Greetings all,
As I noted in March I’ve been involved this year in the start up of a new professional networking group in Melbourne: Change Management Professionals. The Change Management Professionals was established to be a community of practice that supports, develops and enhances the profession of change management. Our primary form of communication is the LinkedIn group, which we are delighted to see has grown to 84 members.
Clearly there is an appetite for connection amongst those who work in change management. We like to think we are fairly inclusive in the sense that we understand that many types of people end up working in change management (for instance HR, IT, Project Management, OD, as well as the hard core change managers). Our goal is to provide opportunities for these experienced practitioners of change to talk, share knowledge and experiences, tools and thoughts. This way the practice of change management improves in a holistic sense.
We’ve had three events this year, and at each event we have had an average of 25 experienced practitioners at each. Last week’s event was focused on: Right (Change) Person, Right Job. As a group we had collectively noted a number of pitfalls in the recruitment process. Our discussions with a few recruiters suggested they were equally frustrated. The frustration derived from a lack of common vocabulary around change management.
Clients were finding it hard to find the right hire, as they didn’t know what they really wanted, as they didn’t really understand change. Even the really good recruiters struggle to get a brief from the client, as the client says “I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know when I meet them”. When you dig deeper you find that even those who understand change have contrasting and often contradictory definitions of common terms in change management.
The ideal? Recruiting firms can start educating the client by discussing the needs of change management job, and testing understanding of central terms to assist them to build a job description and position statement that finds the change manager with the right skills set.
So we put together a panel discussion in the boardroom of SHK (a recruiting firm that is very experienced in placing change management roles) and the very generous hosts of the evening and future events (thank you!). We had a representative client (Nick Mescher), a representative recruiter (Andrew Staite), and a representative change manager (Kym De Lany). It was a really exciting and stimulating conversation. Many thanks to all of those who particpated.
One of the things that dropped out of the discussion was a list of 25 terms that need further elaboration, or definition to ensure the change recruitment process improves, and ultimately the client experience of change. We (perhaps foolishly) made a commitment to putting some definitions to these terms to distribute to those in the group, but we are conscious if it is just the definition of Kym, Verity and I, it is not a shared understanding, and thus contributes to the problem. So how about a lovely collaborative crowd sourcing approach? ; ) We would love it if you left your thoughts in the comments on how you would define 1 or more of these terms. We’ll go from there!
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- Strategy
- Plan
- Flexible
- Engagement
- Impact analysis
- Business readiness
- Cultural fit
- Process facilitation
- Project lifecycle
- The end-game
- Steady State Assurance
- Sponsor
- Change agent
- Change champion
- Framework
- Change lifecycle
- Change milestones
- Change Metrics
- Change communication
- Change context
- System engineering
- Process engineering
- Transformational change
- Change Leadership
- Emotional intelligence
We anticipate the next CMP event being a festive one…perhaps themed with “What would a change manager want Santa to bring them”…As always, looking forward to you thoughts.
Strategy
Your strategy enables you to make choices about the activities carried out in your organization – both what and how things should be done – to create value for your key stakeholders [customers, shareholders, employees, society] and to outperform your competitors.
Strategy can be therefore be described as a plan to achieve your goals, a pattern of consistent activities, a position relative to competitors, a value proposition for customers, a way of thinking and acting and ultimately as a tool for making choices and trade-offs.
Process Facilitation
Process facilitation is more about discovering and designing than it is about delivering. The best process facilitators ‘do’ very little and never feel they have to provide the right answers, they do ask the right questions. At the core of process facilitation is discovering the questions that need to be asked, identifying the key players within the ‘system’ that need to come together to consider the questions as a group, working with the group to establish some groundrules for how they engage with other and – if needed – holding people accountable to those commitments.
Alternatively as John Heider writes in his translation of the Tao of Leadership, “The wise leader does not intervene unnecessarily. The leader’s presence is felt, but often the group runs itself. Do good without show or fuss.
Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be happening.”