Insider OCM Intel: Exposing the Strategies Behind Sustainable Transformations
With organizations facing continued pressure to adapt or die, Change Management is swiftly rising to the top of the priority list for organizational leaders seeking to secure success for their digital transformation initiatives. Mark Konietzko, a Change Management & Process Optimization Consultant for ZRG Partners – Interim Solutions, has spent the last 20+ years helping organizations navigate their change journeys while achieving ROI targets and sustained user adoption.
In this DX Insights exclusive interview, Mark shares his wisdom on critical topics such as compliance regulations, risk mitigation, and overcoming obstacles in change resistance environments. He covers strategies for maintaining consistency in change management programs across multiple locations or divisions, and practical tips for navigating misalignment with organizational leadership.
Table of Contents
Q: How have you navigated the unique challenges of leading change management initiatives in organizations with stringent compliance requirements?
We’re in an interesting time where businesses in ALL industries face an increasingly complex regulatory landscape that is driven by technological advancements, globalization, financial crises, and heightened awareness of environmental and social issues. The most successful change initiatives I have led regarding regulatory and compliance requirements are those that have included the applicable regulatory and compliance teams from the business at the very beginning of the project.
In these successful cases, regulatory and compliance representatives played a key role in identifying the essential regulatory and compliance requirements related to the project and changes and integrating the requirements in all relevant phases, steps, and artifacts. These include project scope, business requirements, future state solution, change impact assessment, communication, training, standard operating procedures (SOPs), KPIs, and sustainment.
My recommendation is to share all projects with the regulatory and compliance teams so they can perform an assessment and determine their level of involvement that is necessary for the project. Depending on the requirements, they may take an active part of the Project Team or a further removed role as part of the Steering Team. They may be required to review solutions before implementation, or simply receive updates on an as-needed basis.
Q: Can you describe strategies you employed to overcome resistance and build buy-in for significant changes that disrupted traditional processes or hierarchies?
Interestingly, the established cultures and work practices most resistant to change are those where minimal structure, rules, and repeatability were the standard. When I’ve supported businesses with these cultures, each of them has had long lists of failed efforts to implement more structure and controls. The common themes for these failures usually include poor leadership, inadequate solution designs, and ineffective change management.
Below are three critical elements for leading change in these environments:
- Leaders are aligned and the Project Sponsor is strong, engaged, and very visible.
- Future state solutions provide clear and obvious improvements over the current state and, importantly, these improvements are meaningful to associates.
- The change is actively managed to provide associates with awareness, desire, knowledge, and ability. In addition, processes and controls are implemented to sustain the change. This is the Prosci ADKAR model, a powerful yet simple tool for facilitating change.
Q: What approaches did you find effective in driving change adoption in industries or organizations with a strong emphasis on risk mitigation or a conservative mindset towards disruptive changes?
Risk assessment and mitigation are critical steps in the change management process for all businesses, with a heightened importance for more conservative and risk-averse businesses. To successfully manage risks, including disruptions, it is essential to employ detailed risk analyses that assess the risks associated both with the project and the business.
From the project standpoint, this includes the complexity of the project, the number of associates impacted, and the degree of change the project will require. From the business standpoint this encompasses assessing the change management maturity level, culture, and capacity. Once complete, the results of this analysis should be used to confirm or update key project details such as scope, timing, resources, etc.
Q: Can you provide an example from your career where you had to navigate a situation with misaligned or unsupportive leadership, and how you addressed that challenge?
In my experience, unsupportive leadership is usually due to some type of misalignment, so I’ll address both challenges as misalignments.
Misalignment is typically related to details that surface during a project such as specific requirements or solutions rather than the high-level goals and direction determined at the project’s beginning. With this misalignment, I’ve been most effective when bringing leaders together for an open review of the concerns causing the misalignment, a reassessment of the current plan that includes impacts related to the concerns, and decisions on how to move forward.
The key benefit of these reviews is improved awareness and understanding of goals, scope, risks, etc. Sometimes this results in leaders aligning on the current plan, while other times it results in alignment on updated plans. From a change perspective, alignment is the key outcome.
Q: Data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement are hallmarks of successful change initiatives. How do you foresee leveraging technologies such as data analytics and visualization capabilities to better measure change readiness, monitor adoption rates, and make real-time adjustments to change plans? What potential challenges or risks should organizations consider when adopting such technologies for change management?
I agree that continuous improvement and data driven decisions are bedrocks within the change management foundation. I believe new data analysis tools will continue to make data and information more accessible and have an overall positive impact on change initiatives. These improvements include visualizations that will enhance everyone’s ability to see patterns or trends.
With that said, data analysis is very complex. Without proper training, organizations risk misunderstanding trends and patterns, leading to incorrect conclusions and poor decisions when attempting to leverage these improvements.
As businesses use data to make decisions, it is my recommendation that data analysis experts—whether internal or external—are part of that process.
Ensuring Long-Term Success in Organizational Change
As Konietzko has shown, successful change management hinges on strong leadership alignment, a repeatable yet flexible change management approach, meticulous risk assessment, and the right expertise. By employing comprehensive change management models such as ADKAR, organizations can actively manage the complexities of change within their organization while fostering an environment of support and collaboration.
Leveraging modern technologies for data analysis and visualization can further enhance these efforts, but it is essential to ensure accurate interpretation of data by involving experts in the process. Through these measures, Konietzko assures businesses that they can overcome resistance, build buy-in, and sustainably achieve meaningful changes within their organization.