Speaker #0Welcome to Ask Dr. Change. I'm Dr. Linda Ackerman-Anderson. I'm happy to have you join me today to explore how to seriously uplevel your leadership and consulting to transformational changes all through conscious change leadership. Welcome to today's episode. Beyond change management, what's required to lead transformational change? This is a really important episode. It's filled with information. I would actually recommend you listen to it a couple of times because there's so much guidance here. In some ways, it's cliff notes on what it takes to successfully lead transformational change. I want to begin with a number of questions for you to ponder. I'll go over each of the questions, but you may need time for each one. to ponder what the answers are for you individually. To begin with, what approaches does your organization use now to lead transformational change? Is it project management, change management, agile, organization development? What kinds of models and approaches are currently being used? And how successful are they? in leading transformational change to sustained business benefits. For you to take a very careful look at the success rate and how it relates to what the models are proposing being done. We're going to expand on those models significantly today. Another question for you is, are the same approaches used on all projects, no matter how complex they are, no matter how many unknowns there are? If the same models are used for a clear-cut project, it doesn't work in transformational change. I'll explain a bit about that as we go. What challenges are you experiencing early in the process? Is it set up for success early on before a project team is even named? Or how about late gaps in the process? That deployment takes place, but you Achievement of sustained business benefits doesn't. For you to really assess the full process of transformational change from the ignition, the light bulb goes on, we need to make a change, all the way through sustained business benefits. It's really essential to understand the full process. Do you get to influence the process from the very beginning? So often project management folks, change management folks. We come in at some point in the process, and we don't have an opportunity to influence it from the very beginning to set it up for success. Do you have influence until sustained business benefits are achieved? Now, here are some generalizations, and I really acknowledge they are generalizations. Project management typically starts at analyze to be able to come up with as smart as possible guesstimate. on scope, schedule, budget. It's still a guesstimate. Project management then continues until deployment, which I frequently call installation. It's not adoption. You know, the usual handover is to operations to then take it into adoption, but many times that actually does not work. So project management ends before sustained business benefits. Now, generalizations about change management. typically starts with communications and really focuses on stakeholder management all the way through to adoption. And hopefully if it's successful, you do get adoption. But I want to state unequivocally, more is needed to set up a project for success and to see it all the way through to sustain business benefits. I want to start today by sharing an understanding of how transformational change is very different than other types of change, than standard projects, developmental change, transitional change, and why the advanced approach of conscious change leadership is required. So I'm going to say a good bit about conscious change leadership, which is the extension, the expansion beyond project management, beyond change management. So what's important today is to think about how you would enact what I offer today. And again, I'm covering a lot of ground here. And so it's possible that a repeat or taking some notes on this, so you could really figure out how could you expand into these arenas. I want to begin by sharing how transformational change is different than standard projects, developmental or transitional changes. Transformation truly means achieving moving into a very different reality, a radical shift in both operations, but also culture and leadership and how work gets done in the organization. It is not an adjustment. It's not incremental. It's not minor. It's significant, particularly because uniquely it focuses equal attention on culture. mindset, and relationships, they also must transform to match the requirements of operations and technology. Now, it's really important to realize when I talk about culture, mindset, and relationships, this relates to leaders, not just the organization out there. Too often, we hear about leaders saying, go change them, make this happen in the organization, and they leave themselves out of the picture. That's not possible for transformational change to succeed. I'll go through a variety of ways that leaders need to lead differently because of the transformational changes they are asking of the organization. Transformation is emergent. Unlike projects, it doesn't have a defined future state before you begin to move into the change journey. That future state needs to be figured out. as you go. That's really key here and very different than a project management orientation. Therefore, you can't lead it on a predetermined, rigid timeline. Wow, a lot of leaders will be uncomfortable with that. How long is this going to take? How much is it going to cost me? In transformational change, too much is emergent, too many questions, too much uncertainty, and that's the reality of it. We can't pretend it's not. So challenging to leaders is that a lot of leaders want answers all the time. That doesn't exist in transformational change. The process needs to be defined, designed, so that it actually can come up with the answers as rapidly as possible. This is very challenging for leaders who would like to have the answers all the time. Transformation is unique in that without ready answers, the process needs to be done. to be designed to figure things out as you go. There's more question, more uncertainty, more chaos. Transformation is messy. Now, who wants to hear that as a leader? They don't. They'd rather say, okay, do it in a controlled way. Well, the two don't go hand in hand and transformation will fail. We really need to up-level our approaches to transformational change so that its requirements can truly be met. Unique in transformational change is the ability to rapidly course correct both the process and redefine or further put meat on the bones of the desired state as we go. Again, matching our knowledge base to what's showing up is really important. So there may be a series of plans, a series of adjustments, and that isn't a weakness. It's actually your ability to do so quickly. is a strength. In addition, what transformation requires in order to generate as much useful information as possible, it needs eyes on what's happening at all levels of the organization affected by that transformation. What's needed? What's required? What hasn't been attended to yet? Therefore, it's often the stakeholders on the front lines or lower ranks of the organization that are able to recognize that information. We need to set up the expectation for early and ongoing stakeholder communications, stakeholder engagement. Leaders, again, typically want to engage stakeholders when they have a ready answer for them. They need to adjust their view, their mindset about stakeholder engagement so that they can consider value what the stakeholders may be inputting. and deal with it effectively. That doesn't mean that leaders need to do it all the time, what stakeholders are suggesting, especially since frequently change is uncomfortable. So stakeholders may not want it to happen. But where new information that's of value is surfaced, leaders need to have a mechanism to address it. Therefore, unique in transformation is what we call rapid course correction at a strategic level, not an operational detail level. So an issue tracking system, while necessary for operational details of change, this is at a strategic level that something shows up that says this direction needs to be altered or a process can't go as designed. These are strategic issues. It demands a change leadership team that is fully in the saddle, not just in the bleachers watching what's happening. You know, so often when we've been asked to observe or evaluate an approach to change, both project management and change management, what we find is that the orientation to tools and data and analytics while helpful. is delivered to senior leaders or steering committee or change leadership team as data. And then it may surface issues and the leaders are left to say, well, do something with it, as opposed to take on the responsibility of figuring out what does this data say about what we want to have happen in this organization. One of the other really critical pieces, I mentioned this about transformational change. Is that not? just the content orientation of a good new future state, but it's driven equally by culture and mindset. Culture in the old state will keep the old state in place. Unless it is evaluated, we can identify what about the culture needs to change. What about our mindset needs to change? This needs to happen early so that it can be an effective part of the scope of change. From this point on, talking about culture and mindset of leaders is why we so strongly both introduce and rely on conscious change leadership. What do we mean there? We have a whole episode that Dean and I presented on more in-depth about conscious change leadership, but very briefly, conscious is having leaders pay full attention to the big picture. What's happening inside of them that is either in support of the transformational future or may inhibit it. They fully need to engage in transforming themselves as well as seeing all the dynamics happening in the organization and being able to strategically navigate them. The change part of conscious change leadership is being skilled in the design of the transformation as an emergent process. Now consider that most of our models are fairly lockstep. You do this and then you do this and then you do this. That's not necessarily the case in transformational change. We need to be paying attention and course correcting as new information shows up so that we can design a process that will actually get us from A to Z sustained business benefits. The leadership part of conscious change leadership. Is leaders developing themselves to model what it is they're asking of the organization? Moving from command and control, you out there, go do this, to actually seeing how they need to walk the talk differently, how they need to speak differently, relate differently, model differently what they're asking of the organization. So conscious change leadership, it's a full system to help support. transformational change to be successful. Now I want to mention a variety of challenges in how we lead changes now. I mention these because I want you to consider, do we have this going on in our change? Is this possibly something that's inhibiting us? Because the full approach to conscious change leadership will mitigate every single one of these challenges. So it's an extensive list. Here we go. First up, as I mentioned very early on the question, are all projects led the same way, despite the different needs, the different types, the different magnitudes? If that's the case, inevitably, you are dealing with some of the limitations when it comes to transformational change. As I also mentioned, frequently we see the change process starts late and ends early. We don't get out. our projects set up for success like we really need them to be, and we end before sustained business benefits are truly achieved and noted. Most projects will prioritize the content solution over and above the needs of people, the needs of the stakeholder, the needs of the culture, which inevitably produces a lot more resistance. Now, that may give a job to change management, but wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to design the change to reduce that resistance by an integrated strategy of both content and people? We often see sponsors very gung-ho to kick off the change, to make the big announcement, and then disappear. Hard to reach, hard to talk to, hard to actually engage in strategic navigation of the transformation. So developing sponsors to truly play that part, as I say, be in the saddle from beginning to end, not overburdening them, but playing their rightful role, really important. What we see so frequently with the orientation to content is that nobody is attending to culture, mindset, and behavior until maybe later. You know, I sometimes have asked when we have the opportunity to evaluate an approach to transformation, a project management or change management approach, who's attending to mindset? Well, some change management folks will say Oh, we have an evaluation. Do people want the change or not? That's how we attend to mindset. Wow. Okay. Important people want change or not. However, mindset goes so much deeper than that. So much about how people are viewing the organization, are viewing opportunity, are viewing what is being asked of them, not just stakeholders, but of leaders. So attention to mindset is really important. So often... Projects are initiated with top-down communications. That may happen sometimes in person with a massive PowerPoint deck. Sometimes it happens virtually with a video. However it goes, usually it is done in a way that, how do the leaders really know what landed? How do they know to what degree do stakeholders understand? Do stakeholders buy in? Understanding the human dynamic. When stakeholders first hear that a major change is afoot, there's no way they truly understand all of what it means. Immediate personal concerns show up. Do I have a job? What does this mean? Am I going to lose power? Et cetera, which gets in the way of their listening to understanding what the organization is doing and why. I mentioned earlier about an absence of attention to course correction. This is especially true when we have a... predetermined scope, schedule, and budget, and no opportunity to budge from it, that doesn't work in transformational change. So we need good guesses. I'm there. But we also need to have an open mind to how scope needs to be shifted, how budget may need to be shifted, and how the timetable may need to be shifted based upon the real work, not luxury, but the real work of transformation. So often we see... under attention to engagement of stakeholders and valuing their input. Maybe leaders consider them engaged because they ask them to attend the announcement. That's not engagement. Engagement is truly asking them what their best thinking is around what the future state needs to be or the best way of getting there. Inevitably, we find most organizations that have adopted both project management and change management. classically is that two project plans are created. The first one is around the project plan for the content solution, and then a separate plan from change management on a change management plan. And the two, you know, never the twain shall meet. Well, that doesn't work in transformation, given the depth of human dynamics required. And so what we really need is an integrated plan. That details both the content implementation, communications, training, addressing stakeholder needs, engaging stakeholders, supporting stakeholders to be successful. That also includes how we're going to address culture change in a tangible way so people really understand how the cultural norms need to be different. All of that in an integrated strategy. The one other thing I'll mention, and there are a variety of pieces to this, is how little attention is often given to good governance. Clear roles, clear decision making, clear interface with operations, who's in charge of what. Governance from the very beginning, before you ever create a project team, is absolutely an upfront necessity in transformation. We also under attend to leadership alignment, which typically looks like, do you all think this is a good change? Yes, head nod, But that doesn't give you alignment. That gives you head nod. So how do you get leaders to truly align with the journey of transformation? and sign up to be models of what it will take to see the transformation through to sustain business benefits. One other thing that is unique to our approach, it's simple and essential, is creating conditions for success up front. Every organization's been through so many changes. They know what works and what doesn't work. So taking a conscious approach to setting up what does work, and having the leaders not just say identifying them, but establishing them and monitoring them from the very beginning. This guidance influences what project teams do, how the organization will respond. So conditions for success, really essential. We have a whole episode on conditions for success. One of the other huge issues we see, and you will inevitably hear this in every single change effort is the organization's capacity to take. on the transformation, both from a leadership standpoint, as well as a stakeholder standpoint. Maybe too much is coming at them. They don't have the capacity to do this. But also from a project team standpoint, do they have the capacity to play the full role? So providing adequate capacity is an essential condition for success. One other thing that I'll mention to you is the need for you initiatives across sub-projects within a transformational umbrella. Many times we have so many things that are happening at once, and we don't have a way for them to work together, support each other, align with each other. So reducing redundancy, collisions, conflict, etc. So having an integration, a multiple project integration strategy, really important. So lots of issues you may have. you may be experiencing any number of these, which is all food for what you generate to get leaders' attention to actually lead differently. So here's a little bit about what conscious change leadership means in terms of expanding your approach and your role for how you contribute to leading a transformational change. It takes us far beyond the guesswork at scope, schedule, budget. It takes us far beyond the solution as the sole initial planning focus so that we embed attention to culture and mindset and our stakeholders' needs and readiness. It takes us beyond, from a change management perspective, stakeholder management. Now, while really valuable to address communications and training and some engagement tools and analytics, all of that's important. And more is required to get sustained adoption and sustained business benefits. One of the most important things in conscious change leadership is consciously designing the process from the very beginning. And so we have a smart launch. So we really are set up with clear governance, with clear case for change, a clear desired outcome or vision of what we're attempting to accomplish and clear structure. for how we're actually going to orchestrate the transformation. Consciously designing the process from the beginning. Again, not locking in. As I've said, it's not predetermined, but it's shaping based upon your best intelligence and then going from there, adjusting from there. As I mentioned, Conscious Change Leadership reports an integrated, unified change process and strategy that incorporates... The conscious attention to the content solution as well as the whole human dimension drama required in terms of stakeholder engagement, communications, training, setting stakeholders up for success from the beginning. I also mentioned, I want to repeat, it establishes conditions for success from the very beginning and a governance structure that runs in parallel with the ongoing organization and they work well in partnership as the transformation proceeds. We address mindset, behavior, and culture from the very beginning. ensuring that mindset, behavior, and culture meet the needs of the content solution. That's essential. So if we really think about the content solution through the lens of how does our culture inhibit it? How does our culture support it? How does our mindset align with what's required in the future or not? How about our behavior? How about our relationships? How about cross-boundary support. All kinds of things go into that bucket before we ever start the project planning process. So we know what we have to build in to the project plan. One of the other really early essential pieces of conscious change leadership is ensuring that all the leaders, both leading and affected by the transformation, are fully aligned with it. We do a whole alignment strategy before we actually launch. And it's not just aligning to a new future, it's aligning to go through the process, raising issues, supporting whatever is needed, being able to support the organization at a larger perspective, not just one's individual part or one's own political agenda, but supporting the organization's outcomes at a larger perspective, really essential in the alignment strategy. And lastly... I want to support that conscious change leadership embeds coaching of leaders so that they play their rightful role. It may just be the sponsor. It may be other executives. It may be other change leaders setting up their ability because transforming mindset and behavior doesn't happen overnight. Doesn't happen because you get the right words on the charge. It happens because people actually are looking at themselves. to understand how do I need to be different? How do I need to lead differently? That's what's really essential here. And coaching helps. Executive coaching is well-respected and it's essential for key change leaders. So the conscious change leadership approach is paradigm shifting. So here's an opportunity to look at just how much more you could be doing in your approach to change. It really focuses on having a clear cut from the very beginning, open relationship with the sponsor. Why is that needed? Sponsors need coaching. Sponsors need development. Sponsors need to understand conditions for success and what's required of them in the upstream stage of transformation. They are critical to getting a transformational change up and running from the very beginning. Our approach also focuses attention on a case for change. Why do we need to do this? What's in it for us to do this? Which takes us beyond the business case. Business case is the numbers, absolutely essential. But this is the motivation. What's compelling about this transformation that would be attractive to our organization, especially our stakeholders? That is driven by, is designed. to be a reflection of what we actually want to accomplish here. So what are our desired outcomes? What's our vision for the ideal future state we're all going for? This is what we call the big win. This is the ultimate of what everyone's contributing to. Really essential to understand the desired outcomes. So often project teams are launched without a clear idea of what they're actually achieving. It's more on a project. design or content design standpoint, as opposed to the real purpose, the real resulting condition that we want the organization to step into and thrive in when we're successful with a transformation. Conscious change leadership develops change strategy. This is also a separate episode in this podcast. What is a change strategy? Very different than a project plan. And so how do we strategically set up and navigate? this transformation. We are essentially providing guidance to the scope of change that includes both the content, which is always there, but also the people, the culture, the mindset, the behavior relationship work. So all embedded in scope from the beginning. That influences our timeline. Can't have a rigid timeline with transformation. It doesn't work that way. How long does it take people to actually alter their behavior, their relationships, their ways of thinking, their ways of supporting each other and the organization? So timeline also is adaptable. Again, not leisurely. but realistic. We focus a lot of attention on good governance and decision-making. We find it's one of the most critical issues that slows up or provides the foundation for redos because nobody knows who's on first. So good governance and decision-making is essential. I've already made the case for conditions for success. That's absolutely essential. Another key piece here is design requirements of the future state. This is really essential. What do your stakeholders have to say about what they think the future state needs to be designed to accomplish, the requirements it needs to meet? That's really important here. Design requirements using not just content experts, your SMEs, but also your stakeholders. I've emphasized attention to mindset, behavior, and culture as it relates to the future and your ability to influence those conversations early in the process. So do you have access to the leaders to address, raise the issues of culture, mindset, and behavior? Really important question because all of that is dependent upon leaders becoming models. of the future state. So having them take on a change leadership role, frequently they have a double hat. One hat is running the operation, another hat is running the change effort, the transformation. They need to be able to switch hats and realize that in both hats, they're modeling what they're asking of the organization. So really important to create an awareness and agreement and engagement and alignment with your leaders. about them becoming models and champions of the transformation. The other thing I want to mention about this approach is that it continues all the way through sustained business benefits. It doesn't stop after deployment. It doesn't stop after installation. It looks like on the surface we have adoption. It only ends when we really can evaluate, did we get what we intended to? And we understand how we got there. or what may have limited us so we can do better next time. So I've covered a lot of ground here. There's a lot of possibility for you extending, expanding your approach to change. I always promise you a pro tip. Today's pro tip is for you to think about your current status in the organization's ability to succeed at its change projects. Give that some thought. Do the same challenges show up over and over again? Is there awareness about those challenges, those patterns in senior leadership? Do you continue to repeat the same mistakes and do lots and lots of redos? I recall one effort I was asked in with a major utility in the United States. They were on redo number five. Well, a review of the prior four. led to absolutely the same patterns. And so how do you identify those patterns and realize we could be doing this very differently, which is what I was asked to come in and help them with. If you could identify and quantify the costs of repeating negative patterns, that's hugely impactful. That's a leverage point. And so how could you assess the quality, the current status of... the success of change? How could you raise issues with senior leaders so that they say, wow, we can't keep doing this the same way? That opens the door to having them have the conversation, hopefully making the decision to build the organization's change leadership skills so that the process it uses for transformational change Starts earlier, ends later, is more expansive, is more engaging than it ever was before. How could it build the organization's change leadership skills and approaches? We have so much guidance, like a number of things that I've talked about today. There's no need to keep making the same mistakes. It's actually foolish to think that we could continue to make change at the magnitude that's needed right now in the same way. Consider conscious change leadership and any element of it to expand your approach. Now, my personal reflection for you is how do you view your role right now? What influence you have? Do you find yourself always waiting to be asked in? Do you find yourself seeing opportunities for action but not having the voice or legitimacy to have them happen inside of a project or a project team? So any of these things are challenging to us. If you see high leverage opportunities, how could you actually create the opportunity going beyond classic project management, beyond classic change management into more of a conscious change leadership approach where you can make a greater contribution. How could you raise awareness of these things? I have talked in previous episodes about our strategy that's called questions that educate. How could you build in the data you've gathered or what you've observed, your perceptions into questions that allow project leaders, change leaders, sponsors to actually see the possibility. that you could deliver greater value if they're willing to take on more attention, more conscious thought. If they're willing to take on some of these expanded strategies to up their level of success. This work is possible. Many times when we have trained people, they say, that's not my role. That's not my position. I'm not in a position to do that. That's all mindset. Mindset is at play here. So part of your personal reflection is to listen to those internal voices, how they may support you or how they might limit you. And so I ask you, what of all of what we've talked about today is possible for you to expand your own approach and how to actually be known for, be seen as any of these options that will up-level the success of transformation in your organization? This work is possible, it's tried and true, and it may require some development on your part to actually understand how do I actually go about doing this. I hope you will undertake that challenge. Thanks for listening today, and I hope Conscious Change Leadership becomes your approach to transformation. Today's subject is one of the key topics that we feature in our leading Transformational Change online program. If you'd like to learn more about leading transformational change, go to beingfirst.com forward slash LTC. Thanks for spending some time with me today. I hope you gain some valuable insights for your work. Please send me your questions and challenges by going to askdoctorchange.com.
