Process or People - helping change happen.

There is a really interesting discussion in a forum to which I subscribe about organisational change, under the general title of “What is missing”. It got my juices flowing, so here are some of my thoughts on the topic…

I find myself yawning at those change practitioners who go on about Change Project Management, Business Cases, n-Step Processes and anything to do with the hard/systems/processes/procedures/models aspects of change. This stuff is at the easy end of the spectrum - it's essentially a technical issue and in the arena of 'puzzles', ultimately solveable.
I label proponents of such programmed approaches the "it's Thursday, so it must be Module 17b" merchants.

Conversely, my juices flow when anyone considers the people involved (do you know, I almost used the phrase 'wetware' but that soooo... degrades the people to an abstract concept and misses the point!). It's the people that are the real, and un-programmable, challenge. We all have our different motivations, propensities towards change, desires for involvement, abilities/desires to learn, etc and any change wallah (let's not get back into manager or leader!) who fails to address the different needs of every single individual involved in or associated with the change faces an uphill and potentially disastrous challenge. I vividly remember upsetting a newish MD who spouted to the workforce about the changes he was going to make before being challenged along the lines of "Well, that is what you want, what you will get is what the 4500 employees are prepared to give you" (I said it and we never really saw eye-to-eye thereafter!).

So, I would like to see MUCH more attention paid to how to work effectively with the humans in the system - they can and will deliver the change when they understand and feel the imperative for change, when they understand and feel what is in it for them and when they have a real change to be involved in designing and delivering the parts of the change that interest and/or affect them.
I have learned to 'do what I can, where I can, when I can', working with whoever is willing and able at the time to move the agenda forward. One willing partner is worth a hundred unwillingly donkeys.

Change is not a linear process, progress very rarely follows a predeterminable plan, it often runs across rocky territory, meeting unexpected obstacles along the way. It's fairly straightforward to produce a Work Breakdown Structure and a Gantt Chart for designing a piece of software (which, BTW is NOT change management despite what many IT guys woudl claim!)or even redesigning a business process. What is a lot more difficult (dare I say impossible?) is anticipating and planning for the many different people issues that will emerge at different times throughout the process. Yes, there will be some resistance, but I cannot say it will appear in Week 17 and be handled using Process #27 with a duration of 3 weeks; it will appear when it appears, at different times from different people (even in respect of the same technical change). Which is not to say that planning is not important – it’s the plan that isn’t.

The easiest way to get a lorry to roll downhill is to remove the chocks under the wheels, take off the brakes and make sure it is out of gear - you need all three otherwise it will stay where it is. Someone on the steering wheel helps, but I promise you that if the first three conditions are met, the lorry WILL go downhill. The 'someone on the steering wheel' needs to be very conscious of the dynamics (culture?) of the vehicle; you can no more turn a 30 tonne lorry on a sixpence than change a multimillion organisation in a week. I remember learning to drive and making BIG turns of the steering wheel, now I know that a gentle adjustment will get me what I want much more efficiently and smoothly.

My experience is that the more attention, and resource, is given to helping the people in the system understand and work in the change, the more effective the change.