Change

Overview

Change is a constant in everybody's lives. However, the way we discuss change can differ greatly depending on your past experiences with change.

 

If you have had a traumatic experience with a large technology change, then the next technology change gives you bad memories. While these memories may not change. If we all have similar language to discuss changes, you might be able to suppress those images earlier if you are able to compare them at a high level and differentiate the changes early on.

 

This page attempts to provide some common language that can be used to discuss the type, topic, way and size of changes.

Types of change

Broadly, changes fit into one of two categories.

 

Adaptive changes - Adaptive changes are small, incremental changes organisations adopt to address needs that evolve over time.

 

Transformational changes - Larger in scale and scope than adaptive changes, transformational change involve major shifts in mission, strategy, structure, performance and processes.

 

What is being changed

People often talk about whether it is a People, Process or Technology change. I think this simplifies things a little too much because even a technology change can have cultural change elements (People).

 

So while you might be aiming to change one of the below, you might also be changing another. So it is a good idea to map out what the impacts of the change could be ahead of time. As per our Grow section, you should work out how to measure these impacts.

 

Organisational structure change

This can be a change to reporting lines, merging teams or creating new teams to name a few types of structural change.

 

Organisational culture change

This happens naturally over time but can also be influenced by interventions based on feedback from employee surveys.

 

Business process or policy change

These are changes made to the way we work as a team or an organisation. Usually done to improve the way we work or provide better accountablity.

 

Technology change

This is where we replace, upgrade or customise a technology application or piece of infrastructure.

 

It is also worth noting that each of these changes could be either adaptive or transformational.

How it is changed

Broadly speaking a change would go through three main phases from initial concept to implementation.

 

Analyse

This is where you gather data to define the problem. You define the size of the problem, the impacts and risks to the organisation.

 

Build

Here you build the solution to the problem and define how you will measure the success of the solution.

 

Adopt

This is where you raise awareness of the problem, build desire for the solution outlined, support adoption and measure the outcomes over time (Reinforcement).

Size of the change

Changes are generally categoried in three different sizes

 

Small / Low impact

Small changes are generally adaptive changes which tweak an existing solution to improve it.

 

Medium / Medium impact

Medium changes can be adaptive or transformational and do larger tweaks or change whole sections of an existing system.

 

Large / High impact

Large changes are generally transformational and replace entire solutions or re-invent how those solutions operate.

Change management

I often get asked to define change management. I usually reply that it is assessing where an organisation is currently, discovering the state they want to be in and supporting them to plan and transition to the new state.

 

The change may be small or large, adaptive or transformational but to change to the new state, people need to learn. People can’t learn without changing themselves, so change is an integral part of organisational growth.

 

A quality change manager knows how to work a change through a change methodolgy and apply that to your organisational setting. My know-learn-grow approach works within the major change methodologies. It focusses on the people and how to move them through a change methodology.