Sponsors are the key drivers of transformational change. What they say, what they do, and what they reinforce on a daily basis determines 50-70% of the likelihood of achieving value realization for the transformation. So, what do you do when they are the ones who are reluctant to change?
Consider for a moment the phases of transformational change projects. Transformation typically begins with a core team that develops a vision of the future state. Over time, the team may engage others as it moves through the design/development/testing phases—all leading to the “go-live” or “cut-over” date. These steps represent the installation phase of your program.
Recently, IMA president Don Harrison led a webinar entitled, “Change Challenges: Extreme Edition” in which he discussed the extreme challenges faced by organizations during transformational change. For the past 30+ years, Don has focused his work on helping organizations to implement large-scale, complex changes in organizations.
Imagine you are driving 65 miles an hour along the highway and your “check engine” light comes on. What do you do? If that happened to us, we would pull over immediately and assess the situation. Would we have the same reaction if the “low windshield wiper fluid” light illuminated...definitely not.
Mergers and acquisitions are international news on a weekly basis. In fact, just this month alone, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced its acquisition of SABMiller in a deal worth over $100 billion dollars. In addition, Dell purchased EMC in a $67 billion dollar deal touted as one of the largest tech mergers ever. Whether we’re talking about multi-billion dollar deals such as these, or smaller ones, there is no doubt mergers mean change is coming for at least one of the organizations affected, and more likely than not... both of them.
No behavior change, no implementation. It’s a simple, but profound statement about the criticality of the human side of business projects, including transformational change initiatives. Right from the start, project teams must take a purposeful approach to identifying what the new behaviors are for the transformation. It’s why a foundation of IMA’s proprietary Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) is, “In order to achieve value realization, you must first identify the “human objectives” for your change.”
The Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) is a set of strategies, tactics, principles, and tools that can be applied to any change, including a Transformational one. However, in our over 30 years of Change Management Consulting experience, we’ve seen a lot of organizations invest a heap of time and money in quick fixes thinking they are going to drive Transformation.
Lately in our Change Management Consulting work, we are seeing a lot of organizations who are strategically hoping to become customer-centric-- or for those of our clients in the health care industry, patient-centric. Simply put, these organizations are making changes to their inherent culture to make their primary focus the customer they are serving rather than the product they are trying to sell.
So many organizations are moving toward a Shared Services model. The business case for this type of transformational change is undeniably strong. Shared Services consolidates redundant business units used by multiple parts of the organization. When complete, this type of enterprise-wide change has been proven to reduce costs and increase efficiencies.
The terms “Transformational Change” and “Transformation” have become quite the buzz words in industry today. You probably hear them day in and day out. But have you ever sat down and thought about what they really mean?
