Phil is joined by communication and corporate affairs leader Saira Absar to discuss responding to praise during change.
Change initiatives can be gruelling and can feel like a succession of uphill battles characterized by tight deadlines, difficult challenges, stretched capabilities, and long hours. Giving and receiving recognition energizes individuals and teams and builds momentum to tackle the next tasks and activities.
There is a lot of advice on how to acknowledge people’s efforts but little on how best to receive this recognition. It can be an opportunity to acknowledge those who give it, your contributing peers, and the strategy and tactics that led to the achievement.
So, how do you respond to praise in ways that leverage the compliment for you, others and the project?
You can reach Saira at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sairanabsar/
Phil is joined by change and business transformation expert Cathy Brown to discuss negotiating deadlines during change.
Setting realistic project timelines requires a thorough understanding of the change and the context in which it is being made. The level of change complexity, resource availability, and operating environment are inputs into creating a fact-based calendar for the timing of deliverables.
Negotiating deadlines requires aligning leader and project team expectations with your assessment of the transition work and the time needed to complete it.
So, how do you negotiate deadlines that enable you to complete tasks and activities to their specifications within dynamic operating environments?
You can reach Cathy at:
Email: bcathy188@gmail.com
Phil is joined by change capability development and change execution expert Michelle Yanahan to discuss handling mistakes during change.
Mistakes are inevitable when managing change. There are too many moving pieces on different schedules, and run by different people to avoid missteps.
Given the stress that major change initiatives inevitably produce, people can default to responses that deflect ownership, compromise resolution, and obscure learning when something goes wrong. This behavior often adds risk to the project and damages relationships.
A better and more difficult approach is to expect and address mistakes as they appear.
So, how do you handle mistakes in ways that identify root causes, resolve issues, and make changes, so they are less likely to happen again?
You can reach Michelle at:
Email: michelle@changefit360.com
Website: https://changefit360.com/
Phil is joined by senior engineering and organization change management professional Denis Kelly to discuss competing for resources.
Securing adequate resources to implement your plan is one of the most important negotiations impacting your success.
Most companies take on larger change agendas than the resources available to implement them. This can lead to insufficient or misaligned resources supporting your change initiative.
A large portfolio of change projects can also limit the capacity of those impacted by the change to implement your plan and transition to new ways of working.
So, how do you compete for the resources your need to support people as they adopt change and achieve intended results?
You can reach Denis at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisrkelly.
Phil is joined by business transformation and change management leader Jennifer Rhodes to discuss reporting against a timeline.
At the center of every change initiative is a project plan that maps the activities and tasks required to transition people from current to new ways of working. It functions as a work back schedule from the post-launch support to the project kickoff.
Teams supporting a change spend significant time reporting against the timeline. Being “ahead of” or “on plan” is the goal, but often, falling behind is a reality.
The ability to communicate progress against a timeline is an essential change management skill. Those who do it well can influence expectations and plan details; those who don’t can experience greater scrutiny, extra work and lost confidence in their capabilities.
So, how do you report against a timeline to inform stakeholders, guide expectations, and make required enhancements that lead to successful change?
Jennifer can be reached at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifermrhodes/.
Phil is joined by executive and change leader Stephen Sotto to discuss defining change support.
Preparation activities are key enablers of change readiness and adoption. The options are many, including, training, coaching, ways of working sessions, job aids, and simulations. The types and amounts of support need to be appropriate for people’s needs and circumstances.
It's a fine balance between too much and too little change assistance. If you provide too much, people get stressed and may choose to opt-out of activities; if you provide too little, people won't have the required mindsets, routines and behaviours to effectively adopt the change.
So, how do you define what change support you need to prepare people to adopt change?
Stephen can be reached at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-sotto-08b605b/
Phil is joined by Professor of Organizational Behaviour Dr. Jamie Gruman to discuss overcoming a blocker during change.
Blockers are people who raise barriers to organizational change and your success. They either oppose what you are doing or want it done differently. This form of resistance is challenging because it is intentional and leverages the blocker’s influence through authority, relationships, and organization knowledge. Inaction is not a good option because the barriers will remain, and the wrong type of action can lead to escalation and more setbacks.
So, how do you overcome a blocker to achieve your and the organization’s goals and avoid triggering greater resistance?
Jamie can be reached at: https://www.jamiegruman.com/about-jamie
Links to writings and research: https://www.jamiegruman.com/read-me
Phil is joined by change and innovation leader Tim Creasey to discuss how to close a change project.
A project team’s effectiveness in transferring responsibilities to operating groups often dictates the level of long-term adoption of new ways of working.
Managing the closing of a change project can be challenging because most leaders and project team members may have physically or mentally moved on to their next roles and challenges.
Building awareness of the importance of the project's final steps is necessary to ensure people fulfill their roles. If they don’t, a poor shutdown will negatively affect the benefits realized and the perception of the project team’s capabilities.
So, how do close a change project to build capability, transfer accountabilities and sustain the new ways of working that deliver the intended outcomes?
Tim can be reached at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timcreasey/
Website: https://www.prosci.com
Additional resources from Tim:
Metrics for Measuring Change Effectiveness
Achieving Sustainable Performance with Organizational Change
Webinar Replay: Making Change Stick: Best Practices for Reinforcing and Sustaining Change Outcomes
Phil is joined by HR and change management expert Kathy Repa to discuss how to identify your lessons learned during change.
Understanding how our experiences impact outcomes helps build change capacity and skill, and dramatically improves organizational knowledge on how projects work within our cultures.
So, how do identify, record and learn from your experiences during a large change initiative?
Kathy can be reached at:
Email: kathy.shanley@yahoo.com
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
PHIL: Hello everyone, welcome to the change on the run podcast, where we discuss common change challenges and ways to address them. When you're short of time, and I'm your host, Phil Buckley. Today's topic is identifying your lessons learned. Understanding how our experience impacts outcomes helps build change capacity and skill and dramatically improves organizational knowledge of how projects work within our cultures. Experience is the best teacher, which enables us to repeat success patterns and eliminate future roadblocks to achieve our goals in the quickest and most effective way. Learning occurs in the moment. Something worked or didn't work because of specific factors, and we often lose learnings we don't record quickly. This applies equally to organizations and individuals and is especially true in the middle of projects because we tend to remember only beginnings and endings, leaving the key middle ground foggy. So, how do you identify, record and learn from your experiences during a large change initiative? And my guest today is Kathy Repa. Kathy, welcome to the show.
KATHY: Thank you so much for having me, I am so excited to be a guest.
PHIL: Thank you, Kathy, and thanks so much for taking the time to be here. Kathy has over thirty years of global human resources and change management experience. She is currently the Vice President HR, Global Supply Chain at Mondelez International. Kathy holds a BA, Human Resources Development at DeSales University. So, Kathy, looking back at your thirty-plus year’s career and we've known each other for over ten years, what's been your experience with personal lessons learned. I look at you as the queen of lessons learned and I've learned so much about how you do so just generally. What's been your experience?
KATHY: You know, one of my biggest lessons, and I think your book Change on the run really triggers a lot for me, is that we run a lot when we're doing these changes. We run from one change to another. We're change junkies. It's sort of our drug of choice and we look forward to those things. What we don't take time often enough as change professionals, to take a pause and to think about what we have actually learned, what lessons we can pass on to others or what lessons we can take forward ourselves, and I think that by doing that you don't often get as much value as we possibly could from that pause for purpose, that time to refresh, that time to reflect, and I'm a huge journalizer, so I do often sit back at the end of the week and maybe as I've gotten into my twenty and thirty years of running change, I do it much more frequently to say, you know, what things went well about this and what am I most proud of and what do I want to learn from that to take forward and make sure that I incorporate in the next ones? You know what things didn't go so well, and sometimes we punish ourselves for what didn't go so well, and I like to sit back and say, well, was that in my control? Because if it's not in my control, then why would I punish myself for it not going well? Then? That's not to say I don't take that as a lesson to do something differently, but I don't sit there and beat myself up over and over again about something that wasn't in my control, but rather reflect on how I can manifest it into something that next time might be much more controllable. And then I d
Phil is joined by board member, breakthrough consultant and executive and team coach Stephanie Wilkes to discuss how to make decisions during change.
Most transformation post-mortems uncover decisions that led to success or failure. Facts, options, assessment criteria, available time and risk all play roles in the decisions made and the ability to implement them.
During large change initiatives, decisions are often made quickly in response to new conditions or information. They require focus, process, and at times, management intuition to make the best call and align leaders and their teams on how to activate them.
So, how do you make decisions during transformations that direct and move an organization to new ways of working to adopt change?
Stephanie can be reached at:
Email: stephanie.wilkes@bridge-partnership.com
Phil is joined by CFO/COO and change leader Matt Lloyd to discuss how to reward team members during change.
People have a need to be recognized for work that is meaningful and is necessary for success. From recognition to gifts, rewards play an important role in maintaining morale, focus, and performance. They acknowledge people’s hard work and give them confidence in their future contributions.
Rewards also shape team members’ perceptions of how they were treated, appreciated, and valued, influencing their levels of engagement and commitment to future projects.
So, how do you reward team members to acknowledge their work and inspire future efforts and performance?
Matt can be reached at:
Email: matt@collectively.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-lloyd-avfc/
Collectively Website: https://collectively.com/
Phil is joined by change management and not-for-profit leader Laura Oliver to discuss how to respond to adjustments during change.
Change initiatives typically involve continual revisions. New information emerges, stakeholder needs shift, and requirements change. Many people dive into accommodating the changes without assessing whether they help or hinder the projects and their success. Conversely, reacting quickly and taking action can be more important than extensively assessing options and determining the best response.
So, how do you respond to plan adjustments that accommodate necessary changes and keep resources focused on delivering your defined outcomes?
Laura and the Grindstone Award Foundation can be reached at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraoliver12/
Email: https://grindstoneaward.com/
Phil is joined by change and transformation expert Sarah Smith to discuss how to leverage your existing culture during change.
An organization’s culture describes how work gets done. It’s a collection of attitudes, beliefs, practices and behaviours that dictate how people treat each other. It is also a source of strength you can tap into because it’s familiar, deeply rooted and has emotional connections with people.
So, how do you leverage your existing culture and its strengths to adopt new ways of working?
Sarah can be reached at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahlcsmith/
Email: sarah@hundredbrands.com
Phil is joined by change expert Brendon Baker to discuss how to identify and apply project lessons learned.
Managing the closing of a change project and capturing learnings is challenging because most leaders and project team members have mentally moved on to their next roles and challenges.
A lessons-learned exercise is essential for building change capacity and skill in your organization. It documents which approaches and activities worked and should be repeated by other project teams, and which didn’t and shouldn’t.
So, how do you identify project lessons learned that are instructive, recorded, acknowledged and embedded in an organization's ways of working?
Brendon can be reached at:
Website: https://valuablechange.com/
Additional Resources: The Change Leader Weekly Newsletter: https://valuablechange.com/
Phil is joined by change management expert Yvonne Thevenot to discuss how to optimize your limited time during change.
Most people have fewer resources to fulfill their change role than they need. With full calendars and large to-do lists, they must choose the most important activities to spend their time on. Determining which activities offer the most value is one of the biggest personal and project success factors.
So, how do you optimize your time on a change initiative to maximize your contribution to achieve its outcomes?
Yvonne can be reached at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yvonne-thevenot-she-her-64779a5/
Phil is joined by consultant, speaker, and leadership coach Søren Pedersen to discuss how to measure progress during change.
Measuring progress is an essential element of good project management. Consistent updates on progress remind leaders and colleagues of the work being done, the success achieved, and the benefits realized once the change is made. It also identifies areas falling short of the plan that need extra resources.
The absence of consistent measurement encourages subjective assessments of gains, or exaggerations of risks that lead to inertia, knee-jerk responses, distraction, or additional cost.
So, how do you measure progress and setbacks to assess the status of a project accurately?
Søren can be reached at:
Phil is joined by learning and development and business management expert David Donaldson to discuss addressing an emergency during change.
Since there are many parts in motion during change, it makes sense that sometimes some of those parts just don’t work. Plans are made with the best available information, and many assumptions are created to fill in the unknowns, especially when time is short. In this environment, emergencies are inevitable. They also are risks that can determine the success of your change initiative.
So, how do you address emergencies to minimize damage and quicken recovery?
David can be reached at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgdonaldson/
Email: david@dragonsong.ca
Additional resources: David's TEDx talk: Resilience, The Upside of Down,
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_donaldson_resilience_the_up_side_of_down
Phil is joined by business and market development expert David Smyth to discuss how to create a Plan B during change.
Most change and transition plans don’t go as intended because there are too many variables to predict. Variances can cause delays, extra costs and compromise credibility, especially if you haven’t thought through responses to organizational shifts.
So, how do you create a Plan B to avoid major disruptions from unanticipated events and to increase team agility?
David can be reached at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-smyth-b815a34/
Email: davidsmyth@greenprojectmanagement.com
Telephone: 01 647-980-5234
Additional resources: The Global Standard for Sustainable Project Management:
Phil is joined by business transformation expert Andrew Freedman to discuss how to avoid team burnout.
Burnout is a stress-related state of emotional, physical or mental exhaustion. It occurs when the demands of a job are greater than a person’s ability to manage them. Change projects contain environmental factors that can lead to team burnout, such as long hours, tight deadlines and insufficient resources.
So, how do you avoid team burnout during change so that people can be their best within challenging conditions?
You can reach Andrew and view his resources at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afreedmanthrive/
Twitter: @afreedmanthrive
Instagram: afreedmanthrive
The Thrive: The Leader's Guide to Building a High Performance Culture book site: https://thrive.shiftthework.com/
Phil is joined by change and innovation leader Tim Creasey to discuss how to measure the success of a change initiative.
Measuring success is an important part of setting up and managing a change project because it defines tangible indicators of the benefits realized from the initiative. In a rush to get a project going, it’s easy to miss or gloss over this crucial step, making it difficult to demonstrate progress and achievements throughout and after the project.
So, how do you measure success to estimate the benefits of change and monitor the approach taken to realize them?
Additional resources on measuring change from Tim:
A Better Way to Talk About the ROI of Change Management
Evolving to Elevate Change Success Webinar Replay
Tim can be reached at:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timcreasey/
YouTube – Tim Talks Series: https://www.youtube.com/c/ProsciChangeManagement
Website: https://www.prosci.com
