A Case for Change Management

By: Robert Maitner Jr., CGFM, PMP

Robert Maitner Jr., CGFM, PMP, is a senior managing consultant with IBM Public Sector Financial Management.

A friend of mine the other day was complaining about something that occurred at work. He is a teacher at a local Washington-area private school (one that happens to include the children of several political figures and others, which is not really relevant to the story).

Well, toward the end of a Monday, the entire faculty of the Upper School received an e-mail note from the head of the Upper School regarding the use of an online course document storage system.

The system, called Campusnet, allows faculty members to upload educational and other related documents to a shared location that can be accessed by the teacher and all of the students in the class. The prevailing culture surrounding this system was that “it exists for people to use it if they want to.” It was pretty informal, and there was no official school policy regarding its use. The e-mail, which was sent by the Upper School head during the second year on the job, set out to establish a policy whereby all of the school faculty would ensure that all course documentation would be available on the Campusnet system.

As you can imagine, this set off quite the firestorm among the Upper School faculty, my friend explained. How could this new head of the school just come in and start making demands about a system that is difficult, cumbersome and would require hours of additional work outside of the classroom? I thought about it for a second, and I said to my friend, “This sounds like a lack of change management on the part of the Upper School head.”

And yes, we agreed that there was little change management incorporated into what essentially was a system roll-out to the school faculty. And there are some general components of change management that are essential to the successful implementation of any new system. And these were clearly overlooked in my friend’s example:

Communications planning. There was clearly a lack of communications planning in this instance. One single e-mail was sent out to everyone, without any earlier notes designed to familiarize the users with the new system. A phased set of communications should have been crafted and sent out well in advance of the new requirements to use the system, with links to training material and other helpful information.

Formalized training plan. A structured and formalized training plan is a critical component of change management planning. How can you expect new users to get onto a system without some training and familiarization? And this should incorporate a phased approach, whereby early communications contain more general overview information about the system, and gradually include more detail, hands-on exercise and skills testing. 

Centralized repository for information and help. Also missing was any reference as to where to go for more information and assistance. There should be an established site for reference material, presentations and information on additional training, as well as a link that will take users to this site. Again, this was missing in this case. 

This particular story really drove the points home to me about the importance of change management, and some of the key components that are often overlooked. This is true regardless of what system is being introduced into the work environment, whether it be financial/accounting, time and labor, or any of the myriad others that we face in the workplace.

Comments

[term papers]

Blogs are so interactive where we get lots of informative on any topics. nice job keep it up !!..

[Finance Dissertation]

Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!

[Lauren Rutkowski]

This is a great example of change management. I would be interested to know if there were any other similar systems already in place or if any systems were previously implemented, and what the response was to them. This would have helped the Upper School Head know how to approach the system's implementation, and how much and what type training and communication would be needed.

[Christy Taylor]

The Upper School head could have also benefited from surveying and segmenting the school faculty to find those that believed in and desired the change. I imagine there must have been faculty members who also saw the benefits of the Campusnet system, they would have provided a source of advocates for the change. A stakeholder survey is an important input for a communications campaign to help move stakeholders towards the change objectives.

[Robert Maitner, CGFM]

Thanks Lori for looking at my blog and the comments, a great discussion! And we appreciate the insight, there is so much to keep in mind when it comes to change management. Super comments all around, everyone, thanks!

[Paul Christianson]

Nice post, Robert. I think the three change management components you selected as being essential for success are right on. However, just as a follow-up, it's also of course important to consider one's audience when constructing a specific change management approach. Given a variety of factors, the culture at the school cited in your example would be surely different than that at a large government agency, bank, or small IT firm, for example.

[Lori Feller]

Good discussion. Part of change management is also thinking about which channel or medium to use. Email is a push to people to read and not everyone will actually read and take action from an email. As the degree of change and complexity goes up, you have to think about what types of vehicles to employ, such as using interactive communications where people can ask questions/obtain answers, and not just the tried and true push (email) and pull (website) vehicles. For someone to remember/retain the information they actually need to learn about it three different ways using three different methods.

As we work more and more virtually with greater complexities, communications and change management play a heightened role in overall performance and job satisfaction.

[Robert Maitner, CGFM]

Yes thanks Andrew, good point. And true, any change will lead to a certain level of discontent, the role of management is to try to mitigate as much of that as possible through early communications and training. But of course there will always be some. You also have to plan how you will respond to it. And thanks Brian, you hit it on the head!

[Andrew Pierce]

It is important to note, however, that in any organization change is likely to produce some level of discontent. So, given the expectation and likelihood of a negative response, even with good change management practices in place, how can one measure a job well done?

[Brian]

This is extremely relevant - whether it is in todays extremely volatile business environment or even at home and in social settings!

Change management is going to be a key to success in the 21st century.