As the pace of change intensifies, changeability is becoming an increasingly important attribute for all organisations. David Codd explains how to get it right
Change is a constant.
Many organisations are rethinking their purpose and adopting a more balanced outlook that recognises their environmental and societal impact.
Technology continues to change markets fundamentally, and now, artificial intelligence is changing how work is done.
Added to this, organisations are having to contend with changing geopolitical forces and events like Brexit and the war in Ukraine.
Therefore, the most important attribute for ensuring your organisation’s long-term health is arguably its ability to sense what needs to change and successfully manage change repeatedly.
Here are my top tips on how to achieve an effective culture of changeability.
Critical success factors
There are four critical success factors that can guide boards and executive teams in shaping their organisation to be ‘fluent’ at change.
Your organisation must be:
- aware;
- inclusive;
- aligned; and
- adept at change management.
So why are these factors critical to success? What are the barriers that prevent organisations from being effective, and how can they be overcome?
1. Aware
Awareness in this context relates to strategic sensitivity – being highly attentive to strategic developments both inside and outside the organisation.
An organisation requires a comprehensive view of the current and future landscape and a considered position on what that means. Otherwise, groupthink and complacency can creep in, and the organisation can stagnate.
Barriers can arise when teams are too busy (under too much day-to-day pressure) or too proud (already delivering success).
So, how do you get over these barriers? Through process and challenge.
A well-run and well-structured strategic planning process, with senior management and board input, supports quality thinking. By not prejudging the outcome, you normalise constructive questioning of the status quo and open minds.
A strategic review needs to have a challenge built in. Some challenges can come from deep customer insight.
2. Inclusive
Changeability is enabled by being as inclusive as possible. Inclusiveness can unlock your talent’s potential.
At the very least, colleagues have a right to expect that the rationale behind any intended change is clearly explained to them.
When done well, this can help you to achieve acceptance, but it still falls short of full ownership. The best results are built on strong buy-in secured through real participation.
In any organisation of scale, one barrier to inclusivity can be the inability to have everyone participate in every change decision – it’s not always feasible.
In organisations of all sizes, varying degrees of confidentiality are usually necessary when change is planned or implemented, e.g. entering competitive markets, using acquisitive strategies, and making difficult cost-reduction decisions.
To overcome these potential barriers, leaders should provide frequent, engaging progress updates to the whole workforce – both successes and challenges – not just titbits of good news.
If using third parties to gather insights, partner relevant internal teams with them. Once the overall direction is set, involve colleagues in ideation for implementation in their own function.
Building trust is a two-way process. Staff engagement can be objectively measured, and the results and trends can be shared internally. Then colleagues know that their organisation is really listening.
3. Aligned
The different components of an organisation need to be aligned for change to be successful. If vital components are misaligned, then change will be blocked or at least compromised. This is clear but not easy to achieve, especially in a big organisation.
Barriers here can arise when the vision underpinning change is not clearly articulated – it can be perceived as meaningless background noise.
For reasons rooted in a lack of trust, you may find that teams pursue different agendas or adopt a wait-and-see stance.
Similarly, individuals and teams often have understandably limited exposure beyond their own area and, therefore, cannot be expected to immediately align behind a general direction they can’t relate to.
Purpose, vision and strategy must be clear and expressed and fleshed out in ways that everyone can relate to.
4. Adept at managing change
Change is disruptive and potentially destabilising, so effective implementation needs focus and skill. The barriers here can include the complexity of the project and a shortage of appropriate expertise.
Portfolio management, run as a process with executive participation, can bridge strategy and the plan-of-action.
It facilitates good collective choices by prioritising proposed change initiatives versus strategic objectives, recognising that human and financial capital are scarce resources.
Similarly, while project managers can usually be contracted in, it can be difficult to free up internal people who have deep functional knowledge and enjoy projects.
Experienced programme and project managers (ideally with functional knowledge) are essential.
A highly beneficial medium-term measure is to develop ‘hybrids’ – people who can work across functions and switch between operational and project management disciplines. This contributes to a higher project success rate and a faster pace.
The changeability lens
Regardless of whether your organisation is currently undergoing significant change, it can be helpful for leadership to apply a ‘changeability’ lens to the organisation as a whole.
Use the four critical success factors to take a view on the change capabilities, processes and culture that you will need and create an action plan to address the gaps.
A thorough review can form the basis of an enduring strong change capability – the key to your organisation growing from strength to strength.
David Codd is a Chartered Accountant and transformation specialist
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