How do you manage change projects in complex organizations?

Few (if any) people embrace change for change's sake. No matter what the situation, there has to be a compelling rationale for change. Why are we changing? To what end? What do we expect to gain from the change? The more explicit the rationale, the greater the potential for people to *accept* change. They still may not like or want the change. But knowing why it's happening and accepting change makes it easier to move forward.

Change projects face challenges such as aligning with current needs, ensuring awareness, assessing stakeholder priorities, assessing acceptance and resistance, determining the project's impact, and determining whether it's short-term or long-lasting. Various factors can impact the project's success.

To facilitate change (and influence the project associated with the change), one must understand the real impacts of the change on people. That means understanding how people view a given change, how big of a change this actually is for people, and the social dynamics at play within each stakeholder group, as well as between stakeholder groups. You'll have a much better chance at this if you can gauge the urgency gap ("I don't get why"), the knowledge gap ("I don't get how"), the emotional gap ("I don't like it"), and the trust gap ("I don't like you").

Organizational problem-solving, is much like the "teach a man to fish" proverb and requires a strategic and methodical approach to foster continuous improvement. Provided here is as high-level Corrective Action/Preventive Action (CAPA) framework. Missing are evaluation intervals and measures, which is crucial for growth. Cultivating a problem-solving culture fosters engagement, ownership, and growth of the team and the organizations success.

This is a critical step too often skimmed over. It is crucial to know the organization, its culture, AND the external environment in which it operates in order for a change initiative to be successful.

This is a great time to engage some of your greatest resisters. Seek first to understand their concerns, so you can have them co-design solutions or mitigation plans. You also want to engage those who will be impacted (internal and external stakeholders) to share their voice and co-design efforts together, when possible. Also think about populations who typically are marginalized and be intentional about designing processes, systems, programs that promote access, opportunity, exclusivity, equity, and belonging.

I agree, communication is essential and should start in the design stage. How often should you communicate and what should you communicate to which audience. Now, is a great time to get stakeholders involved that individuals are drawn too and confide in. Arm them with the information they need to settle fears and resistance. Sometimes having them involved from the start will help answer questions that can be managed and prepared for before implementation.

A RACI matrix is useful as part of the design it allows to keep in mind the needs and wants of the stakeholders while planning for communication since the beginning of the project.

Watch for signs of fear. When implementing change, people fear it due to they feel as if they are going to lose something. They will tend to keep to themselves, and blame verses holding themselves accountable. This can be addressed through transparency, caring communication, inclusion, etc. which all leads to trust. There are also those that will accept change sooner than others, and involve those individuals to help others move along the emotions in the change curve.

Resistance and conflict will manifest itself. That is why the validity of the assessment is important. This phase will take motivation and energy.

In my experience, data driven decision making is one tool in evaluating progress, and I suggest to do a trend analysis to be able to identify any outlining data results from one point to the other. What I find missing is the narrative that goes with the trend analysis for defined high or low results. Keep in mind that there may be contingencies that yielded to a lower result than expected, however it may be that it is explainable and deemed an outlier.

It is valuable to borrow from Peter Senge's System Dynamics and insert feedback loops throughout the process and not merely wait until the end for feedback.

I agree and will add that continuous feedback, both development and positive, is also critical; so the coaching, reinforcing and rewarding the desired behaviors and outcomes, and also building in to every people communication venue and tool, a communication on the status of the change. Be real, transparent. If the change is not going well, take advantage of communicating that point and how a team or the entire organization needs to shift going forward to meet the objectives. Also, keep in mind that employees need to be aware as to how their role impacts the purpose of the organization. To sustain the change, be sure that engagement is top of mind for all employees.

Trust and Transparency - The Two “Tees” in Change Management. Change Leaders who Tee It Up for their teams empower successful change.