Change is hard, managing change is even harder. As I mentioned in my previous post, change, even the idea of change, generates resistance. Therefore, change management is about effectively overcoming resistance to successfully achieve the desired results..

As the above image highlights (note: original source is unknown), many key factors need to be aligned for successful change management. Below are some additional factors that must be managed in addition to vision + skills + incentives + resources + action plan.

• Motivational strategies — for sustainable change management strategies, one can’t count on incentives alone. For one thing, you need everyone at every level to pull together, towards the same goal in order to have real impact. W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant) indicates that by focusing on 3 factors of disproportionate influence — kingpins, fishbowl management and atomization — tipping point leaders can quickly motivate a large group of employees. Kingpins are the key influencers in the organization. By utilizing fishbowl management, i.e. shining a spotlight on kingpins’ actions in a repeated and visible way, one can build a high performance culture. After all, nothing can be more effective than peer pressure to get things rolling. However, as the authors argue, none of these strategies can be effective if the change at hand is believed to be unattainable or impossible to achieve, no matter what. As such, by utilizing atomization, leadership ensures the challenge is attainable at every level by breaking it into bite-size atoms.
• Political hurdles — one just needs to look at the influence of lobbyists in our government to realize the implications of political hurdles to change management. Again, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant) offers the recommendation of focusing on three disproportionate influence factors: leveraging angels, silencing devils and getting a consigliere on the top management team. Angles have the most to gain from the change, while devils have the most to lose from it. Consigliere are the individuals that understand the political landscape, and can help navigate thru the mine fields. By focusing on these three groups, one can certainly increase the odds for success.
• Customer focused AND performance driven — change management is a journey, it is a marathon, not a sprint. Just like many New Year’s fitness goals that don’t last beyond March, it is too easy to loose focus, direction and motivation to ensure sustainable change. However, by understanding who the customer is, what is the gap between where we are and where we need to be, and building performance metrics to measure our progress, we can keep better focus and measure our progress.
• Top leadership ownership and accountability — leadership accountability and ownership is a must in the change management process. If the leadership is not involved in structuring and driving the change, the organization will reject the process and change management will fail. This is further emphasized in the McKinsey Quarterly article Creating Organizational Transformations: A McKinsey Global Survey Results.

Here are some additional articles on the topic of successfully managing the change management process. Enjoy!

• From strategy+business: 10 Principles of Change Management
• From strategy+business: Creating Temporary Organizations for Lasting Change
• From HBS Working Knowledge: Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?
• From McKinsey Quarterly: Creating Organizational Transformations: A McKinsey Global Survey Results
• From McKinsey Quarterly: The Psychology of Change Management

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