Executives are Key to Successful Organizational Change, but Middle Managers are Where the "Rubber Meets the Road" to Drive It!

Gartner Inc., the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, has frequently noted that the critical success factors for managing SAP and other ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning software) implementations are people issues; behaviors, skills and actions — the "soft" side of business process redesign, organizational restructuring and other strategic change initiatives…

"Enterprise change is accelerating for most organizations… Unfortunately, mastery of change is a core competency for only a few enterprises. But these "hard" (system) issues are not the primary challenges to successful change. New tools and processes are worthless unless people change their behaviors and actions."

— Gartner Inc, Oct 2005

We totally agree. But most business leaders we engage tend to know this — a big improvement from just a few years ago where the "soft" factors of change were poorly understood. We now find that the weak link is at middle management, supervisor and team leader levels. This is where the "rubber meets the road" when it comes to ensuring employees adapt to changes that result from ERP system, business process redesign and organizational restructuring initiatives.

Managers as champions of change

A cornerstone of managing and sustaining change is embedding ownership and accountability for ongoing change into the fabric of the organization. The place to start (assuming top leaders are already committed) is changing the role of middle managers, supervisors and team leaders. Jim Clemmer, a leading author on leadership and management including titles such as The Leader's Digest, Pathways to Performance, and Firing on All Cylinders notes the following:

"As members or leaders of operational and improvement teams, (middle managers) are much closer to the action than anyone in senior management. So they have a much better sense of which change and improvement tactics will work. But perhaps even more importantly, they hold the balance of implementation power. Without their commitment, the best-laid plans will fail."

— Jim Clemmer, The Clemmer Group, 2001

Managers are often promoted into their roles because they are good marketers, accountants, engineers and the like. Frequently it's not because they are good "people" managers or team leaders with strong "soft" skills. But in this age of constant change, managers need to be facilitators of change and have the skills to interpret top-down strategy into operational change. They are the individuals "in the trenches" who are able to engage their teams, have conversations on the need for change, understand potential areas of resistance and coach and guide their teams to a future vision. And to do this they need to be able to perform a number of important roles well if companies are to become more adaptable to accelerating change.

Middle managers as process and system owners

Organizational change is frequently focused on work processes and systems. During a recent SAP implementation, a Finance VP mentioned to me that if it had not been for a major technical problem, which forced him to roll up his sleeves and become completely involved in solving the problem, he would have only had superficial knowledge of the system. He would have relied on the Super Users (SU) — team members designated to be experts in the use of the system — and consultants in his unit to operate the system and train others. Being forced to roll-up his sleeves and solve the problem created the urgency for him to fully understand the system and become much more knowledgeable about the end-to-end business processes the systems enabled.

On further investigation it became clear that many senior and middle managers only had a high-level knowledge of the system and were heavily reliant on their super users and consultants for solving problems. Senior and middle managers — by default — should be the experts on how end-to-end work is conducted, who does it, and how they connect with and impact upstream and downstream functions. With this hands-on process and systems knowledge, managers become change champions, coaching and training their team members, holding process optimization and innovation meetings to find better and more efficient ways of doing business and delivering better outputs to customers.

Managers as facilitators of ongoing learning

To learn is to change. I would wager that most manager job descriptions in your company describe some level of managerial accountability for hands-on training of team members. But I have seldom seen this function performed well in most companies I've worked with. Researchers at PriceWaterhoursCoopers comment as follows:

"The usual approach to rapid training — taking employees off-site for intensive training — is in fact misguided…(they) tend to work against human nature, since they attempt to impart all the knowledge needed to all staff in one fell swoop. On-the-job training (by managers, supervisors and super users)…is in fact a more effective way of ensuring staff get training relevant to their jobs."

— Dawson & Jones, PriceWaterhouseCoopers — Human Change Management: Herding Cats

I believe that the role of facilitated "on the job learning" by managers and supervisors does take over the role of specialized trainers. There is clearly a need for focused, intensive training delivered by specialist trainers. The manager/supervisor role is rather linked to the manager's role as Process Owner described above. Managers and supervisors should facilitate regular learning sessions focused on work processes. They should hold periodic team meetings (my experience suggests this should be every week, even if for 30 minutes) where they review work processes and procedures, understand the company-wide context for where their processes fit in the overall process architecture, review process performance metrics and identify problems and brainstorm ideas for process improvement.

Managers as ERP "Super Users"

In many ERP implementations, the role of the super user is critical and typically is filled by an employee in the client company who has a penchant for technology as well as people:

"The SAP Super User (is) gifted with the talents of knowing their portion of the system well and they often are asked to go beyond the role of their day-to-day job to provide or assist in the provision of documentation, training, and support — engaging users and providing a personal touch to bring harmony between the people and the SAP system."

The Adventures of Super Users — Cristin Merritt, Insite Objects, Dirk Manuel, ExxonMobil, Suzette & Hannah-Hessler, Applied Materials

Utilizing a Super User (SU) is a very effective approach for transferring knowledge from consultants and building competence and ownership for change into the organization. Too often however, SUs are selected from junior staffers. Not that this is a bad thing in itself, but team managers tend to delegate this role and then continue business as usual. And it's the SUs that is expected to facilitate the change at system and process levels. Unfortunately, many SUs are not senior enough to effectively influence change. In one case I experienced recently, a department manager had elected herself to be her department's SU. She said, "If I am going to lead my department in this implementation, coach and train my team, optimize our end-to-end processes and work with other functions, I need to be at the forefront of knowledge and learning. The super user's role is what managers should be doing anyway." I Agree!

Managing process/system Communities of Practice

So, if managers begin to perform the role of Process Owners (and SUs), what mechanism or structure is effective for performing these roles across functional and geographic boundaries?

A well-known energy firm has used Communities of Practice (CoPs) to promote a focus on end-to-end global processes and provide a mechanism for managers to effect change and continuously improve those processes. A CoP is a formalized team of key players that are responsible for a core business process across all functional structures and geographies. The team owns the process and is responsible for its continuous improvement and performance. CoPs collaborate and share knowledge using collaboration software tools, and hold global teleconferences on a regular basis. CoPs are powerful mechanisms for managers to engage hundreds, even thousands of people involved in a process anywhere in the world to share knowledge, learn and adapt to process driven change.

Managers as communicators

"When leaders embrace honest conversations, dramatic and rapid change occurs"

— Michael Beer, Trust Matters in Business, May 2007

Michael Beer, the world-renowned authority on organizational effectiveness and change and Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, notes that the core element for driving organizational change is the ability of line managers to have "honest conversations" with their teams. This is communications in which employees are engaged at an emotional level. Without this direct interaction, even the most effectively crafted corporate communications campaign will have little impact.

A leading global company I worked with recently, attempted to effect a culture change in their organization from a collegial, easy-going company to a driven, performance-oriented culture. A very impressive communications campaign was developed. The problem they faced was that this communications strategy was largely media driven, leaving middle managers out of the delivery process. It lost traction because it did not contain day-to-day practicality driven by managers and team leaders. For effective change, middle managers must become the key vehicle for disseminating information and soliciting feedback.

Conclusion — Drive change where the "rubber meets the road"

Placing greater importance on the role of middle managers and team leaders as facilitators of change is a powerful starting point for your organization to become more adaptable to constant change. Selecting, promoting and developing managers with an acute focus on their ability to communicate and create a sense of excitement and urgency, facilitate learning and coach team members, facilitate process communities and encourage process innovation and continuous improvement, is critical to building the capacity to change into the way your organization operates.

— Kevin Weitz, Founder of Change • Directions, a Merit Business Partner

If you have questions for Kevin regarding this article or any aspect of effective change management, you can reach him at KevinW@MeritHR.com or call him at 425-301-4827.

As always, we look forward to your feedback.