Change is the only constant: When you know change is working

[elizabeth_jones]

As a PMO director, I am regularly introducing change and one of the most challenging aspects of that is knowing when change is working. For me, that often comes in the form of conducting retrospectives to gather feedback, talking with team members 1:1, viewing metrics to ensure that the changes that I introduce are having a positive affect. A unique challenge comes when teams and individuals are already stressed and dealing with yet another change can be scary, even when the benefits of that change are clearly understood. Have you been on either side? Making changes, or re-evaluating how you work to meet change in your daily life. How did you know when that change was working, and trending in a positive direction? Did you find it more difficult to embrace change in 2020? 

[John Funk]

I was definitely on one side of that when we rolled Jira out across the entire organization, replacing another tool in the process. It was helpful that not many people were happy with the existing tool at the time, but change is still hard for some folks. And maybe even REALLY hard for others. 

For myself, I embrace change when thoroughly thought through agreed that the path forward is better than being mired in the current state. Still, that is not all convincing for others. So, for me, the process needs to be communicated well in advance along with the reasons for the change. Be sure to have a plan that slowly rolls the change out and in phases or iterations if possible. 

That allows people to process pieces at a time and not have to eat the elephant in one setting. Be sure to be positive and encouraging about the change without being overly sappy about it. 

Then Commit, Communicate and Iterate.   :-)

[Phill Fox]

Hi @elizabeth_jones 

I certainly see the pain you are exploring with teams that are undergoing significant sets of changes and the unplanned changes brought around by Covid certainly exacerbated that situation. 

A couple of things I use to help make sure change is working. 

1. Up front determine what are the desired improvements that the change is looking to bring?

2. Reduce this list to focus on the most important change only.

3. Determine how you will measure the success of this change? Make sure you choose a clear measurement method and ideally something which can be quantified rather than a quality assessment. 

4. Be clear on the timescale that the change is to be measure over.  Every change takes time to bed in so do not expect immediate results. 

5. If a change goes wrong be prepared to revise/reverse/reset the change and try again.

By following these simple guidelines I find it is easy to control change and the impact.  If you find yourself trying to measure more than one change at a time for a team how do you know what is the root cause of the effect?

Phill

[Daniel Ebers]

I remember one sentence from the talk that you see that change is working when there is acceptance for it. When you recognize the new structure/process/tooling is adopted you can say the change was of success.
For acceptance I found there needs to be a visible advantage for the people involved.

When we needed to cleanup a Jira instance lately the first reaction was: "I will never forfeit my own configuration" even when we explained why we need to do it.
When people saw the advantages they actively asked to get the new configuration (standardized and cleaned-up) as an early adopter. They even promoted the new config to other teams so there was a visible acceptance. Meanwhile they discuss improvements, which for me is a signal of adoption.

This is however just a very small example and I found the detailed steps outlined by Phill above very useful. Understanding what leads to acceptance and adoption is useful in order to see the whole lot. Especially for all who are new to the topic.

[Phill Fox]

Totally agree with @Daniel Ebers that having folks actively requesting the change makes adoption 100x more easier than trying to introduce change to folks who are not receptive!  

In my list above this could even be one of the more important criteria you use in terms of identifying the most suitable change to focus on.