Words & Meaning: (5) Change

For some people, organisational change is a bit like this:

And sometimes they are right. You point in one direction & off your troops go, in nice neat lines. We have plans & communications. We have articulated the benefits for change to all concerned. We have incentive plans in place & measurement systems that will track the necessary conformity to our goals.

Great.

However, with all that in mind, why does change more often feel like this?

John Kotter is one of the world's foremost authorities on change management lays down the following eight steps for change:

1. Establish a Sense of Urgency
2. Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition
3. Create a Vision
4. Communicate the Vision
5. Empower Others to Act on the Vision
6. Plan for and Create Short-Term Wins
7. Consolidate Improvements and Produce Still More Change
8. Institutionalize New Approaches

All of which is good stuff. But just as "innovation" is a darn sight messier than what it says on the label, so is change. The metaphor that keeps going through my head around KM & change (and if you don't think KM is all about change then go to the back of the class now) is moving an enormous boulder. If you try to lift it with your arms, you will break your back. Instead you have to find a leverage point. A place you can stick a crowbar and use your whole weight (and this where it actually comes in handy if you are a desk-bound manager with a weakness for tim-tams) to make some kind of difference. The point I made in the previous post about finding a group of people with a real (preferably solvable) business problem is related to this. They are your leverage point. It may be about lessons learned or virtual teaming, you have to start somewhere.

And this ties into Kotter's first point. It is very hard to establish a sense of urgency for KM projects. It is impossible to manufacture it ("If we don't set up a new product development community of practice, we risk imminent invasion from Mars!!!"). So find some people who already have a sense of urgency about something. KM practitioners have to be (N.B. metaphor alert) ambulance chasers. Be careful, this group of people may have a million other people wanting to solve their problems for them. They may even have hired the A-Team. So only step in if it is genuinely an issue where you can add value because you don't want to have to face down Mr T in a powerpoint duel now do you?