Change on the Run

Phil is joined by communication and corporate affairs leader Saira Absar to discuss responding to praise during change.

Change initiatives can be gruelling and can feel like a succession of uphill battles characterized by tight deadlines, difficult challenges, stretched capabilities, and long hours. Giving and receiving recognition energizes individuals and teams and builds momentum to tackle the next tasks and activities. 

There is a lot of advice on how to acknowledge people’s efforts but little on how best to receive this recognition. It can be an opportunity to acknowledge those who give it, your contributing peers, and the strategy and tactics that led to the achievement.

So, how do you respond to praise in ways that leverage the compliment for you, others and the project?

You can reach Saira at: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sairanabsar/

Phil is joined by change and business transformation expert Cathy Brown to discuss negotiating deadlines during change.

Setting realistic project timelines requires a thorough understanding of the change and the context in which it is being made. The level of change complexity, resource availability, and operating environment are inputs into creating a fact-based calendar for the timing of deliverables. 

Negotiating deadlines requires aligning leader and project team expectations with your assessment of the transition work and the time needed to complete it.

So, how do you negotiate deadlines that enable you to complete tasks and activities to their specifications within dynamic operating environments?

You can reach Cathy at:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathybrown188/

Phil is joined by change capability development and change execution expert Michelle Yanahan to discuss handling mistakes during change.

Mistakes are inevitable when managing change. There are too many moving pieces on different schedules, and run by different people to avoid missteps.

Given the stress that major change initiatives inevitably produce, people can default to responses that deflect ownership, compromise resolution, and obscure learning when something goes wrong. This behavior often adds risk to the project and damages relationships.

A better and more difficult approach is to expect and address mistakes as they appear.

So, how do you handle mistakes in ways that identify root causes, resolve issues, and make changes, so they are less likely to happen again?

You can reach Michelle at: 

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://changefit360.com/

Phil is joined by senior engineering and organization change management professional Denis Kelly to discuss competing for resources.

Securing adequate resources to implement your plan is one of the most important negotiations impacting your success.

Most companies take on larger change agendas than the resources available to implement them. This can lead to insufficient or misaligned resources supporting your change initiative.

A large portfolio of change projects can also limit the capacity of those impacted by the change to implement your plan and transition to new ways of working.

So, how do you compete for the resources your need to support people as they adopt change and achieve intended results?

You can reach Denis at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisrkelly.

Phil is joined by business transformation and change management leader Jennifer Rhodes to discuss reporting against a timeline.

At the center of every change initiative is a project plan that maps the activities and tasks required to transition people from current to new ways of working. It functions as a work back schedule from the post-launch support to the project kickoff.

Teams supporting a change spend significant time reporting against the timeline. Being “ahead of” or “on plan” is the goal, but often, falling behind is a reality.

The ability to communicate progress against a timeline is an essential change management skill. Those who do it well can influence expectations and plan details; those who don’t can experience greater scrutiny, extra work and lost confidence in their capabilities.

So, how do you report against a timeline to inform stakeholders, guide expectations, and make required enhancements that lead to successful change?

Jennifer can be reached at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifermrhodes/.

Phil is joined by executive and change leader Stephen Sotto to discuss defining change support.

Preparation activities are key enablers of change readiness and adoption. The options are many, including, training, coaching, ways of working sessions, job aids, and simulations. The types and amounts of support need to be appropriate for people’s needs and circumstances.

It's a fine balance between too much and too little change assistance. If you provide too much, people get stressed and may choose to opt-out of activities; if you provide too little, people won't have the required mindsets, routines and behaviours to effectively adopt the change.

So, how do you define what change support you need to prepare people to adopt change?

Stephen can be reached at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-sotto-08b605b/

Phil is joined by Professor of Organizational Behaviour Dr. Jamie Gruman to discuss overcoming a blocker during change.

Blockers are people who raise barriers to organizational change and your success. They either oppose what you are doing or want it done differently. This form of resistance is challenging because it is intentional and leverages the blocker’s influence through authority, relationships, and organization knowledge. Inaction is not a good option because the barriers will remain, and the wrong type of action can lead to escalation and more setbacks.

So, how do you overcome a blocker to achieve your and the organization’s goals and avoid triggering greater resistance?

Jamie can be reached at: https://www.jamiegruman.com/about-jamie

Links to writings and research: https://www.jamiegruman.com/read-me

Phil is joined by change and innovation leader Tim Creasey to discuss how to close a change project.

A project team’s effectiveness in transferring responsibilities to operating groups often dictates the level of long-term adoption of new ways of working.

Managing the closing of a change project can be challenging because most leaders and project team members may have physically or mentally moved on to their next roles and challenges.

Building awareness of the importance of the project's final steps is necessary to ensure people fulfill their roles. If they don’t, a poor shutdown will negatively affect the benefits realized and the perception of the project team’s capabilities.

So, how do close a change project to build capability, transfer accountabilities and sustain the new ways of working that deliver the intended outcomes?

Tim can be reached at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timcreasey/

Website: https://www.prosci.com 

Additional resources from Tim:

Metrics for Measuring Change Effectiveness

Change Management Process

Achieving Sustainable Performance with Organizational Change

Webinar Replay: Making Change Stick: Best Practices for Reinforcing and Sustaining Change Outcomes

Phil is joined by HR and change management expert Kathy Repa to discuss how to identify your lessons learned during change.

Understanding how our experiences impact outcomes helps build change capacity and skill, and dramatically improves organizational knowledge on how projects work within our cultures. 

So, how do identify, record and learn from your experiences during a large change initiative? 

Kathy can be reached at:

Email: [email protected]

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

PHIL: Hello everyone, welcome to the change on the run podcast, where we discuss common change challenges and ways to address them. When you're short of time, and I'm your host, Phil Buckley. Today's topic is identifying your lessons learned. Understanding how our experience impacts outcomes helps build change capacity and skill and dramatically improves organizational knowledge of how projects work within our cultures. Experience is the best teacher, which enables us to repeat success patterns and eliminate future roadblocks to achieve our goals in the quickest and most effective way. Learning occurs in the moment. Something worked or didn't work because of specific factors, and we often lose learnings we don't record quickly. This applies equally to organizations and individuals and is especially true in the middle of projects because we tend to remember only beginnings and endings, leaving the key middle ground foggy. So, how do you identify, record and learn from your experiences during a large change initiative? And my guest today is Kathy Repa. Kathy, welcome to the show.

KATHY: Thank you so much for having me, I am so excited to be a guest.

PHIL: Thank you, Kathy, and thanks so much for taking the time to be here. Kathy has over thirty years of global human resources and change management experience. She is currently the Vice President HR, Global Supply Chain at Mondelez International. Kathy holds a BA, Human Resources Development at DeSales University. So, Kathy, looking back at your thirty-plus year’s career and we've known each other for over ten years, what's been your experience with personal lessons learned. I look at you as the queen of lessons learned and I've learned so much about how you do so just generally. What's been your experience?

KATHY: You know, one of my biggest lessons, and I think your book Change on the run really triggers a lot for me, is that we run a lot when we're doing these changes. We run from one change to another. We're change junkies. It's sort of our drug of choice and we look forward to those things. What we don't take time often enough as change professionals, to take a pause and to think about what we have actually learned, what lessons we can pass on to others or what lessons we can take forward ourselves, and I think that by doing that you don't often get as much value as we possibly could from that pause for purpose, that time to refresh, that time to reflect, and I'm a huge journalizer, so I do often sit back at the end of the week and maybe as I've gotten into my twenty and thirty years of running change, I do it much more frequently to say, you know, what things went well about this and what am I most proud of and what do I want to learn from that to take forward and make sure that I incorporate in the next ones? You know what things didn't go so well, and sometimes we punish ourselves for what didn't go so well, and I like to sit back and say, well, was that in my control? Because if it's not in my control, then why would I punish myself for it not going well? Then? That's not to say I don't take that as a lesson to do something differently, but I don't sit there and beat myself up over and over again about something that wasn't in my control, but rather reflect on how I can manifest it into something that next time might be much more controllable. And then I d

Phil is joined by board member, breakthrough consultant and executive and team coach Stephanie Wilkes to discuss how to make decisions during change.

Most transformation post-mortems uncover decisions that led to success or failure. Facts, options, assessment criteria, available time and risk all play roles in the decisions made and the ability to implement them.

During large change initiatives, decisions are often made quickly in response to new conditions or information. They require focus, process, and at times, management intuition to make the best call and align leaders and their teams on how to activate them.

So, how do you make decisions during transformations that direct and move an organization to new ways of working to adopt change?

Stephanie can be reached at:

Email: [email protected]