Change isn’t going away, and the ability to respond to a myriad of competing demands and priorities, and change the way we work for our communities is fast becoming core business. Yet this is happening at a time when resources are most stretched. Many organisations have been forced to reduce corporate and generic change and transformation teams, and yet ‘business as usual’ managers are also stretched, with increasing workloads. So how do you do the 'change' work?
In our experience, leaders can often underestimate the level of work doing change well requires. Even for a simple restructure, there are a range of tasks: analysis, design, consultation, re-writing job descriptions, engagement and communication.
Within this challenging context, how do we do the change work? If you’re in this position there’s 3 things you need to consider:
Skill
Being equipped to deliver change well and efficiently is a skill set, and one that historically we might not have done enough to build. When we train managers we often train them in the importance of consistency and stability, whereas change requires creativity, risk and those who are comfortable without stability. We often find ourselves needing to buy in specialists as our business leaders are simply out of their depth and comfort zone. While this is a good temporary solution, I strongly advise considering how you build those skills in house. As I said earlier, change is here to stay.
Some key skills for change leaders are:
- Good general management skills
- People skills – they need to be comfortable with engagement
- Initiative and ability to take action
- Comfortable with uncertainty
- Experienced in change environments
- Can challenge the norm in a healthy way
Capacity
Often we work with organisations who may well have the skill, and know what needs to change, but simply don’t have the capacity. If this resonates then you need to consider a range of options:
- Can you buy in specialists? They will provide new thinking and much needed resource. Interim management and consultancy are the most common routes for this.
- Can you build an internal team? I’ve worked in a number of organisations that have had internal change teams which can be deployed around the organisation to work on projects when needed.
- Can you back fill existing staff to free them up to work on change? This can work well where you need subject matter expertise in a change programme, but can be challenging where your internal staff do not have experience of change
- Can you take the best of all options? A hybrid approach which includes some specialists, some internal resource, and some from the business area often works best.
Culture
If you’re looking ahead and seeing a lot of change in the pipeline, it’s very important to consider your culture. Having a culture within your organisation that is pro change, action focussed, agile and reactive will enable you to drive change at pace with less resource. It’s amazing how much resource can be tied up in lengthy governance, managing resistance and stakeholders who aren’t on board, and following process. Change your culture and you’ll find lots of this resource freed up! For more information about our approach to culture mapping click HERE.
Some practical hints and tips for managing your change resource well:
- Prioritise. I know this is easier said that done! But if you’re struggling for resource to deliver change well conduct a quick audit of what change activity you have going on around the organisation. I have seen local authorities halve their list of projects doing this exercise.
- Consider long term and short term projects. We often tie a lot of resource up in long term transformation programmes, and neglect shorter term projects which can provide us with quick wins.
- Invest in the skill of your managers. Change is now business as usual, and we need all managers and leaders to have a reasonable level of skill and ability to drive change. Investing in this group will reduce resistance and allow you to harness their existing knowledge and skill to drive change more effectively.
- Ensure you build in flexibility. Change programmes are difficult to predict (despite our best efforts of programme management!) and you are likely to need different skills and capacity at different times.
- Critically challenge all governance and process. Of course we absolutely need it, but don’t fall into the habit of sleep walking into processes and governance that will tie up resource without value.
Want to know more about how to resource change well? Why not get in touch with Trueman Change to discuss your change and transformation plans? We're always here to help!
