Managing Business Transformation: A Practical Guide

Managing Business Transformation

A Practical Guide

Managing Business

Transformation

A Practical Guide

MELANIE FRANKLIN

Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publisher and the author cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the publisher or the author.

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IT Governance Publishing

IT Governance Limited

Unit 3, Clive Court

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© Melanie Franklin 2011

The author has asserted the rights of the author under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in the United Kingdom in 2011

by IT Governance Publishing.

ISBN 978-1-84928-307-6

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melanie has an extensive track record in the successful realisation of business change programmes within the public and private sector. She is the founder and Chief Executive of Maven Training and balances her company responsibilities with her interest in helping organisations to make changes that deliver their strategic objectives. Melanie is energetic and enthusiastic, passionate about her job and excited by all of the opportunities that it gives her for meeting new people and hearing about new business ideas.

This book is a result of the many requests that Melanie receives for help in developing an organisation-wide approach for successfully integrating products, services and business procedures that are constantly being created. The ideas in this book originate from the variety of solutions that Melanie and her colleagues have devised to help organisations get better at changing themselves.

There is growing recognition that making change happen cannot be left to chance. Organisations rely on a framework of processes for managing all aspects of their work, but often these don’t extend to include guidance on how to change the nature of that work. An effective approach for business transformation is now recognised as a competitive advantage and is regarded as best management practice. Many organisations are now developing their ideas in this field. This book supports these efforts, offering a simple but comprehensive explanation of each step in the business change life cycle.

Each idea is based on sound practical advice that has been stress-tested by lots of organisations experiencing the challenges presented by the increasing demand to offer something new and to do things better.

All of Melanie’s ideas are underpinned by a previous successful career implementing large-scale change in the highly competitive, demanding and fast-moving environments of financial services and software development. Her roles have included: developing programme and project management frameworks for global organisations; creating development programmes that build change management capability at every level of the organisation; guiding innovators through the process of translating their ideas into successfully delivered projects; and creating global crisis management initiatives covering 42 countries across five continents.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the many contributors to this book who have shared their stories and experiences of managing change with me and have helped to shape the contents of this book. Their help stretches over many years and I apologise in advance to any of you who I have not specifically mentioned.

I would like to especially mention Karen Bailey, Arnab Bannerjee, Richard Billingham, Tiffany Childs, Andrew Dangerfield, Fraser Ewen, Simon Fremont, John Gilkes, Robert Grabiner, Paul Jackman, David King, Bruce McNaughton, Polly Murphy, Christine Outram, David Owen, Professor Elizabeth Rouse, Christina Thomas, Fiona Thorburn, Susan Tuttle, David Watson, Clifford Weatherall and Mike Whittaker. Thanks are also due to Giuseppe G. Zorzino, CISA, CGEIT, CRISC, LA27001, Security Architect, for his helpful review comments.

A special thanks to my wonderful family without whose support I would never get anything done, and especially for staying quiet and not reminding me that I promised I would never write another book again!

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: Understanding the Change

Understanding the need for change

Case study

Assessing the environment in which change will be implemented

Create initial support for the change

Chapter 2: Planning and Preparing for Change

Identify the change activities

Establish the milestones

Case study

Create the change plan

Communicate the change

Chapter 3: Implementing the Change

Building an effective change team

Understanding how people react to change

Persuading and motivating people to change

Chapter 4: Embedding the Change

Business as usual

Activities to celebrate the new behaviours and attitudes

Supporting those who have not yet accepted the change

Addressing those who will not change

Chapter 5: Aligning Project Management and Change Management

Understand how change management and project management fit together

Integrating change activities into the project life cycle

Conclusion

Bibliography

ITG Resources

INTRODUCTION

This book is for people who are looking for a structured approach to managing change. There is no universally recognised definition of change management, but contributors to this book variously describe it as:

engagement of individuals and the organisation to enable a smooth transition to a desirable and sustainable changed state;

all the management activities to successfully move from the current state to the desired future state. These activities include: the definition of the objective, the facilitation of the impacts and the embedding of the change;

understanding and defining the scope of change required. It includes the planning and successful implementation of the change. It involves engagement of stakeholders working together.

These definitions are of transformational change, which, as its name implies, is about making big changes, often involving many parts of the organisation and affecting customers, suppliers and staff.

Whilst this book has been written to meet the needs of transformational change, some of the ideas are still applicable to incremental change – small-scale improvements that can be identified, authorised and implemented within individual teams or functions.

The structure of this book is based on a ‘business change life cycle’ containing four stages:

understanding the change

planning and preparing for change

implementing the change

embedding the change.

The benefit of this life cycle is that it provides a starting point for change and an idea of all the factors that need to be considered. The downside is that it implies that managing change is a logical, linear set of activities. People rarely adapt to a new environment without hesitating before moving forward or revisiting previous steps. However, to make this book readable and enable you to turn to the most relevant section easily, I have tried to set out the most common change management activities in a logical progression.

The business change life cycle is not a prescriptive one-size-fits-all process; it should be adapted to your own circumstances. You might want to consider:

examining the relevance of each activity to your situation without reference to its position in the life cycle;

selecting only the activities that are appropriate to your situation;

changing the order of the activities chosen, adding and amending as you need to, and renaming them to fit in with the words and terms used in your organisation.

If you are interested in understanding the change process from beginning to end then read Chapters 1 to 4, which will explain each stage of the business change life cycle.

If you are interested in the links between project and change management, you might find it more useful to read Chapter 5 first, so that you can set change management into the context of running a project.

If you do not have formal responsibilities for managing change within your organisation, this book is still of value to you. The ability to define, plan and implement change is a core management skill that is actively sought when appointing people to new roles. It is no longer good enough just to know your job: you are expected to have the motivation and the skill to identify and implement improvements in whatever part of the organisation you work in.

CHAPTER 1: UNDERSTANDING THE CHANGE