Is it just me, or is the term “hand-crafted” getting out of hand? I think I first heard the term several years ago around craft beer, or maybe it was a cocktail. Then I remember seeing it used referring toa sandwich, which I guess made sense – all sandwiches are effectively made by hand, right? But then I saw it on my bank statement: “Hand-crafted Banking.” What?
It got me thinking, is everything hand-crafted? No. However, it’s a term that people use to highlight the creative, customized, and personal nature of their trade.
So then I got to thinking, as I usually do, about change management. Is change management hand-crafted? Without a doubt, yes. There is no cookie-cutter approach to effective change management. Sure, we have a methodology that we bring to bear on most engagements. However, every engagement is different.
Whether we’re implementing a new technology or new process – it’s never the same. In fact, in my assessment, only 60% of effective change work is applying the right aspects of a standard methodology. That’s not standard, but it’s about as close as we can get to standard. The other 40% is made up of the unique scope of the change and the culture or environment.
Related to scope, the language we must speak and the content we build has to be relevant to that change, be it technology or process. The terminology we use for a Microsoft Office 365 implementation will be different than a Salesforce Service Cloud project. Similarly, streamlining a process to reduce inefficiencies will be different still. These are unique for each engagement.
Moreover, every corporate culture is different, and so the starting point for behavior change and the tactics we use from one company to the next will be different and must be effectively planned. There are no two people or subsequently corporate cultures that are alike. Each has its own identity, and frankly, our specific culture is what we like about our companies. Back to change management, for it to be effective, each person has to decide to buy-in and go along with the vision. Each culture has to be transformed in unique ways. There’s no out of the box approach to this.
This is what makes change management hard. This is taking the science and transforming it to art. This is the core of effective change management, and this, is hand-crafted.