Driving ROI through Collaborative Organizational Change Management

Transcript

Jess Carter: The power of data is undeniable and unharnessed. It's nothing but chaos.

Speaker 2: The amount of data, it was crazy.

Speaker 3: Can I trust it?

Speaker 4: You will waste money.

Speaker 5: Held together with duct tape.

Speaker 6: Doomed to failure.

Jess Carter: This season, we're solving problems in real-time to reveal the art of the possible. Making data your ally. Using it to lead with confidence and clarity, helping communities and people thrive. This is Data Driven Leadership, a show by Resultant.

Hey, guys, it's Jess. On today's episode, you're going to hear Allison Grayson unpack for us organizational change management, why it matters, what to do with it, how to think about it and when, in the most approachable ways for any C-level executive or a major initiative champion.

I think some of the things that really stood out to me, I just appreciate about Allison is she walks you through just rattling off the top of her head what a case for change is and all of the components of it. So grab a pen and take notes there because it's critical. If you don't want to do that, you can also go to Resultant.com/blog and we're going to post an example of a case for change there. So you can go ahead and use that. She makes this really pragmatic.

So, if you've got a major initiative or several and you're trying to figure out how much do I really need to pay for? And think about training and aligning my people to the outcomes we want and how to measure the ROI on that and how to get it right, this episode is for you. Enjoy. See you guys later.

Welcome back to Data Driven Leadership. I'm your host, Jess Carter. On today's episode, I wanted to bring up something that's often thought of after a major technology project, strategic initiative, or some other major change has gone on in an organization. I want to talk about what it is, why it matters, and how to do it well. And that thing is organizational change management, which we will refer to as OCM throughout this episode.

So, why do data-driven leaders need to know how to leverage organizational change management? To help me solution on the spot is Resultant Director of Organizational Change Management, Allison Grayson. Welcome, Allison.

Allison Grayson: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Jess Carter: Yeah, no worries. Glad you could be here. So, I'm going to start with what does it look like for Allison Grayson to be the director of organization change management? What does that really mean? Like, how long have you been doing it? What does it look like for your career and its collision with OCM?

Allison Grayson: Yeah, so I've been with Resultant for about three and a half years, and even when I joined Resultant, there wasn't an organizational change management practice. OCM has really started to evolve, become more known, and people start to understand the impact a little bit more of what it can have in recent years. So, my history or background, I spent about 20 years in customer and employee experience consulting. So basically, what that meant was I helped organizations better listen to their employees and their customers so as they were prioritizing efforts or making change, they had the voice of as part of that. So I was always doing change management even though I didn't even know I was doing it. And so it's kind of evolved and now there's a title and job postings and real practices within organizations dedicated to it. So, it's been a big evolution.

Jess Carter: That's awesome. Well, and we probably have, I would imagine, kind of two camps. People who know what this is to some extent, I'm not sure how much adapt and people who have no idea what this is. So can you start pretty simple. What is organizational change management?

Allison Grayson: So we talk about it as the people side of change. So in a lot of the work that we do, we focus first. And organizations tend to focus first on the technical. So they need a new technology or a new data solution or they know they're going to change a process and that has certain things that you're going to design, develop, and deploy to the organization and it tends to be very technical. We're the other side. We care about who does this impact, how will this change the way they work, and what do they need to do to be successful in a new way of working. So getting people to be aware, embrace that change, and be set up to use it proficiently.

Jess Carter: Okay, that sounds of course brass tacks basics, right? It's obviously not. And so I don't know, when you look back at the industry it seems like it and data is where we really started to harness more of a practice of OCM in the last 10 or 20 years. Maybe you could speak to the history of it, but when did we hit a boiling point where now I do see it everywhere? I see people referring to it. There's whole certifications on OCM. So when did you start to see that showing up?

Allison Grayson: Well. So I think it kind of mirrors along kind of the trajectory around a kind of transformation. And we hear a lot about digital transformations and organizations kind of reinventing themselves and really kind of investing and replacing legacy systems and really starting to uncover all of the things that they put together and put invested, class solutions to be able to kind of support their business. And so with that has come mostly through failure and acknowledgment that it is not just the technology that's going to solve the problem. It's about making sure that you are bringing people along that journey and that it's not something that happens at the end so you don't do a “Ta-da!” We've developed this great system, send an email, invite people to a training and assume it's going to go well.

So I think the focus on it has been really because people have deployed things and they haven't been adopted. And then they've had to rethink, what did I do? How do I get people on board? I promised that I was going to see all of these benefits come to the organization by implementing this, and I'm not meeting my objectives. So what went wrong? How do I kind of go back? So I think it's through that learning that it's gained steam and some credibility. You're not doing just one small change. You really are doing an investment where you expect there's going to be really a lot of benefits across the organization, for sure.

Jess Carter: When I think about the experience, you have kind of two curiosities I have. What is it about OCM that you maybe love—like, live for—and what parts of it do you hate? What's like, “Oh, man, I'll do it, but man, it's not my favorite piece.”

Allison Grayson: What I love is that we've got kind of a foundation and a tenet and a framework for how we think about OCM here. We leverage the PROSI change management methodology as a good foundation, but we're also CCMP certified and all of that, so we've got a lot of experience. But even if you've got some standard frameworks, the thing that I love about it the most is every change is different, every organization is different, every culture is different. Whether or not they're in kind of risk of change saturation because their industry and everything is changing, or whether they've done things and failed before, what is that? So for me, organizational culture has always been a passion. And so the fact that I have to consider that in every project that I do and in every client I engage with, that's the part that I love the most.

Jess Carter: That is awesome. What about what you don't like?

Allison Grayson: I think some of the biggest challenges that I've struggled with, even though people will now start to recognize the benefits of change management, sponsorship, like legit sponsorship, is so critical and it's really hard sometimes to get people to recognize that being a sponsor is being engaged and visible and being a champion throughout. It's not like I've launched it, today we're going to do it, everybody cares. It's really about being consistent and really showing up. So it's hard to sometimes get those executives to realize how important their role is. And it's not just to be the face of a project, it's really to be its advocate and its champion throughout. So I love that part. I wish it was a little bit easier.

Jess Carter: Yeah. They're often pulled in so many different directions that it's hard to get them fully captivated on all like, what's enough of their time and attention on this? And I hate saying it that way, but that is often what they're thinking is like, how much do I have to do before it's like, I've done enough, right? So I was going to ask you to unpack the sponsor component, but you kind of just started down that path. So maybe answer this question then. When should I start thinking about OCM? If I've got some changes coming down the pike, I'm a leader.

Allison Grayson: Yes. Now, yesterday, I think that is one of the biggest misconceptions is that, well, one, that it's a nice to have and two, that it happens later in the process. It's actually in the very beginning. So the way we tend to focus on it is understanding kind of the change characteristics. What is the size scope of that change you're looking to do, how does it tie to your strategy, what is your why, what is your case for change—that all should tee up anything that you're doing before you go through any type of design and development, you have to be really clear on that.

And so really we start from the very beginning with that strategy, with that understanding of the culture, and starting to do an initial inventory of who are your stakeholders, who is this going to impact and how big of an impact is this going to have? Because that really should set up your entire strategy. That should be embedded in each of your milestones that you have for your technology project. So, yeah, already you should be thinking about already.

Jess Carter: And when I think about I'm taking on my strategic plan this year, that's not usually one change that's compounding changes to the organization. So how do I think about OCM? If I'm a CIO or a CDO or a CEO, how do I approach that? I could see myself feeling really overwhelmed really quickly when it's like, well, I got to give everything all this attention because there's 14 changes going on in my this year. How do I apply the right energy or think about OCM the right way.

Allison Grayson: Then, yeah, so there's a few things like there's not one way you do it. You're going to scale up and scale down based on the complexity and the impact that change is going to have. But you also can't look at changes as their individual silo. You have to step back and look at it cumulatively. So what are all the changes to achieve your strategic plan? What are all of the initiatives that you have going? When do you think those initiatives are going to hit? Who are those initiatives going to impact and almost heat map that as a logic check to really understand what's going to happen? And are all your changes really going to roll out in Q2? You can't do everything all at the same time because you're going to saturate your audience. They're not going to hear what you say and they're not going to actually adopt what you're rolling out. So it is kind of taking the time to be really thoughtful and map and plan that out so that you're setting yourself up for success.

So, yeah, I think you do have to prioritize that and you do have to make some decisions and likely shift things around. Sometimes you actually find synergies by looking at that because you say, well, wait, we're going to hit this group, the sales group, up with four different initiatives this year. Well, is there a way to package those? Is there a way to make that change feel less daunting to those you're impacting by wrapping it together, tying it to the strategic plan, making sure they see the why and have an expectation of what's going to hit them when they won't be as resistant? Because you've set that plan, you've explained that initiative and you're more likely to get them on board.

Jess Carter: Okay, one of my other curiosities. So if I'm a small business versus a medium sized business or an enterprise company, who's doing all of this, like in an organization? Do I look to the person who's doing the IT change? Is it the CIO? Is it the CDO? Who in the organization is responsible for OCM?

Allison Grayson: I don't know that there's one answer. So I think usually it's going to have to be somebody that is paired with the person, oftentimes with the person that's going to lead that initiative or that project. So if you've got somebody thinking about it from a technical component, you want them paired with a partner that can think about it from the people side. You want somebody that can go into those same meetings while you're doing business requirements and you're gathering technical things. You want somebody thinking about who that's going to impact and what jobs are going to change as a result.

At the same time, one person can't do both well. And so when we tend to work, sometimes we're embedding with people within an organization to help scale them up on OCM and just kind of being a thought partner. Sometimes we're collaborating with them and doing it together, or sometimes organizations don't have the skills and resources and then we step in as that team member. So there's lots of different answers. It really depends on the availability and skill set of the resources you have within your organization.

Jess Carter: Man, that makes so much sense and there's so much of this that we've lived through. I mean, we've done some of this over time and built the framework you mentioned, but it wasn't always there. And so I think there's moments in our history where I have some battle scars from moments where so many people had so many initiatives that were really important and in the end we wanted them to go so well. And all these people had these different initiatives, and then we got to the end and realized nobody could consume that much. I mean, I think there were times when we were the best of intentions, right? Like we had the best intentions in the world, but there was like a 7:00 a.m. optional training on my calendar, a 5:00 p.m. optional training and a noon one for three different trainings. And I was like, oh, this is why this doesn't work. Right?

Allison Grayson: Exactly.

Jess Carter: The well intentions didn't actually yield the outcomes we wanted at all. And so one of the really curious things that I am just dying to unpack with you is, obviously the value is like, well, we want adoption. We're spending all this money on these changes. Or we have a strategic plan because we need these changes for the sake of our business or a nonprofit. But how do you attribute value to OCM? Or, like, how much? I can understand the cost of software. I can understand the cost of an enhancement or a feature. How do you help a CEO, chief-whatever, understand what the right cost is for change management over any given initiative, either in time or money? How do you look at that?

Allison Grayson: Sometimes I think about it as it's almost the cost of not doing it. So what is it worth for you to invest all of this money and then have everybody continue to do the work the way they do today? So it's a little bit of that.

One of the things that the way that PROSI talks about which I really like is, when you're designing an initiative, you've got certain objectives you're trying to get. You've got certain metrics that you're going to deploy this system, and it's going to result in certain automations, which will create efficiencies, which will allow people to do different things and scale up their job. Or maybe you're going to reduce headcount because you're going to find these things, or there's a variety of different things that you're looking as the ROI of this initiative.

So what PROSI talks about is that OCM delivers the people-dependent ROI, and it's the percentage of that ROI that requires people to change the way they work. So if you think about it and you're deploying the solution and no one has to do their job differently and they don't have to log into a system or maybe they can receive a dashboard with new data and new information, but they don't have to make any different business decisions on it or use it anyway, then maybe you don't need it. But chances are you're expecting people to behave differently and utilize that, so that's the people-dependent ROI.

Jess Carter: That is fascinating and makes so much sense. Well, and you've mentioned some certifications too, so you mentioned PROSI, and I think something else, another acronym. Can you walk us through what those are, too?

Allison Grayson: Sure. So PROSI is a research based organization that really just focuses on understanding change management and helping to deploy those certifications. So they are international, around 70 years old. All of my team has that certification. You can continue to get certified. There's also the CCMP, which is the certified change management professional through the Association of Change Management. And so those are probably your most popular change management certifications that exist out there.

There's tons of resources, there's tons of different frameworks, and there's no one right or one wrong solution. I mean, it really is about taking some of those key components and frameworks of really understanding the why, who's impacted, how they're impacted, and how we can help them be successful. And there's lots of different tools and techniques you can deploy once you understand the organization and can help fit it right within the culture.

Jess Carter: Okay, so then while I'm thinking about when you said if you have changes you want and you're thinking about them, you need to start thinking about OCM early. Now. Yesterday. It seems like there's a moment where you set your year up for success. Budget is an important season, whether it's headcount that's going to invest in it, dollars you're going to invest in it, what are we planning on getting done next year? And do we have the budget set aside for OCM too? And I just bet most people don't. I bet most people try to cobble together something. I don't know. Do you have any secrets? Have you ever consulted anyone where it's like, crap, we ran out of money or we don't have the budget for it? How do you advise someone to think ahead? I mean, is it just, hey, when you're in budget, consider it, or do you have any secrets to making sure you're set up for success out the gate before you take on an initiative and you're thinking through the size of that ROI? I don't know. Do you have any secrets there?

Allison Grayson: I mean, don't have, like, a percentage of a project. I mean, it really is so much about understanding. If that specific change has a really strong sponsor and a really good case for change and everybody wants it, if you don't anticipate a lot of resistance, then you might need a lower amount of change management support. But if you have an enterprise change or you have multiple groups that are going to be impacted by the change differently, maybe you're going to reorg. Maybe it's going to impact job descriptions or pay. Those are the ones where when you really are going to hit some of those big levers, that's when you really need to make sure that you've got your thinking through and you're planning for it. Unfortunately, change management is often if we have money left over, we'll put it towards change management. And the problem with that is that nobody really has left over money. And there's always different ways to allocate. You really do have to think up front about what's this worth, not just from a technology perspective, what's it worth for me to actually have people set up to be successful.

Jess Carter: You just mentioned case for change. What's that?

Allison Grayson: Case for change is the why. So to me, every project needs your case for change. What is it? Why are we doing it? Why are we doing it now? What are some of the pain points that exist in the organization today that are kind of why we're trying to solve this? And then what are some of the benefits that we anticipate as a result? What does that future state look like? So what are the current issues or the issues in our current state? What are the benefits we want to deliver future state? And kind of encapsulating that.

I almost visualize it as one single slide and it's something that gets repeated over and over again to create a common understanding about why this is important and why people should care. Because at the end of the day, change is a choice. Individuals will get a chance to choose whether or not they behave in the way that you want them to. Sometimes they choose it by leaving, but it's a choice. They can jump in and adopt it. They can dig their feet in and want to work the way that they've always done.

Jess Carter: And first of all, I'm impressed with how much you just literally rattled off like a perfect case for change. That is just an impressive feat. I was like, I would be taking notes if I was trying to do this right now on every single item.

Allison Grayson: You just visualize things.

Jess Carter: That's so good. That was a gold mine. Okay, what if somebody brings us up to their C-level executives and they say, we already invest in training. That's what it is, right? Is it?

Allison Grayson: That's the other thing. People think it's communication, it's a few emails and it's a training and that's what people think it is. But it's so much more. We talked in the beginning. It's that sponsorship. Do you have strong visible sponsorship? That is actually the largest deciding factor on whether or not your change is going to be successful. You also have pockets, potentially, of resistance. So you might have either a part of the organization that's going to be resistant, maybe you have people with certain tenure that might be more resistant to the change than others, but you have to be able to proactively invite them to the table, manage through that.

You really have to think about not just communicating to, but engaging with, those impacted stakeholders. So, how do you set up two-way communication to make sure that they're heard, valued, and respected throughout the process? So, how do they do work today? What do they struggle with? What would they love to see? Making sure that you're hearing from them in the beginning, you're letting them tell you what they've done, how things work, what they've struggled with, so that they can breathe into the solution a little bit as well. They make the best testers, they can give you feedback, and all of that can happen so that by the time you're delivering that solution, they are informed, they're engaged, they know what's coming, they feel like they've been a part of it and they still might not love it, but they might not have to. If people feel heard through the process, they're more likely to adopt it, even if it's not something that they would choose to do themselves. And you're getting a better solution that's going to kind of ramp you up to proficiency a lot quicker.

Change is disruptive. If you surprise somebody with an email on Friday that says on Monday you're going to go to a training in the morning and start on this new system, you will have chaos. If those same people have been brought through and they know when it's coming and they've been a part of it, and then you roll it out, they're ready. They're in there. They've had hands on keyboard already, and that disruption is going to be so minimized, they'll be able to be proficient in their new ways of working so much quicker than if they're an afterthought.

Jess Carter: Okay, so I don't know if this is consulting, coaching, or therapy, but you tell me which. We've been there, right? So, we've done some of this, and I also have empathy for these champions. So, as one before, some of the things that I think are really difficult is when you're just trying to get this thing done, you're trying to get the system implemented. You're trying to get everybody to use it. You're trying to get them to understand why. And in that moment, people who are maybe not always thrilled by the change provide enormous amounts of feedback that can be really emotionally difficult. So, like, for me, there were moments when it was like, oh, a 20-page document that came with a letter about how this made you feel makes me feel bad. Makes me feel like I've done a bad job or I'm causing you pain or I'm disrupting your life. And it took me a minute to stop and be like, hey, this is invaluable. And I can't stare at it. The day after I was up all night trying to get this thing out the door. I have to come back in, like, a week or two. What, shipped? Shipped. I can make changes. But it's interesting how emotional that process can be where everybody who's experiencing the change, to some extent, it could be happening to them and the people who are championing it are doing that. And so there's this pushback, and I think there are moments where I've even seen some of the best leaders just get hot headed, impatient, and sort of handle that really poorly. So say you're in that situation, theoretically, one day, Allison, what advice would you give to C-levels on how to receive that feedback? Because I think you're going to tell me: It's good that people are engaging and they're sharing and they're connecting, right?

Allison Grayson: They're engaged enough to share their feedback, which is wonderful. If you're not hearing from them and they're not doing it, they might be one foot out the door. So the fact that they are willing to invest their time and share that feedback is really important. But I think what you have to recognize is that most resistance is rooted in fear. It's the fact that they have been successful in their job using their systems for many years. In many cases, maybe they have been the ones that have cobbled together these legacy systems and did these bolt-ons and these workarounds and all of this to make sure that they did the best they could with the infrastructure or the tools or the technology that they had to help this business run. And so they want to feel valued for what they've contributed. And if you're now saying that's bad and this is good, they're going to take that personally. And so the fear is that they're not going to be respected, that they're not going to be seen as valuable because they were tied to the legacy system and not the new. And there might be a little fear that they're not going to be as successful or as good at their job in this new environment. And so that's why identifying those at-risk groups from the very beginning, inviting them to the table and saying, talk to me about your work, they are probably frustrated with how it goes today. They probably don't like all the workarounds and all those things. So if you listen and have them be part of that solution, then you're going to be better off.

You're not going to make everybody happy and you don't want to. You have to make the decision that's right for the business. But it will be a lot easier for you if you open up the door to that conversation earlier. The other thing is that we live in a world of continuous improvement. Nothing is delivered and then untouched for the next four years. It should be about here. Is this rollout? This is what we're doing. We still want to know, does this work? Is this better? Is something more difficult than you thought it was going to be? Do you have now in the system? Do you have other ideas that can help us make this better? It should be a part of your continuous improvement cycle. It should lead into the governance and the prioritization. And people should really feel like there's not one shot to give feedback that they are a part of this with you driving the success of your organization through change.

Jess Carter: Yeah, no, that's really good. And I think that reminder for the champions out there that are kind of running these things is like, hey, you don't have to be good at receiving feedback all the time. You can take a beat. It is okay. You have to address it and recognize that it's a gift. But if it doesn't feel like one in that moment, it might be because you’re near burnout, right? So step away. Come back to it, address it. And it was funny to hear you voice that fear that maybe an end user is experiencing, because I think I would tell you the feelings I was feeling was fear. As a champion, I didn't want to fail them. And so getting this piece of feedback made me feel like maybe I didn't do enough. Or maybe it was wrong and recognizing it was just a step somewhere and there's maybe some choices we made that we should unmake, and that's okay. That permission to play. That permission to adapt or be like, yeah, I was wrong. We shouldn't have probably called it that, or we should have changed the way we rolled that out. It makes so much sense. But making those decisions on your sixth sleepless night is highly unadvisable.

Allison Grayson: Yes, but to your point, you need to, as a sponsor, as an executive, not be so in love with your idea of what's changing, that you're not willing to take new information. One of my favorite books is Adam Grant’s Think Again. How do you absorb new information? How do you let it challenge your assumptions and your beliefs to make sure that the decisions that you're making day by day are equipped with the new information and insight that you have today that you didn't have yesterday? And so I think that's part of leadership's role is to be really committed to the outcomes, but maybe not so in love with the specific solution.

Jess Carter: I love that I've not read that book. I'm putting that down right now on my list of books I need to read. Okay, so I think that you have handled most of my machine gun questions of what OCM is. I mean, do you have any other last insights of like, hey, you kind of know if you're heading in the wrong? This is sort of a curiosity. Could you ask a few questions to be like, hey, if you can't answer these questions, you're probably doing it wrong, or hey, I have seen a few people who are highly confident, but if these two or three things aren't in place, you probably should question your confidence. Do you have any advice of insights in that way?

Allison Grayson: If you don't have a clear case for change that people understand and are bought into, if you don't have clear, visible sponsorship, and if you are not engaging the impacted stakeholders in two-way conversations throughout the process, you're not set up for success. Those would be probably my top three.

Jess Carter: That's awesome. Okay, is there anything we haven't talked about that we should that I haven't thought to ask you?

Allison Grayson: Yeah, so when we think about organizational change, it can happen at a few different levels. And much of what we've been talking about is project-level organizational change. You're going to develop a new solution or technology or process, and we're going to wrap around change management around that specific initiative. But even before that, organizational health is key. If you do not have an executive team that is aligned, that is healthy, that is functioning, that can have challenging conversations, that can operate as a cohesive team, that's probably a risk. And so organizational health is really important.

Clear strategy, clear alignment, clear ability to work across the organization on an executive level is critical, and it makes change management at the lower levels so much easier. Because they feel like there's a strategy. They feel like everybody's speaking the same language, and they feel like everybody's behind it. And they know that what they're doing can meaningfully impact the organization. So I would say organizational health is another component of change management, that if you don't have a healthy organization, you might want to start there even before you start thinking about change management at projects or do both at the same time, but don't feel like one is in absence of the other.

Jess Carter: I can imagine even just one scenario in my head is if you've worked somewhere where executives are competing instead of collaborating, that's where I think you're going to have some of those compounding changes. Because we're trying to race two different people to a finish line. That it's. Like, guys, this has to make sense for all the end users together. So I'm sure there's a bunch of scenarios where you can kind of experience whether you're in the executive seats or not, that tension where it's like if you're just going through constant change you can't keep up with, there's probably something going on at the top that doesn't make sense or there's just a miscommunication going on. Right?

Allison Grayson: Yeah. Or if you talk to one executive and they're like, here are the top three priorities and the other has a different top three priorities, what does that mean on the day-to-day basis? How do you prioritize where you're going to invest your time? You don't have clear line of sight and so that's where it starts to get really messy and you're not going to get all of the outcomes, the benefits and the outcomes you're looking to achieve.

Jess Carter: Yeah. If I'm C-level, can I delegate change management or championing something? And if so, how far can I delegate it?

Allison Grayson: Yeah. The sponsor, the champion, the head champion does not have to be the most executive person. They have to be respected within the organization. They have to have enough authority that they can move boulders or assign resources or help people get things done. And they have to be authentic. If they're not authentically behind this initiative, they're not going to be able to be successful. So I've actually been a part of change where we had the wrong sponsor and they were not authentically behind it. And that actually despite all of the good work at the project level, it really hurt adoption because people didn't really trust that this was a primary thing and they should really lean in and focus on it because they didn't feel that sponsorship was authentic.

Jess Carter: That makes a ton of sense. Wow.

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