SUCCESSFUL CHANGE CHANGES EVERYTHING

Sponsor’s Guide to Change Management

L A M A R S H . C O M

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1 | S P O N S O R ’ S G U I D E T O C H A N G E M A N A G E M E N T

If you are a change management

practitioner, you have many

resources to help you understand

and apply your role. This resource is

not one of them.

It is written for those whom LaMarsh

Global call Sponsors - those people

who have Targets of change

reporting to them and who, because

of the position they hold in the

organization, have the authority to

order up a change and who provide

the resources to implement it.

Still, you may value this eBook,

so read it and pass it on to the

key Sponsors of change in your

organization.

If you are a change management practitioner, you

have many resources to help you understand and

apply your role. This resource is not one of them.

Sponsor’s Guide to Change ManagementYou can’t escape it, the many articles about being a leader of change that are showing up in the magazines and newspapers, paper or electronic, that you read today. And you don’t disagree. You know that as a leader you play a key role in the effort to get employees to embrace the changes your organization is making.

Our experience at LaMarsh Global is that leaders accept the role of Sponsor of change, but the articles exhorting that role don’t go far enough. What does it really mean to be a Sponsor of change?

The answer becomes quite clear when we look at the changes you are making through the eyes of the people being asked to change. What do they need from you? Knowing will help you to define the action steps you need to take.

First and foremost is the clear understanding on the part of the people impacted that you, their boss or boss’s boss or even their boss’s boss’s boss, support this change. While you may have set up a project team to implement the change, if the people impacted do not report to those people in their day-to-day work, the first thing they want to know is whether or not the management cascade they sit in DOES support the change. And they don’t want to hear that from the project team, the people we call the Change Agents. They want to hear it from all the managers in the org chart above them. So the wise Change Agents make sure the management cascade is supportive of the change before they concentrate on the employees impacted. They look to you to check both your willingness to accept the change and your willingness to support the change. If you have issues or concerns about the change, work

them out with your management cascade and with the Change Agents.

Then, Change Agents will ask you to ‘give the speech.’ Make sure that you share with your direct reports and those below them your commitment to the change AND your intent to hold people accountable for changing. So there is a lot of work the Change Agents will do before you share with the people impacted that you are fully behind the change effort.

Look at it this way:

ACTION STEPONE

The Change Agents identify who is going to be impacted and who those people report to. We call this process building a Key Role Map.

ACTION STEPTWO

The Change Agents assess leaders/managers in that Key Role Map to determine issues/concerns or lack of willingness or skill on the part of key individuals that could prevent them from operating as good Sponsors.

ACTION STEPTHREE

Having dealt with any issues existing in the Sponsor Cascade, the Change Agents write the speech. They prepare the message to be delivered by the Sponsors, design the venue in which that message is delivered and work with the Sponsors to ensure the ‘speech’ (the memo, the video, the conference call, the Town Hall meeting…whatever venue(s) is most appropriate) is delivered.

And you are not done yet. You need to reinforce your commitment with every opportunity that comes up. Once is not enough. Throughout

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the life cycle of the project, the Change Agents will call on you multiple times to reiterate your support. You don’t just wait for them to ask. You scan your organization and look for opportunities to let people know you are behind the change.

But it’s not enough just to ‘give the speech.’ There are other key elements of the change that you need to be involved in. Certainly you have to agree that the Desired State is acceptable to you, but your agreement has to go further. You need to answer two questions:

(1) How many of your employees must embrace the change – 100%, 75%?

(2) What level of acceptance do they have to achieve: 100%, 10%?

The answers to these questions are key. People being asked to change need to make a choice -- to accept the change or to choose not to change. They can’t make an informed and thoughtful choice unless they know the answers to these questions AND the key follow-on question of what would happen to them if they chose not to change? The consequences for refusing to change -- to drag out the implementation until it loses its energy or misses a key implementation date, for continuing to follow the old process even when it should have been retired, for refusing to take part in opportunities to understand the change and build new abilities to perform -- need to be understood by the employees, but it is only you as the leader who can define them.

Two more places where your role is critical occur during the implementation.

Employees are held accountable by you for their performance on the job as it has been defined through the job descriptions, performance criteria, KPI’s, SMART Goals or whatever your organization calls the key requirements for a defined period of time within the current state.

But change often plays havoc with the employees’ ability to meet these requirements. The effort to learn the new way that occurs during the implementation -- the time taken away from their ‘day job’ to attend training, to practice the new way, to attend meetings discussing the change, all those -- cause employees’ concerns. Often they believe you are judging them solely on that ‘day-to-day’ performance criteria and that their efforts to change, to expend the time and effort to embrace the change, could result in a poor performance review. It will make them reluctant to change even if they want the change because the effort to get through the transition or delta could be perceived as too dangerous. The third shift employees on the production line in the manufacturing plant need to know that if their production quotas will not be met the week they are in training on the use of the new bar coding process they will not be punished with a poor performance review. The accounts payable clerk who cannot close the books by the 7th of the month, because she is transitioning to the new system that will eventually allow her to close the books by the 5th, needs assurance that this week, when she is unstable and awkward in her use of the new system as she faces it for the

first time, she will not be called out because she failed to meet her job performance standards.

So, obviously, you need to work with the Change Agents to determine what could cause what we call the dip in the delta, or the lowering of performance expectations that are a natural part of the implementation. Then, have the Change Agents recommend alternative plans to reduce that dip to whatever degree possible. Remember, you will need to communicate to the employees your understanding that a certain amount of ‘dip’ cannot be helped and if they are making a good faith effort to change they will not be punished for the consequences.

Change Agents, by the nature of their assignment to implement a specific change, often lack a key perspective that the Targets of

First and foremost is the clear understanding

on the part of the people impacted that you, their boss or boss’s

boss or even their boss’s boss’s boss, support this change.

K. Judge

3 | S P O N S O R ’ S G U I D E T O C H A N G E M A N A G E M E N T

Clearly Define the Roles and Responsibilities of the Sponsors and Those of the Change Agents

SPONSORS CHANGE AGENTS

Make it clear that resistance will be addressed Systematically identify the Target populations and the sources of potential resistance

Demonstrate the willingness to ‘’own’ the Desired State including the level of acceptance by the Targets

Address your own issues regarding willingness and ability to act as an effective Sponsor

Commit the resources that are required to reduce the resistance

Identify the actions required to reduce the resistance and build the plan of action

Address the key issues of multiple changes and the possibility of a Dip in the Delta

Do the communicating

Write the speeches

Provide the rewards and reinforcements Determine what those need to be

This is what Sponsorship too often looks like.

CASESTUDY

Leonard Capleton is the Vice President of Operations at the Strandor Medical Center, a healthcare system consisting of seven hospitals, 23 clinics and a variety of specialty operations. As Strandor introduced a new procurement and supply management system for both medical and maintenance products throughout the complex, Leonard recognized that he was a key Sponsor but only for those who work in the areas of inventory control and product scheduling. Many, indeed most, of the people who would be impacted and asked to change are not in his chain of command. Because Leonard has been such an outstanding Sponsor of this change, the project team had been reluctant to engage other leaders and had relied on Leonard to speak about the change, to explain why it is necessary, what Strandor will look like after the change is completed and how it is being done. That thinking by the project team was challenged, however, when they conducted the training on the new system. At the end of each training session, the groups of Targets deluged them with many questions. The most common were, “Does my manager know about this change?”, “Does my manager support me in this?” , “What do I do if my boss doesn’t like this change?”, “My manager is mad that I took the time off the floor to come to this training. Will Mr. Capleton protect me from my boss’s frustration that I am not getting my regular work done?”

The project team realized that they had made

a mistake. They went directly to the Targets and forgot that between the Targets and the CEO Sister Madeline, there were as many as five layers of management, or Sponsors, in some parts of the organization. They had not realized that Leonard Capleton did not have the managerial authority over many of the Targets so the questions they were asking in the training could not be answered by him.

This team, and Leonard, would have benefited from a more thoughtful approach to the role he should have played, and they might have started with an assessment such as the one on the next page.

The assessment on the next page can be used by project teams to test the current level of sponsorship. It can also be used by leaders themselves to determine how they feel about the roles they need to play and how ready they are to perform. You might want to consider a change facing your organization and assess yourself and even ask those Change Agents you are working with to fill it out about you.

change have -- knowing that multiple changes are impacting employees simultaneously.

Without clarity of the importance of each change, the people impacted do their own prioritizing. They usually make decisions for themselves, based on the impact and value of each change as they see it. Because they lack the strategic perspective you have as the Sponsor, they cannot always make the most optimal prioritization. Besides that, each Change Agent group or project team is pushing them to focus on the change that group has been charged to implement.

So here is another obvious place where Sponsors play a key role. They need to charge Change Agents with the responsibility to look at each Target group and determine what changes are impacting them specifically. LaMarsh Global has a tool called the Concurrent Change

Assessment which looks at this list and assesses the impact on your change of having multiple changes happening to the Targets at once. It is a powerful resource for Change Agents to address this very serious issue, and often a great source of Target Resistance. After Change Agents complete this work of determining the degree to which multiple changes may cause resistance and building a case for addressing the issues that surface, make the recommendation that reports come to you for action. That’s your job, not the employees’ job.

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Don’t have enough

informationNever Rarely Usually Always

1. Has a clear vision of the Desired State. 0 1 2 3 4

2. Understands what it will take to achieve the Desired State. 0 1 2 3 4

3. Understands the external drivers of change and cost of not changing. 0 1 2 3 4

4. Is open and flexible regarding the Desired State. 0 1 2 3 4

5. Is open and flexible regarding the path to the Desired State. 0 1 2 3 4

6. Communicates personal commitment to the Desired State. 0 1 2 3 4

7. Communicates from the perspective of the Target audience. 0 1 2 3 4

8. Keeps him/herself and the organization constantly focused on the Desired State, in public.

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9. Keeps him/herself and the organization constantly focused on the Desired State, in private.

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10. Encourages people to express concerns and fears, and to seek additional information.

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11. Recognizes and acknowledges the personal changes required. 0 1 2 3 4

12. Recognizes and acknowledges personal and organizational changes required throughout organization.

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13. Is willing to provide the resources to achieve the Desired State. 0 1 2 3 4

14. Will align rewards/reinforcement to support the Desired State. 0 1 2 3 4

15. Requires feedback on measurable/observable increments toward the Desired State.

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Sponsor Being Assessed: Change Project:

Person Completing Assessment (optional): Date:

Sponsor Assessment

Scoring History Assessment

Assessment Legend

Observations

Total Score ÷ 15 x 25 = %

Less than 45%: Serious danger

Between 46 and 65%: Serious concern

5 | S P O N S O R ’ S G U I D E T O C H A N G E M A N A G E M E N T

Look around you. Find out what changes your employees are being asked to make. Are you being asked to sponsor those changes? Are you willing to sponsor these changes? Are you able to sponsor these changes? If the answer to any of these questions is no, the change is in trouble and so are your employees. Maybe you need to reach out to the Change Agents if they have not reached out to you. Your sponsorship is critical to successful change and to the future of your organization. Commit to that sponsorship and increase the chances of success for the organization and for you as a leader.

And there is another commitment you need to make after the change is completed. From a Managed Change™ perspective, we talk about the Sustainment of Change and you play a key role there too, but not as a Sponsor. The change has been made and your Sponsorship was a major contributor to its successful implementation. Now take off your Sponsor hat and consider how you, with your day-to-day leadership hat on, ensure that the New Current State does not slip back. Holding people accountable for continuing to do things the new way and making sure they get recognition for maintaining this way of working is what leaders do. And you are both: a Sponsor of

change and a leader in the New Current

State.

Now take off your Sponsor hat and consider how you,

with your day-to-day leadership hat on, ensure

that the New Current State does not slip back.

K. Judge

To register or receive more information call 312.464.1349 email change@lamarsh.com visit www.lamarsh.com