Reasons to Use Consultants for Change Management

featuring: Rita B., Senior Consultant for Change Management

What is change management?

Change management is the process of identifying and responding to "people" issues that occur on a project.  If you do not address the people issues, it can affect whether you have a successful outcome and realize a return on the investment you’ve made in the project.

What steps are involved?

First we work with leadership to validate agreement on why we are doing this project.  What are the expected benefits?  What problems will this project solve?  Who is going to be affected?  How much of a change will this be for the organization?

Early in the planning we also identify the people issues that could lead to resistance if they are not addressed.  People issues could be as basic as getting an understanding of what is going to be different.  People issues could consist of getting agreement that the change is a good thing to do.  You need to be able to give people a plan of what to expect and what will be different.  People want to know how they will be prepared for the change.

Basically you have two choices:  You could move forward with the project and roll it out and not take the time to prepare people and tell people "just deal with it."  That is the cold turkey approach.

Or you could get people on board from the beginning…and make sure people are prepared for the change.  That way, you get to realize the benefits of the change sooner.

Are there different stages of change management?

There are different levels of involvement.  In the beginning, more time is spent with leadership at an executive level.  Getting agreement from leaders that the change is a good thing to do is essential.  When you have executive support, then you can take the steps necessary to make sure that whatever needs to take place for the change to occur, will happen.

What do the different stages of change management entail?

If you’ve gone through the executives first, then employees are more likely to go along with the change.  Employees look to management for guidance, especially when there is change.  People want to be supported through the transition.  They want to have the reassurance from management that the change is a good thing.  It is similar to how children look to parents for leadership:  children want leadership through difficult times -- especially through times of change -- to reassure them that the change is a good direction and that the outcome will be positive.

A lot of people interpret change as "what am I going to lose?"  When a change is asked of someone, they need to know there will be some benefit.  They need to know that the outcome is worth the change initiative.  That is where the company leaders can encourage the rest of the organization to get on board with the change.

Simply put, change management is really a process of involving, informing, and preparing the organization for what will be different.  There are different audiences for those different activities:  it always starts with involving the leadership who in turn can inform the organization on a regular basis about what will be different, when it will happen, and how they will be prepared.

Preparing people is essential to a successful change initiative.  People want information and if they do not have it, they will make it up…and that will be worse than the reality of the change.  As you get closer to implementing a change, you want to make sure people are prepared, whatever the change is, whether it's role changes, process changes or software changes. 

Why do companies call in a consultant who specializes in change management?

Usually because they’ve had a really bad experience of not being prepared for change.  If they’ve gone through that experience, they don't want to do it again.

Sometimes I go into a company and this is their third or fourth attempt at the same change…and they finally come to the conclusion that perhaps they should try a different approach.  It often seems to stem from having had a bad experience.

In trying to implement change, people are becoming more aware of change management; but people did not used to have this awareness.  I think in perhaps the last 10 years, change management has become something that is now part of a project, like a budget.  You have your budget, and you need a change management plan.  We're not quite there yet, but we’re a lot further than we used to be.

How do companies benefit by using an outside consultant for change management?

The political problems that an in-house person might face do not exist to the same extent with a consultant.  Because you do not have a future with that organization, you do not have to walk on eggshells.  No one wants to hear that their baby is ugly…but sometimes in an organization, that is something you have to do:  you have to tell people that their work product, leadership, approach or process requires a change.

With an internal person, they do not want to burn bridges.  An internal person wants to build relationships within an organization to grow their career and ensure their future.  So an internal person is often not the best person to spearhead a change.  With an external person, they do not have to face those political challenges. 

If you are external, you have a broader view of what works and what does not work.  And if you are external, you have more of an opportunity to apply this knowledge when going through a change.  You can help a client avoid pitfalls and mistakes that you have seen with other projects. 

Can you give me an example of when it was an advantage for a company to call you in to implement a change?

Most of my clients are global corporations.  One of these global companies tried to roll out an SAP implementation.  They had rolled out the system, but people were not using it.  And they had not taken steps to get people on board, especially the people on their teams in Europe. 

And because it was a US based company, as happens with many US companies, the people based in the US assumed that the change and the process for it would work in other parts of the world.  Now this sort of approach misses an opportunity:  staff in other countries may have a better way to do a process. 

When this particular company realized they were missing opportunities to improve, they decided that they wanted not only a change management plan, but also an internal change management group, to be established to help other changes going on in the company.

This company needed a change management process of what would work in their corporate culture.  They asked me to come in with a change methodology and help their team use those methods for their SAP upgrade and for other projects.  They also asked me to give them a methodology that would work on projects once I left.  And so, we integrated a change methodology with their project management methodology and now it is just the way projects are done in that organization.

Why is it so important to include change planning with project planning?

In order for change to be successful, it needs to be integrated into a project plan and a project methodology.  In other words, you have a project plan that includes a change plan.

In the case of the company trying to implement its new SAP system, we used change management integrated with project management steps to roll out the software.  A while later, this same company was able to use the change methodology to support a company merger.  That was six years ago and their change processes have worked and the company is still doing well today.

There was another client implementing SAP who called me to help with the change.  The problem with their SAP implementation was that their internal project team was not aligned with the goals of the project.  That team was so off their timeline and budget that the project was not going anywhere. 

To get the project back on track, we brought in new project leadership and did an off-site meeting to help the team refocus.  You might call it an "intervention."  There were a lot of bad feelings that needed to be dealt with so the team could get "unstuck"  and begin to work more effectively together. This team made an amazing turnaround and became an example for the rest of the organization of how a team should work.

On a more personal note, how did you come to an interest in change management?

I got into it 20 years ago before it was a profession.  It has really only been recognized as a profession in the last 10 years.  Now you can get a master's degree and even a doctoral degree in change management.

In this field, I started with career counseling, helping people with career changes, and some of my clients were working for companies making internal changes, and they would ask me to come into their company and support their organizational changes.  So I started looking at the change process from an individual perspective and expanded that to an organizational perspective. 

Over the years, I have learned that it does not matter how small or how large the organization is.  If you can get the individual's okay with change, then you can get the organization's okay with change.  But you have to start on the individual level first before you can expand to the organizational level. 

In the early 1990s a lot of my work was in the area of outplacement with individuals who had lost their job through downsizing. My work with organizational change began when companies realized that not only did employees who lost their job need help through the change, but also employees who kept their job needed help through the change.  Companies realized that if the needs of the job "survivors" were not addressed, productivity and overall morale would suffer. 

What is the survival syndrome?

The survival syndrome is where people feel guilty that they kept their job when their colleagues lost their job.  In the mid-1990s people started losing jobs…the sense of security of being with a company was gone.  Initially I started working with the survivors of companies, to help them through those feelings and recognize their role in their newly organized company. 

People used to think that if they were good employees and if they were loyal, they could stay with a company forever.  Some people chose professions in banking, government, health care and education based on the belief they would have job security. That is no longer the case. 

These days, you have to realize that you are your own security.  In today's world, people need to know how to learn and adapt to change.  Those are the keys to a long career:  the ability to learn and adapt to change.

I continued to work with changes in staff and work groups for some years.  In 1996, I started working with technology-driven change.  Now, I did not understand the technology, but I understood resistance and people.  And I knew what to do to help people prepare for and adopt new technology so the company could realize a return on its investment.

I started to work with Oracle to support their clients with technology-driven changes:  changes in process, changes in jobs, changes in systems.  With technology-driven changes, people wonder, "Will I be able to learn this?  Am I going to be able to do this job?"  In the late 1990s, instead of downsizing and mergers causing change, change was caused by implementing new technology.

And so I focused on supporting that type of change…which lead to process and organizational change on a larger scale.  People want to know about a change; they have to deal with uncertainty; they want to know, "am I going to be OK?" 

It does not matter if the company is in the US or Asia or Europe.  It does not matter if it is an executive, an assistant, an assembly line worker or a warehouse person.  It is the same experience for all people:  people view change as a loss, a change, a threat.  We help people face that uncomfortable situation by understanding the change and the rationale behind it – and by being prepared.

Looking to the future, how do you think change management for companies will change?

Five years ago I thought that change management would only be needed for a couple years because everyone would learn the change process.  But people are people and are still uncomfortable with the unknown.  We still need to prepare ourselves for what is going to be different. 

In the future, I think change management will be seen as a skill that everybody will need to have.  I think companies will still need to have an external consultant come in, have an objective point of view and not have to deal with the political side of change.

The need to adapt to change, and the need to prepare employees, is going to remain constant, whether you have 3 employees or 300 employees or 300,000.

Every person in a position of leadership will need change management skills -- it is a crucial part of being an effective leader.  You have to be able to manage your own change and support those around you who are going through the same process.  You have to be able to make a plan that is tailor made to implement a change and manage the transition from the old to the new.

A leader needs to know how to introduce and execute change within an organization and that ability to guide people through a change management process is going to remain a critical skill in the future.

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