The Art of Change

If there’s one thing that’s common to most people, it’s that they generally dislike change. Humans are creatures of habit. We all like to compartmentalize our daily lives into known entities so that we can reduce the energy required to get through our day and know what to expect.

When we leave for work every morning we typically don’t recalculate the best way to get to work, we simply jump in our car and take the same route we always take. When there’s an accident or construction that suddenly disrupts this routine, it’s not an enjoyable experience.

Along these same lines, organizational change is often a difficult process. Even if the reason for change is super compelling, you’re dealing with people and emotions who are used to certain routines and ways of doing things. This process can be even more difficult when the change is perceived as too abrupt and forced.

As a Product leader in a SaaS SMB or Startup, this is a vital skill to develop. The key is to facilitate an emergent change that hits on lots of touch points:

Pre-requisites (work to establish these first)

• Trust and belief in the change leader – Company business leaders must have trust in the abilities of the Product leader (i.e., you).
• Open lines of communication among groups – The business environment must facilitate healthy, respectful opinions and input from different business groups.
• Executive sponsorship – If you’re a Product executive yourself, then getting the strong support from the rest of your executive team is crucial. If not, you’ll need to recruit an executive sponsor or two that can be your strong advocates to outside groups.
• A culture open to change – This isn’t to say that everyone should be open to swift and drastic changes, but there should be an openness across the company to changing for the better.

Step 1 – Act as the Visionary

• Understand the current process and situation – Make sure that you have a good handle on the current process or situation before presenting your vision for change. This will help to gain trust.
• Communicate the vision and goals – Educate business leaders on the task at hand with supporting background information and use metaphors wherever possible to help provide clarity.
• Lay out a loose time frame for arriving at a solution – It’s always good to throw out a time frame or date to shoot for so that everyone involved can adjust their focus accordingly.

Step 2 – Act as the Facilitator

• Bring business leaders together to solicit feedback and input – Get all key stakeholders together for a series of collaborative discussions on attaining the vision and goals.
• Provide the guardrails – Allow input to flow and a solution to develop by guiding the discussions to ensure they don’t veer off course.
• Interject and provide guidance as appropriate – When appropriate, provide your assertions in a tactful and constructive way.
• Be patient – The first discussion may seem chaotic as people provide input and try to understand the vision(s) presented. You’ll find that the discussion (or series of discussions) will eventually fall into a groove with your guidance, as the smart people involved will start to hone in on solutions.
• Don’t be spooked by an apparent loss of control – The whole point of this exercise is to make the other business leaders recognize the problem and involve them in coming up with the solution. This can sometimes feel like a loss of control for the Product leader trying to implement the change.

Results

• Immediate Buy-In – Since the group leaders across the organization were involved in creating a solution, the change will feel more subtle and leaders across the business will be more bought in.
• No surprises – Again, since business leaders were a part of the solution there shouldn’t be any surprises when it comes to rolling out the change (always a good thing).
• Better solutions – By bringing together the best and brightest in the company, the design of solutions will be all the better.
• Quick Adoption and Success – See the previous three bullets. The rollout of the change, which will still require clear communication to the rest of the company, will be more successful because it has the support of all key business leaders.