Stakeholder commitment is the root of a successful change. But getting commitment as a reaction to a proposal is beginning to make less sense without first discovering what stakeholders probably want to change. This makes change management a continual process, not an event.
2. The Stakes of Change
Most often, change is proposed to provide a recovery, a stabilization, or a
breakthrough. Each reason is, in effect, a strategy.
The strategy is a “problem”, and the change is a “solution”.
In each case, a proposed change seeks future "adoption" against current "acclimation".
Acclimation can be described in terms of a complex of aspects and attributes that an
existing stakeholder recognizes, and with which the stakeholder currently identifies.
Identification is not necessarily acceptance. But identification accounts for why the
stakeholder's current agenda includes what it does. For change to be adopted, the
agenda must align with the strategy.
5. The Investment
A stakeholder is invested in the agenda. The effort and habits already being expended on the
agenda represent a constraint on change in the form of either inertia or existing momentum to
overcome. Stakeholder concerns affect the pursuit of any strategy.
Stakeholders are psychologically invested in their agenda and may already be experiencing
certain risks and rewards in terms of a sense of being self-sufficient, creative, or effective.
Because this psychological feedback is deeply personalized and is several "levels" away from the
justifying "logic" of the proposed change, adjustments to this feedback can determine whether
the stakeholder can be recruited into an attitude that pursues the proposed change instead of
avoiding it.
Notably, active avoidance is not necessarily resistance. It is critical to understand that avoidance
can be strategic, tactical or even accidental. Understood from the point of view of achieving
change adoption, the significance of avoidance is that it produces an "absence of support“.
6. Will Stakeholders Support a Change?
Stakeholders represent the capacity to change.
Managing change requires identifying the capacity, to release it and commit it as necessary
for supporting the requirements of the change.
This means that the lifecycle of a change begins by identifying accountability of the
hypothetical change: its viability, feasibility and credibility based on capacity. The
accountability proposes agreements to take responsibilities needed for creating an
organization that in active practice will support the effort to achieve the change.
In effect, the proposed accountability is a design. Following the design, appropriate
resourcing and production organize the change as a plan with a deliverable outcome.
But the design must be accepted by a sufficient group of stakeholders who must contribute.
The issue at hand is one of “what” change will be accepted by available stakeholders.
8. What to do about the Stakeholder Agenda
Stakeholders have an agenda that presents possible needs for trade-offs.
Trade-offs compensate for losses of protection against risks and preservations of
benefits that may be altered or removed.
Compensations change the perspective of the stakeholder by presenting the group of
tradeoffs as a position on a pathway to a better return on the energy required to
maintain investment in being a stakeholder.
That improved ROI is the opportunity that encourages the stakeholder’s agreement
to the intention to pursue the goal that is the proposed change.
Net: the stakeholder needs to see the proposed change as an investment opportunity.
11. Notes: Emergent Change
Design Thinking:
It relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize
patterns, to construct ideas that are emotionally
meaningful as well as functional, and to express
ourselves through means beyond words or
symbols. Nobody wants to run an organization on
feeling, intuition, and inspiration, but an over-
reliance on the rational and the analytical can be
just as risky.
Inspiration is the problem or opportunity that
motivates the search for solutions. Ideation is the
process of generating, developing, and testing
ideas. Implementation is the path that leads from
the project stage into people’s lives.
-- IDEO
Systems Thinking:
A system is composed of interrelated parts or components
(structures) that cooperate in processes (behavior)…
The component parts of a system can best be understood in the
context of relationships with each other and with other systems,
rather than in isolation… Small catalytic events that are
separated by distance and time can be the cause of significant
changes in complex systems… An improvement in one area of a
system can adversely affect another area of the system.
Systems thinking views "problems" as parts of an overall system,
rather than reacting to specific parts, outcomes or events and
potentially contributing to further development of unintended
consequences. Systems thinking focuses on cyclical rather than
linear cause and effect.
-- Wikipedia