To Compose a Change Management Symphony: Think About People

Change is hard. At least that’s what we’ve been told. But it does not need to be that way, nor should it be the norm!  Pushback is a natural response to big change (this is especially true for Data & Analytics projects). “We don’t have the data!” “It’s going to take years!” It is very easy for organizations to get trapped in their own data quicksand. I say don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. An agent for change has to think in positive terms and cheerlead for change.

Often we spend a lot of time on process frameworks for change management. In my view, it’s more important to have a human framework for rolling out change. With this in mind, here are a couple of suggestions that I hope will start a conversation about the soft side of change management, which, in my view, is the most important aspect.   

Empathy

Empathy means the difference between inflicting an application or data product on users, and delivering something that will be embraced with enthusiasm. Empathy means you have a model of what users want that is at least as sophisticated as your understanding of the product you are promoting. Isn’t that the core of design thinking?

How do we know if we are being empathetic? The word is used a lot in business contexts, but sometimes it’s not put into practice. Listening to people and nodding your head isn’t really empathy. In my view, being empathic means evolving your ideas based on the input you get from the people who have to live with those changes. It doesn’t mean you have to rework all of your plans, but it is beneficial to hear what people have to say and use their input to fine-tune your plans. 

If, in rolling out a project, you made no adjustments based on user feedback, either you’ve amazingly created a product with perfect product/market fit on the first try, or maybe you didn’t really employ empathy. Right?

In a previous blog, we explored the importance of designing intelligent experiences. Empathy is at the heart of those experiences. Someone who works for you is going to have to use this software. Whatever you send their way needs to make them better, more efficient, more productive, and more effective. Shrug off the usual technology-first, systems view and instead take a people-first perspective. More often than not, if you think in terms of people, everything else will fall into place.

Agility

Since empathy requires a willingness to adapt, you need a malleable approach that supports iteration. One of the biggest reasons people dread change is not because they don’t want change, but because it takes so darn long. 

It’s not that you have to deliver the perfect solution from the start. Everyone knows that won’t happen on day one. They just hate the idea of being stuck with suboptimal processes and products while the company spends years working toward some kind of utopian vision. It’s why the people who have real work to do every day fire up Excel rather than trying to deal with the latest work-in-progress.

The big proof of concept idea that got the executive team excited is something to work toward. However, there are lessons to be learned along the way to this achievement. A better way to get there is through incremental goals that let end users feel good and see success quickly while at the same time enabling iteration. 

Take Year Up, an organization that provides young urban adults with the skills, experience, and support to go from a high school degree to a career or college in just one year. They turned to Einstein Analytics to better measure success and drive outcomes than they’d been unable to achieve using dated spreadsheet reporting. 

One comment from Year Up CIO Jim Thie stands out: “Fast iteration is key. We are able to get the dashboards out quickly and make necessary adjustments so they are useful for our employees.” An important takeaway is that rapid success reverberates across the entire organization. Such agility helps invest everyone in the process and drives engagement toward larger goals.

There are numerous proven approaches to agile development management, and most of them provide ample space for this kind of thinking. They embrace inquiry and critique. Using Scrum to support innovation, an idea nicely summarized here, is just one example. The important thing is to plan for agility from day one and use your chosen framework to accelerate change management. Getting the flywheel of progress going is the most important thing. Don’t worry about the potential for mistakes; just get started.

Finally there is this one last thing  -- the need to really internalize that you alone do not have all the ideas and answers. No wonder this article feels incomplete. I often say, "All my best ideas are not mine." Which leads me to a question: what suggestions do you have to share about the human elements of successful change management?

Help me complete this piece. Together let’s compose the "Change Motivation Symphony." Jump into the comments and add your ideas.