How healthy is the Change ecosystem in your organisation?

In my recent podcast episodes I talked about the Diamond of Change effectiveness in Programs. Diamonds however are not meant to be 2 dimensional but multi-faceted. So lets explore all of the aspects of your change ecosystem and fill out that diamond into a multi dimensional, quality, value add diamond. After all, when you walk into a room with significant BLING from that diamond on your hand, it gets noticed. The second element though is the carat and clarity. That is where the real value lies!

When looking at the change ecosystem in your organisation, you should be considering each aspect of this diamond which combines to create value in your organisation. This is achieved through clarity and how well all of these areas are aligned and working together.

Let's explore each area:

Strategy:  There is a big leap between strategy definition for an organisation and then the operationalisation of it. If the strategy is unclear in an organisation or too ambiguous, it can mean distortion as the business plans are created. This misalignment can create confusion, especially if strategic priorities are not clear and communicated well.

Governance: Consider how strong and effective the Governance frameworks are in your organisation. Is risk offset against opportunity? Decision making, prioritisation and risk management are all actions related to Governance, which if not functioning well, will create frustration and confusion.

Customer Experience: This is another area in organisations which if not promoted or healthy will mean more challenge for any change outcomes. If you aren't focused on improving the things that matter to customers as a priority then you will be caught in the poor performance panic! A healthier customer experience/customer outcomes culture, the easier the pathway is to achieve outcomes.

Marketing/Brand: External communications are often delivered by a marketing/external function in an organisation. How effective these communication methods are, especially in the age of digitisation that most organisations are in, can impact how well (or not) change is implemented. Poorly written customer communications or marketing will ALWAYS impact outcomes negatively. With theories such as Nudge and the emergence of change comms as a concept, there is more focus on how communications can improve outcomes. 

Internal Communications: The health of your staff and internal communications frameworks and methods contribute to the effectiveness of change outcomes if your change is internally focused. When leveraging these channels, a change manager is at the mercy of these channels and will want to utilise them well, to be able to achieve cut through and focus. With all of the white noise in organisations nowadays organisations and internal 'comms' functions are needing to reinvent and evolve to be effective. How effective are your internal communications?

Learning: This area is a key partner to change management, but also contributes to change maturity through developing change capability in an organisation. Capability profiles for roles are invaluable and if they don't exist identifying new skills to be adopted becomes just that little more difficult. In addition to this both project and change management skills should be added to certain job profiles in organisations as a way to improve the change ecosystem. It's never a waste of time or money to invest in a Change Management 101 course for your staff to participate in to better understand change, or a change leadership short course for your leaders.

Programs: Your program delivery area should have change capability embedded in its program function to provide a real focus on outcomes. How sharp your program function is operating, in it's consistency and focus will lend itself to being a real value add for the organisation.

Leadership: When leaders in an organisation are all on the same page regarding priorities and leading them with their teams, this shows up in engagement scores and performance. Strong, effective leadership impacts not just program outcomes but also change outcomes in general. What calibre of leaders does your organisation have? 

People engagement: While people engagement is a factor of many things (leadership, values led behaviours, company purpose), typically the function and accountability will sit in your Human Resources (now often branded People and Culture) area to facilitate this as an indicator. How healthy are your people engagement indicators, or have you yet to implement engagement scoring? The more engaged staff are, the more they will perform and the higher the probability that change outcomes will be achieved.

Culture: This is the real centre if your diamond and if culture is somewhat blurry, murky and inconsistent (i.e. behaviours do not reflect the values or purpose) then this will compromise the value overall. There is a saying that is one I will repeat time and time again - 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast', by Peter Drucker. You can have the most amazing strategy and intent, and 'sell' that to your staff and stakeholders, however if the behaviours in the organisation do not support delivery of that strategy (in flighting, conflict, blame) then you will never achieve the outcomes you are aiming for. So for every conversation regarding the different 'cuts' of this diamond, you have to always refer to the culture which may be at the heart of the compromise in outcomes. Some great questions to ask when reviewing outcomes, 'What behaviours did we display which may have contributed to these outcomes? What decisions did we make which compromised the outcome we were looking to achieve? Why did we make these decisions? What would we do differently next time?.' Indeed if these questions aren't asked regularly as a learning opportunity then that is already giving you clues as to the underlying culture which is playing out in possible substandard outcomes being achieved.

This is a lot to take in of course, as there are so many aspects being covered, however from a change perspective, often when delivering change these areas either help or can hinder outcomes. Take a moment to reflect on the health of these functions in your organisation and consider what can be done to turn the dial one or two notches in the right direction.