Defining the Value in Change Management

CONTEXT

“You’ll spend the first three months creating the analysis and plans” the change lead said as she showed me to my cubicle. I had just joined an initiative as a change management consultant and was being onboarded. I initially thought that I had misheard the change lead, but what followed was months of reviewing documents, completing super detailed change analysis, creating the 30-page strategy, and drafting the 50-page plan. The result was the most comprehensive and polished documentation that I had ever produced. Of course, as soon as it was completed it was all quickly filed away in some SharePoint site. The change lead was ecstatic with the documentation, but I was frustrated and thinking about quitting. Can you blame me? I had just spent hundreds of hours producing hundreds of pages of beautiful documentation, yet I hadn't delivered any actual value.
 

WHAT IT MEANS

The definition of value in change management is anything that creates context for stakeholders – nothing more, nothing less. Initially, you may think that this assertion is far too simplistic. After all, change management is a complex field, encompassing a broad range of methodologies, models, activities, strategies, and tools. Can the value of this complexity really be distilled down to a single function? It makes perfect sense if you strip away the noise to get to the fundamental purpose of change management.
 

“The definition of value in change management is anything that adds context for stakeholders. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

The fundamental purpose of change management is to create alignment for change through the creation of shared context. Alignment does not mean agreement. We can’t make everyone like or agree with change, and that’s ok. What’s important is that we create enough context for stakeholders to be aligned to the cause, purpose, and vision of the change. We can’t force people to change, and we shouldn’t try. We can’t cajole or manipulate people into changing if they don’t understand what the change means, why it’s happening, how they fit in, or what the outcome looks like. In other words - if they don’t have context.

The only thing worse than stakeholders having no context is if they have limited context. Limited context means stakeholders’ perspectives and actions will be based on an incorrect or incomplete view of reality. People will decide for themselves if, when, where, and the degree to which they will participate in change. It’s incumbent on change management to ensure that those decisions are made with accurate context.

If you define context creation as the value in change management, then what follows is a paradigm-shifting idea – any activity that does not create context (value) for stakeholders should be viewed as waste and eliminated or reduced. With this one mindset shift, you can completely transform your change work, because it challenges you to reassess your priorities.   

"Any activity that does not create context (value) for stakeholders should be viewed as waste and eliminated or reduced."

HOW I HANDLE THIS CHALLENGE

I constantly seek to Identify waste in my change process. I start with the premise that any activity that is not spent engaging with stakeholders should be reduced or eliminated. For example, I view traditional change management analysis, strategies, and plans characterized by lengthy processes and heavy documentation as having zero intrinsic value because they don’t in of themselves create context for stakeholders. It’s not that I don’t need to do these things, I do, but I view them and do them differently. Instead of working in isolation to create big heavy change documentation that no one will ever read, I use a variety of visual lean collaboration tools to involve stakeholders in the process to co-create the documents. By doing so I extract value these traditionally non-value-adding activities because stakeholders create context through the process.

I always keep in mind the difference between context and content. Big heavy documents provide a lot of content, but very little context because no one reads them and even if they do, the information is not fully understood because it is being viewed through a person’s unique viewpoint. Only meaningful dialogue can create shared context and understanding.

Defining value in change management as being anything that adds context for stakeholders helps us to focus on identifying and removing waste from our process so that we can run more lean and agile.