Change Management resources: articles, interviews, reviews, journals, checklist, internet resource links

Change Management Checklist

Intended use of this checklist
For a project team and/or a Project Manager to evaluate the effectiveness of the projects and Change Management Process and how to revise the specific plans. The checklist contains items to consider for documenting change requests, handling them with a change process, and ensuring approved changes are included in the project deliverables.

Response Items to be considered

1. Has a request been filed by a member of the project team or by a stakeholder (requirement, change, problem, defect, or other change)?
2. Has the change request been documented?
3. Has the change request been prioritized?
4. Has an approach been identified to handle the change?
5. Has a workaround been identified if the change is not implemented?
6. Has it been acknowledged that the change applies to this project?
7. Has an independent team or member (not the originator) reviewed the change request to determine whether or not it is worth evaluation for action?
8. Has an estimate been developed of project effort, cost, schedule, resources been determined?
9. Have the estimates been evaluated and authorized by a Change Control Board or other authority? Have the results of the above evaluation been communicated to the requestor?
10. If the change is denied, has the requester been notified?
11. The following steps are to be considered only if authorization for the consideration of the change was given.
12. Has the change been incorporated into the project work plan?
13. Does the incorporation of the change require an adjustment of resources?
14. Does the incorporation of the change require an adjustment to the schedule?
15. Have the changes in the plan been communicated and commitments established?
16. Has the work been performed to address the change?
17. Has the work been reviewed with all effected parties?
18. Have the associated verification activities been performed to ensure correctness?
19. Have revisions been placed under configuration control?
20. Have the change request records been updated to document the changes made?
21. Has the Change Control Board been notified that the change has been completed?
22. Have the change request records been updated to reflect completion status?
23. Has the requestor been informed of the final status?

MANAGING CHANGE: A CHECKLIST for Managers

Ask yourself these questions:

• Have I studied the changes carefully and identified who is likely to lose what -- including what I myself am likely to lose?
• Do I understand the subjective realities of these losses to the people who experience them, even when they seem like overreaction to me?
• Have I acknowledged these losses with sympathy?
• Have I permitted people to grieve and publicly expressed my own sense of loss?
• Am I giving people accurate information and doing it again and again?
• Have I defined clearly what is over and what isn’t?
• Have I found ways to "mark the changes/endings?"
• Am I being careful not to denigrate the past but, when possible, to find ways to honor it?
• Have I made it clear how the changes we are making are necessary to protect the continuity of the organization or conditions on which the organization depends?
• Finally, what actions can I take to help people deal more successfully with the changes that are taking place in the organization? What can I do today to get started on this aspect of transition management?

Dennis Sparks, Executive Director of the National Staff Development Council, offers these 13 tips for managing the complex and difficult change process (Sparks, 1993):

1. Educate the leaders of change, including both principals and teachers.
2. Use a "systems" approach to ensure that all aspects of the school organization are considered when planning and implementing change.
3. Use a team approach that involves many stakeholders in the change process.
4. Share power with teachers and others to encourage the implementation of the change efforts.
5. Make plans, but "hold your plans loosely." Develop plans, but know that they will have to be adapted to change as needs change.
6. Realize that there is a tension between establishing readiness for change and the need to get people implementing new approaches quickly. While getting people intellectually ready for change is something to be considered, it should not take so much time and effort that people lose interest and motivation.
7. Provide considerable amounts of training and staff development for those involved. These activities can include everything from holding study groups to "on-the-dash" coaching.
8. Choose innovative practices for and with teachers that are research-based and "classroom friendly." Picking approaches that have been used or researched can help the implementation of those approaches.
9. Recognize that change happens only through people. The emotional effects of change on educators need to be considered and understood by all involved in the change process. Understanding resistance and working with it is key.
10. Be prepared for "implementation dip." Fullan (1993) and others note that things often get worse temporarily before improvement begins to appear.
11. Help educators and others develop an "intellectual understanding" of the new practices. While the outcomes are important to assess, people also need to understand the underlying meanings and functions of the practices.
12. Seek out "paradigm shifters" and "idea champions" who are interested in making substantial changes in practice.
13. Take the long view; realize that change takes time and should not be forced to occur too quickly.

Change Management Resources on the Web

Uninted Small Business Administration
Business.gov
Bitpipe IT change management resources
First Gov: Mangers Toolkit
The International Association of Business Communications

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Change Management Articles

What will the long-term effects of change be? Similarly, your employees will want to know how they will be personally effected by the changes you are proposing.

Once a change occurs, it is very important to communicate on a regular basis with all effected. Let your employees know what is happening. If your communication skills are weak or you don't have a formal way of letting your employees know what is happening, set one up before you hit this stage of the change process. By keeping everyone informed, you reduce the chances of low productivity and low morale that often accompany unaccepted change.

It is important to realize that although you can use techniques to smooth the change transition process, you will never be able to completely jump from one way of doing something to another without experiencing at least some resistance. Why is this? Well, people adjust to change at different rates. It's just part of human nature. To reduce your frustration with this process, it helps to know the six phases people go through whenever they are experiencing any type of change, be it personal or professional.

• Anticipation. People in Phase 1 are in the waiting stage. They really don't know what to expect so they wait, anticipating what the future holds.
• Confrontation. At some point, people reach Phase 2 and begin to confront reality. At this stage, they are beginning to realize that the change is really going to happen or is happening.
• Realization. Once the change has happened, people will usually reach Phase 3 - the stage where they realize that nothing is ever going to be as it once was. Often times, this realization will plunge them into Phase 4.
• Depression. Phase 4 is a necessary step in the change process. This is the stage where a person mourns the past. Not only have they realized the change intellectually, but now they are beginning to comprehend it emotionally as well.
• Acceptance. Phase 5 marks the point where the person begins to accept the change emotionally. Although they may still have reservations, they are not fighting the change at this stage. Usually, they are beginning to see some of the benefits even if they are not completely convinced.
• Enlightenment. In Phase 6, people completely accept the new change. In fact, many wonder how they ever managed the "old" way. Overall, they feel good about the change and accept it as the status quo from here forward.

It is important to note that people in your organizations will proceed through the different phases at different rates of speed. One person may require two months to reach Phase 6 while another may require twelve. To make things even more complex, the cycle of change is not linear. In other words, a person does not necessarily complete Phase 1 through 6 in order. It is much more common for people to jump around. One person may go from Phase 4 to Phase 5 and then back to Phase 2 again. That is why there is no easy way to determine how long a change will take to implement. However, by using the skills we've outlined above, you increase your chances of managing the change as effectively as possible.

Copyright ©2003 Small Business Administration.

Managing Change and Delivering Performance

Introduction

Whilst each of the above terms, Managing Change – Delivering Performance,have independent identities and can take considerable effort to progress and maintain within an organisation, management demands are such that invariably they will need to act simultaneously.

Therefore placed together in the title of the paper it may be assumed that whilst happening together in the NHS, they are supportive elements. Often they are not! Performance can be delivered without change and Change can certainly be introduced without any evidence of, or even an eventual fall off in on-going performance. However when introduced in a cohesive and open way through a change management and goal setting programme, both themes can be supportive and change that fosters service improvement can be forthcoming.

The following short paper will centre on the delivery of change and performance improvement as applied to any typical service provider within the health facilities arena and constitutes a practitioner’s view on the process.

Change Mangement : Setting Principles and Beliefs

In the support of both methodologies the change agent needs to adopt a set of principles and beliefs that mean something to them, ultimately linked to the culture of the organisation they are trying to develop. Some of these principles and beliefs could be: -

To be inclusive (including Stakeholders, Directors, Managers, Staff and Service Recipients [customers])
Set realistic – but stretching-goals and targets
Formally agree those targets and goals with all parties
Ensure all understand the issues (of failure as well as success)
To learn, from the exercise and from the outcomes as they develop
Feedback to 1 to 2 – to ensure Continuous Improvement
These are seen as the core values from which all parties can understand as the basic rules in the progression of performance development within a changing environment.

Principles & Beliefs In Managing Change

• Radical Change
• Organic or Evolutionary Change
• Organic Radicalism (A third methodology that combines both the radical and the evolutionary)

Radical Change can be associated with the introduction of major Government Policies and Statute (Community Care Act 1990/1 introducing NHS Trusts, Trust mergers and the NHS Plan introducing Modernisation). Organic or evolutionary change can be associated with the longer term aims of a Strategic Health Authority (StHA) in developing and improving both the activity levels and service provision of Trusts over a period of time within its available resources. Organic radicalism accepts the fact that even the strategic view of a StHA is coloured by their need to meet their own Franchise Plan with its associated goals and pressures. Nevertheless it still attempts to take a longer strategic view on a number of performance issues best served by the evolutionary learning process.

Radicalism provides a volatile ‘shake up’ and sometimes a complete redirection of the organisation, its clinicians, directors, managers and its workforce. It can be caustic, uncompromising, scaring stressful, concerning to its stakeholders and clients but it can with stakeholders, staff and managers involvement, bring about meaningful changes to the organisation.

However it can incur casualties, that must be picked up and re skilled or re directed and in some cases directly affects the operation of the organisation over the short term, whilst undergoing this reconfiguration. This process can be applied to some process departments when the current operating system has become outdated and a radical change is necessary, which can result in significant changes to the organisation. It can also be used as a catalyst when clients frustrated at poor levels of service performance, have been the instigators of and fully supported the introduction of radically new operating methodologies. Departmental mergers or Market Testing can generate a similar effect.

Organic Change is far less stressful to the organisation, its stakeholders and its clients in the short term, but will require a longer period to reach its agreed set of financial, technical or managerial performance goals. It should still be a managed change scenario with agreed goals, milestones and inclusive discussion and formulation of the goals and priorities for action. It produces fewer casualties, allows the organisation to continue in the same general vein, with gradual modification and long term r5e skilling. It is generally less obtrusive to its clients. However it is a longer-term strategy with milestones set further apart and may fail to meet the need for short-term financial savings, linked to pressures of balancing budgets or redressing shortfalls. In addition clients looking for immediately identifiable change may be disappointed in progress.

It can however, produce consistent and on-going improvements in general and service performance if introduced and developed properly in conjunction with a regulated performance measurement and appraisal system. Applications could be localised to departments where customer focus had been reducing or even lost and some work would be needed to reintroduce this focus and bring the department, its managers and its workforce closer to the requirements of the clients.

Organic Radicalism, perhaps seen as an oxymoron, is identified in this article as the third methodology that attempts to combine the two previous polarised methodologies. It is perhaps a more pragmatic approach to inclusive change. Its use acknowledges that the time scale for organic change is not available, as the situation requires more immediate action or that the financial demands of the organisation may require a short-term remedy as an initial booster. However it also operates in two phases, with the less frenetic second phase of evolutionary (organic) change following the initial shock of the first phase.

Problems with this methodology can be identified by Senge (1990) who clearly demonstrates issues with short term ‘fixes’ that easily generate their own problems affecting performance and planned outcomes in the longer term. However these issues can be somewhat reduced by understanding the life cycle of a short-term fix as well as the modifying effect of the longer-term project contained within the second organic phase.

Within facilities, this methodology has been adopted by departments to introduce radical change to a service in delivery and budgetary process, but with planned and consistent progress in meeting the longer term industrial relations issues for the staff and improved service for their customers.

Change Management Best Practice

Researching issues of change management on the world wide web highlights a considerable number of issues related to best practice in managing change. In a distillation of the key issues identified by practising change agents the following three best practice issues dominate: -

The No 1 contributor of top management to the process is the ability to define and communicate the corporate vision to the staff.

Most companies find that dealing with the company culture and inbuilt resistance (Scott-Morgan 1994) as the most difficult part of the change project
Many change agents find the biggest obstacles to progress are the very people who instigated the change in the first place.

However all three change methodologies (Radical, Organic & Organic Radicalism) support the idea of utilising the first elements of change from those easily spotted and easily rectified issues.

Change Management Delivering Performance

In performance delivery as well as change management, the overarching issue continues to be maintaining the same principles and beliefs within the organization. Which are:

1. Being inclusive with all those involved
2. Setting realistic and formally agreed performance targets and
3. Being part of a learning organization, using the results obtained to generate continued improvements in the organization and its service

Performance delivery is generated from agreeing and setting common yardsticks (benchmarks) by which those who need to prosper form a set of actions can see by when and how those action have been undertaken or completed. It derives from a mutually understandable set of measures, how much, how many, what cost per unit, what level per unit, when completed etc. They may also be set from a number of less tangible, more subjective measures. How well, how clean, how good, how welcoming etc.

However constructed and whatever introduced what they prosper from is a level of comparison with other similar projects or methodologies as ‘benchmarks’ to allow both a self-comparing assessment of progress and progress when compared to others in similar positions.

Performance has a number of connotations when applied to the NHS and could be attributed to a number of performance areas such as:

• Clinical Performance
• Managerial performance
• Financial Performance
• Safety performance
• Service Performance

All have their own level of importance within the organization, however in this facilities associated article the following section will look at Service Performance.

Service Performance

This application has been the development and use of the Balanced Scorecard i (Kaplan & Norton 1992), which is being developed in a number of areas nationally (NHS Estates) and locally (Trust Level), providing a realistic measure to help define progress towards continuous service improvements as required under the NHS Plan (2001). These measures are formed around a number of financial, numerical, operational outputs (hard measures) as well as a number of softer measures linked to the experiential aspect of the assessed service and support and compliment the hard outputs to give a balance.

Whilst performance metrics can allow departments to fix their levels of performance, it is the method of comparison (benchmarking) either internally or externally that are the determinant of good and consistent pe4rformance improvement. Benchmarking with better performers further hones and improves that service performance

Conclusion

• Confidence in their capabilities to deliver quality performance from our directorate and ourselves
• Assurance that they are dealing with the agreed key issues on the Trust’s behalf and can provide good evidence of that through their performance measures.

It is possible to move through the change process and deliver appreciable performance improvement whilst undergoing organizational, directorate or departmental change. Performance improvement after the change is completed is not acceptable to an impatient society. The key tools to aid this perpetual drive for performance improvement are good performance metrics, proper peer group/best in class benchmarking and the use of a service measurement aid such as the Balanced Scorecard. The Benchmarking Steering Group set up originally by the HFC and now run by Hefma has been looking at ways to assist Trusts to find a route to improved performance through benchmarking and the use of the Balanced Scorecard methodology. With the support of NHS facilities managers and the centre it should be possible to provide and easy to use and effective methodology of use to all. However this “self help” approach does require peer group support and a willingness to share ideas.

The commonality of the performance measurement process and the Balanced Scorecard in particular, supported by proper benchmarking, can greatly assist the process as it can easily support whatever change process the organization is currently experiencing. Be it radical, organic or a combination of both.

Bob Heavisides, Chair, Health Facilities Consortium April 2003

Transition Leadership: Managing Change In Your Organization

In today’s deregulating and increasingly competitive business environment, organizational change is becoming inevitable. Today’s successful organizations are experiencing transitions in the areas of technology, process reengineering, mergers, and organizational restructuring in order to remain competitive. However, although these areas impact employees at all levels of the company, senior management often overlooks this fact. Therefore, it is imperative that company management understands the impact of organizational change on employees and manages these effects accordingly. By doing so, organizational leaders minimize the negative impact change has on productivity and performance.

This paper will focus on the activity of successfully leading employees through significant changes brought about by new technologies and process changes and will focus on three areas of transition leadership. First, the discussion conveys the impact that change has on an organization’s employees. Second, an overview and discussion of transition leadership and its role in managing organizational change is given. Finally, ways to effectively manage employees through these reactions to change is presented. By understanding the elements of organizational change and its impact on employees as well as the appropriate ways of managing people through these revolutions, organizational leaders will be better prepared to address the challenges that are inherent in major business transitions.

The Impact of Change on People

OCM is the process of aligning the organization’s people and culture with changes in business strategy, organizational structure, technology, and business processes. OCM is important because, at the most rudimentary level, all change involves some degree of loss whether it is loss of stability, loss of expertise, loss of relationships, or loss of understanding. People often try to avoid the experience of loss by resisting change. Resistance can come in different forms and be expressed with different emotions such as anger, frustration, fear, etc. Due to the tendency for change to elicit an emotional response, any large-scale change initiative will likely remove the employees’ focus from the business to transition-related issues. This shift in focus will likely disrupt the productivity of the business.

Many technology implementation/business process redesign efforts fail because they overlook the impacts that change will have on the people in the organization. An organization that ignores the importance of OCM could experience the following risks: increased resistance to new technology, decreased quality and customer service, high turnover and absenteeism, difficulty recruiting and retaining high performers, and damaged internal and external brand equity.

On the other hand, an organization that implements a technology/business process transformation with integrated OCM will experience the following benefits: realization of the business transformation objectives, higher return on technology investments, retention of high performers, maintained and improved productivity, improved employee satisfaction and morale, and increased discretionary effort.

How To Manage People Through Change

The third phase of the change process consists of building the infrastructure (i.e., job and organization designs) required to make the change successful. For example, if the technology changes are intended to automate processes that were previously done manually, changes to job designs will be required. The final phase consists of a series of activities aimed at measuring results and identifying lingering gaps and issues that need to be addressed in order to achieve the project’s intended benefits.

While the above phases outline the sequence that change initiatives normally follow, there are three corresponding phases that describe the psychological experiences that people have when affected by change. These come from William Bridges’ book Managing Transitions (1991). The first phase is called “Letting Go.” This is the time when employees will begin to understand that things are changing, and that in the near future they will be challenged with letting go of the old way of doing things. This may include letting go of old ways of working, relationships, feelings of competence, etc. The second psychological phase, the “Neutral Zone” is the difficult period when the work is done to implement change and the transition from the old way to the new way begins. Trying to handle implementation and balance the transitions may make this period the most difficult period of change to manage. The last psychological phase is what Bridges refers to as the “New Beginning.” This occurs when changes have been fully implemented and expectations for people to change the way they work are realized.

Each of the phases described above consist of many people-related challenges, and there are many specific strategies for helping to manage people through these phases. Some of the important critical success factors for managing change are the following:

• Identify potential barriers or risk factors that will inhibit success, and create action plans to address them appropriately.
• Use written and face-to-face communication to help people understand the what, why, and how of change.
• Identify opportunities to involve large numbers of employees in the change process; research shows that there is a correlation between involvement and commitment.
• Seek to understand and manage individual and team level resistance.
• Listen to your employees, acknowledge their losses, show empathy, strive to reduce their stress levels.
• Recognize and reward behaviors that support achievement of intended goals.
• Systematically analyze the impacts change will have on corporate policies, individual jobs, and organizational structure.
• Ensure that employees receive sufficient training and the other on-the-job resources necessary to raise people’s level of confidence.
• By addressing and incorporating these success factors into their management toolkits, effective transition leaders greatly increase the likelihood that their change initiatives will be successful.

Conclusion