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Can you Codify Change Management?

The need has never been greater for leaders who can take people through turbulent, and sometimes radical, change.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to contribute a chapter on “Stakeholder Strategy” to a book that was published as The Effective Change Manager's Handbook (ECMH for short), a title commissioned by the international Change Management Institute. The request from Richard Smith, the Editor, came on the back of my earlier book, Practical People Engagement: Leading Change through the Power of Relationships. 

Both books have been really well received; both connecting, it seems, with a very current real need for someone to make sense of the confusing change management landscape. Last week Richard sent me a review of ECMH by the British Chartered Management Institute (CMI). This review was really glowing, recommending ECMH to its members, and placing it in their ‘book club’ alongside titles by the greats such as Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey and Henry Mintzberg(!). I’m honoured by such reflected glory, albeit in a small way.

It’s reminded me of what a good piece of work Richard has assembled in ECMH, a work based on the Change Management Institute’s Body of Knowledge.

So is ECMH the last word in Change Management? Has it finally cracked the genetic code of leading people through change? No. But it does lay a really good foundation.

Many people I speak to aren’t aware that our Change Management Practitioner course is based upon ECMH and that we bundle a copy with every registration. Delegates on this programme tell us that it has opened up for them the world of change management like never before.

It bears repeating that Change Management defies being codified into a single coherent methodology.

Prosci’s ADKAR has made a good attempt at that, but in the very act of simplifying the subject misses some very important discussions on change. Whereas the Change Management Institute decided to cast its net rather more widely and make its Body of Knowledge more a reflection of what Change Managers were practising in the field. So it draws from a number of related fields.

For example, a client recently asked me about my understanding of ‘emergent’ change as opposed to ‘programmatic’ change. I drew the following table for him:

The “emergent” school of thinking is itself emergent, coming to the fore over the last few years of the increasingly VUCA world.

I really like it - you can tell, I’m sure, by the way, I’ve worded the contrasting statements – and we’ve seen some very positive results for our clients. But it would be a mistake to label it as the ‘right way’because many cultures in our organisations would simply reject it as a modus operandi.

No, better to keep “Change Management” a broad church, and hold these approaches in tension, as the Change Management Institute advocates. Today’s change manager can’t afford to be a slave to any one model and to be found laying down some yellow brick road for all the happy little munchkins to follow blindly. Change is far too chaotic and volatile for that approach. We will discover our munchkins are not so biddable; in fact, they are powerful and can turn on us. We need a rather more comprehensive set of tools.

ECMH is the comprehensive reference we need, a ‘must read’ for any manager who discovers they are part of a change story. Come to think of it, that describes most of us!