My previous post described challenges with triggering changes bottom-up. This post focuses on three key elements of successfully preparing and announcing changes in organizations from the perspective of the change author and driver. The approach described here is mostly relevant for organizational or process changes.

The difficulty in announcing changes depends on the scope of change, the situation of the affected individuals, and the perceived difference compared to status quo. Diligent preparation and rollout planning for changes is crucial for driving a successful change process. Missing out on planning may lead to diminishing returns, create unnecessary friction, and put additional pressure on the change authors.

When preparing a change, three elements are crucial to consider:

• Set of key changes alongside with reasoning on why these were decided upon and which constraints were taken into account.
• Change map with measures and messages appealing to the needs of those affected by the change and those who will support it.
• Communication approach: announcement vs. communication cascade.

Noting these down serves as an easy way to assess the confidence of change authors in the change and uncover areas that may have been missed out during preparation.

Key changes, reasoning, and constraints

Listing the key changes that are being made and preparing a crisp reasoning for each point helps in verifying the completeness of the scope of change. Capturing the constraints that influenced scope or decisions allows to set the right context as part of the announcement. It also ensures that assumptions about the status quo are validated ahead of proceeding further.

The change map (four quadrants of change)

Every person who is affected by a change is asked to adjust their behavior, which involves learning. Adults learn both on an individual level or collectively with/from their peers. Both ways have an internal and external dimension to it, forming a change map or four quadrants of change. The likelihood of success when rolling out changes is increased when the messages used throughout the communication as well as the additional measures accompanying the change process cover all of the four quadrants:

• mindset/values (internal / individual) — What facts need to be acknowledged about the status quo, values, or beliefs of the individual to ensure the change is easy to understand and relate to? What measures are needed to promote buy-in? What key concerns of individuals need to be addressed in order to explain the reasons for the change, speak to their potential anxiety for change or fear of losing something they had or mastered before?
• behaviors+skills (external / individual) — how are individuals expected to act after the change is announced? What material can they read or interact with in order to learn about the changes? What skills to they need to acquire and what training opportunities are provided? What behaviours would define a successful rollout of the change? Which behaviours should be reinforced and which rather prevented from happening and how?
• cultural (internal / collective) — what support will be provided through changes in culture (or expectations), communities, and means of exchange for those who are affected by the change? How can groups be nudged or empowered to interact and discuss their concerns or understanding of the changes? Who will be the change agents and supporters/promoters?
• systems/processes (external / collective) — what processes or mechanisms will be put in place in order to support the change? Is there a need or opportunity for enforcing the change through process or rule changes? Will there be any mandatory trainings or re-skilling?

Filling out the four dimensions during change preparation ensures coverage of the full spectrum of needs of the target audience (usually the internal dimensions) and organization (usually represented in the external dimensions). A common pitfall is to underinvest in the two quadrants with internal focus on the individual, resulting in merely stating the change and facts. This happens especially if there is external or time pressure or when the authors exhibit excitement and relief for the changes being finally ready to announce. The mindset/values quadrant ensures that care is given to help understanding the state of mind, knowledge, or needs of the target audience. It’s crucial to meet the audience where they are in order to convey a convincing and relatable message, thus reducing friction when the change is announced. Change authors need to be careful to keep a realistic view of the state of knowledge and sentiment within the organization. The longer the preparations take, the more familiar with and convinced they become of the new course, making it rather easy to underestimate the degree of change.

Communication approach

Announcement

The simplest way to roll out a change is to announce it to everyone stating the facts (key changes), either in person or in writing. The bigger and more diverse the audience, the more care is required alongside the announcement text, with aspects prepared in the four quadrants required to be mentioned to increase success.

Regardless how sophisticated and clear the communication will be, there will (almost) always be questions. Including a short FAQ section in the change announcement helps to address anticipated questions upfront. To source these questions, put yourself in the position of the audience and those individuals who are most affected by the change. Try to anticipate what the most controversial or just the obvious reactions will be. To strengthen the set of questions, feedback can be sourced from a few individuals who have not worked on the change or from representatives of the leadership team.

To better structure the conversation around the change, it’s advisable to host a Q&A session and to include an invite in the original announcement. Questions asked during the Q&A should be also added to the FAQ later on.

Communication cascade

It’s common to combine the announcement with the cascade for major or complex changes. There are two types of cascaded rollouts, which differ in the role leadership plays in the change process — a supporting or leading one.

In the first model, the change initiators use dedicated sessions to announce the change to different groups, for example following the organizational hierarchy (following the reporting chain) or its structure (sessions per department). Here, the change authors play a stronger role in the rollout and are supported by leadership.

In the second model, the change is rolled out top-down with leaders owning the change, starting with the first leadership level who then roll it out to their team who communicate the change to the next level, and so on. The FAQ section mentioned above is extended at each level and leaders are supported with additional talking points which help to ensure consistent messaging. The key changes, reasoning, and constraints captured before serve as a base for the talking points and enable leaders to communicate the change as if they had worked on it themselves. Here, it’s also possible to adjust the messaging at every leadership level.

Summary

Depending on the complexity of the change and size of the organization, sufficient time needs to be invested in preparation. How much time to invest is highly contextual and depends on the culture of the organization and the affected individuals. For simple changes, quickly noting the key changes and mapping the key messages onto the four quadrants will help you to tune the content of the change announcement. For complex changes, separating work on the three elements more explicitly is advised. The more changes you will initiate and drive, the better you will be prepared for the next one.

Should you encounter individuals challenging the changes, help them understand what opportunities they have to influence changes and participate in the change process themselves.

Have you ever felt frustrated when you found a problem worth solving but it was not picked up by your colleagues nor supported by your boss? Deep inside you knew you were onto addressing something important, leading to a breakthrough, or just going to have a positive impact on the company, but you failed and don’t know why. This post provides insights on why your ideas may have been rejected along with tips on how to find the right problems to solve.

Why do managers reject your ideas?

Your personal view on the problems that are important will differ from your manager’s view. Your position, role, and size of the company determine your understanding of the strategic goals of a team, department, or organization and influences the easiness of access to relevant, oftentimes strategic information. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand that not all of the problems that you will identify are worth addressing due to a multitude of reasons:

• Approach: The way in which you raised the problem was ineffective. You chose the wrong medium, were too forward and crossed boundaries (e.g. cultural, personal) or just spoke to the wrong person.
• Contracts & regulations: Solving the issue would stand in conflict with the way the company does business due to contractual relationships with customers, the way customers are billed for, or because of regulatory requirements. You may need to build a stronger business case on the positive impacts when addressed, so that the pain points are addressed eventually.
• Cost: Solving the problem would incur too high costs for the company.
• Experience: You’ve joined the team quite recently and/or your manager perceives you as a member of the team who is still learning and trying to understand the mechanics and context of the team. In case you’ve been on the team for a longer time, this may mean that you’re crossing a certain boundary and you should better understand the expectations of your boss, e.g. the areas/problems you should focus on. Also, reflect on the relation with your manager as trust makes a difference.
• Focus: There is another team already working on this challenge and your manager would prefer to keep you focused on the main team’s responsibilities.
• Isolation: You’re the only one that sees this issue and without further support, the idea won’t get further traction.
• Priority: You misunderstood the team’s context and the problem you’re seeing is not worth being solved at this point in time. There may be other opportunities already known that would bring bigger benefits.
• Strategy: Addressing the problem would be in conflict with other, upcoming, more strategic changes you are unaware of. Such changes may be being planned either by your manager or the company.
• Value: It’s unclear what the impact of solving the problem is due to lack of sufficient data points to support your idea.

Understand which problems are important

In order for you to increase chances of a meaningful discussion about the issues you find worth solving, you need a solid understanding of the overall business context and environment. This will help you better showcase the value of resolving the issue to potential supporters. You can start by asking your manager (or other, more senior colleagues) open-ended questions that will help you acquire insights on the big picture and also show the boundaries in which you move in. Here some guiding questions:

• What is the biggest problem in our team that you see is worth addressing? Why?
• I find X annoying/inefficient and would like to help changing that. How could I help finding a solution? Whom in the company would you recommend reaching out to in order to get support?
• I think X is an issue in our company. What’s your opinion? Who is responsible within the company to address such problems? With whom beyond this team could I talk to in order to exchange ideas?
• When would be a good time to address issue X? Why not earlier?
• I have been bringing to you problems that I see as worth solving, but you don’t seem to be interested. Why do you think they’re not worth addressing at this point in time? How would you like me to raise similar issues moving forward?

Get support within the organization

Usually, you’re not the only person in the organization that recognized a problem. You just may be the one that is willing to act. However, this does not mean that you’re alone. You can reach out to your colleagues in order to sound your ideas and verify whether others also have this issue and whether they’re willing to support you. This can be as easy as stating that you work on problem X and asking if someone is interested to help. Having support within the organization is crucial as your peers can provide you more context or help addressing the problem in a different way than you would have.

Bring solutions, not problems

It’s common, especially for less experienced colleagues, to constantly point out problems and deficiencies. Over time, this will lead to fatigue on both sides. You will be frustrated because the problems you raised don’t resonate with your manager and for your boss as well, because you’re likely not the only one to talk about problems. If you never approach your boss with ideas on how to address the problem, you risk being perceived as a complainer and your voice is likely to be ignored over time. Especially from senior team members, managers expect solution suggestions to be brought forward for discussion. Coming with concrete proposals and asking for feedback, context that you may have missed, or for guidance how to proceed in bringing the solution to life will dramatically change the type of discussion you will be having and increase your chances for success. To be on the safe side, you can first validate the idea and come back with a solution proposal only afterwards, which will allow you to focus your attention on the important problems.

It’s not the problem — it’s the timing

Large organizations are complex systems composed of people. Though a stable state of the organization is not desired, there is a limit to the total amount of change an organization can simultaneously cope with. It may well be, that the problem you found or your idea how to solve a problem is brilliant, but the timing is just not right. This may depend on the company’s current strategic goals, the environment (e.g. market conditions), other ongoing structural or cultural changes, or even the management team itself. In such situations, you can either wait for the circumstances to change or try to vastly reduce the scope of the change and thus aim to make small, incremental steps forward instead.

What if all attempts fail?

Surely, the environment or organization you’re in may not be ready to address the issues you’re raising or for the changes you’re willing to drive. If you feel that you’ve been trying for too long and all your attempts failed, you may be better off by changing the environment to another one with a different mindset that is more open for change. This may be a different team, department, or even another organization.

Further reading

This post focused mostly on providing you more understanding on why your ideas would not resonate with others and contains simple guidance on finding the right problems to solve. However, this is just the first step of driving a change. To succeed, you must learn how to define a problem, support it with sufficient context and data, and be able to showcase the impact of solving it.

If you’re more broadly interested in change management, check out Rebels at Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within for ideas on building an alliance for change within your organization or Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas for an extensive collection of patterns and approaches for driving change.

See also my other posts with advice on Communicating major changes and tips for Accepting and supporting changes for individuals.

In many companies leadership and management positions are the next step forward for engineers in their career path and often the only way to achieve a salary progression. Here a glimpse of the various aspects to be considered while thinking of transitioning into a management role.

You start as junior again

After taking up the new role you will be a beginner again. You will need to learn a lot and acquire new skills. If you have watched your past managers closely, you will notice that observing is different from doing. In case you have acquired some leadership skills beforehand you will have a head start.

You’re part of the management team

Your peers are not the people you manage, but other managers in the company. Depending on the size of the organisation, there might actually be very few of them (or even spread across different locations). This also means that you will have limited opportunity to learn from other managers on the same level as yours and thus your networking skills will be put to a test.

In case you’re asked to manage your former peers — no matter how well you know them, how well you get along with them — as soon as you become their manager, they will see and treat you as their boss.

Management is hierarchical — you will be asked to execute or communicate things, you not necessarily have worked on, in a way as if you actually had, oftentimes without having all the needed details. Examples include changes in company strategy, restructuring, budget cuts, etc. Some decisions might not be the best for your own teams, but necessary for the long-term success of your company.

You’re responsible for the people you manage

In order to gain trust, you need to genuinely care for people. It’s your job to create an environment that allows people to take joy in their work, use their abilities and fulfil their potential. Be a role model — your behaviour will influence culture and help to set expectations towards your directs. Remember to be the first to act and take the responsibility to address the matter as soon as it arises.

You will need to manage people’s performance by leveraging feedback, one-on-ones, and conducting periodic progress reviews. While addressing low performance, you cannot forget your top performers that your teams rely upon to succeed. Not managing the growth of your best people (for example by being clingy and blocking their rotation to a new team) along with not living up to their expectation, eventually will make them leave the team or even the company.

It will become personal. You will encounter situations where people on your team will not get along with each other due to personality, attitude, cultural differences, etc. You will be expected to manage and resolve such conflicts within and across teams.

Prepare to be judged by what your teams deliver

No matter how great atmosphere you create in the teams, it’s delivery that counts. Delivery against goals or products the teams ship to your customers. Make sure to celebrate successes with the team and praise your directs for the work and efforts they put in.

Your daily rhythm will change

Forget about being able to plan your day. Prepare to be disturbed, over and over again. Being a master meeting scheduler won’t help you. You will find it hard to focus on a single task for a longer time frame and might leave work without the feeling of actually achieving something meaningful. A common error to overcome this feeling is over-involving oneself and not giving enough space to others. Your main job has changed (i.e. it’s not coding anymore), make sure to delegate work and empower others to do it.

Is it worth it?

Management is a new role. It requires high responsibility, discipline, patience, as well as the desire and ability to effectively work with people. You get to build effective teams, create an environment where individuals work towards a common goal, and watch people grow. The decision to transition into a management role requires a certain level of commitment. You don’t get to “try” nor experience management otherwise.

Consequences for failure in management are large, both on business and personal level. Taking risks and learning from situations in the daily work is how you grow and become better in management.

As manager — in case you hire or promote managers, remember your early days in the new role back in the past and make sure to provide enough support and coaching for your directs. As a beginner — ask for it!