Category: Expertise strategy
By Martin Hartley, Managing Director, emagine UK
Bringing in new technology, individuals, or new teams to work on a key project can feel like a threat to existing staff – but it doesn’t have to be that way if you manage change positively.
I spoke to emagine’s own panel of change management experts consisting of Agile Practice Lead Nick Foster, Development Practice Lead David Shaw, and Operations Manager Stephen Masterson to share insights you can apply within your own organisation.
Typically, if we bring in a new consultant or team, it’s to support an existing project or environment, to add credibility to a project, or equally it’s a simple case of execution support.
The nature of our consultancy is that we support our clients with the very best – the top ten per cent of consultants available for their project. Introducing these new teams into a business can be seen as a threat to existing employees.
Rather than encourage rivalry as some businesses undoubtedly do – and where there is unhealthy rivalry, toxicity will follow – we work hard to ensure there is a clear, common objective and vision to any project and that includes understanding the need to bring in any new talent.
Sounds simple, but how do we do this?
Vision and communication need to go hand in hand, so bringing consultants together early to understand the objectives of what they are working on and what their roles are within the project is key.
It’s important to try and create a social event to get people interacting and engaging outside of work to show that these are your colleagues rather than rivals. Once people understand you’re all in it together and you get to know them on a personal level, that really helps to build bonds.
You can also encourage cohesion by empowering existing employees to act as mentors or single points of contact for the new team.
If consultants are remote, circumvent this by arranging more frequent online meetings. It’s the little things that make the difference here – one of them being to ensure everybody has their camera on all the time. There can be a tendency, especially amongst developers, to try and dial in without the camera on, but having them on means there’s more participation, and it’s more likely that everyone will be heard.
Change can fail when you try and go too big too soon, so smaller, gradual, but continuous change is always preferable.
The introduction of change follows a curve where people fall into different brackets. You’ve got your innovators, early adopters, the majority, the late adopters, then the laggers.Can you take all of those different types of people on this journey with you? And do you have stages for each of these people to get involved and to jump on board?
If the answer is ‘no’, edit your plans and communications until you have.
Think about creating space for change.
Use your own ‘test pilots’ to test the change velocity and learn what issues you will take on board before you scale. Scale slowly, learn, remediate and move forward.
Inspiring vision is imperative, and leadership must be fully involved in any change.
“Inspiring vision is imperative, and leadership must be fully involved in any change..”
Recognise and leverage change champions. People like to follow others on an ‘if they are doing it, so will I’ basis. Recognise there will be collateral damage.
There’s a good chance some people won’t accept it. Some people will leave. And further down the line, there will be some people who won’t want to implement it. But you just have to understand that and recognise it.
In the main, people don’t like change.When we spoke to those individuals upfront, there was plenty of resistance: “I don’t like that”, “I won’t do that, it’ll never work…” and twelve months later they’ve taken it all on board and changed their opinion – so always account for the human nature element!
The common golden thread here is ensuring everyone understands the value of the technology and how it can create efficiencies not just for the organisation but also for the team and for individuals.
If you explain what the road map is for implementing the technology; what training is required and then follow up that training, you ensure it goes full circle.
In many cases, the new technologies are there to ensure that existing team can be redeployed to more value added and challenging activities rather than doing the mundane jobs.
There’s also the issue that new technology isn’t always used as efficiently or as properly as it should be, and then people complain about it – so often any errors or teething problems are human and not technological.
“You need a clear road map to implementation and understanding the benefits of new technology.”
New tech 101: Ease of use. If it’s not easy to use, people won’t use it. Simple as that.
If you look at phone apps, they’re easy to use and intuitive. The user interface is great, and they make life simple. That’s the whole point. If your new technology doesn’t do that, then you’re wasting your time.
Again, you need a clear road map to implementation and understanding the benefits: committed, super users, ongoing refresher training, inspection of key metrics, and identification of end users who are utilising it.
The takeaway?
Always bring people along on the journey with you by explaining the vision, highlighting the benefits, clearly defining the roles, understanding the change curve amongst individuals within your team, and keep talking.
“Always bring people along on the journey with you by explaining the vision, highlighting the benefits, clearly defining the roles, understanding the change curve amongst individuals within your team. And keep talking!”
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