Organisations must become increasingly able to change quickly and easily. The business must be flexible yet capable of implementing and sustaining change. Change has to be built into the way businesses work.
However, many organisations have problems with the way they tackle change. These problems are usually related to people, processes, systems, technology or structure. Change is complex. Change is wicked! And the pace and scale of change today can overwhelm organisations.
Sustaining Change
Projects are key to creating beneficial change. They are the vehicles for managing and implementing change. Those organisations that recognise project management is a core capability (or competence) are most likely to find success in sustaining change.
Successful business change projects have the following characteristics.
A Business-led Change
A single project team. That is, a team that is business-led. One that comprises of all the required resources from the business, human resources, information technology and so on. Ideally, team members should be collocated and allocated to the project full-time. This encourages communication and helps to build strong relationships.
Benefits Realisation
Business change is about delivering benefits. The project team is responsible for delivering clearly specified benefits to the business not for creating systems, structures nor introducing technologies. There should be no other success criteria! Projects should always be driven by benefits that support strategy.
Leadership Thought
How many projects have you observed that came in late or had the scope changed to bring it in on time?
How long did the business have to wait to see tangible results? Were there negative experiences along the way?
Large-scale change needs urgency. Large-scale change needs quick wins. Often it is better to implement incomplete solutions than to wait years for perfection.
A Sense of Urgency
Executive management describes the business need—why the project is necessary—from the outset. Their mandate will also specify the time-scale within which the project must deliver the benefits. What’s more, successful organisations set a challenging schedule and stick to it—even when expert opinion suggests this is unachievable. Change should be delivered with urgency and in no more than nine months.
Time-Boxing
Detailed analysis has the effect of putting the brakes on change. Therefore, the idea of time-boxing is used to push the project team to make decisions about what is really needed. Successful businesses break tradition and create a sense of urgency when delivering change.
Quick Wins
Large scale change needs momentum plus a sense of achievement and bags of optimism. Time-boxing encourages quick wins ensuring results are achieved quickly. Instead of detailed analyses and the preparation of a hefty business case or full requirements specifications the project team is moved to change and learns what is really required through a series of iterations—breaking large scale change into smaller chunks and success stories.
Dolphins Not Whales
Thus, large scale projects are broken down into a series of shorter steps or phases. Each step will deliver benefits and move the organisation to sustaining change. It is urgency that sustains change and this is only possible when results are achieved rapidly. Not only does this give recognition and encouragement to those working hard to accomplish change it also builds faith in the change effort.
David Feeny—a prominent British academic and authority on business transformation—first introduced the concept of dolphins not whales. It effectively shows people how sustaining change should be implemented. That is, creating a climate for change by increasing urgency and engaging and enabling the organisation through short-term wins.
Sustaining Change: Dolphins Not Whales
Dolphins, not whales is a great way to grasp what is at the heart of change. When leading change use this to win hearts and minds.
Have Your Say
What approach do you use to implement large-scale change? Do you take an incremental approach or favour the monolithic project? Please join the discussion.
Image: NOAA’s National Ocean Service.
Martin
I agree with what you’ve said but would add a couple thoughts.
First, I encourage people to think in terms of value, rather than benefits. This is particularly useful when generating and engineering solutions, as the idea of value encapsulates both benefits and cost.
Second, I think there is a difference between delivering change through a projects and sustaining organisational change. On the latter of these two, John Kotter recently wrote and interesting piece for Harvard Business Review, in which he proposed a ‘dual operating systems’ for organisations. What he means by that establishing an informal leadership organisation, alongside the formal one. This is also and interesting idea that can be applied to programmes and one that I am currently experimenting with for a current client programme.
Here is a like to the article, in case you haven’t seen it http://hbr.org/2012/11/accelerate/ar/1
Gary
Hello Gary, Thanks for taking the time to comment. I’m not sure I’m with you on the first point. Whilst we may derive value from change it is often the promised benefits that move us to change.
Accelerate! is an interesting piece. But I’m not convinced that the dual operating system will work since organisational culture is deeply embedded and a new operating system is likely to adopt the organisation’s beliefs and behaviours. Nonetheless, I do think there is benefit (value) in an agile approach akin to the Agile Manifesto and Management 3.0.
As ever,
Martin
Martin
Happy to debate both points with you some time
Gary