The real world

I received the joke below in an email today - one of those things that go around at Christmas time. You can read the joke if you wish, but the sense of it is that the real world has changed so much that saying 'Happy Christmas' might upset someone. This is political correctness gone mad in my opinion, although there was an article in a national paper a few days ago that said managers are fearful of putting decorations up. Amazing. At the other extreme there are offices where you might see decorations for Diwali, Chinese New Year etc as well as Christmas of course, recognising a social and community approach to life.

The key point here for me is that in our professional lives we are impacted by whatever is happening in the real world, and it is sometimes difficult to separate the substance of an event or activity and the interpretation of the same. Any action will mean different things to different people, and will impact them in a variety of ways. We are all different, and will vary our mood and interpretation on different days. This is key in change management and transformation of business.

THE JOKE

I wanted to send out some sort of holiday greeting to my friends, but it
is so difficult in today's world to know exactly what to say without
offending someone. So I met with my lawyer yesterday, and on his advice
I wish to say the following:-

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes
for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress,
non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice
holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious
persuasions or secular practices of your choice with respect for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their
choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and
medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally
accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the
calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society
have helped make the world a great place (not to imply that any country
is necessarily greater than any other country) and without regard to the
race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual
preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:
This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely
transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no
promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for
her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is
revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted
to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for
a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday
greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement
of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the
wisher.

Disclaimer: no trees were harmed in the sending of this message however,
a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.

Cleaning out my sock drawer - let's be analytical

Ok, I haven't really been cleaning out my sock drawer - I'm not desperate for things to do! What I have been doing for the last hour was going through all of the masses of forms, analyses etc that I maintain in a folder on my laptop and making sure that they are all still relevant and useful. This is probably equivalent to folding socks, but it needed doing.

The point of course is that managing change (as for the remainder of project management-related activity) is an analytical process, that needs planning, monitoring and measuring just like any other activity. I know that is all about people, and people are fickle, have egos and desires, but whatever we do to address the needs of these people must be planned to ensure that we know what we need to do and when (and how much it will cost my accounting conscience annoyingly reminds me), and monitor and assess the success of our actions and then replan and so on.

The challenge of course is that monitoring is difficult -if we ask someone "How are you?", they will normally say "Fine!" rather than "My leg hurts and this new system will be rubbish!". But that is what makes it interesting...

If you need a document or process around any aspect of change management, please email me

Work/Life Balance - is it sustainable in the real world

My wife is retiring at Christmas aged forty-something. It is not that we're rich (we're not!), but work and life don't balance with a couple of young kids and a house and me to organise (I do my best...). Now she's working out what to do with her time!

In all of our professional lives, 10 hour days are the norm for many, and if you commute into a big city, you can probably add a two or three hours to that - leave home at 6.30am and get home at 7:30pm if you're lucky - I've been doing it a lot this year.

Why do we work so many hours?;

• because it is expected
• because everyone else is doing it
• because it is professionally necessary
• because we love work
• because we need the money
• because if we don't do it, then they'll find someone else
• because everyone else over-commits and we don't want to under-deliver

I'm sure there are more reasons that I could think of.

Today's business environment is getting faster and ever-more pressured, with results expected immediately, instant messaging, email, mobile phones etc (see other postings). It is all of these things that perpetuate the need for longer working hours, and less of a life. Let's get real and assess what is critical and not just important - there are critical things in our working lives that must be done, and surely our balanced home life is critical? This is a real world issue - how can people have a life and work, rather than work and a life. Should we talk about life/work balance?

Many large organisations have addressed this issue to some extent or other with flexible working arrangements, career breaks and suchlike - the recognition that people work to live, rather than live to work. You are a long-time dead.

Different ways of looking at things

A friend sent me a joke recently..something along the lines of;

Q: "Why do IT people confuse Christmas with Halloween"
A: "Because DEC25=OCT31"**

Whether the joke is funny is a matter for you, but it got me thinking about different peoples perceptions of the same situation and how it important it is for us all to think about our actions. I worked for a manager many years ago, and I dreamt up a great structure for the business, focus on sales and service etc - but it meant that there was only a role for him or his peer. I thought it was a great idea, would save a great deal of money, and ensure focus on what mattered - he thought it was not tenable and we went back to the drawing board! I learned a lot in that job.

A lot of the focus of change management analysis and communications planning is ensuring that the perceptions that the recipients of message will hold are positive (or can be dealt with if adverse). We need to recognise that people from differing personal and prfessional backgrounds will perceive the same piece of information differently. This is why being a change consultant is fun...

** Decimal 25 is the same as Octal (Base 8) 31 (3x8=24+1) - you can tell it is nearly Christmas

Big business - talking about the importance of people

Well, well, well. On today's BBC 'Working Lunch' programme (I do not spend all day watching television, honest), Ben Verwaayen CEO of BT spoke about the importance of people in this FTSE 100 company - watch the video. Mr Verwaayen was excellent, and tied BT's business strategies into the 100000 people globally who have to deliver them. He clearly has a grip on what makes companies tick, and the need to get BT's people behind him. What amazed me, was that it is rare that you hear a big-company CEO talking like this (and the interviewer's preamble outlines Mr Verwaayen's credentials from a people point of view).

Excellent interview if you're interested in change in the real world!

The whole point is to deliver value

I'm an accountant - but I'm not boring! I've admitted it, owned up to it. Done.

This admission is important - the reason that we implement projects and programmes is to deliver value......isn't it? So you would expect me to say nothing matters other than the financial impacts of the change activity. What will implementation expenses be, when and how are benefits realised, how can costs be capitalised, who has got the budget etc...

OK I would say all of those things - in the business world we have to deliver value to all our stakeholders, but we also have to think that there may not only be a financial business case that we need worry about, but all of the other impacts of our projects. Take the petrochemicals sector for instance - a project that develops relatively environmentally-friendly biofuels (see the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer's comments on this in yesterday's pre-budget report) deliver value in other ways, not just financial. This is important - selling the change on the basis of environmental benefit may be more relevant to some stakeholders than 'we save £xm over 10 years'. We need to determine all of the benefits and make sure that they're sufficiently developed to get people to accept the change. It may be possible to tweak a programme of work to (cheaply) gain additional benefits that make the change more palatable. Whichever way, it is critical that the benefits case is worked up in detail at the beginning of the project rather than the end!

Accelerating change

I had an email today about a global company that needed someone to help the finish a programme that had been running for two years - it sounded as if it had faltered and they need change consulting effort to move it to its conclusion.

Two years into the programme and they start worrying about the people impacts!! This reminded me of a great book I've read a couple of times - 'Five frogs on a log' by Mark L Feldman and Michael F Spratt. The book is about acceleration of change, particularly in an post-mergers and acquisitions situation. The title comes from the story about five frogs sitting on a log, one says 'shall we jump', and all agree that they should - of course they don't actually jump because saying you'll do something is differrent to actually doing it.

Back to the point, Feldman and Spratt use a great analogy for change - they liken it to removal of a sticking plaster; remove the plaster slowly and the pain lasts longer than pulling it off quickly - 'rip, sting, gone'.

Not all projects can be completed quickly, but you need to move those affected to an 'acceptance' position as quickly as possible. This is a measured process - in some situations you may not be able to talk to people as soon as you would like (eg; redundancy) - but that doesn't prevent detailed analysis and planning.

What normally happens in a change programme?

People talk to me about what I expect will happen in their change programme...the short answer is 'who knows?', but that isn't terribly professional or practical!

As it is people that stop change, make change happen, embrace change it is not very easy to say that one person, cadre of people, team etc will hold a specific view and will take a particular position. But if nothing is done to get people to support a change then, unremarkably, there is a real chance that nothing will happen. How many times in our professional careers have we seen that an IT system enhancement is delivered, but all the users do is carry on working in the 'old way'? How long did it take some colleagues to use email, rather than secretary-typed memos!

People have egos, issues, personal crises, work ethics, social, political and religious viewpoints, hangovers....they all need nurturing to work through a change. They will go through various stages dependent on their starting point (based on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' work );

• denial ('this can't be happening');
• anger ('why me - I won't let it happen');
• bargaining ('if I do this, what will it mean for me')
• depression ('Ok, I suppose that we have to do this')
• acceptance ('Let's just get on with it')

We can talk about whether these are actually the stages another day, but the principles are appropriate.

The challenges do not stop with an understanding of where individuals are with respect to working through the stages - because teams, unions, 'coffee-machine cliques' all have different views, as do managers, boards, shareholders, customers - every individual stakeholder and stakeholder group will need to be managed through the change - and working out which individual or group can really prevent or delay or change and then dealing with it is really what makes managing change interesting. For some individuals or groups a simple website with a feedback mechanism might be sufficient, others might need weekly briefings and monthly reports, others might reasonably be totally ignored - it is the structured approach to this, with regular monitoring via a 'heatmap' or similar that will help ensure that your change is successful. Alongside all of this, you have to ensure that the practical aspects of the change on a time/cost/quality basis is delivered successfully too!

Managing people, not technology - People stop change

I've just read a great article by David Ollerhead published in this week's Computer Weekly. In 'Manage People, Not Technology' he talks about how IT departments need to support an organisiation through change and indeed might be the catalyst for change (paraphrasing hugely). He also writes about the importance of gaining stakeholder support and ensuring that people support the change. It might be getting boring, but those who know me will have heard me say 'People Stop Change' about a billion times.

I have worked with IT departments to deliver real change to either themselves in terms of significant processes or to their user communities, and a perennial challenge is getting focus away from the technologies and onto the impacts of those technologies for users and the business at large. Overcoming resistance to change can be hugely challenging (and interesting!), and working out where the resistance is emanating from can be difficult.

I'm in the process of putting together a training event with the working title of 'Change for Techies' to bridge the gap in understanding and promote the need to ensure that the benefits of the technology are delivered. More on that another day no doubt.