Jared Andres — Individual Assignment — BMC 377–003

“Building Change Management Capability in a Complex Matrix Organization”

In my problem, a large oil and gas organization has identified the need to build change management capability in their organization in advance of some major change initiatives that are coming. I took this example from a real-world problem that I am working on at work. My team, UCalgary Continuing Education, Corporate Training and Workforce Development, has been approached by a large, complex matrix organization that has identified a need to build change capability throughout the organization. They want to ensure that all their staff are building this capability — from the individual contributor level, through management and leadership, up to the executive and board level. They want to make sure that the organization is prepared for some major change initiatives that are coming including a new ERP implementation, succession planning for many of their senior leaders, and even compliance and regulatory-based changes to the way they do business. With increased the ERP implementation, retirements of senior leaders, and pressure from customers and government to deliver their products in more sustainable ways, the organization knows that they have many large change initiatives coming quickly.

I had originally stated this problem as “Create a solution for building change competency and resilience throughout a complex matrix organization at different levels from individual contributors, front line managers, executives, and board level.”

When I started doing research into the problem, I started by looking into change management best practices. Prosci is one of the leading change management methodologies and they identify the following seven best practices for change management[1]:

1. Mobilize active and visible executive sponsorship

2. Apply a structured change management approach

3. Communicate frequently and openly

4. Engage with front-line employees

5. Dedicate change management resources

6. Engage and integrate with project management

7. Engage with and support middle managers

LaMarsh Global defines change management capability as “Embedding the practice of change management into the organization by building competency and training change practitioners and leaders.”[2] This statement, and the best practices outlined by Prosci, align with the organization’s desire to help close this skills gap through training staff at all levels of the org. chart. The problem for my team will be to design a training solution that will meet their needs, stay on budget, effectively scale throughout the organization, and feel tailored to different staff groups with varying levels of experience.

What’s Your Problem

With this initial research in mind, I moved on to defining my problem statement. I used the “What’s Your Problem” worksheet provided in the course materials and came up with the following:

I went through a couple of iterations of the worksheet and at the end came out with a problem statement that I was happy with: A large, complex, hierarchical, matrix organization needs to build change competence and capability at all levels throughout the organization in preparation for major upcoming change initiatives.

It was interesting to see how I went from what I thought was a fairly clear initial problem statement of “Create a solution for building change competency and resilience throughout a complex matrix organization at different levels from individual contributors, front line managers, executives, and board level” to what I now consider a better problem statement of “A large, complex, hierarchical, matrix organization needs to build change competence and capability at all levels throughout the organization in preparation for major upcoming change initiatives.” I think the updated problem statement is better because it is clearer, better thought out, and posed in a way that allows for some of the next steps in design thinking.

Reframe Your Problem

Taking my updated problem statement, I worked through the “Reframe Your Problem” activity and came up with several “How Might We” statements:

How might we:

· Approach the needs analysis?

· Engage all levels of stakeholders?

· Effectively engage all stakeholders?

· Tailor the experience to each level?

· Ensure the executive and board level people are engaged?

· Modernize the organization’s mindset?

· Build change competency?

· Create excitement around the program?

· Communicate the importance of this initiative?

· Keep training cost effective?

· Make training feel tailored but maintain consistency between all audiences?

· Reassure people that this initiative will not lead to job losses?

· Design training that will be effective at all levels while maintaining a consistent message and feel?

As I was working through this activity, I found it difficult to not jump straight to solutioning ideas. Based on the course content, I know that at this point it is better to keep these how might we questions open ended so that they can help trigger new and better ideas. I did find that by the end of the brainstorming session, I was getting closer to the kinds of how might we questions that would be effective in reframing the problem. I think that my best one was the last one: “How might we design training that will be effective at all levels while maintaining a consistent message and feel?” Taking into consideration this and other how might we questions helped me clarify my problem.

Next, I had to start thinking about human centred design and chose to use the 5 Whys, Empathy Mapping, and research into the problem and change management best practices as my primary tools. I chose not to focus on Customer Journey Mapping for this assignment because I have quite a bit of experience with customer journey maps and felt that for the sake of this course, my time would be better spent on some of the other activities. This said, I use customer journey mapping at work all the time and can certainly vouch for their effectiveness in identifying customer needs and wants, as well as potential pain points.

5 Whys Activity

Problem Statement: A large, complex, hierarchical, matrix organization needs to build change competence and capability at all levels throughout the organization in preparation for major upcoming change initiatives. Why?

1. Because there are major change initiatives coming to the organization and they need to be prepared. Why?

2. Because staff at all levels of the organization need to build better change capabilities to ensure smooth implementation of changes. Why?

3. Because there are currently different levels of change capabilities throughout the organization. (Eg. different levels of comfort, understanding, and skills). Why?

4. Because there has never been any formalized change framework or training done at an organizational level. Why?

5. Because former change initiatives were smaller in scope and only implemented at the departmental or team level.

I really like the 5 Whys activity and find it a valuable tool to use for root cause analysis. I remember a former boss introduced this tool to me several years ago when we were trying to solve a complex process problem at work, and I find that you can use it to come up with some fascinating ideas. In this case, I’m not sure that it uncovered much new ground, but I did find it to be a useful activity to help clarify my thinking about this problem.

Empathy Mapping:

For the empathy mapping activity, I broke the groups of staff out as individual contributors, leaders and managers, executives and board. If I had more time, I would have broken out each staff group further, possibly by seniority/experience, comfort with change, etc. I also could have done separate empathy maps for the executives and the board. In the real world, these groups would have similar, but different needs, wants, pain and gain. For the sake of this assignment, for time, and for simplicity, I chose to keep it a little broader.

Below, I have included images of the empathy maps I created, as well as the pain and gain that I identified for each group.

Individual Contributors

Pain (fears, frustrations, obstacles):

· Apprehension about change

· Fears of job losses

· Stress

· Resistance to change

Gain (wants, needs, measures of success):

· Opportunities to do work in better ways

· Opportunities for advancement

· Opportunity for training

· Desire to be part of change initiatives

Leaders and Managers

Pain:

· Concerns about change

· Some will not be on board with direction

· Lack of staff time for training

· Gossip and rumour mill

Gain:

· Some will embrace the initiative

· Excitement for training

· Opportunity for career advancement

· Better change capacity and ways of doing work

Executives and Board

Pain:

· Lack of change readiness of organization

· Leading a potentially unpopular initiative

· Concerns from staff at all levels

· Gossip/Rumour Mill

Gain:

· Improved change readiness/capacity throughout organization

· More resilient organization

· Investing in staff development

· Smooth change implementation

Next Steps: User Interviews, Contextualization Documents, and Instructor Meetings

Based on some of my research into best practices from Prosci, the ultimate solution should be sure to take a holistic approach. This means that training and building change management capacity will be important, but the solution must also incorporate changes to processes and structure in order to be sustainable over the long run[3]. Since the scope of this project will focus mainly on the training and skills building side of change management, it will be a primarily skill-centric approach — which is what my team specializes in.

In going through some of the content on user interviews, I began to reflect on some tools that I use at work to do what I call course contextualization. During some of the initial meetings with each client, I do a needs assessment. This is similar to user interviews in the sense that I ask the client several questions including things like:

· What skills gaps are you looking to close with this training?

· What kinds of problems is the target audience running into at work?

· What will success from this training look like to you?

The answers to these questions can be very illuminating in terms of identifying exactly what the client is looking for from the training.

I then use contextualization documents to dig deeper into the needs. These are templated documents that ask the client and their SMEs several questions that help identify the kinds of situations that are happening at work for the target audience. Using these examples, I create case studies that will be used in the program to make the training very relevant and relatable to the participants.

The final step in the contextualization process is to arrange a meeting between the instructor and the client. I use this meeting to unpack the needs analysis and contextualization documents with both groups of stakeholders. This helps ensure that nothing is getting lost in translation or being left up to assumptions.

These user engagement strategies can go a long way towards ensuring that the training being delivered has the best chance at solving the problems the organization is facing.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed going through all these design thinking activities. I think that I have a good understanding of the problem now and will be able to approach future problems like this in a structured way. I will be sharing some of this work that I have done with my team in hopes of helping them understand the problem differently and I’m looking forward to hearing their thoughts on it, as well as moving into ideation and some of the other next steps.

[1] Prosci. (n.d.). Best practices in change management. Prosci. Retrieved June 19, 2022, from https://www.prosci.com/resources/articles/change-management-best-practices

[2] Global, L. M. (n.d.). 5 pillars of change management competency. Insights By LaMarsh. Retrieved June 19, 2022, from https://insights.lamarsh.com/5-pillars-needed-to-build-a-change-management-core-competency

[3] Creasey, T. (n.d.). A roadmap for Building Change Management competency. Prosci. Retrieved June 19, 2022, from https://blog.prosci.com/a-roadmap-for-building-change-management-competency