Updated version - 20 Tips to implement and rollout Organisational Change Projects: Think Lean, think Agile, deliver value early, and more...

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20 Tips to implement and rollout
Organisational Change Projects
Michael Tarnowski
Arthur John Picton: https://www.flickr.com/photos/arthurjohnpicton/4383221264/in/faves-58564123@N05/

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Change is inevitable
compassrose_04 https://www.flickr.com/photos/compassrose_04/7321975372
Change is inevitable
Change is not an event.
Change never stops.
Change is a process.
Change is continuous.

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Organisations aren’tr any different than People
…because people/employees are their base!
Heather Gold: https://www.flickr.com/photos/subvert/4419653281/in/faves-58564123@N05/

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Organisations are difficult to change
Luis Vilanova https://www.flickr.com/photos/32951050@N05/3204345416/
It’s difficult to change Organisations since it’s difficult to
change Employees

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Fear to Change
Rubén Díaz Alonso https://www.flickr.com/photos/outime/3974810429/
Employees fear Change

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Resistance to Change
Rubén Díaz Alonso https://www.flickr.com/photos/outime/4250568447/
Employees resist Change

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Problems of Organisational Change
In Organisational Change Initiatives
you are confronted with
• Resistance
• Fear
• Loss of Trust
• No-Commitment
• Resignation
• …
Kevin Dooley https://www.flickr.com/photos/12836528@N00/3166121241/
Here are 20 tips how to cope with this

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Active Management Attention
Kristof Ramo https://www.flickr.com/photos/kristoframon/3526530172
1. Call for Active Management Attention and Support
As Board member or as Manager:
Walk your talk! – Be present at all
levels
Trust your employees – let them
detail high level change objectives
from their perspective / needs
Let them contribute in activities,
artefacts, processes, and
procedures
Allocate needed resources
Serve your employees
Define yourself by accomplishments
of your employees

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Realistic Schedule
Dafne Cholet https://www.flickr.com/photos/dafnecholet/5374200948
2. Have a realistic Schedule
Don’t under-estimate the effort
You can harvest the new culture &
benefits after rollout not earlier
than: 3 years
Implementing Change at least (see
John Kotter’s phase model): 1-2 years
Time to acclimate to the new
culture (further marketing the
change): 1 year
Don’t accept management wish-
thinking

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Assistance and Guidance
Lara Cores https://www.flickr.com/photos/57375589@N05/13056506394/
3. Offer at all levels your Assistance and Guidance
Help with Assistance and Guidance
Support the front line actively with
engagement, knowledge and
technology in all improvement
activities
Explain unmovable constraints
Remove impediments
Stop Wasting People’s Time

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Personal Vision – Shared Vision
Respect and value employee's
Personal Vision
Personal Visions defines personal
identity, attitudes, behaviours,
empathies, and resistances.
Use personal visions to
create Shared Visions
Shared Visions build
Collective Identity
Match Change’s objectives with the
employee's Personal Visions
Identify resistance
and blockers as
fast as possible
Use LEGO Serious Play workshops to develop a
Shared Vision correlated to employees vision and
change initiative objectives
4. Create Shared Visions by valuing Personal Visions
Elvin https://www.flickr.com/photos/25228175@N08/6105804458/

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Trust
Nick Ford https://www.flickr.com/photos/23000678@N05/2208787413/
5. Assure employees to trust and to be trusted
An Organisation has always to fulfil
the Trust of the employees
Because employees trust in them!
Involve all who have needs
Show improvement actions on all
operational levels transparently
Align and engage change with the
business
Motivate by giving confidence and
responsibilities
Allow mistakes

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Transparency
Nina Matthews https://www.flickr.com/photos/21560098@N06/6722653055/sizes/l/
6. Be always transparent on all levels
Show Transparency as much as
possible:
Deploy Early and Often
Show progress / results all-time
Communicate success, problems,
and failures
Make all data highly available
(whiteboard at a prominent place)
Involve at all levels employees in
detailing high level change
objectives to their needs
Establish feedback cycles and
discussion forums

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Commitment
Prasanth Chandra https://www.flickr.com/photos/35092241@N03/6028269649/
7. Strive for Mutual Commitment
You get no Commitment by
management top-down-orders only
It’s a 2-side coin: if you are not committed
yourself, you get no commitment
Build commitment on
• Trust and Transparency on both
sides always
• Motivation (on individual, team, and
department / management level)
• Embedding in decisions all
involved
• Showing everybody personal
benefits and values
• Creating “Small World Networks”
spreading connections feature-
driven

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Process Engineering Group w/ Change Agents
David Wall https://www.flickr.com/photos/dwonderwall/3340589299/in/faves-58564123@N05/
Process Engineering Group – a
core team driving the Change.
Vertical and horizontal representatives
of all teams/depart. involved
Supports actively on all levels
employees in finding objectives,
implementing, and rollout change
Change Agents – promoting and
multiplying the Change
Representatives of all management
levels
Some of them should be part of the PEG
Agile Coach:
Systemic supervision by an Agile
storytelling
8. Establish active community to drive, support, and
promote Change at the front line

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Communicate
Marc Wathieu https://www.flickr.com/photos/88133570@N00/4074440716/
9. Communicate! Communicate! Communicate!
Communicate! Communicate!
Communicate!
• …success stories as well as
stories about failures
• …constraints, objectives,
resources, and goals
• …motivation and benefits
• …time lines and schedules

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Create Impact
Jekurantodistaja https://www.flickr.com/photos/91248320@N04/11161074753/
10. Create Impact at all levels
Spread across the organisation that
your grass is greener – use the
domino effect: “Let me join your
team!”
Give employees room for feedback
Let employees experience
improvement benefits personally –
“Continuous Improvement Process”
Engage enthusiastically supportive
employees
Reward by giving responsibilities or
status – do not reward by money

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Create Experimentation Culture
Paolo Lottini https://www.flickr.com/photos/12215612@N06/6119908332/
11. Create Experimentation Culture
Roll out Iteratively
Prototype / Test all improvement
ideas – even the smallest one – at
the frontline
Keep test teams small (3ppl)
Test repeatedly and often
Constantly remove guesswork
Be metrics driven – define metrics
by prototype’s usage / purpose
Make all data highly available
Allow failures – tests can fail!
Encourage employees’ engagement

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Energise Employees Emotionally
Plays-In-Business: “Agile Games Evening 2012” – Photos: Tobias Cieplik
12. Find solutions in a Playful Way
Playing
• …addresses emotionally
• …energises with fun
• …motivates by heart
• …commits easily
• … connects people and goals
• … transfers goals and objectives
• … opens creativity quickly via
metaphors, pictures, symbols,
storytelling

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Challenge Employees
13. Challenge and Engage Employees
Get enthusiastic support and buy-in
upfront
Assign neutral facilitator(s) to
assure everyone will be heard
Use engaging collaboration formats
and facilitation (Open Space, Barcamp,
Fish-Bowl, World Café, Innovation Games,
Agile Games, LEGO Serious Play)
Create Declarations of
Understanding
Celebrate successes
Richard Parmiter https://www.flickr.com/photos/parmiter/2521273890

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Value Stream and Business Alignment
kafka4prez https://www.flickr.com/photos/kafka4prez/5551473459
14. Align Change Activities on Value Stream and Business
Value (of the change) is pertinence
of usage the change brings to
organisation / frontline
Identify waste using Games and
Retrospectives (Innovation Games)
Assess projects and teams in terms
of
• …creating flow by eliminating
waste.
• …needs / business value /
importance
Select “pilot projects” for change
activities / artefacts according to
business needs and value stream

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Create Value
Billy Wilson https://www.flickr.com/photos/32132568@N06/4804943273/
15. Think Lean. Prototype. Deliver Value
Prototype early – Don’t over-
engineer
Ship directly usable artefacts
time-boxed and incrementally
Establish reliable metrics and
reporting cycles
Use, evaluate, and improve all
shipped artefacts immediately:
“Build-Measure-Learn”
(Lean-Startup-Cycle, Eric Ries)

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Lean Change Canvas
Pip https://www.flickr.com/photos/pip/4967680686/in/pool-productivity_kanban_gtd_lean/
Visualise teams the impact of their
change activities (on whiteboards)
Monitor Progress with Lean
Change Canvas Metrics:
• Urgency: “What is urgency?” “From who’s
perspective?”
• Change Recipients: “Who is affected?” –
“How many?”
• Vision: “What’s the goal intended?”
• Communication: “How will we
communicate?”
• Success Criteria: “When will change stick?” –
“What’s the definition of Done?”
• Target State: “Where do we want to go?”
• Required Investments (effort): “What
should we prepare?” – “How much?”
• Benefits / Wins (not monetary only): “Who
gains most?” – “How much?”
16. Visualise and Monitor Progress continuously

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Agile Rollout Policies
Mykl Roventine https://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine/7911487006/in/photostream
17. Think Agile. Establish Rollout Policies
Implement artefacts with daily
feedback loops in core team
(24hrs)
Release artefacts in directly usable
increments in 2wks sprints
Define retrospective intervals per
sprints
Define success criteria (“Definition of
Done”)
Scrum

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Scaling Change
santacroce https://www.flickr.com/photos/86131800@N00/1335971537/
18. Scale the Change
Use same agile rollout policies in
the line as in core team:
• Incremental releases (24hrs/2wks)
• Build-Measure-Learn cycle
Front line
team 1
Front line
team 2
Front line
team 3
Front line
team 4
Team coaches
Core team
Enterprise Transition
Community
(Process Engineering Group)
Agile Coach

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Retrospectives
Kevin Lau https://www.flickr.com/photos/87473264@N00/767491038/
19. Create Learnings regularly
Use Retrospectives (i.e. regular team
meetings after 4-6 sprints each) to:
• “Inspect & Adapt” – reflect with core
team and others involved their way of
working, and how to continuously
improve
• identify and commit actions to be done to
improve
• empower teams and improve the team
productivity
• increase product quality
• identify impediments
• collect learnings
• adapt to changing objectives and
requirements
4 Questions:
1. “How are we doing?”
2. “What's going well?”
3. “What's not going well?”
4. “What steps can we take to improve?”

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Offer Alternatives
20. Forget about pleasing everybody: Offer Alternatives
rabiem22 https://www.flickr.com/photos/rabiem/8398594857
You can’t get everyone on the
bandwagon
Permanent motivating, explaining,
and convincing people puts
pressure on you and slows down
the transformation
Provide Alternatives / Exit
strategies to employees not
willing to follow the change:
• moving to new teams /
departments with same mindsets
• telework opportunities
• early retirements
• cancellation agreements
• pay employees to quit (Zappos,
Amazon)

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Questions? – Comments? – Interested in
consultancy, or business plays, stage directing?
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