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Daniel Evans, CIO of EMLYON in France, writes:
>
> A common theme in training...I'm interested in knowing the key
> challenges that TRAINERS face when conducting courses/sessions in change
> management. What are the traps? What are the tips to make it effective?
>
> Thanks for your answers !

The first challenge is that of credibility. If the "trainers" are not themselves skilled and accomplished change management practitioners, the training will fall flat on its face owing to the lack of any real experience on the part of the trainers. Credibility will be assessed in two ways: (1) background, vita, resume, etc and (2) the things the trainers say and do during the training.

A second challenge is that of relevance. This entails linking the training to the trainees' needs and interests and that usually implies tying it to something going on or about to go on at their company that affects them.

A third challenge is that of language, of definitions and meanings. Here, the basic definition and meaning of change management come into play. You, Daniel, are a CIO. In information technology, "change management" often refers to what used to be called "version control." In Organization Development (OD) and other circles, it often refers to the making and managing of change. In IT circles, this latter meaning often ties to the introduction of new systems or approaches (perhaps an SAP package or the introduction of a process-centric approach). The key point here is that all need to be clear about just what "change management" means and what it doesn't.

A fourth challenge lies in confronting the fact that making and managing change isn't done by one person; it takes many and often MANY people, all of whom have bought into the change in question and are willing to work to support it and make it happen. This means that "change management" is a hotly political undertaking, not a technical skill to be mastered. The key here isn't in the training per se but in the selection of the people who will attend.

A fifth challenge owes to the fact that training can never provide anyone with anything more than the potential to perform, usually in the form of some kind of learned repertoire or skill set. More often than not, the failure to perform doesn't owe to a skill gap; it owes instead to barriers or obstacles or system characteristics that inhibit or preclude performance as desired. This means that training in change management, no matter how relevant or effective, is not enough by itself. It must be coupled with or be part of other initiatives. As Geary Rummler, co-author of Improving Performance is fond of saying, "Put a good person in a bad system and the system will win every time."

A sixth challenge derives from the cold, hard reality that all change management situations are inevitably one-off situations. There are no canned approaches, only custom ones. This is because organizations are more or less unique and people are indisputably unique. The stakes differ, the culture differs, the strategy differs, the timing differs, the pace differs, the urgency differs, the means differ and the goals differ. Training in change management, then, must also be customized to fit the situation at hand. You can't buy it off the shelf; it's not pre-packaged software.

As for traps and tips, I'll have to come back and make a second post. In the meantime, there's an article on my web site that you might find relevant and useful. It is titled "Change Management 101: A Primer." You will find it at the following link:

http://home.att.net/~OPSINC/change.pdf

There are other relevant papers there, too. Go to www.skullworks.com and look around.

Good luck with your change management efforts.

--
Regards,

Fred Nickols
Managing Partner
Distance Consulting, LLC
nickols@att.net
www.nickols.us

"Assistance at A Distance"

Can you 'train' rather than 'educate' in change management?
From a systems perspective (and I find it hard to escape from such) any change will have repercussions throughout the wider system and its environment, and unless such repercussions are anticipated and managed then the change is likely to create further problems. Indeed from this perspective it is highly unlikely that the 'symptoms' clearly reflect the 'problem' the change is intended to address, and careful diagnosis (looking at whole systems) wil be needed to identify root causes and decide upon an appropriate approach
From a psychological perspective (another deep rooted one) you are likely to need to change long established habits of thinking if change is to 'stick'.
Training in project management would be extremely helpful, but that is the only training that springs to mind.
There is a huge trap to be avoided: people may end up thinking that change is simple, or that it is easy to decide what changes to make. Without a wider understanding of systems thinking etc, and of psychology - which I would class as education not training - it is hard to see how such a trap could be avoided.

________________________________

From: Management Education and Development Discussion on behalf of EVANS Daniel
Sent: Fri 11/07/2008 08:33
To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
Subject: Training in Change Management


A common theme in training...I'm interested in knowing the key challenges that TRAINERS face when conducting courses/sessions in change management. What are the traps? What are the tips to make it effective?

Thanks for your answers !

Daniel Evans, Ph.D.
CIO EMLYON
Lyon, France



---------------------------------
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Dear Colleagues,

Many things come to mind immediately for me. First, as I report in Level Three Leadership 4th edition, my experience consulting in every corner of the globe is that people tend to be creatures of habit. I've asked 1,000 country managers in places like Rio, Johannesburg, Cairo, London, Athens, Istanbul, Mexico City, Bangkok, Japan, Atlanta, etc., all over the globe what proportion of visible behavior (what you can capture on film) is, in their experience, habitual (unthinkingly repetitive)? And they tend to say 75%. If you ask about level two, conscious thought, what proportion of the way people think, given all the people you've met in life, is habitual, they say 85%. If you ask about level three, semi-conscious values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations (VABEs) about the way the world is or should be, they say, on average, 95% to 100%. THAT is the biggest problem I face in teaching ANY group--the level of habituality and trying to find ways to get below that and to get people to examine their VABEs and perhaps let go of some of them. Pre-conceived VABEs about how you influence others and how you manage are very deep and very strong. (e.g. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

Several authors posit possible phases in the change process, Waslawski, Prochaska, Kubler-Ross, and others. They all are a little different and all have some similarities. In my experience, until and unless the instructor can model the principle that he/she is able and willing to change at all three levels, then whatever he/she teaches will be relatively superficial and likely to bounce off the hard hat/helmet of the audience's preconceived VABEs. In my view, you can only initiate change by changing self--what you do, how you think, what you believe. Even if that means dealing with others in a different way. The volume above lays out these concepts in detail.

I hope this helps.

Respectfully,

Jim
James G. S. Clawson
Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business Administration
Darden GSB, University of Virginia
Box 6550, Charlottesville, VA 22906
100 Darden Boulevard, Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA
Tel: 434 924 7488 Fax: 434 243 7680
Web: http://faculty.darden.virginia.edu/clawsonj

-----Original Message-----
From: Management Education and Development Discussion [mailto:MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.pace.edu] On Behalf Of Sofia Kauko-Valli
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 6:38 AM
To: MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.pace.edu
Subject: Vs: Training in Change Management

Hi all,

For me one of the most important things in change management
seems to be figuring out whether the person/s in question REALLY
is ready for change. There seems to be different phases in the change
process - precontemplating, weighing the pros and cons of change,
preparing
for change, the change itself and maintenance to name a few.

sofia



Sofia Kauko-Valli
PhD (econ.), BEd
Senior Assistant
Entrepreneurship
(Knowledge Intensive Business Formation)
University of Jyväskylä
www.jyu.fi
School of Business and Economics
PL 35
40351 JYVÄSKYLÄ
FINLAND
Tel +358(0)142603510
Fax +358(0)142603331
e-mail: sofia.kauko-valli@econ.jyu.fi

\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/\o/
For life to change, you have to
change. For things to get better,
you have to get better.
Jim Rohn

>>> EVANS Daniel <evans@EM-LYON.COM> 11.7.2008 10:33 >>>
A common theme in training...I'm interested in knowing the key
challenges that TRAINERS face when conducting courses/sessions in
change
management. What are the traps? What are the tips to make it
effective?

Thanks for your answers !

Daniel Evans, Ph.D.
CIO EMLYON
Lyon, France

Daniel,

You original question: What challenges are faced by trainers in change
management? What traps?

You've received excellent advice for situation in which the change has been
determined and must now be implemented. As noted, Project Management is
specifically designed to accomplish change. Fred Nichol's comments in that
context are excellent.

1. Consider change leadership. At least touch on processes for use in
choosing changes to be made. Processes vary widely, yet have fundamental
similarities: Goals, objectives, strategies, plans. Your training is in
the execution phase. Give your students enough context to understand how
their specific change might have been selected.

2. In that same vein, do reinforce systems theory. No change ever leads to
an end point. They all lead to new starting points. Leadership fails
utterly if the selected change addresses symptoms rather than fundamental
issues.

3. Consider stakeholders. Who will be impacted by this change? Why? In
what ways? Are stakeholders ready for the change? Were they included in
decisions? All too often, it seems that changes are seen as somehow
independent of humans. If you talk to those who do such installations such
as SAP, they spend very significant time up front with stakeholders, then
again in training as launch of the new system nears.

4. Marketing: Teams can be directed to manage and implement change, but
stakeholders don't have to accept the change. Consider the change as a new
product and teach your managers to launch that product with high quality
marketing. I've pestered various Project Management Institute officers for
years saying that the PMBOK needs a tenth chapter: Marketing. No progress,
yet when I speak to such audiences everyone agrees that they do marketing
constantly.

5. Build teams: Give the change initiative a name. Create an identity
around that name. Hey! Make T-shirts. A major change institutive requires
a cohesive team. Change managers must be team builders, team leaders.
Perhaps the single most dangerous failure is to create a team not able to
work through the tough issues without fracturing.

6. Create a business: For small changes, projects will do. For something
that takes many months or more, stop thinking of it as a project and operate
it as a business. Any lesser view opens potential for problems. For
instance, over time staff may change. New requirements or constraints may
force change within change (adaptation). Projects can handle some levels,
but it takes a larger structure to deal with larger modifications of the
change process.

7. Decisions: This listserv hosted a fascinating conversation some years
ago on decision making. In the process of working with various decision
processes, I offered the thought that questions were more fundamental than
answers (decisions). In any case, your training can suffer if you haven't
thought through how decisions will be made. Strange as it seems, decision
making is rarely taught, either by academia or the corporate world.

8. Finally, change is perhaps the single most important factor in human
civilization today because it tends to overwhelm resources. We very much
need the skills to deal with change in lives, businesses, governments, and
civilization itself. Frankly, I worry that human beings have not evolved to
deal with current levels of change, much less that which we will see in the
future. We would already be lost if not for our systems.
In that context, here are my corollaries to "A Way of Change", Gary
Michael Lundquist, The Market Engineering Press, 2006. Please do not
reproduce these without credit.

Everything is connected. Everything!
All change is more complex than one believes in the beginning.
Initiating one change forces initiation of others.
The full range of outcomes cannot possibly be known.
The only change we might truly control is our own change.
The universe gives up its secrets very slowly.

Best,

Gary
...........................................
Gary Lundquist
Director@InnoSearchColorado.com
Colorado Resources*for Innovation
303-840-9929*
...........................................
GaryL@Market-Engineering.com
Innovation of Business and
the Business of InnovationT