What a Change Steering Committee Should Decide (and What It Shouldn’t)
The steering committee meets monthly for ninety minutes. Roughly seventy of those minutes are spent presenting status: what has been completed, what is on track, what is amber and why. In the remaining twenty, nothing is decided that could not have been decided by the programme manager. The committee has spent its meeting being informed, […]
Who Should Deliver the Message? Choosing Messengers by Trust, Not Rank
The CEO recorded a three-minute video about the transformation. It is well made, sincere, and has been watched by 18 per cent of the workforce, most of whom stopped before the end. In the same week, a shift supervisor told her team in about forty seconds that the new scanning process is slower for a […]
Communication Is Not Engagement: What the Difference Costs You
The plan has an engagement workstream. Inside it are a communications calendar, a newsletter, a set of roadshows and an intranet page. Every one of those is communication. None of them is engagement, and the substitution is so routine that most programmes never notice they have made it. The distinction, stated plainly Communication transmits a […]
How to Write Change Communications People Actually Read
Here is an opening line from a real change email: “As part of our ongoing commitment to operational excellence, we are embarking on a transformation journey that will enable us to leverage best-practice processes across the organisation.” Twenty-eight words, no information. A reader learns that something is happening, that it is corporate, and that the […]
Why Change Communication Fails When It’s Only Broadcast
The communications plan is on track. Eleven emails sent, two town halls held, an intranet hub live, a monthly newsletter, and a video from the sponsor with 3,400 views. The readiness survey comes back and 44 per cent of people say they do not know what is changing for them. Both statements are accurate, and […]
Why Change Maturity Models Rarely Change Anything
The change maturity assessment came back at 2.4. The improvement plan, unsurprisingly, is to reach 3.0 within eighteen months, and there are now workstreams for each dimension that scored below the target. Eighteen months later the organisation will very likely be at 3.0, because organisations that set out to reach a maturity level generally reach […]
Prosci vs Kotter vs Agile Change: Choosing an Approach
The framework selection meeting is a recognisable event. Someone has a preference from a previous employer, someone else has a certification, and a decision gets made that will shape how the next two years of change work is described. It matters less than the meeting implies. The evidence base does not support a strong claim […]
Lewin’s Change Model Is 80 Years Old. What Still Holds?
Unfreeze, change, refreeze. It is the first thing most people are taught about organisational change, it is attributed to Kurt Lewin, and it appears on more slides than any other idea in the field. There is a problem with it, and it is not the usual complaint that organisations never refreeze. Lewin does not appear […]
Kotter’s 8 Steps: What Survives Contact With an ERP Programme
A large ERP programme sets up its change plan as eight workstreams, named after Kotter’s eight steps. There is a urgency workstream, a coalition workstream, a vision workstream. By month four, three of them have quietly stopped meeting, because they were never activities. Kotter’s steps describe conditions an organisation reaches, not tasks a team performs, […]
ADKAR Explained — and Where It Runs Out
ADKAR is the most widely used change model in corporate practice, and most of the criticism aimed at it is unfair. It is clear, it is teachable in an hour, and it directs attention at individuals rather than at programme artefacts — which is more than can be said for most of what it competes […]