Some days, I have to restrain myself when I hear young change managers say, “Yeah, but I’m a change manager. I shouldn’t have to ________.”
While I’m a huge proponent of staying inside your sphere of influence, there are days you’ll have to roll up your sleeves and chip in, even if what you’re helping with isn’t strictly change management.
A brief aside for those who wonder what the sphere of influence is. For the sake of clarity (and because I am NOT an artist), we’ll talk about the circle of influence.
You own the middle bit. It’s yours to manage, and you’re accountable for the results. In this case, Change Management.
The next ring includes the elements you can influence (if needed, and effectively influencing people and events is a separate discussion). That’s the ‘around the edges’ part we’re discussing here. These are the areas that you, as Change Manager, drive: training, documentation, communications, etc.
Beyond that, in the outer ring are the organisational responsibilities that are “somebody else’s problem.” It’s not yours to worry about. However, it’s very handy if you learn whose problem it is through your discussions and stakeholder engagements so you can direct people to the correct owner if something comes your way.
I’m writing here about the activities in the “You influence this” ring”. Some organisations don’t have the personnel or bandwidth to pick up these change-adjacent activities. If you have the bandwidth, roll up your sleeves and offer a hand.
Benefits Realisation
Organisations invest in upgrading systems to either 1) comply with changing legislation that regulates them or 2) enhance processes, systems, or structures to boost corporate profitability. Benefit realisation in the first instance is fairly self-evident. For the second, realising the benefit requires additional effort.
SMEs are your friends in this case. SMEs who know the processes impacted by the change and understand specific measurements or know who does. Improvement (the purpose of the change) can’t be shown without measurements.
If they haven’t started one yet, create a Benefits Register. Track tangible and intangible benefits, categorised by operations, financial, risk, compliance, and other relevant areas for your project. Obtain baseline measures (or ask someone else to obtain them—you probably won’t have that access). Plan to measure the same metrics post-implementation.
Then put on your communications hat and tell the tale of the tape: How the well-executed change paid off with improved KPIs.
Building Personas
Almost every project I’ve had the pleasure of change managing has had a very skilled Business Analyst (or team of Business Analysts) who took the time to create personas for stakeholder groups impacted by the change.
Almost.
When BAs aren’t available, don’t skip on the personas. They may not be as well crafted as a good BA would create, but it’s still a valuable exercise.
Identify stakeholders based on their role, function, level of impact, and fit into the change journey (e.g., adopter, influencer, enabler). Gather data through interviews, focus groups, team meetings, pulse surveys, and discussions with SMEs.
When you build the persona profile, I recommend including the following fields:
You’ll probably notice that the Venn diagram of ‘Building Personas’ and ‘Stakeholder Impact Analysis’ (a staple of all change management exercises) has a healthy overlap. It shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to perform persona-building or contribute to it if someone already has it in hand.
Capability Building and Uplift
Unless the change is incremental to an existing platform (like a Windows 10 to Windows 11 upgrade), someone will have to prepare training program materials and deliver them. Identifying skills and knowledge gaps is undoubtedly part of your responsibilities as a change manager; typically, there is a ‘People and Capabilities’ department that can assist. Sometimes, the training is left to the vendor.
It's conceivable that you’ll be asked to (or will volunteer to) provide support pulling together Quick Reference Guides, updating process documents to reflect the changes brought on by the technology uplift (with SME support, of course), and coaching frontline leaders.
Embrace the opportunity to get the message out to a broader audience.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is to not get too precious with your sphere of influence boundaries. Extend beyond them. It leverages your expertise and is a great way to increase goodwill.