What is Lean Change Management Model?
Resisting the change is a natural reaction, when you don´t involve people affected by the change. Jason Little wrote a book called Lean Change Management, this book shows how to implement successful change through examples of innovative practices that can dramatically improve the success of change programs.
About Lean Change Management Model
“All models are wrong, but some are useful” is a phrase acknowledged to a Professor of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin, George Box. He probably means that simple models can be useful for making sense of complex situations, even if they´re not 100% correct.
Below you can see the picture of the Lean Change Management Model by Jason Little. It consists of 3 main parts: Insights, Options, Experiments and 3 parts of Experiments – Prepare, Introduce, Review.
Source: leanchange.orgHere´s a brief explanation of the Lean Change Management Cycle:
Insights: It´s very important to understand the current state of the organization, before you can plan any change. In order to do that, there are several tools, assessments, and models you can apply to understand the current position. The Lean Change Management book describes many practices to collect Insights.
Options: When you gain enough Insights to start with the planning, you will need Options. Options have a cost, value and impact. Options usually include one or more hypotheses as well as expected benefits. These hypotheses are then turned into Experiments.
Experiments: Now it’s time to introduce a change and see if it works out. At this point you should learn enough about your current position and consider multiple Options.
Experiments also have a sub-cycle:
Prepare: This is the planning stage of your Experiment. At this point, all you have are your assumptions about the change. In this step you validate your approach with people affected by the change.
Introduce: In this step you start working with people affected by the change. Once a change will reach this step, it is part of the process.
Review: Here you review the outcomes of the Experiment. Normally you do this after the amount of time you thought you would need for the change to stick.
How to run a Lean Change Cycle
Lean Change Model is a nonlinear and feedback-driven model for managing change.
As described above, in this model, Insights is when you observe the situation as it currently is. Then you move to Options, where you evaluate cost, value, and impact of each possibility. From this you create a hypothesis to test the expected benefits of that test. Using that hypothesis, you form an Experiment.
Insights – listening the right way
When looking for Insights, the most important thing to do is listen but we must listen in the right way.
In order to actively listen, we need to use facial expressions and body language to show full attention. We should also ask clarifying questions that are neutral in language and without judgement.
We develop Insights by being curious, asking questions, and helping the people who want the change. By asking questions we can discover what the real problem is and discover new Insights.
Options – getting the root cause of a problem
Now, help people generate some Options by asking: What is the root cause of the problem they´re dealing with? Dig deeper and find out what is going on and what might be some possible solutions.
There are several exercises and practices that you can perform to get the root cause problem – for example Lean Coffee Session, Five Whys, Retrospectives, etc.
Experiments – building on curiosity
Now that you have some possible solutions, work together to create some Experiments to test them. Simply run one Experiment, and see what happens. The idea is to learn from that and determine your next steps.
Each experiment includes three parts: Prepare, Introduce, and Review.
What you need to do is to prepare for the experiment, introduce the experiment to those who are involved and then review the results together. Invite the team members to participate, get their feedback, and have empathy for their problems.
By using the Lean Change Model and conducting small Experiments, you can cause transformations in your company or on your team.
Creating hypothesis for experiments
All experiments start with hypothesis. Below you find a hypothesis structure:
We hypothesise by
We will
Which will have
As measured by
You can follow the following thought process:
think about what the experiment would be
think about who would be affected
think about what would be the benefit
think about how to validate the Experiment as successful
By using the Lean Change Model and conducting small Experiments, you can cause transformations in your company or on your team.
It´s important that there is a strong alignment between you – executive, management, and staff using this approach and making it successful.
Developing your own change management process
It´s crucial to select and develop your own change process that best suits to your organization. There are 4 main components to developing your own change management process:
Developing your Strategic Change Canvas
Aligning your organization
Developing your Change Agent Network
Executing the Lean Change Management Cycle
Developing your Strategic Change Canvas
The best way to create a change strategy is through a facilitated session using big, visible canvases, and sticky notes on a wall. It´s recommended to have your change agent or anyone responsible for change implementation do that.
Facilitating a Strategic Change Canvas session
There are several different approaches for group facilitation. The most important thing is to visualize the canvas on a wall using sticky notes.
First create a canvas on a wall and use the following questions to guide you to complete the canvas:
What points haven´t we considered yet?
What are our assumptions about this strategy?
What is our riskiest assumption?
How often should we review this strategy?
How will we collect feedback from staff
What other important information should we put on this canvas?
There are several key persons that should be involved in this session: the Change Sponsor, the Change team and optionally executive team (depending on the size of the organization).
Aligning your organization
Once the Strategic Change Canvas has been created, it´s time to start aligning stakeholders in your organization with your change strategy.
If your organization is small, you can facilitate a session with everyone, including management and employees.
Here are couple of tips that might help you facilitating the “Change Alignment” session:
In bigger companies, re-purpose an existing department meeting and ask the manager and one member of the change team present the Strategic Change Canvas
In smaller organizations, do a full-day company session using any type of facilitation approaches for the large group.
Tip: facilitate this sessions starting with stakeholders that are affected by the change
Do an ADKAR Assessment survey
It´s important that you, as an executive, and change sponsors leave details to the team when aligning with change. That includes measurements too; Avoid telling teams how you´ll measure them, let them figure out their own progress measurements.
Creating organizational alignment around change is difficult and time consuming, especially in bigger organizations.
Developing your Change Agent Network
It´s important you have internal change management team or anyone that is responsible for implementing change. Executives and managers need to act as change agents. The reason is because people are more likely to work with their peers rather than external consultants (which is recommended to have too).
People might feel threatened or feel that change is being forced on them if they don´t see their peers being involved first.
Here are some tips for expanding your change team:
Get one person from each department that is affected by the change
Let early adopters that are being part of the change know that the change team involves extra work
“Promote” becoming member of a change team as something exclusive to attract the right people
Rotate the change team members periodically, depending on the type of change you´re implementing
Executing the Lean Change Management Cycle
Implementing a successful change program requires these basic building blocks. Change only fails when the people managing it blindly follow a structured process that isn´t compatible with the organization.
Therefore, it is important to build your own change management process using the Lean Change Management cycle.
Here´re some ideas:
Create a change program room: make your plan visible (using Strategic Change Canvas and Experiments)
Decide how often to have these meetings
Change Team Daily Standups
Change Team Retrospectives
Strategic Change Canvas Refresh – revising the Strategic Change Canvas
Lean Coffee
Retrospectives
Do not use status reporting – ask your change team to go to your big visible room. It´ll be hard but you need to stick to open and honest dialogue
These 3 pieces are the key points you need to build your own change process. Avoid creating too much process at the beginning. The interactions among your change teams will be better equipped to deal with complexity. Therefore, create enough process to trigger these interactions.
If you´re interested in attending one of our Lean Change Agent workshops, please visit the training calendar page.
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Sources and references:
Lean Change Management book by Jason Little
Leanchange.org
How to run a Lean Change Cycle, Happy Melly
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