Networking to deliver change

There is a lot of fuss around on the on-line networking sites at the moment that is basically asking 'what's the the point of networking'. Here's the response I gave to a LinkedIn question on this subject...

"...The point of networking in my view is to build trusted relationships, providing a support and 'friendship' infrastructure - you have to give, give, give and occasionally you get to 'take'. Building these relationships might lead to sales, but it may not be direct sales, rather leads and referrals from folks that trust you to deliver. "

If we apply this to managing change, answering the question of 'what's the point of networking in managing change', I wouldn't change my answer much...

"The point of networking IN MANAGING CHANGE in my view is to build trusted relationships, providing a support and 'friendship' infrastructure - you have to give, give, give INFORMATION and occasionally you get to 'take' THE DESIRED (BEHAVIOURAL) CHANGES. Building these relationships might lead to CHANGE, but it may not be direct, rather STEPS ALONG THE PATH from folks that trust you to deliver. "

The point is that we need to build relationships with people, and build a network of colleagues, suppliers, partners etc that can help us achieve the ultimate goals of our projects - the enduring change that creates the value required. When I worked for a major corporate it was clear that my network helped me deliver, and working on a shorter-term assignments still requires these relationships to be built-up, only more quickly.

I deliberately left the term 'stakeholders' off of my list above - depending upon what you need to achieve, the stakeholder groups that are most affected by the change are probably those where your networking skills will be most valued. You need to nurse those affected by the change, whether as the sponsoring community (who might get fired if it fails!) or those directly impacted through the new systsem, company acquisition, outsource or whatever. It is ultimately 'people that stop change', so you need to ensure that you understand their fears, worries, crises and how you might steer them in the direction of accepting and embracing the change.

There are of course a lot of techniques to help you do this, but that is for another day!!

Developing relationships

Sorry for not posting for a while!

I was talking to a colleague about developing business relationships. I thought I would list my initial ideas for the real world....

• talk don't email - not easy sometimes, but relationships are built from trust and hiding behind an email persona is not going to build a trusted relationship
• network - link up with as many relevant people as you are able - maybe electronically at first (Ecademy, LinkedIn etc). You need to know people and be able to support relationships with introductions and information
• market - depending on the degree of transience that you expect business relationships to have, there is nothing wrong with advertising - it is how you turn the responses into long-term relationships if that is your goal
• join - clubs, professional organisations, rotary etc
• sponsor - put some money up for a 'good cause', business event or publications - particularly good where you need brand awareness in a reasonably small market place

That's enough for now.

Driving stakeholders to change

Rick Maurer commented on my previous post around the importance of building trust with stakeholders (also see Rick's great blog Change Management News).

Building trust is key to any human relationship. The stakeholders in a change programme will all be worrying about different things, if they're worrying at all, and will probably have different perceptions of what is actually due to happen, what status the change programme is at, and whether the desired outcome will ever be achieved. They need to see who is helping them through the change, giving them certainty and comfort, and it is important therefore that change and project people spend time and effort building trust through the human relationships.

In the real world people will be less worried about the interesting new system that you are developing that will save the company £xm, they will be worried about what it means for them. Our job is to act as the trustworthy 'oracle' or at least ensure that the senior stakeholders trust us and are trusted by those affected.

There are of course many things that one might do to build that trust, that extends well beyond the 'social' relationships. Here's a few suggestions - the importance of these will depend upon the stakeholder individual or group, where they are in their acceptance of the change etc;

• Always do what you say you will do;
• Be seen to deliver;
• World class project management of risks, issues etc
• Plan everything, with detailed stakeholder analyses, communications plans etc
• Communicate (in all its forms)

How important is being a 'trusted adviser' to clients?

I was asked this a few days ago, so thought I would quickly articulate my views here.

Without trust, it seems to me that relationships are ineffective. Individuals will never achieve optimum performance and the benefits from the relationship will not achieve their full potential.

As a consultant, one strives to become a 'trusted adviser' - as a professional person a consultant strives for client satisfaction as well as personal satisfaction - in a change environment one would gauge this as benefits delivered (exceeding those required if possible) along with the behavioural and process changes that ensure that those benefits endure. As a trusted adviser the consultant is taking the client relationship to the next level - not necessarily for mercenary reasons - endeavouring to use their skills and 'wise counsel' to support their client through whatever challenges faces them.

It seems to me that this is critical to development of a long-term professional relationship, with potential benefits to the consultant of further work and referrals.

Defining change management

I wrote on 4 January about the tensions between project and change management. The Change Management Learning Center have a great (short) paper aimed at giving a definition of change management.

Managing the financial impacts of change

I've had a few discussions lately about financial control in a change and project environment. Too much to discuss in detail here, but here's a 'top of my head' list of the things that you might do to keep financial control of your project;

• Build a narrative business case, and detailed plan;
• Align that to detailed numbers - implementation (revenue) expenses, capital expenses phased to show cashflow (cash is king!), and benefits case - what will be delivered when and what will the real impacts be;
• Develop a risk weighted NPV - use factors such as 'do we know how to do this?', 'do we have the resources?', 'budget?' to show an NPV - over time improve the NPV by adjusting the risk factors as you satisfy yourself that you can achieve it. The NPV (or ROCE) is a great measure to show expected financial outcomes.
• use qualitative measures to support your numbers (which of course you will monitor in detail weekly/monthly!) - are deliverables being completed or is there a bow-wave of activity building up with consequent cashflow impact, are the numbers and criticality of open issues/risks increasing etc
• Use graphs to compare measures - see the relatives as well as the absolutes.
• Make sure any numbers that you use are reconciled to source data (ie; are accurate), and preferably 'triangulated' to two sources

With proper (basic) systems and processes, much of this monitoring can be automated!

Enough for now!

Why do we deliver change...to create value

We deliver change to create value - that's it. I've written on this subject before but given one or two discussions I've had recently thought it worth reiterating the point.

Change is a difficult thing. But it must always have an ultimate goal - in corporate life we deliver change because it creates shareholder value (it is difficult to see any other reason), and in the social and governmental sectors we might go through a change programme to establish some social or environmental improvement. Why would you go through potentially gut-wrenching change for no good reason?

Facilitation for change - tools to support us through change

I've been along to a meeting today - these folks are all professional facilitators based in central England, and much of what they do is help groups of people achieve their change goals (as well as mediation, public policy and loads of other things). It is a long time since we could rely on things to 'just happen', and facilitated workshops, conferences, meetings etc help in ensuring that objectives are achieved.

This got me thinking - as change consultants/change managers what do we have in our armoury to help us through some really tricky people-related change activities. Here's my list off the top of my head...

• processes to support change analysis
• project and programme management approaches
• Communications expertise; and
• Professional facilitation of course

....but other than experience and common sense probably not a lot else.

If you want to get in contact with any of the UK Facilitators let me know.

Project Management and Change Management

There is a debate going on in another forum about the use of structured project management methodologies (eg; Prince 2) versus the management of change. We need to be clear that project management is not the same as change management - managing the project is part of managing the change, but it is a relatively mechanistic process, providing the assurance of technical delivery and to some extent the delivery of the benefits. Change management is about delivering the behavioural change that ensures that the benefits endure, that the technical changes are accepted, and that the expected outcomes are achieved.

Another way of looking at this is that there are many more people involved in delivering the change (the sponsor, Board, managers etc), whereas the project processes can be delivered by the Project Manager (who, if they are enlightened/experienced will be focussed on delivering the change as well as the technical delivery).

One thing that annoys me is where some third party suppliers/partners (in IT particularly) tend to come along after winning a contract and expect that they can simply implement their bit of technology and it will work and be accepted - they often get a shock and then cost overruns etc, and consequently relationships start to fail between supplier and customer....the real world is difficult!

Here's a link to a basic project/change role comparison from the change management learning center if you're interested.

Change training and development

I was asked today about change training and development.

I know there are a few public courses around, but in my view bespoke training related to a particular business sector is most helpful - different sectors tend to have different challenges, ways of operating, language etc, and all of these things are important in how people act and react to change. Probably the best course that I've run is a focussed 'advanced' training within the Financial Services sector, based on 'real-life' case studies and a little bit of role playing. This allowed participants to establish an approach to managing through change (at a very high-level inevitably) in a safe environment - and its loads of fun too!

If training can be supported by mentoring, so much the better.