I invited several experts to my weekly Coffee with Digital Trailblazers to discuss change management, easing adoptions, and minimizing the productivity dip. Participants heard a change management playbook.
We used the
productivity dip
(illustrated below) as a reference model as it’s a useful tool to illustrate
desirable versus problematic change management programs.
The dip in productivity occurs after the change event as people learn to
adapt to new strategies, priorities, processes, practices, and technologies.
Digital Trailblazers
minimize the impact of change by reducing its impact (the dip in
productivity shown on the y-axis) and the time required to meet end-state
performance objectives.
My experts included Martin Davis, Joanne Friedman, Joe Puglisi, and John
Patrick Luethe. Others joining the conversation included Elizabeth Moran,
Tyler Johnson, and Roman Dumiak. Thank you for your contributions and
insights!
I will summarize six recommendations in this post and share another seven in the full white paper, which you can download here.
Digital transformation requires strong change management practices
We focused on
change management in digital transformation
because of the magnitude and frequency of changes they drive across the
organization. Digital transformation initiatives often have several change
factors happening in parallel, so Digital Trailblazers need a game plan to
ease and accelerate adoption.
In my recent post on 24 ways to avoid painful digital transformation failures, several issues point to underinvesting in change management. As I said in my book, Digital Trailblazer, “You will always be transforming,” and change management is one of the key digital transformation competencies required by all organizations.
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Below are some notes before we dive into the ten recommendations.
- My list isn’t exhaustive – just what came up during our Coffee Hour. I’m sharing six of the recommendations in this post and the full list is available for download here.
- Check out the Driving Digital Standup videos from Joanne Friedman, Martin Davis, Joe Puglisi, and Tyler Johnson to learn how being a change agent and change management are key Digital Trailblazer Attributes.
- Those participating in StarCIO’s transformation programs and long-time readers of my blog know I prefer using the term transformation management, which breaks people away from any preconceived notions about when to plan for change and what framework to use. For this article, I elected to stay with mainstream terminology.
The C-level executives’ roles in change management
Several recommendations focused on the top-down responsibilities executives
must play in change management. Below are four recommendations for Digital
Trailblazers on how to involve executives.
Urge investment by articulating change management in business terms –
In the book Rewired, authors from
McKinsey suggest that for every dollar invested in a transformation
program’s implementation, expect to invest at least another dollar in change
management programs. You’re unlikely to get execs on board with this
investment by selling them the need for change management programs or how
the investment will fund training, consultants, documentation, and other
change programs. Instead, Digital Trailblazers explain the case for
investment in terms of cost, risk, and reputation. For example, how will a
longer productivity dip impact costs or revenue? What’s the brand impact of
downtime, poor customer service, or lower employee retention if there’s a
poorly executed (or no) change management plan?
Confront exaggerated projections and forecasts – Joanne Friedman won
quote of the day by stating, “AI is not the Ozempic of your business woes,”
a belief some executives will embrace given all the hype around generative
AI. Inflated and unrealistic projections trickle into digital transformation
visions and plans, often resulting in difficult to nearly impossible change
management programs. Nip this in the bud by becoming a
pragmatic visioneer, as Joanne suggests in my interview with her on Digital Trailblazer
attributes. Digital Trailblazers may need to schedule several learning
sessions on the art of the possible, given the organization’s constraints,
and not let executive fantasies drive expectations.
The Digital Trailblazer’s responsibilities in change management
Digital Trailblazers are the people leading digital transformation initiatives and include product managers and delivery leaders. As they are most responsible for defining vision statements, articulating business value, planning roadmaps, developing solutions, and releasing capabilities to end users, they are the most important leaders in overseeing change management efforts.
Set realistic expectations in advance – If your plan calls for sunsetting a legacy technology, taking cost out of a business process, or even reducing the workforce– set these expectations upfront. Joe Puglisi says to be realistic about objectives, their timing, and what’s expected or required from people. When you set expectations, create avenues for people to share feedback and express concerns. Avoid creating detractors, especially when people’s jobs may be at risk, by providing incentives for their contributions and helping them plan for new opportunities at the company.
Develop plans for the “layer of clay” and detractors – Every major
change event has its
detractors
– those are antagonistic to the change, some passive, and others highly
vocal. But what can be more challenging is winning over middle adopters, or
what Martin Davis terms the “layer of clay,” who have little interest or
incentive to participate. “Digital Trailblazers must get more middle
adopters to join the journey if they want their organization to succeed in
transformation management,” I wrote in chapter 10 of Digital Trailblazer.
Digital Trailblazers should break down the middle adoption challenge into
different groups and personas, identify possible incentives, and design
activities (see the next point) to drum up engagement.
The transformation team’s responsibilities
While Digital Trailblazers have the greatest change management
responsibilities, the full team working on the transformation doesn’t get a
free ride. Below are three ways agile teammates, stakeholders, subject
matter experts, and others participating in the transformation initiative
can contribute.
Actively listen and participate in agile programs – “The top agile
teams turn their demos into theater where the audience can participate with
Q&A,” I wrote in a blog post on
how feedback loops drive powerful culture change
in agile and digital transformation. Agile teams can use sprint reviews to
engage everyone, from enthusiastic supporters to the layer of clay, to
witness progress and provide feedback. However, product owners and agile
team leaders should dial up their active listening skills and follow up
after the review to learn where delivered capabilities may need
improvements.
Plan for incremental releases – I asked Tyler Johnson, our architect
in the group, how teams with a full sweet of DevOps practices should
consider change management before accelerating production deployment cycles.
Many DevOps teams implement automations, including CI/CD and IaC, which can
reduce feature delivery cycle times and increase the frequency of releases.
However, by pushing new capabilities too quickly, end-users may be unable to
keep up with all the changes. Tyler brought up how advanced DevOps teams
utilize
feature flags
and
canary releases
to control releasing capabilities to small user group populations. Non-tech
teams can use pilots and beta programs as part of an incremental release
strategy.
There are seven more recommendations along with some added advice for you by downloading this StarCIO Lifelong Learning white paper.
Digital Trailblazers! Join us Fridays at 11am ET for a live audio discussion on digital
transformation topics: innovation, product management, agile, DevOps,
data governance, and more!
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