The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management: Tools for Managing Process and People

By Kathryn Zukof

Change isn’t going anywhere. Learn how to manage it.

We live in a wild world of volatility, unpredictability, chaos, and ambiguity, with change seemingly as the only constant. Change can be difficult. It often induces resistance, panic, and fatigue. And, as you may expect or have experienced first-hand, many organizations aren’t handling change all that well, with many efforts resulting in failure. What you may not realize, however, is that some workplace change initiatives are stunning successes, rolling out smoothly and more easily embraced. Why do some change initiatives fail while others succeed? How can organizations and employees handle change better?

In The Hard and Soft Sides of Change Management, Kathryn Zukof offers practices and approaches to help you and your organization roll out, receive, and manage change effectively. Namely, Zukoff shows that you need to manage the process (or the “hard”) side and the people (or the “soft”) side of change and find the sweet spot between the two. She demonstrates that when you integrate both sides, you and your organization can make change less of a hit-or-miss affair. Successful change management means deploying sound project management techniques that increase the odds of achieving the outcomes of your change initiative. It also means helping employees understand the need and vision for change, so they feel less threatened by it and become excited and energized by what’s ahead.

To deliver best results, you need to:

Define the change and how to get there—with project charters and plans.

Involve the right people in the right ways—from dedicated change teams to affected stakeholders.

Build support, understanding, and awareness—with communication, training, and resistance management plans.

Assess progress and adjust along the way—through action reviews and steps to tackle thorny issues.

Capturing the inherently messy nature of workplace change—from technology implementations, mergers and acquisitions, and business transformations to office relocations and more—this book offers tangible insights to help you and your organization tackle change challenges. Follow the book’s tools and practices to lessen the messy and objectionable parts of change and actively give your change initiatives the best chance for positive outcomes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Association for Talent Development
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781950496884

Book preview

Introduction

It’s quite a predicament, isn’t it? At work, and maybe even in our personal lives, we hear that change is the only constant. We live in a wild, wild world, characterized by volatility, unpredictability, chaos, and ambiguity. To adapt to this ever-changing environment, our organizations introduce even more change. We implement new technology, policies, and procedures. Employees transition to working from home, or they transition back to a brick-and-mortar office environment. New leaders join our organizations and introduce different ideas about how to interact with customers. They change the structure of our workplace, establishing new departments one day and eliminating entire divisions the next. Sometimes these changes produce the kinds of results our organizations are striving to attain. Employees embrace the new technology, and productivity levels increase. The new customer interaction protocol really works, and fewer customers leave.

And yet, far too often, our change efforts come up short. Change is introduced, and we don’t achieve the outcome our organization is looking for. Productivity remains the same—or gets worse. Customers continue to leave, perhaps in greater numbers. We try to figure out what went wrong, what we missed, and we’re told that we shouldn’t be surprised by our lack of results. People just don’t like change, we hear. Change is hard. It’s painful. And most change efforts fail anyway, don’t they? You might conclude that implementing change is a hit or miss affair. Sometimes changes work. Often they don’t.

So why do we keep at it? Why do we keep introducing changes in the workplace when it’s something we may not really want to do, when it’s so challenging, when we do it so badly anyway? Why do we keep trying if we haven’t figured out how to do it right—or at least, how to do it right more consistently? If our chances of success are just hit or miss, is this really something we should keep on doing?

The easy answer is, we keep at it because we have to. Much of the change happening in today’s workplace is driven by factors outside our organizations—by variables that fall, at least in part, outside our control. Customers want less expensive and more personalized products and services, and that means changing what we offer to clients and implementing new forms of delivery. With globalization, companies face increased competition; our workforce is more diverse, and the co-workers we collaborate with may be all around the world, instead of just down the hall or across the street. Rapid advances in technology mean that our business processes may now incorporate artificial intelligence or robotics. We’ve had to adjust—both at work and at home—as we take steps to protect our data and ourselves from cyberterrorism. Government regulations that we need to comply with change—and then they change again. Add in a global pandemic, and we may find ourselves reeling.

To respond to all of these external factors, maybe your company has decided to overhaul its business model, like so many retail firms and companies in the hospitality, food, and dining industry did during the COVID-19 crisis of 2020. Maybe your organization is implementing new technologies and work processes. Perhaps you’ve started to adopt new safety protocols or you’re introducing new guidelines for setting up telemedicine appointments. Maybe your workplace is relocating some or all of its employees. Maybe you are relocating. Perhaps you are in the midst of an organizational restructure, in which job roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships are changing. Maybe your company has acquired a new business, and you now need to figure out how to merge two distinct organizations into one. Or maybe your employer has been acquired, and you have to figure out how to work well with the new parent company. Your organization may be facing financial losses and may be downsizing its workforce. Or business may be booming and you find that the employee population is growing by leaps and bounds. Perhaps new leaders have joined your organization and have announced new ideas they plan to introduce in your company right away.

Maybe change in your workplace truly is the only constant.

How We Respond to Change

The external sources of change—and the steps our organizations take in response—may seem endless and continuous. In fact, in a recent study conducted by Harvard Business Review in partnership with the consulting firm Strativity, 86 percent of the organizations studied reported that they were conducting multiple change initiatives simultaneously (Percy 2019). That is, different business functions—from operations and IT to marketing and finance—[were] trying to tackle different issues concurrently. And that study was conducted prior to COVID-19, when suddenly everything—from the technology we used to stay connected to our customers and co-workers to our business priorities to simple procedures we needed to follow to enter our places of business—changed and then changed again and then changed yet again. We’re facing lots of changes, constantly, all over the place, and all at once.

Sadly, research also shows that we really aren’t handling all that change all that well. One often-cited study found that 70 percent of change initiatives fail to deliver on the objectives that were set for them (Ewenstein, Smith, and Sologar 2015). In another, 91 percent of respondents reported that a change initiative had failed in their organizations (Percy 2019). And although some companies successfully navigated the changes that were required to survive during the crisis of 2020, far too many organizations saw their efforts fall short. Research by the consulting firm McKinsey (Blackburn et. al 2020) suggests that companies that will struggle the most to deal with the COVID-19 crisis are reticent to test out new approaches. They aren’t willing to try something new, fail, learn from their mistakes, and then quickly try a different approach. Change fatigue, defined as the exhaustion that comes from excessive change, may be just one reason employees are reluctant to try something new (Carucci 2019). Our change initiatives also fail when we neglect those affected most by the change and fail to secure their buy-in, when we underestimate the scale and scope of the change as we create project plans, when communications regarding the change are inadequate, and when support from senior leadership is insufficient (Dickson 2019; Sirkin, Keenan, and Jackson 2005).

All that said, some workplace change initiatives are stunning successes. Some companies change their leadership team, organizational structure, processes, and technology—even all at once—and it just seems to work. They grow dramatically. Employees describe the company as a best place to work. Consider Google, which figured out how to help employees focus on the change initiatives that really mattered, and weed out projects that were unlikely to succeed. As a result, 80 percent of Google’s employees said that they understood the changes the company planned to implement (up from 50 percent before the company changed the way it managed change) and employee adoption of changes increased to 90 percent (Mautz 2018). Or take Deloitte auditors, who quickly pivoted to a 100 percent work-from-home environment to cope with COVID-19. They reported that executive-level attention, training, communication, and open dialogue with stakeholders was key to their success (Shannon 2020). And as Corning Cable Systems made changes to its corporate structure, executives met with managers to solicit their input, and provided multiple vehicles for employees to express opinions. They found that establishing mechanisms for two-way communication was essential to helping Corning implement rapid change (Robson 2020).

Apparently, some organizations have figured out how to implement change in a way that works.

But just because these companies have found ways to successfully navigate through change doesn’t mean their employees immediately embraced change when they encountered it. It turns out there really is some truth to the old adage that people just don’t like change. When change is coming, our natural tendency may be to resist a bit—possibly a lot. Research on the neuropsychology of change finds that our brain is hardwired to conserve energy. In comfortable, familiar situations, such as when we’re using technology that we have mastered, or when we collaborate with co-workers we know really well, our brain operates on a kind of autopilot. It’s just easy to get lots of stuff done that way. But when we encounter ambiguous and confusing situations, such as when we need to begin using a new technology at work or when we’re unexpectedly assigned a new task, our brain interprets this as an error condition. It suddenly needs to process more and work harder, and we become, at least temporarily, less efficient. That is why people crave certainty, explains David Rock of the NeuroLeadership Institute (2009). Not knowing what will happen next can be profoundly debilitating because it requires extra neural energy. Change really can be difficult, at least for our brain.

And yet despite our neuropsychology, we don’t always resist change at work. Many times we actively seek it out. We apply for promotions. We hire new teammates. We try new skills. From a neurological perspective, mild uncertainty actually energizes us. Our curiosity, focus, and interest are sparked by situations that seem just new and challenging enough—that trigger a mild threat response, but not one that is completely debilitating. We seem to have a sweet spot. If there’s too much uncertainty—in our personal lives or at work—we get overwhelmed and panic. But if there’s just enough change and challenge, we are energized and we engage (Rock 2009).

Why We Need to Handle Change Better

So change is coming at us from all angles, and our organizations make even more changes as they try to adapt. In the workplace, employees sometimes show a real willingness to support what’s changing; other times, they find the change to be too overwhelming and debilitating, and they resist. Some change efforts succeed; others fall short. How do we make sense out of all this? Is it really all just hit or miss? Or is there something we can do to help our organizations and employees successfully navigate through change?

Well, there are steps you and your organization can take to achieve more consistently positive results. There are practices you can deploy that will help your company increase the odds of achieving the outcomes you’re seeking as you begin a change initiative. And there are strategies you can use to help employees understand why the change is happening, feel less threatened by it, and find the sweet spot where they’re excited and energized by the change that’s coming. You can use a systematic approach to help the people in your organization change what they’re doing today and begin to do something new so your organization achieves the results it’s seeking. You can make change less of a hit or miss affair. You can manage change.

In this book, we’ll take a look at those practices and approaches you can use to help manage change and produce more consistently positive results for your organization and its employees. You’ll see that some of these practices involve using sound project management discipline, such as clearly defining project deliverables; assigning roles, responsibilities, and authorities; establishing a team with the right skill set; and making adjustments as your project proceeds. That’s right. There’s a hard, process-oriented side to managing change—a side that’s focused on helping your change initiative achieve the business outcomes you’re seeking. And you’ll see that other practices help you establish an environment of inclusion, trust, and open communication that helps mitigate the sense of threat and destabilization employees may experience as they deal with change. These practices and approaches help you address the soft, people side of change. In this book, you’ll learn that for a change initiative to succeed, you can’t just focus on one side or the other—the hard or the soft. You need to integrate both.

That might sound like a tall order—attending to both the hard and soft sides. Can any one person really do all of that as you try to help your organization navigate through change? In this book, we’ll figure out how you can meet that challenge. If your organization is about to begin a change initiative and you’re helping to manage the soft, people side of change—perhaps you’re responsible for leading communication, training, or stakeholder engagement—this book will help you understand and attend to the hard side of change as you execute your change management role. Or maybe you’re the project leader, focused on managing project planning and execution. This book will help you learn how to focus on the soft side of change as you perform your hard-side, project management role. Whether you’re primarily responsible for managing the hard side of change or the soft, this book will show you how establishing a strong partnership between project leaders and change management leaders is key. You can focus on the hard and the soft simultaneously—you need to—but it helps to have help.

We Can Manage Change

I’m no stranger to experiencing the disorientation—and the energy—that workplace change can bring. For many years, I led the learning and organizational development function in several multinational organizations, ranging from a family-owned conglomerate, to a global manufacturer and service provider, to one of the largest universities based in the US with sites all over the world. Before that, I held jobs in client services, product development, and marketing in the technology-services industry. I worked in these organizations during periods when they were undergoing radical transformation. Over the years, I saw—and led—some changes in these workplaces that really hit the mark and, admittedly, a few that were spectacular disasters.

I’ve participated in acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures during which employees felt included, informed, and respected as the company’s governance, structure, and jobs were profoundly altered.

I’ve seen software implementations and process re-engineering during which employees felt left out, confused, and resentful, and the company failed to realize the efficiency and cost savings it sought when it initiated these changes.

I’ve led a relocation during which most everyone moved to their new work site with a sense of optimism and enthusiasm, as well as an organizational restructuring that was met with fear and distrust.

As an employee in these organizations, I experienced changes that I hadn’t been asked to help implement but that I advocated for anyway. And there were changes I actively resisted. There were also changes I saw that confused me. And changes that I knew put my job—or my sense of autonomy, status, and prestige—at risk.

I know what it’s like, and you may know what it’s like, to work in an organization that’s pursuing a change that’s exciting, where you might—just might—end up on the winning side. And I know, and perhaps you know too, what it feels like when you fear that a change happening in your workplace means that you’ll lose something that matters—something that’s important to you.

Along the way, I watched my co-workers use tools and processes to lead and manage change that really worked. I learned more about these tools and adopted them myself as I helped lead change initiatives in the workplace. And I used some approaches that I now recognize aren’t effective at all. What I discovered most is that managing change is a skill I could develop. I learned that I could build real competence in managing change, my co-workers could become more proficient, and the organizations I worked with could develop a real aptitude for managing change too. It took time, but I came to realize that while change may be challenging, we can begin to manage it.

This book introduces some of the tools I came to rely on when managing change in the workplace. In each section, we’ll review a fictional case study that shows one or more tools in practice. We’ll look at the key change management challenges that these tools help address, and we’ll take a deeper dive to explore how you can apply these tools in your own organization. We’ll see how these tools and approaches can be used to generate the business outcomes your organization seeks as you embark on change initiatives—to help you manage the hard side of change. And we’ll examine how you can use these tools to build trust, engagement, and a real sense of change competence in yourself and among your co-workers. These are tools that help you manage the soft side.

Table 1 shows the tools and approaches we will cover in this book.

Table 1. Tools and Approaches in This Book

I’ll note that this isn’t an exhaustive set of tools and approaches. As you continue to build competence in managing change, you may find yourself using other tools too. But I’m certain this is a great place to start.

You and your organization can manage change. You can thrive in an environment where change is a constant. This book will help you get there.

But first, let’s consider two organizations that got it right—at least part of the way. In chapter 1, we’re going to look at two workplaces that managed change pretty skillfully, except that they still got it lopsided. Let’s find out what we can learn from their experience. Let’s see how we can manage change more effectively by focusing on the hard and the soft simultaneously.

1

The Challenge of Change Management

Mary was worried. Absenteeism among service center staff was through the roof, and almost 40 percent of the original service center staff had already resigned. The first resignation came just one month after launch, when Ava, the new service center leader, a real up-and-comer handpicked by Mary herself, explained in her exit interview that managing a service center just didn’t fit with her career plans. I love Bervin, Ava explained. But I want to be the CFO of a nonprofit someday. I’m not getting the kind of experience I need managing the service center. Mary wasn’t sure she agreed with Ava’s assessment, but Ava’s decision was firm. So she left.

The grumbling quickly extended into other areas across the agency too. As soon as the finance service center was announced, rumors started circulating about more shoes to drop. After all, if Bervin was setting up a finance service center today, could an HR service center, or an IT service center, be far behind? And forget accuracy. New service center employees had been hired to replace exiting team members, and these rookies were making mistakes—big ones. Just last month the agency had to shell out more than $10,000 to fix an error made by a new hire on the service center team. How could things go so wrong, Mary sighed, when every step in the project rollout seemed to go so well?

Mary was right. In some respects, the project was executed flawlessly. There was a clear vision of what was supposed to be accomplished and a convincing rationale for moving forward with that vision. Executive leaders supported the change and were kept up-to-date throughout the entire rollout. The assembled project team seemed to have all the right technical competencies required to get the job done. And even with an aggressive schedule, the project team plotted out all the key tasks and managed them closely to ensure they were completed right on time. There was a training plan, and that worked without a hitch. There was a communications plan, and at least some of the people who needed to know about the change were notified right on schedule. When viewed purely from a perspective of planning, assigning resources, and managing project tasks and deliverables in a disciplined way, the initiative was a spectacular success. Except, of course, it wasn’t.

Unfortunately, the project team failed to consider the pervasive sense of loss, threat, and uncertainty that members of the Bervin community might experience as the finance service center launched. They didn’t stop to think:

• Will junior accountants feel like they’ve been demoted when we assign them their new service representative job titles? Will they resent losing the opportunity to perform a variety of job tasks as they transfer into roles where the work is more focused and specialized? And will they feel like they have lost their sense of self-determination and control when they are merely informed of the positions they have been assigned, rather than being offered the chance to apply to service center roles that fit with their career interests and aspirations?

• Will the administrative directors at each site balk at losing direct reports? And will they experience a loss of job status and lose precious time in their busy workday if social workers and staff start directing basic inquiries to them?

• How will social workers and staff feel when we tell them they will no longer receive personalized attention on-site and instead need to call a hotline? Will they become less efficient? Will they lose their sense of status?

• Will staff across the agency feel threatened as they speculate that more restructuring might be planned? Will they question how we made the decision to proceed with the service center approach in the first place? Will it feel top-down to them? Will they wonder how that fits with the culture of collaboration and inclusiveness they previously have enjoyed at the agency?

In short, when viewed from the perspective of anticipating and accounting for the sense of loss, threat, and uncertainty the new structure might present, the initiative at Bervin Cares was a spectacular failure.

What the project team at Bervin Cares seemed to miss is a lesson I figured out over the course of many years helping to lead change initiatives at work. There’s a hard side to change management and a soft side, and you need to address both, simultaneously, for your change initiative to succeed.

Fundamental project management principles need to be in place to drive your change initiative forward. These are hard-side practices, such as setting achievable deliverables and timelines; securing the right resources; establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and authority; and putting in place sound mechanisms for monitoring progress and making adjustments. And steps need to be taken to establish an environment of psychological safety, trust, and predictability, wherein the sense of threat and loss associated with the change is acknowledged and appropriately addressed. These are soft-side practices, such as engaging with and involving those most affected by the change, establishing frank dialogue and discussion, and providing multiple channels for expressing ideas and concerns. The project team at Bervin Cares seemed to master the hard side of change as they implemented the finance service center, but they flubbed the soft side. And it cost Bervin dearly as a result.

Now, let’s consider an organization that focused effectively on the soft side of managing change and see how well it fared.