Changing complex systems
Part 2: Planning the Change
by Elena Bondareva
In Part 1: The Building Blocks of Systems Change, I introduced the discussion of why most attempts and transformational change fail. Today, I offer another reason: rarely is change strategically planned.
At some point, the entire scope of change was relegated to change management. Don’t get me wrong, change management is vital: we can and must step people through what they cannot control. However, I am here to advocate for the other, the invisible and underappreciated, discipline of front-end change design.
What is “change design”?
Change Design is the front-end strategy. You need to define – as meticulously as a tennis coach would pinpoint the precise angle of a player’s wrist – what behavioural change you seek. Like with the tennis player, it is gravely insufficient to think that a shift in understanding, motivation, or reps is sufficient; in fact, a coach who merely repeats why a player should do better isn’t staying in business long. Behaviour is key here. What exactly is a person doing differently in that future scenario where your solution exists? How does that change their day and their ability to manage everything on their plate?
Once you have defined that for every impacted population, you have your “change impact assessment,” an output I urge you to get to while you are still thinking about your solution so that it is a two-way feedback mechanism, not the traditionally static brief for “change management.” Your brief: challenge your solution and everything that goes with and around to make change desirable and seamless.
In other words, Change Design strives to eliminate the need for an ‘instructions manual’ through clarity, functionality, and an intuitive user interface.
In essence, a change follows the law of physics: for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, a change strategy is as effective as its ability to apply the right amount of effort at every point of resistance.
A change strategy is like a moving quote: the moving company would match the vehicle, packing material and support personnel to the volume and mass of the load as well as any of its regularities and fragilities. You may need to move a few boxes (and a hand cart will do), a moderate but oddly shaped load (for a truck) or several fragile truckloads. Your further expense would, of course, depend on how far you have to go. Unlike with moving possessions – which tend to stay where you take them – change programs come with an additional risk of reverting to previous state because old habits die hard. It is one thing to make the change happen once; it is a whole other challenge to get it to stick. Which is why embedding change across systems, people, and technology is essential to our approach.
Only once you have exhausted the power of change design do you resort to change management, ensuring that stakeholders are supported wherever it’s bound to experience discomfort through the transition to the new behavior.
A tip from my practice
If you cannot do anything else, give people a choice.
When designing a whole-of-business transformation for a media company with 400 locations, I advocated for a choice of a PC or apple laptop – even though the iOS would be overridden. I was also able to convert the $60/pp for the obligatory OH&S backpack that would have been collective dust into an individual budget, and built a marketplace where each employee chose from dozens of bags, backpacks, skins, sleeves, and other personalization accessories that made their transition to activities-based working both more palatable and exciting.
What defines robust change design?
In our experience, successful change programs tend to possess the following characteristics:
Invisible: the best Change Programs eliminate the need for activities traditionally associated with change management because they intervene at the highest possible leverage points, enable the Executive to lead and support the organization, make the desired behavior intuitive, seamlessly mitigate risk, and result in transitions that are organic rather than disruptive, for the leadership as well as for the most impacted end-users.
Precise: there is a historically established view that change management is ‘soft’, barely accountable, and difficult to evaluate beyond anecdotal satisfaction surveys, but it can be built up from evidence, offer ‘blinders off’ clarity (and thus control) of the project, focus on the precise behaviours that must change, keep time and expenditure focused, and report on impact.
Consolidating: the best Change Programs do not result in a culture drift and loss of talent. Rather, they shape a shared story and further organizational goals within and alongside delivering the project, they build desired values and keep the ‘good eggs’ amongst the workforce and processes, as well as leave replicable capability for growth within the organization.
Thorough: the best Change Programs make it their business to identify the entire impact from the project, including the ripples of recalibration that may need to occur across systems, policies and protocols in order to prevent ‘reverting to type’ and protect the organization from derailment due to avoidable issues.
Actionable: the best Change Programs can be put to the test right away, logically splitting into workloads and deploying a range of effective feedback loops all the while protecting the strategic core and monitoring progress. Most visibly, they drive the project story, told in the vernacular of each stakeholder group and preventing a distracting cacophony of ideas.
Compelling: the best Change Programs are self-explanatory and make a strong case for any sought investment, communicate in the way that stakeholders want to be engaged, and create desire – not just a sense of obligation or, worse yet, guilt – to act in the ways that are necessary for success.
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