There is nothing 'warm and fuzzy' about Change Management

The tone when people comment about the disciplines of Change and Communications 'warm and fuzzy' is certainly one where they are being judged as a necessary evil rather than a value add skillset.  Sure, at times this can be how good change makes you feel, but it is not the appropriate catch phrase to describe the function itself.

Another classic term used is that Change is part of the 'soft' skill set. If achieving outcomes is about the 'soft skills' in business then Finance and Sales should also be categorised as 'soft' as well. The only reason Change Management exists is to achieve business outcomes in a shorter timeframe through engaging the people who are impacted in owning that change. In fact depending on the type of change there may be nothing warm about it at all. 

The benefits of introducing change management and change leadership capability in an organisation are extremely tangible.

The reason you invest in change management is because it decreases the time from the investment taking place in the change and the new product/service/process/policy being adopted and utilised.

Perhaps it is easier to outline the scenarios you want to avoid to prove my point...

'We introduced a new software system but the staff don't use it the way they should. We now have data quality issues we have to resolve.'

'We restructured the team but it took us 6 months to work out roles and responsibilities so we could work well together.' 

'We have corporate values but we don't live and breathe them, so we have high staff turnover and can't attract top performers in our market.'

'We changed processes but no-one knew and our customer calls increased as it ended up taking us longer to get the product out to customers. This has hit us hard on our bottom line.'

Any of these sound familiar?

If you invest in technology, if the people do not adopt the new technology or use it effectively then you are wasting money! Many times in my career I worked on a second 'phase' of technology projects where the first phase was unsuccessful because all that had been focused on had been delivering the product and it's functionality, rather than the change and engagement with the actual users.

By not developing change skills within your organisation you will be spending money that in times like these, you can't afford. Mastering these and embedding change skills in your organisation will yield tangible financial returns.  

If you are a Change Manager, you should be putting ROI measures into place to prove up the value to change. If you are a Manager who has hired a Change Manager to work on a piece of change you should be asking for the measures of success to validate that they are the right person to have on board.

Change is hard and an also be measured in the hard measures of an organisation. If your leaders are engaging and leading change well, you will see strong productivity, greater performance and seemingly seamless change for anyone impacted. Now that's warm and fuzzy!