Human adaptation to change is one of the key determinants of digital transformation success. Transformations take time to mature and require deep and meaningful changes to existing processes, culture, and technology. The employees are at the forefront of this experience and have to continuously navigate change successfully. As we continue on our transformation journey, we share some learnings about the addressing the human aspects of digital transformation: Engaging and communicating the change, understanding and empathizing with the employee views, and understanding change and influencing styles to complement each other.
WHY THE CHANGE: The first step, we found, is to make the business case for change, that is, why are we changing and what is the need for change? Change leadership requires addressing the drivers precipitating change: new business direction or strategy, poor financial performance, new leadership, new customers or marketplace demands, new technology, different economic conditions, costs of inaction, regulatory requirements, and product or patent expiration. Depending on the driver/s, the reasons for change must be communicated at all levels of the organizational thoroughly and often. A recent study by McKinsey & Co. noted that 70 percent of large transformation efforts fail because of poor organizational health where companies fail to establish a healthy work environment open to new ideas and best practices. They proposed five key question senior leaders should focus: where do we want to go? how ready are we to go there? what must we do to get there? how will we manage the journey? And how do we keep moving forward? By candid discussions and debates around these questions can leadership foster the break-down of barriers between functional and business groups and create more transparency and collaboration.
WHERE TO CHANGE: To assess the change needed, we continue to focus on the following aspects of our organization:
- Structural – how the organization is managed including departments, levels, locations, relationships and job descriptions.
- Operational – strategy, procedures, governance, performance and productivity measurement in getting things done.
- Technical – systems, knowledge bases, skills, tools, and technologies in use.
- Cultural – our beliefs, norms, values, communication styles, formality.
- Personal – the impact of change on an associates work, personal life, mindset, and relationships.
Each of the above are crucial drivers of change in themselves, and are in turn, impacted by change. We have also learnt about the following organizational challenges called into play during transformation:
- Distraction due to lack of focus and uncertainty and change fatigue due to too many and competing change initiatives.
- Varying degrees of agility and resilience of the associates, individual resistance to change, and associate turnover.
- Associates driving in two lanes simultaneously – operational and change.
- Sub-optimal communication and lack of employee involvement in operationalizing the change.
- Tension between the need to move quickly against carefully.
- Financial constraints and insufficient or relaxed change timeline.
WHAT ABOUT US: Acquainting with the Human Behavior-based change model:
We have learned that individuals progress through five behavioral stages with impending change. As change agents, we need to understand these stages, empathize, and act appropriately. The five stages are:
- Anticipation of expectant change. Effective individual adjustment is to be flexible, strong, and be prepared. The change agent or leader’s action is to communicate about the impending change.
- Letting go of the past and accepting that current situation is different. Individuals should prepare to handle a cut from the past. The change agent or leader’s action is to listen and empathize about individual concerns.
- Disorientation from the change. Individuals should gain perspective from others and the change agent or leader’s action is to direct prioritizing tasks and developing short-term goals, with follow-up.
- Reappraisal of the change to make a choice. The change agent or leader’s action is to engage individuals, recognize positive contributions and leverage early successes, and reinforce positive behavior.
- Recommit to change and move forward with a sense of purpose. The change agent or leader’s action is to coach, share successes, and highlight benefits attained.
WHAT IS MY CHANGE STYLE: During this journey, we also learned that to be effective and successful in change management requires two additional ingredients: knowing one’s (i) change style indicator and (ii) influencing style.
- Your Change Style Indicator: Flexing one’s behavior or management style is very important to suit situations and knowing one’s preferred style is helpful to accommodate others towards common goals. Generally, preferred behavioral styles fall in three categories: Conservers (disciplined, detailed, deliberate, and organized); Pragmatists (reasonable, practical, agreeable, and flexible); Originators (unconventional, spontaneous and lacking organization). Since change agents will be dealing with all three categories, knowing the preferred styles will aid behavioral flexing – we all need to flex with change and with each other to be successful at it. Knowing others behavioral styles is also helpful in negotiating change and for complementary balancing of resources and talents.
- Your Influencing Style: A key behavior of effective leaders is the ability to influence others. We have learned about five distinctive influencing styles: Rationalizing, Asserting, Negotiating, Inspiring and Bridging. You can improve your leadership effectiveness if you know when to modify your style, understand situations where your style works best, and when it may prove ineffective. It is also critical to counter-balance a team with different influencing styles as this will provide helpful insights. For example, if an influencer is primarily Inspiring and is not counter-balanced by a Rationalizer, the initiative may not succeed as only lofty ideas are chased without a rational approach towards the needed solution. It critical to understand the team composition and the influencing styles and to compensate as needed. This is not easy and requires conscientious repeated practice.
TIE IT TOGETHER: Digital and business transformation is about human adaptation to change which possibly has more outcome impact than technology or process changes. How we adapt to change and lead the adaptation is an indicator of a successful transformation. We must learn to assess and communicate, with empathy, the case for change, understand the change drivers, our own change and influence styles, and the individual state of change. This is difficult, but collectively and with repeated practice is attainable, as we continue to learn.
This article was originally published in Linkedin.