Size and Complexity Matters… or does it?
Many of my colleagues know my penchant for templates and checklists. Whether they have taken a course with me on Personal Branding (shout-out to all my Super-power students) or followed my guidance to build a better business plan, they know that if I can provide a template, I will.
I realised years ago that providing templates and checklists allows the user to see all the computations and permeations of possibility, without limiting their own thinking. In fact, templates and checklists free our minds from the minutia so that we are better able to strategically about what we are doing.
It’s not all the same, but is it that different?
Programmatic Organisational Transformation Management (POTM) works in the same way. It posits that, despite many arguments to the contrary, Organisational Change Management (OCM) activities don’t have to be limited to a few external or internal experts. OCM does not have to be the sole domain of highly trained, and paid, consultants and change agents. Instead of cloaking the transformation process and its associated procedures in mystery, POTM seeks to provide a standard roadmap that takes away about 80% of the guesswork.
The power behind programmatic transformation is that the theory is paired with standardized checklists and templates that can be used to ensure that every step is covered, or at least considered, during a transformation initiative. It provides a matrix that allows you to think in terms of size and complexity. It frees our minds of the stress and uncertainty related to ‘The Complexity of Change’ and demonstrates that even the most complex transformation initiative has standardised approaches and procedures that can be leveraged to ease the journey.
Integral to the POTM process is handling four (4) areas . When written out, it seems simple, but the trick is knowing how deeply to go into any of the areas and what is truly required at each stage.
POTM provides a roadmap to guide teams through the details of change, but more, it instils an understanding of the strategic management of transformation. It focuses energy on ‘planned transitions’ that allow your employees to look ahead. It allows the population to understand that a break from the additional activity that inevitably accompanies a change in the organisation or transformational initiative, will soon come. It signals that allowing a rest and rejuvenate period before another initiative begins, is part of the process.
Not all transformation is the same but, even in very complex, large-scale transformation, there are reproducible, systematic underlying patterns that can be exploited to provide a relatively easy-to-follow roadmap to success.