5 CxOs on leading change

“I remind IT professionals and IT leaders that part of a middle manager’s job is to lead their direct reports who are impacted by a change. IT should not take on the business managers’ role. It’s great if IT can provide them talking points for a staff meeting, or attend as a guest to answer questions, but the business case and the why of its importance need to come from the operational business leaders,” she says.

As the saying goes, the devil’s in the details, and that’s particularly true when it comes to implementation. There’s more capacity at the top because the top doesn’t have to deal with those details. When we fail to consider the capacity issue, resistance sets in and change efforts lose momentum and stall out.

“I call engaging my team in the transformation journey ‘enrollment’,” Parmar says. “We all show up to do the best we have the potential to do. You’ve created a change vision — a future that should be better for everyone, but in reality may not be — how do you keep them engaged? How do I enroll someone where they believe the agency is with them, they’re signing up for this, they are empowered? They may not be committed to it yet, but they made the choice to sign up for it.”

Managing resistance to change

Bishop highlights several pivotal areas to focus on in order to manage resistance and overcome some of the other potential change derailers. First is the issue of change saturation. The executive team needs to have clear visibility into all of the change going on in the organization to determine whether it has the capability to absorb something new.

He also emphasizes the importance of developing the case to help people understand the why behind the change and using a formal change methodology or model.

“And then you have to understand the culture piece, because what I’ve found is that people with have either a positive or a negative response to change,” he says.

The negative responses, Bishop adds, tend to fall into the categories of fight, flight, or freeze. When someone believes that the change conflicts with what they value or what their customers value, they will fight the change, actively arguing and resisting. If they don’t understand why there is a change or don’t see the value in it, they’ll “check out,” which is a way of fleeing.

“With freeze, the response is to kind of do nothing and ignore the change,” he says. “We always address the fight and the flight, but we don’t place a lot of attention on the freeze.”

Getting these people engaged and on board with the change may require number of strategies, including creating ambassadors, getting some quick wins that you can highlight, putting what Bishop calls “radiators” within the organization so that people can see the progress of change, and, critically, creating context for the change.

Confused minds don’t act, which is why taking time to provide context goes a long way toward gaining people’s commitment, not just compliance, to the change. When they understand the why for the change and they’re involved in it, they can see the value. Right thinking leads to right action.

“We hold mandatory weekly 30-minute town hall meetings with all IT employees, which reinforce the why behind the changes within the context of the health environment, their local environment and other changes going on,” Bruno says. “It’s a way of bringing clarity and getting people personally involved.”

That kind of forum also provides an opportunity for two-way communication and a chance for people to ask questions and engage more fully with the change. Whether it’s the executive team, middle managers, target users or other stakeholders, people need to be able to connect personally and emotionally with the change, which means IT leaders need to be able to clearly articulate how it will benefit them individually — addressing the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) factor.

Bishop says things go much better when change is “done with and not to” people. To gain commitment rather than just compliance, he finds that adjusting the message for different levels and audiences within the organization is important.

As Ghosh says, “It’s never going to be about technology. It’s never going to be about processes and procedures. It’s about storytelling and helping them understand how the changes will improve their lives. And you have to have these separate discussions because these are the people who are going to make your change successful or not.”  

Communicating the change isn’t just IT’s job. Like many organizations, Ghosh’s company has created a cross-functional transformation office that is constantly telling the story and creating clarity and context around change. Whether part of a formal office or not, change champions and ambassadors can have a huge influence over others and the success of the initiative.

Changing for the future

As technology leaders know all too well, digital transformation isn’t for the faint of heart. Many CIOs can relate to the experience of dealing with sprawling, deeply entrenched systems that are highly customized and that people have built to perfection and operational excellence. Getting through all of that is a massive amount of change, and that doesn’t even take into account the giant leap you’re asking people to take when you move from, for example, a mainframe to a cloud-based solution.

When the pandemic hit, companies no longer had the choice of delaying their digital transformation efforts. For many, it was a wake-up call, one that propelled them into a new era of the way we do business and the way we work. While the fundamentals of effective change remain the same, we’ve also picked up some valuable new learnings in the whirlwind of the past few years.

“Telehealth has been talked about in our industry for over a decade. COVID took all the discussion out and forced the change immediately,” Watson notes. “People got excited because they want to see results and they saw the result of that really quick. It really inspired them to continue on. We now recruit with the idea that you will be involved in change. You won’t do the same things every day.”

In the face of rapid, complex change and a continuing talent crunch, technology leaders have to be more intentional and purposeful than ever about giving people context and clarity and empowering them to get on board. They have to galvanize their teams and engage them in the mission and purpose — the difference they’re making for the business, their colleagues and their customers. And just as important, they have to hold their business partners accountable by reminding them that technology is the business.

Because not changing is not an option.

As Bruno says, “You’ll either cease to exist or cease to matter.”