Horizontal Change Management

Images of Change- Prepare to be overwhelmed

ggitchell — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:16:46 +0000

I googled change management this morning to see the latest hawked wares and approaches. Since I am a spatial learner and love pictures I chose “images of change” as my first stop.http://tinyurl.com/245t9s5.

Wow.

Could the approaches be more overwhelming? Change itself has a tendency to be the same. As a practitioner wouldn’t you want to make the process easier? Although if I am selling snake oil…

Here are some observations from my image journey-

Change practitioners adjust their approach to their own perspective (strategic, OD focused, PMO based, Leadership oriented etc) Change apparently either revolves around a hub (yes

Continue reading Images of Change- Prepare to be overwhelmed

Change Communication

ggitchell — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:05:09 +0000

Communicating for Change Management serves three purposes- to motivate, to guide and to provide place.

Place

We are going backwards from my list to illustrate a point. Most change management methods, and the consultants who practice them, move forward in time with my list. Not so effective. Not so effective because place gets lost in the mix. “Place” is the work of an individual in relation to the whole. When communicated well each stakeholder can explain how their work fits in to the bigger picture, how it connects to the next person and how it leverages the work of

Continue reading Change Communication

Restarting Change

ggitchell — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:38:09 +0000

Things begin to pick up for business (less fear, willingness to spend hoarded cash, new competition appearing from garages- not sure which is the cause, but things are picking up in the change arena) and the revisiting begins. Change anew. Except some of it is the programs that were cancelled a year or more ago. How is restarted change different?

History Doubled

The ability to move change forward is always effected by previous attempts (bad or good). To start something that did not finish on the first attempt is potentially tempting fate. If, in our current case, the

Continue reading Restarting Change

First things first-A Change Management Short List

ggitchell — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:09:58 +0000

A Change Practitioner will need to steer, guide, lead and prod for a variety of situations. While human nature can be consistent cultures and processes within organizations are distinct. Which of course is the result of human nature. Intuition, experience and empathy may carry the day for knowing people in general, but to get to the specifics and the “distinct” of one organizations takes an initial list of questions and to-do’s.

How do they communicate What are the horizontal connections (if any) Where is leverage the strongest How weak or strong is the PMO What is the history of

Continue reading First things first-A Change Management Short List

“In my day we never had change management…”

ggitchell — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 01:28:11 +0000

Taken completely out of context (barely) from a post within a LinkedIn group.

Nor did he have the internet, global communications, virtual teams, contracted work groups or the need to constantly keep up with the business environment. What he did have is structure, hierarchy and unwritten rules about participating and unemployment (for not doing so).

As a leader why do I need change management?

You don’t.

If… you have the capacity in your organization to come up with ideas, that lead to vision, that illustrate end states, that tie to the energy, motivation and skill set of those you

Continue reading “In my day we never had change management…”

Change Management and Creativity

ggitchell — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:38:02 +0000

Newsweek article has my head spinning on a creative streak. http://tinyurl.com/27krc5j or the old fashioned paper version-much more tactile. It turns out the reason for that spin is a process of looking at something from the familiar and facts, to searching for other connections hanging around in our brains, to refocusing on the tie. And “Bam!” as one creative says- the “aha!” moment.

This is the creativity of ideas. It is the ability to see things from a different angle, perspective, approach. This is innovation at its core.

What it requires (ideas and therefore innovation and… possibly change?)

Continue reading Change Management and Creativity

Change or Transition

ggitchell — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 05:38:46 +0000

Change can be the overall time line of moving from one thing to another, or old to new. It can be the moment the switch happened- you actually move into that new home. It can be the process itself of transforming and changing behavior. It can mean movement, perspective, action, technology and/or behavior.

Transition might well be the same if semantics are not your game.

As an English undergrad words and languaging are an environment all their own for me.

So I like to think of transition as that sweet period- sometimes short sometimes a longer transformation- from

Continue reading Change or Transition

Change Management and the project manager

ggitchell — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:35:47 +0000

This is an interesting relationship. Symbiotic, hopefully. Adversarial, sometimes. Good show, always.

When they are the same person

Usually that means layering CM into the role of the project manager. There is a conflict here. A project manager will by nature work to narrow focus to reduce risk. When focus expands it is to satisfy “the list”. They know that the broader the spread the more the risk because that brings in more People. The more time spent influencing people the less spent managing the timeline of to-do’s.

At times, less than our first combo, the CM is tasked

Continue reading Change Management and the project manager

Self-interest is not a dirty word

ggitchell — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:54:43 +0000

I came across a post the other day that said getting stakeholders to use new technology meant addressing their own self interest http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-manager/?p=3976. The post is on the right track. IT implementations are, admittedly, a specific type of change. Every form of change has a “punch a different key” aspect and IT change rarely stays confined in a nice manageable timeline. So lets look at self interest as a general perspective.

Well, of course

Everything we do is in our own self interest. The more we need to change the more our self interest comes into play. We balance

Continue reading Self-interest is not a dirty word

Who is in charge of motivation?

ggitchell — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:15:12 +0000

Change is always about action. Or for the historical, resistance approaches, inaction.

For action to happen there must be some stimulus that gets it started and keeps it going. The trigger/switch at the individual level is motivation. That foundation out of the way, who is in charge of the triggers?

The Individual

You would think it would start here. The individual most likely assumes it will start somewhere else. When an individual has chosen to do something on their own, say find a job, they are certainly responsible for motivation. They will feed that with the carrots and sticks

Continue reading Who is in charge of motivation?