Is Change Management Outdated?

I RECENTLY READ an article published by McKinsey out of its Johannesburg office that had the title Changing Change Management. In the first paragraph it says “Change management as it is traditionally applied is outdated.” Then it goes on to say that digital tools have made traditional change management obsolete – not in so many words, but it is implied. What I find fascinating about the rest of the article, and the examples they give, is that digital or not, they don’t just magically succeed. There are still change management principles at work in each example.

Their first example says that a ‘new’ principle, based on application of digital tools is to provide ‘just in time’ feedback. Feedback, interestingly enough, is a main tenant of traditional change management practices. Just in time feedback would always be the goal, but isn’t always an option. So feedback – about the change, about what is going well or not going well – needs to be gathered and used to tweak and improve the change. Yet in the example given by McKinsey, they talk about ‘just in time’ feedback on a sales representatives’ business. This allowed them to tailor their calls to their customers and put attention where attention was needed. I agree that in this case ‘just in time’ feedback was a critical component. Those SMS messages just kept on coming and sales reps could see their progress, or lack of it, in as real time as possible. That is a business solution solving a business problem and its success is built on a foundation of the application of traditional change management principles..

The article doesn’t say anything about what went into the creation of this system but I have some thoughts. Perhaps originally the sales reps had access to their sales information in a system that was cumbersome to use and didn’t always have connectivity in the field to see the data.   So they didn’t use it consistently. They might have given this feedback to their managers, who in turn might have raised it at a high enough level that action would be taken. That is a traditional change management principle of a ‘feedback loop’ – where feedback is given to, in this case a sales rep and they in turn give feedback, which causes a change to be suggested.

So, based on the feedback the company came up with a better way to pass on that sales data using cell phones and SMS messages. They went from a pull system of getting information to a push system of getting information. Someone decided to change the delivery based on the feedback from the reps that they couldn’t get the data real time. This same team also probably decided what data to push, perhaps also based on feedback. They probably discussed what data would get the best action and cause a sales rep to pay attention. They also probably discussed what was the best balance between pushing info that a sales rep would appreciate and pushing so much that a sales rep would cease to pay attention. Maybe they even did a pilot to check out their suppositions and see the reaction.

ALL of those conversations are traditional change management principles being applied. ALL of those decisions were critical to the success of the implementation of the digital solution. And if those conversations didn’t happen, if those traditional change management principles hadn’t been applied, that system – however fancy and new and ‘real time’ wouldn’t have been as successful as it was.

What I also find interesting about this example is that they make no mention of a feedback ‘loop’ that allows the reps to give real time feedback back – what is working for them, what isn’t, what could be improved. Maybe that went on, but the fact that it isn’t talked about, and that the writers of the article wouldn’t think that that was important is quite telling. To truly exploit and continuously improve a process, and to embed in it sustainability into the future, that feedback loop (a traditional change management principle) was glaringly absent.

The article, in the many examples that it uses, makes it seem like digital solutions make traditional change management principles obsolete. But that is not the case. A business solution should always use the technology that will help it be the most successful. Today, more than ever before companies have so many more options before them. We forget that less than 10 years ago, just getting a sales representative data about their customers on a computer was a huge deal. Now digital is the next big thing, and rightly so. But let’s not forget that behind all great solutions there are conversations and decisions that support the success or not.

The digital solution described in McKinsey’s article (there are quite a few – none make their case) could have gone powerfully wrong without solid change management principles at work. It may still not fully exploit the technology if it doesn’t employ those principles I’ve mentioned. In fact, each of their examples proves that now more than ever traditional change management principles need to be applied in business. We must never forget that technology is great but it is the actions (or inactions) of people that make them come alive (or not).

And just to give some perspective, this is the same conversation we had when PCs were first staring to be used in business. We were told that the latest and greatest technology would solve all business problems naturally and organically, so we didn’t need to worry about change management principles, or training – it would all magically succeed. And now, as then, we learned that it isn’t quite so. It is the solid grounding and acceptance that people make or break a change, not the latest and greatest technology that will lead to a business’s ultimate success in implementing true and lasting change. And it is the application of good, traditional, change management principles that will continue to be the partner and enabler of great change.