Reflections on building change management maturity and leading a Change Management Office (CMO)
Setting up a Change Management function or building change management maturity can be and is for many a pretty daunting task. Just where do you start?!
I speak to countless clients who are at different stages on their Change journey, for me, it’s the part of the job I love the best, where are they at and how I can help them.
It’s always helpful to hear from others who have been on that journey to get any tips, insights, dos and don’ts… and as such, I delighted to share the below blog from Tracey Darley.
Tracey is the founder of Changeism, a boutique change management consulting firm. She has recently finished a 4-year stint with the Co-op, where she was bought into build an in-house Change Management Practice, which at it’s peak is the home to 25 + change practitioners.
Reflections on building change management maturity and leading a Change Management Office (CMO)
After having led and set up a few change management offices / teams now, I thought it might be useful to step back and reflect on what I’ve learned so far. What follows is literally a brain dump, and the order of my points are the order they popped into my head. I think perhaps that might be important, because I suspect the ones I thought of first, are the ones that have been the hardest lessons for me to learn over the years – so they’ll likely be front of mind in my next CMO experience. So, here are some of my thoughts that may or may not be useful for you in your current change context.
1. It doesn’t matter where the Change Management function sits in an organisation. I’ve led change management functions in Human Resource, Technology, Strategy and Transformation functions and the biggest enabler of success has been senior accountable leader sponsorship of change management. Senior Leaders who have a decent understanding of and valuing of the role of change management in organisational success. Conversely, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, that without true understanding and sponsorship from the relevant senior leaders, it’s a real slog!
2. The Human resource team are your critical partners for landing change successfully in any organisation. And I use the term “critical” very intentionally. In almost any change there is a level of HR team speciality engagement that is critical to the success of the initiative (yes, even so called “technology only” initiatives). If the change management team and HR Team are not working together in a true partnership of mutual respect, the HR Team may end up taking the role of critical onlookers, especially if some specialities feel like change management should be their remit. So put in the effort to build a strong relationship with the Chief People Officer and their team, regardless of where the change management office reports.
3. As the leader of a change management function, you need to have a vision for where you are heading, a strategy to get there and a plan you are executing. I know this sounds obvious, but very often change teams spend so much time delivering change for organisational initiatives, that they forget they are trying to execute change too – they are trying to build the change management maturity of the organisation, so that all change can land more effectively and sustainably. So, spend some time ruthlessly and objectively assessing the change management maturity of your organisation (PROSCI and the Change Management Institute have good models for this), decide what level of maturity is needed, and build a plan to get there based on your assessment.
4. Make sure your change team has some level of dedicated time for building change management maturity and executing your change management office strategy and plan. In fact, build your strategy and plan with the team, so you all own it. Then, ensure each change practitioner has objectives in their KPIs for contributing to the execution of the plan. This may sound simple, but it’s far from easy. The cold hard reality is that change practitioners are often super busy just keeping their heads above water on demanding programmes or projects. This change management office activity can sometimes feel like a “nice to have” rather than a priority. But it’s an activity that if done well, will make all changes land more smoothly and sustainably.
5. You should be the owner and primary point of contact not only of the organisational change management framework, methodology and toolkit, but also of change management training in the organisation. I know this is a big statement, but in my experience, this has a massive positive impact on building a common understanding of change management and embedding a common practice for how to land change. Being the first port of call for change management training for Project Managers, HR practitioners and operational change teams, can take a long time to get in place and takes significant effort and time to deliver, but it’s a game changer.
6. Another game changer is ensuring that your change management framework, methodology and toolkit (whatever it is) is seamlessly integrated with the organisations project management methodology and PMO assurance process. This again needs to be a partnership. The way I’ve had the most success with this is to involve senior program and project management professional in the development of this integrated approach. Similarly, partner with the head of the PMO to then embed the relevant change management steps into the PMO assurance framework. Project managers who think they don’t need change management practitioner help, tend to ask for it when the PMO is telling them they haven’t met their change management stage gate criteria. It might mean you get involved late, but better late than never (or is that debatable? Another potential blog post perhaps).
7. Find a way to get involved in initiatives well before they formally enter delivery. This involvement can be light touch, but if you can do a quick and dirty change risk and change impact assessment in a “Discovery” phase, it does a few important things. It helps clarify just how “big and hairy” the potential people related change might be (size, scale, complexity in professional change management lingo). It gets organisational and project leaders thinking about more aspects of the change, while deciding whether to do it. It also puts the potential need and size of change management support and budget on your and their radar early. With some solid sponsorship of change management from the right leaders and the credibility you build as a change leader and team, you can get to the point where this early change management assessment is built into any discovery process.
8. This brings me to the holy grail – strategic change. Ultimately, to build strong change management maturity in an organisation, your change management input needs to form a significant and early part of both strategy formulation and execution. The more you can show value and be perceived as a credible, pragmatic voice, the easier this becomes. But I think this strategic change role could also be another whole blog post in and of itself!
9. Speaking of holy, grails, let’s talk change portfolio management! In my experience, grappling with how to get a meaningful view of the holistic impact of the change portfolio (transformation and operational) on people, is very tricky. How much change is too much? In reality, the world is changing faster all the time, and organisations must keep up. So simply talking about change fatigue isn’t going to cut it with senior leaders. You must be able to demonstrate this change load in a meaningful, data driven way, so that the risk is accurately represented and understood, allowing better-informed decisions to be made. I’m not saying I’ve come close to completely cracking this particular nut – I continue to grapple with it. But I can thoroughly recommend the Change Portfolio Management training run by the Change Management Institute. It resulted in many “aha” moments for me and my team, and helped to provide a useful language and set of tools for doing this better. If you’re going to spend money on training for you and the senior members of your team, it’s a really good investment.
Okay, I’m going to finish off with a final point (for now!). You’ll notice I’ve made 9 points, and resisted the urge to make it a neat, well-rounded 10. Probably because one of my pet peeves is articles that reduce complex challenges to 10 step (or less) “recipes” for success. We all know it’s just not that simple.
We also know that every organisation is different. In your context some of these things will be far more important levers to pull than others.
So, my advice is that you start with a ruthless assessment of your current context and maturity. Figure out what the most important levers are for you to pull to build change management maturity. Then develop a plan to get there – and use your team and other key stakeholders and partners in your organisation to do it.
I’d love to hear from you about your change management office and organisational change maturity journey, so hit me up for a virtual cuppa and a chat anytime.