It’s always great to welcome in a New Year with resolutions and change, and there are lots of exciting developments at Changefirst to tell you about in our Spring 2008 newsletter.

Firstly PCI Tools Online has been launched. We have an accompanying article to give you further details. We’ve been busy working on the PCI Practitioner’s Programme workbook -  the training material has seen a facelift with input from many of the training facilitators that you’ve all come to know and love (and hopefully not hate too much!). Your feedback has been very important to us, and many of your suggestions have now become a reality in our new look training.

It’s great to introduce a new member to the Changefirst team: Caroline Paxton. Some of you may already know Caroline as she has been a PCI Practitioner for many years as the Consultancy Practice Lead at BT Global Services. Caroline brings with her vast experience in Change Management so we’re all very pleased to have Caroline on board.

Our lead article this quarter is about Passive Sponsorship. Ask any facilitator what their most asked question is, and without a doubt, it will be about engaging sponsors. There is no easy answer to this quandry, but it’s also a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed during any change project. An engaged sponsor brings commitment, builds enthusiasm, and creates a momentum for change.

During 2008 I would love to include some real case articles on PCI change projects. If you would like to contribute, either by writing an article, or by participating in an interview, please do get in touch.

Best Wishes, Lisa.

Changefirst newsletter editor.

Do you have a passive sponsor?

You present your Business Case for introducing Change Management with gusto and enthusiasm.  After outlining the costs involved, alongside the benefits to the organisation, the board all nod their heads in agreement. “Great!” one says. “Just what we need!” says another. “Go do it.” the CEO instructs. They all pat you on the back as you walk out of the boardroom.
 
One month later you’ve trained your key team of sponsors and change agents in PCI, given presentations to project staff on Change Management, and the tools and guides are all ready. There’s a task at the top of your to-do list requiring your immediate attention: Get your senior executive team engaged. Right! No problem. You book a half hour appointment in your CEOs diary, only problem is he’s fifteen minutes late and he’s distracted with urgent manners on his mind.
 
“How’s the change management project?” He enquires.
“Great.” You respond. “And I’d like to discuss your role as a key sponsor.”
“You’ve got my whole hearted support.”  He says. “I give you full remit to get this in.’ He stands up, shakes your hand firmly and then shows you the door. “Well done.” He says with enthusiasm as he shuts the door behind you.
 
Sound familiar?
 
One of the most commonly asked questions is “How do I engage my sponsors?” particularly those most senior in the organisation. Even the most seasoned change management expert hits this problem time and time again. Often your sponsor is your biggest advocate, loves change management and everything it stands for. It’s not that he doesn’t buy into it, in fact he probably agrees with it’s principles, it’s just that in the overall scheme of things, and on the scale of potential looming disasters, change management projects can often rate pretty low on the scale. And lets face it, although it’s a means to reduce risk and increase success of other projects, Change Management projects themselves rarely rate on the critical projects list.
 
Clearly you need an active sponsorship. Without it organisations struggle to get any project delivered with even moderate success. Change Management becomes a half-hearted implementation that is only referred to when people have the time available (which is rarely). It becomes a nice to have / a great idea at the time / lost under the ever growing lists of other critical projects. It’s also difficult to preach to others the importance of an active sponsor if you yourself don’t follow your own teachings.
 
So what can you do?
 
Ensure your sponsors clearly understand their role upfront
The role of sponsorship cannot be delegated. While it may be a great confidence boost to be given such authority, it’s a short-term thrill. You’ll quickly discover that without the backing of the senior executive team, Change Management will struggle to get off the ground. It may feel an admission of failure to say “Thanks but no Thanks!” but it is, in fact, more courageous to ensure they are engaged and understand their role from the very beginning.
 
Getting senior executives to commit money is often easier than committing their time. As part of gaining their commitment at Business Case time, it’s important that they understand what that commitment really means – it’s not just money and otherpeople’s time. It’s a little bit of their time (not excessive amounts), and it’s their visible support for Change Management within the organisation. The sponsor team needs to share a consistent message that is highly visible through their actions.
 
Ask some hard-hitting questions:
 
If times are getting tough and priorities have to be made – are they prepared to stick to their guns, within reason, with Change Management?
 
If a Programme Manager delivers a Programme to time and to budget with all systems in, but with huge people impact and poor adoption of the new ways of working – will the Programme Manager receive his or her bonus?
 
Are they prepared to include change management success criteria in the performance reviews of Change practitioners?
 
Give examples of what their involvement will entail
Don’t be shy to say upfront what you are expecting from them.  Give them some real examples: such as they play a vital role in establishing the change imperative and deciding the future state.
 
Be very clear about the impact on their time that the new approach to delivering change will have.  Just like any other expense to a project, it should be explained and justified. The emphasis should be that the amount of their time would be kept to a minimum but that the impact should be regular, positive and reinforcing.
 
Make their life easy
A small quick reference card can be something that a sponsor can keep on his or her desk or take to a meeting, and it’s a quick refresher on the basics of what they are required to do on a change project.
 
Providing them with a few key questions can also be helpful. If your CEO asks a Programme manager in the lift how the staff change adaptability is going for their project, you can bet that very quickly all your programme managers will ensure they can answer a similar question if put on the spot!
 
The key here is not to overdo it. A few key questions that your sponsors can remember, have a better chance of success then getting them to read a report on the importance of their role (regardless of how good the report).
 
Explain the importance of their visible support
And equally important is the impact of their lack of visible support.
 
If a senior executive says “if we had time to spend analysing people impact then great, but we’re just too pushed for time. Just get the new system in” – the impact is not just to the project involved, but also to the wider Programme community. Other programmes begin to question whether their commitment to change management will be treated as “not that important”.
 
Clearly there will be situations where cuts need to be made – be it to time, to the budget, to the quality, and also to people impact.  As Change practitioners we can help ensure that Sponsors deliver message in a manner that has minimal repercussions.
 
There is no easy solution to engaging sponsors, be it on a Change Management project or any other. The key is engaging with your sponsor at the very beginning – ensure that they understand what it really means to be a sponsor, and what you require from them. Make their life easy with support, and hopefully you can achieve a state where your sponsor’s involvement is kept to an absolute minimum but when they are, it has real and positive impact.
 

PCI Tools Online is launched!

As we mentioned in our last newsletter, we’ve been busy making the PCI toolset available online as a web application. During February, participants of previous PCI programmes have been receiving emails outlining access details to the website.
 
The PCI Tools Online website now replaces the tools CD-ROM, and brings with it many advantages! The website gives the PCI Practitioner easy access to the latest version of the PCI toolkit.  You can create assessments online, both individual and group, and then distribute surveys and automatically process the results. Tools can also be downloaded for use in planning meetings and focus groups.
 
Relevant advice, guidance and reminders relating to each tool and the PCI methodology are provided automatically. The tools and templates are available in English and German, with further languages planned for the future.
 
To demonstrate how easy it is to use PCI Online, we thought we’d step you through creating a survey:
 
Step 1: Login and select the option to Setup New Assessment from the top navigational bar.
 
Step 2: Select Group as the Type of Assessment and add the email addresses of the people you wish to partake in the survey. You can then edit the email that will be sent to them. The Assessment is saved and the emails are sent.
 
Step 3: Each survey participant will receive an email with a link to the site. They can then complete the assessment. They cannot access anyone else’s responses or see the group results.
 
Step 4: The Change Agent can see if all participants have completed their survey by the indicator, as shown below. The Risk score is shown once more than 2 participants have completed their surveys.

Step 5: Once all results are in, the Change Agent can review the summary graphs online, for example:

PCI Tools Online is simple and easy to use, and streamlines the process of collecting and assessing information about your change.  It also means that PCI Practitioners can keep abreast of new trends and practices in the area of Change Management.
 
If you need any assistance with using PCI Tools Online, or have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you.

Caroline Paxton Interview

Caroline joins Changefirst in March after 9 years at British Telecom, Global Services (BT’s business to business division) as Consultancy Practice Lead (BT’s Business Transformation Consultancy). Caroline is very familiar with PCI having delivered PCI capability building and consulting to key BT clients and as a change architect on two large internal transformation programmes. In her new role, as of Head of Client Services, Caroline hopes to meet many of you shortly however we thought an interview with Caroline would be a great first introduction!

Hi Caroline, it’s great to see a new face join the Changefirst team. Can you tell us about your past experiences of using PCI and how it helped BT Global Services achieve its transformational goals?
 
PCI was our change methodology of choice for client programmes.  These programmes have a heavy technology component, and consequently, have delivery teams dominated by IT and project management folk who, in the main, are more comfortable dealing with milestones, timelines and deliverables.  PCI enabled us to put a structure around that “problematic and fuzzy” component, and ultimately had the most impact on the delivery of benefit – the people.  

From experience of using PCI externally we then decided that we needed to “take our own medicine” and started training project managers working on internal transformation.  The impact was immediate and we began to see a much greater emphasis on engagement and stakeholder management benefiting the speed of delivery and depth of the change.

“Transformation” seems to be a constant in business today.  How would you define “Transformation”?   What would you say are some of the toughest challenges facing Change Delivers? 

For me, transformation is about creating a step change in the performance of an organisation. This usually takes several years and several major change programmes to achieve. I see the word over-used by leaders who often mean major change, leading to confused expectations among their people.
I think the biggest challenge for change deliverers is to combat cynicism and resistance among the ‘change weary’. We live in a fast moving environment where no organisation can stand still.
The second challenge is ensuring that change leaders really understand the time major change takes to embed and deliver benefit.  Declaring victory too soon and disengaging from the change is common in my experience. Locally, people feel the change has been abandoned. Change leaders need to be strong and visible throughout the whole of the change cycle – not just at the beginning – and they need to be honest about progress.  
The third is making sure that local sponsors are fully engaged and supported.  Too often they have the least exposure to the strategy and planning of major change yet have the most pressure to make sense of change to their people and to deliver benefit. Without their active participation change will not be sustainable.

Is there one key element of PCI that you consistently used throughout your years in Change Consultancy, that you would ‘never do without’?

Only one is too hard.  Please can I have two!
The first would be the Change Network Map.  This has been such a useful tool for creating dialogue with change leaders, especially those who are hard to engage.  It also helps get project teams to understand the scope and impact of a programme on different audiences.  
 
My second is the Initial Change Description.  I have found this invaluable in overcoming cynicism, especially where people believe they did not need change management.  Running through the questions helps sponsors and project teams understand some of the risks they face.  Sometimes the sponsor and project team members each have different answers to the questions – in itself very revealing about their Shared Change Purpose! Or where the team recognise that they have no sponsor or no budget – why was the project still rolling?
 
And finally, as is always the way with such an interview, we always like to find out something completely non work-related about someone – so my final question is: Where are you hoping to go on holidays this year?
 
I discovered when we had children (two girls 11 and 8) that “last minute” holidays where a thing of the past!   So we already have two holidays booked this year! 
Living in the UK the winter, we endure a very grey sky so we love to escape to Florida around Easter as the weather is great – no hurricanes or humidity just day after day of blue sky and sun.  We are going at the end of March and are hoping to have a few days on the coast at Vero Beach and then off to Orlando.  We usually spend the last two weeks of July in south west England, on the north coast of Devon at a place called Saunton Sands.  We have been there for the last 11 years: walking and surfing and gourmet eating!

Change Network Mapping – tips for success

I was recently asked to provide some examples of when I have used Change Network Mapping successfully, and as it is such an interesting subject I decided to share my response. If you have other examples of where you have used this technique and found it helpful, please do send in an email and share your experiences.

As a Programme Office Manager I used Change Network Mapping frequently, and encouraged my Programme and Project Managers to try the technique. I didn’t generally have it as a ‘must do’ but I would often help Programme Managers create a Change Network Mapping when there were issues with ‘politics’, or a lack of clarity around roles (particularly Sponsors), or perhaps an inability to bring influence over an area that was required to change. A PMO can also encourage PMs to share their network map – where there can be benefit – for example – it can help a new PM understand the environment they are about to implement into, if a previous project has gone into the same environment.

As a PMO manager I would have conversations with PMs around what to do with the information on the Change Network Map. If they has a good enough relationship with their Sponsor I would encourage them to discuss the Map with them. Other discussions involved using influencers and other reinforcing sponsors – because sometimes you can’t always make the changes you would like.

And lastly, an example of how not to do it:
I was helping a team to build a Change Network Map – we were in a meeting room onsite – and the initiating Sponsor walked past. On the map we had drawn he wasn’t at the top. Let’s just say that wasn’t the best way for him to find out!

ww.changefirst.com