How well do you manage the change capacity of your organisation?

So your change cup runneth over and not in a good way? Perhaps your organisation is showing signs of change fatigue, or potentially your programs and improvements aren't delivering as you had assumed? The discipline of managing and measuring change capacity can resolve many issues, and put the leadership team in the drivers seat. Here are some ways decision makers and governance forums can improve the change capacity and agility of your organisation. There are two areas of opportunity strategic and operational.

The first opportunity is in the strategic discussions of your organisation at Executive level

Integrate the change conversation into enterprise wide operating forums. In my experience this is can only be done if there is change maturity which exists in your organisation or if the organisation culturally is people centric. If your organisation is starting to experience the indicators of change fatigue, placing emphasis on a conversation regarding change within the change delivery landscape may be required.

You will need at least one person at Executive level who is confident in having that conversation and ideally more than one who can champion the conversation and recommendations. In these forums strategic priorities need to always be clear and then operationalised via day to day decision makers in the operational forums.  If existing forums can't be leveraged, for a period of time you can create some change governance meetings which focus on the change delivery pipeline and active management of it. If your leadership team isn't familiar with these type of conversations, you can engage a consultant or hire someone to facilitate this process.

Allocating a % of capacity to 'unknown' priorities: Sounds crazy doesn't it that you would allocate a notional % for the unexpected, but if there is a need to provide some relief knowing your organisation is going into a period of uncertainty it is worth it in the long run. No athlete performs at 100% every day of his or her career. And no organisation should expect their employees to perform at 100% all year round either. So you can use this technique to actively align to cycles. It is interesting that many organisations factor in contingency or variations for financials however when it comes to capacity they operate inefficiently at 110% and then the a market factor requires headspace and planning they struggle. To manage the capacity to change, factoring in a % allocation for being able to mobilise effectively to respond to a factor that could not have been anticipated is mandatory.

Capture lessons and data: Data and evidence based decision making is important in all areas of business but critical when it comes to change capacity. If you haven't yet ventured into this domain in your organisation, it is worth considering and committing to gathering data and measures regarding the changes you are introducing and learn from them. Here are some suggested change measures.

The second opportunity presents itself when looking at your in flight change delivery pipeline.

Active discussion should take place about the following:

Phasing: What makes logical order in which to introduce changes. Projects do this through interdependency mapping on portfolio's however the change lens should also considered. If the same group is being impacted, what phasing would be appropriate and what order should the change be introduced?

Packaging: This is all about optimising. Having smaller changes packaged with bigger ones, as well as rolling out changes in a predictable timeframe - every quarter, or every month, will assist leaders and staff prepare. 

Embedding/Closure measures: What is that saying that builders say - measure twice, cut once? well you can apply that to when you are embedding change. This is the phase after go live where Executives should feel comfortable or not about whether the change has been sufficiently adopted for a new change to be introduced. If it hasn't, (and you need to measure more than once) then you can decide what to cut. Even better you can make sure you don't have a game of 'stacks on' where staff are squashed with the weight of many changes at once. For example if you are to move to flexible working, don't do it at end of Financial year or during a key customer service peak period. For examples of change measures, you can read more here.

Alignment to strategic priorities: There is no escaping the need to continually question whether the delivery priorities are lining up with strategic priorities for the organisation. At times these may change or for some reason internal politics may get in the way. So always consider this aspect and ensure alignment for the smoothest path possible.

The long term benefits of this approach 

Over time you will build up cyclical understanding of when to scale up and down. And of course at times like these when there are global events which impact business, you will learn to balance all opportunities and manage risk responses better.

                 Example of a change capacity chart tracker

Measure for change effectiveness: an organisation is a living organism of it's own and the only way to keep an eye on change capacity is to measure, measure and measure again. To test thresholds, be able to ensure embedding and outcomes have been achieved and that the load of change isn't too great. As the science is applied over time, you can see how responsive your organisation is and how agile it has become over time.  

If this is an area which is of interest, contact us to discuss how you can implement a Change science approach in your organisation to give it a competitive advantage. Of course if you are wanting to put the basics into place, we can help as well. Learn more here.

Want to explore this topic further?

Listen to this podcast Episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify here.