agreement that did not last. Afterwards, Wanda was shot with individual emails from the participants disagreeing on the proposal discussed earlier. Backpedaling a mutually agreed outcome is a waste of time and resources. Only if Wanda had watch out for signs of disengagement pushed by the invisible forces from political interference. 

With little attention to certain cues or signs of discontent exhibited by employees, Wanda was oblivious to the complexity of people relations that side-railed her project. If Wanda started with setting the stage the teams to use the right language of transformation, she would have gone beyond preaching passionately to practice progressively in real life about the mantra of turning into a digital powerhouse to harmonize machine and workforce.  

In conclusion, change management blended together with business transformation gains the organization a strategic sustainable transformation to execute a well-connected and tightly coordinated portfolio of balancing business, people, and technological initiatives through a carefully constructed game plan involving the whole organization.  

* This article was inspired by M.WS, a senior consultant.

References 

ASQ. (2021) What is Change Management? Organizational, Process, Definition & Tools Retrieved February 7, 2021 from Asq.org website: https://asq.org/quality-resources/change-management 

Deloitte. (2016). Thinking big with business transformation Six keys to unlocking breakthrough value. Retrieved from https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/process-and-operations/us-sdt-think-big-business-transformation.pdf 

Innosight (2017). Corporate Longevity Forecast: Creative Destruction is Accelerating. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from Innosight website: https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/ 

InsideBoard (2018) The 5 Types of Business Transformation. (2018, November 29). Retrieved February 7, 2021 from website: https://www.insideboard.com/blog/the-5-types-of-business-transformations/ 

McKinsey & Company (2017, February 10) The people power of transformations. Retrieved : https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-people-power-of-transformations# 

Smarp (2021) Business Transformation in 2021: The Guide for Successful Implementation. Retrieved February 7, 2021, from Smarp.com website: https://blog.smarp.com/business-transformation-2020-guide 

 Zaillian, S., Sorkin, A., Chervin, S., & Lewis, M. (2011, September 23). Moneyball. Retrieved February 7, 2021, from IMDb website: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/ 

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Wong Siong Lai

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