Lean and change management: why do we need to change?

When dealing with change management, there are several models to make the change happen.

John P. Kotter 8 steps model is one of the most popular. In his research , he found that 70% of change programs fails, so he derived this checklist.

Step 1: Create a sense of urgency

• Examining the market and competitive realities
• Identifying and discussing crises, potential crises or major opportunities

Basically, this first step is an attempt to answer to the following question: why do we need to change? And why now?

If I take the example of the financial services, following the 2008 crisis, regulators put more pressure on banks. Some banks are not only too big to fail, they are also too big to serve well the client while remaining managed centrally from the headquarters.

Over the past decade, several banks launched a Lean initiative. The rationale behind this was to promote Operational excellence as a way to remain competitive.

But one of the common mistakes was to introduce to their teams only the advantages of the program. Most of the time, people tried to avoid speaking about the drawbacks of such programs.

To be fair, we should take into account the following situations:

-          What are the advantages if we change? i.e Opportunity if we change

-          and the drawbacks if we change? i.e Treat if we change

-          What are the advantages if we do not change? i.e opportunity if we do not change

-          And the drawbacks if we do not change? i.e treat if we do not change

The previous 4 questions is a good way to identify the need for change and the resistance.

The Threat/Opportunity matrix helps generate a sense of urgency. The threats are the consequences of doing nothing, the opportunities are the potential gains if action is taken.

I used this matrix in a team who was not primarily convinced by the need to change their way of working. The topic was precisely the set-up of a daily morning meeting. I just gave them some post-it and asked them to identify the treat and the opportunity of each situation. At the end, everyone realized that their original point of view was biased. People tried to argue why they don’t need a morning meeting but after classifying all ideas in the flipchart, we were able to have a big picture.  In the sort-term, there were some sources of resistance (and it is important to keep it in mind) but in the long term, there were more drivers for change. Thanks to this initial workshop, we implemented successfully a daily morning meeting in this team without resistance.

I recommended to perform this initial analysis before moving forward because, we may face passive or strong resistance later in the project.

Here is also a video that explain this matrix:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcz1aZ60k7w

To make the change happen, we should take into account the sources of complacency in any company. Here are some extracts from John P. Kotter book:

Coming soon:  STEP 2: Creating the Guiding Coalition