The term Change Management brings in more than 10,000 hits on Amazon.com, an informational overload. But there is no need to feel overwhelmed. This short article will focus on lessons learned in managing change projects from the front lines of government, businesses, universities, and non-profits. Simply stated, the "rules" are as follows:

  1. Ensure buy-in up front.
  2. Communicate in multiple ways with multiple tools.
  3. Train, or don't train, if not necessary.
  4. Expect the Unexpected.
  5. Take time to reflect, learn, and share.

Herd Your Cats Early: Ensure Your Leadership Buy-In Up Front

Both the executive change sponsor, who has the power to approve action, and the sustaining sponsor, who stands with the change agent and regularly participates in events, must understand and sanction the strategic and tactical plans. Why? It is detrimental to a project if executive sponsors call a temporary halt to rollout in order to review a work process, communication package, or other deliverable. The pause can undercut the credibility of the change and can create conflict. Assuming you have support based on a three-minute blurb in a large meeting may be a false assumption and the required human and financial resources may never materialize.

Communicate in Multiple Ways, With Multiple Tools

Consider multiple communication formats, aligned to the business cultures. Large organizations will have multiple cultures, be they in a corporate, government, university, or manufacturing environment. Formats include emails, electronic or print newsletters, posters posted on the walls of the lunch room, flyers dropped on desks, face-to-face lunch-and-learns, face-to-face meetings, conference-calls or electronic Town Hall meetings, Website announcements, giveaways such as pens and key chains with slogans or telephone numbers, and cutting-edge tools such as Text Messaging and Podcasting.

Communication events or tools, over time, can move from an awareness level to a detail level. Six weeks to go live, Three weeks to go live, and Go live communications potentially all have a role in managing knowledge and expectations around the change.

The first questions the ordinary reader will ask are How does this change affect me? and How does this change make my life easier or more difficult? Determining the What's In It For Me may be one of the most challenging aspects of successful communications, but it offers change managers the opportunities to gather input, thus increasing the chances of buy-in. Communications that stress the good of the organization will, more often than not, have a less-than significant impact.

Finally, written communications are not the primary tools to manage the pain and resistance often brought by change: face-to-face, open and honest discussions, and question-and-answer sessions are often the most effective format.

To Train or Not To Train?

Do you need to seek out training professionals to design training to be delivered by subject matter experts or do you need to create a written communication as a professional change manager? Change does not always require training. In addition, often the act of communicating is confused with training. If the change is minor or simple, the communications campaign described above may be sufficient. But beware! A pack of 50 slides delivered by a talking head in a darkened room is not training or communication. It is a prelude to a nap.

Training to improve workforce performance requires participants to do something, to lead or participate in breakout sessions, to share their stories, to design processes based on what they have read or heard. And communication also requires end-user engagement and a willingness to read.

Expect the Unexpected

One step in strategic planning involves predicting barriers or risks and anticipating ways to remove or go around the barriers or mitigate the risks. However, the unexpected does happen. And the unexpected is more than unpredicted barriers and risks. Change managers can leverage naturally emerging change. In complex, adaptive systems where multiple change agents network, share learning, self-organize, and identify additional resources, change to the plan can naturally and spontaneously emerge from the bottom up. As change managers listen and engage, they can identify areas for continuous improvement. Rather than reject these emerging ideas as out of scope, the wise change manager will listen and adapt.

Take Time to Reflect, Learn and Share

During the rollout and after the change is implemented, ask yourself three questions:

  1. In the beginning, what did I expect to happen?
  2. What actually happened?
  3. What would I do differently if I could do it all again?

For the first question, have participants use Post-It notes and write one expectation per Post-It. They can then, after 10-15 minutes of silent writing and reflection, post their ideas on a wall to group all ideas into categories. Discussion naturally occurs during and after this activity. A facilitated discussion then follows for the second and third questions. Share your insights with other change agents and with your executive and sustaining sponsors. Treat your findings as open information for business improvement, and not as confidential discoveries, unless told otherwise.

Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet that he would lead reconstruction like a riverboat captain, one bend at a time on the Mississippi, about as far as a captain can see. Change managers today lead one bend at a time, accepting emergent change, but they also have Global Positioning Systems to successfully implement major change.