This month we provide a summary of Chapter 15, Leading an Integration Change Program, in Integrating Program Management and Systems Engineering (IPMSE), a collaboration of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the Project Management Institute (PMI), and the Consortium for Engineering Program Excellence (CEPE) at the Massachusetts (USA) Institute of Technology (MIT). This is our sixteenth article in this series. Our objective in providing this series is to encourage subscribers to leverage the research base of this book that has provided new knowledge and valuable insights that will serve to strengthen the performance of complex programs. “The Book” is highly recommended as professional development for all systems engineers and is available to members of INCOSE at a discount.
This chapter looks closely into the change management aspects of the effort to integrate program management and systems engineering; considers the unique characteristics of the change initiative required to achieve an integrated environment; and provides key guidance for leading such an initiative within a variety of organizational settings. Chapter 13, Integration Means Change (reviewed in PPI SyEN 68, August 2018), provides an excellent starting point for the organizational change management thinking that must be present before, during, and after the execution of the integration program. Note that the use of the term “organization” includes the concept that programs are organizations as well, and can function as unique, identifiable entities within the enterprise. Accordingly, references to “organization” refer to the enterprise, as well as to the individual programs underway within the enterprise.
Whether the cause for concern has its roots in issues surfaced through interactions with employees, managers, senior managers, or executives, or perhaps from communication from external stakeholders, by the time business leaders begin seeking meaningful alternatives and solutions, the challenging issues that first inspired their investigative research have likely already taken a toll, leaving a significant and lasting impact on at least one part of the organization. It is this realization that causes the leader to act – responding with an increased sense of urgency. This realization that “something must be done” also places the leader in a difficult position. Suddenly becoming aware that “something within the organization must change,” implies the notion that subtle, or in some cases obvious, signals that indicated the need for organizational change had been missed or misinterpreted at some point along the way. When this occurs, it is important for the leader to pause and ponder the appropriate way forward. Leaders must carefully choose an approach for addressing change that will more likely foster success than failure and must stand firm in the face of considerable organizational resistance in their commitment to achieve it. Additionally, to be successful at bringing about meaningful and lasting change, leaders must look forward toward positive structural change for the organization, using facts and information about the existing conditions as a starting point while resisting the impulse to impose hastily conceived solutions, refraining from pushing for quick resolution, or looking backward into the current state seeking to identify the party or parties to who whom responsibility for the existing conditions can be assigned.
Finding and assigning blame for organizational difficulty will not contribute to the creation of an atmosphere for change within the organization. In fact, doing so has quite the opposite effect.
In response to the need for effective change, leaders will follow one of two similar but unique paths. One path is based on a decision to contract with outside consultants and experts who will be brought into the organization to identify key improvement opportunities, then design and lead the necessary organizational change effort. The alternate route is the selection of change agents and champions from within the organization who will be empowered to create the environment for change and will endeavor to deliver on a commitment to make it happen. Selection of the latter path is based on the knowledge (or an assumption) that the necessary vision and talent is available within the organization.
It is important to note that the individuals chosen to lead organizational change are vitally important to the overall success of the effort. Leading an active organization through transformational change is a complex and challenging initiative. It’s likely that a cultural change program, such as an initiative to integrate program management and systems engineering, will be conducted within and across the organization over an extended period of time (years rather than months). The selection of change leaders for initiatives such as these, therefore, must be performed with studied and deliberate care. The leaders chosen for these initiatives must be perceived by stakeholders as inspirational, influential, persuasive, dynamic, and effective, or they face serious challenge leading the organization through difficult and extended transformational change. Many of the benefits of the change initiative may not be fully recognized or realized until after the conclusion of the program, compounding the challenge to sustain the initiative. Real evidence of the impact of the organizational change will be seen in the ongoing and sustained operation of the organization.
Chapter 15 proposes a five-part, success-enabling approach to implementing such a program. For the change management initiative to be successful, a leadership team needs to be formed, typically consisting of an executive sponsor (champion), program manager (charged with oversight and leadership of the change initiative), the Chief Systems Engineer (CSE) and systems engineering (SE) domain leaders (who bring deep technical experience and expertise and represent the organization’s broad SE environment), the Program Manager and program management domain leaders (who bring deep management experience and expertise and represent the organization’s broad program management environment), and leaders of the governance body (typically executives: partners and internal and external stakeholder leaders).
Critical parts of the change management program are the following:
- Planning.
The following components of the planning process are critical:
1) Ensure senior leader support and commitment for the long term.
2) Engage and gain commitment from across the organization.
3) Develop a clear set of target outcomes, ways of performing and interacting, and establish performance targets and indicators at the start of the program.
4) Meaningful measures and metrics for gauging progress against targeted objectives must be established at the start of the initiative and reviewed frequently during the life of the program.
5) Design and implement processes for monitoring and governing the change initiative.
6) Define and document clearly defined roles and responsibilities for both systems engineers and program managers.[2]
7) Carefully select properly skilled individuals who will lead the change initiative.
8) Systems and technology solutions that support the integration of program management and systems engineering within the organization must be put in place or modified to support the initiative.
To properly ground an important change initiative within an organization, those empowered to make it happen, including program management and systems engineering leaders, must do more than they believe they should to ensure that the organization fully understands the need for change.
- Observing and Interviewing.
1) To be successful, those responsible for conducting the proposed integration program must be willing to invest the time necessary to fully assess the environment, and to establish, without bias or agenda, the true conditions and source of the trouble. [3]
2) Documented observations will become particularly valuable when considering the metrics, measures, and indices that will be used to gauge the program’s progress and success.
3) As the initial step of the program, observing the day-to-day operations and talking with (interviewing) program leaders, stakeholders, team members, and other staff will have an additional immediate benefit – engagement.
4) The weakness of swiftly assessed problems and hastily implemented solutions is immediately sensed by the organization’s employees as well as the program team’s members and stakeholders.
Page 316 in The Book provides a list of questions that will help clarify the program management and systems engineering roles.
- Synthesizing, Sharing, and Mapping
Figure 15-2 in The Book presents the framework elements that must be present to achieve an integrated program management and systems engineering environment, where the recognized characteristics of the program are effective collaborative work, effective information sharing, and rapid and effective decision-making. The four input dimensions that influence effective integration are processes, practices, and tools; organizational environment; people competencies; and contextual factors, including program and team characteristics, organizational structure, and alignment with stakeholders.
When the observations, collected discussions, and interview information have been grouped summarized, and aligned to the framework, the next step is to share the information with the various leaders and staff who contributed to the discussion. This must be a delicately executed and carefully performed task, for it is the first step in generating trust for the change program and the people conducting it. The collected and summarized information ultimately will be shared broadly across the organization as significant component of the baselining activity. Those who volunteer information through discussion and interview must feel that the information accurately represents their views and perceptions.
The intent of the observations, discussions, and interviews is to develop a set of de-identified comments and perceptions that form a generalized “statement of condition” for the organization, and to build trust within the organization that honest and direct feedback can be shared without the threat of sanction or fear of retaliation. Sharing the collected information serves many purposes during program start-up:
- Honest feedback must be validated with those who originally contributed it before it is used for any other purpose.
- Creating trust is a cornerstone activity for the change program and its leaders.
- Sharing the information with the original contributors will engage them in the problem definition process and will set the tone for further dialog in the future. Clear, open, and honest communication among and across the program’s participants is essential for the ongoing success of the program.
After final review and acceptance by the original participants, the integration program’s leaders will map the grouped and summarized information to the various dimensions of the Integration Framework (recall that the Integration Framework emerged from the multiyear research activities that provided the basis for The Book, and that it is described in Chapter 6 and summarized in Figure 6-8 on page 114). Linking issues identified through observation, discussion, and interview to dimensions of the framework will ground future discussions in a formal structure that will facilitate communications and allow the organization to review, study, question, and “make sense of” the information as it is presented to them. This mapped information will make up the content for the initial communications and discussions held with organizational leaders, program sponsors, program participants, and stakeholders.
Having completed the above described aspects to enabling the success of the change program, organizational leaders are now ready to embark on a broad communications campaign within the organization. This step addresses the first two of five key change-enabling activities: Creating a sense of urgency; and Communicating the vision and alternatives.
As an organization prepares these first communications, the program’s sponsors and leaders must acknowledge that all of the work will not be accomplished in a single, sweeping action; and must design the communications as well as well as the program itself to address a set of prioritized program elements that will be addressed over time.
There are two essential components of this communication: a detailed explanation of what is anticipated if no action is taken, and a high-level vision of what the future can look like for the organization, with a call to action. Employees must perceive, or even better, believe, that there is a better future ahead, and must also feel that they can be a meaningful part of creating that future. Change champions, those who will be visible representatives of the organization’s commitment to support the program through to the end and who will lead the program through the entire duration of the effort, should be clearly identified and afforded as much authority to act as can reasonably be bestowed on the organization’s most senior leaders.
The change program’s leaders will begin the process of prioritizing the various sub-elements and program components that will be conducted (see the discussion on pages 324 – 327 for guidance concerning the prioritization process).
One of the most elusive aspects of change management programs, surprisingly, is not the achievement of target objectives and benefits, but rather sustaining changes and benefits once they have been achieved and delivered. Reviewing carefully some of these programs, even successful ones, reveals an interesting condition that is often overlooked: programs that initially succeed in bringing about intended changes are later found to be unsuccessful because the changes brought about by the program are not ingrained in the organization and the benefits that were achieved are not continuing to accrue.
To make changes “stick” within the organization and to ensure achieved benefits continue to deliver dividends beyond the end of the program, requires thoughtfully planned efforts to sustain them. For example, collaborative work, information sharing, and joint program management and systems engineering decision-making are examples of organizational culture that will be required to implement the necessary changes. Shortcutting the change management process leads to failed programs or the inability of the organization to sustain the benefits initially achieved. Each of the steps must be carefully understood, planned, performed, reviewed, reported, and repeated. A critical end-state is that the program manager and the chief systems engineer view themselves as partners who together share responsibility for the program’s success and outcome.
The above provides highlights of Chapter 15 in The Book, but you will want to read and digest the chapter to garner maximum insight! Organizations that successfully implement change over the long term repeat the processes outlined in this chapter on a cadence that focuses the entire organization on continuous improvement.
Following are some questions you might want to ponder:
- How can those feeling a need for change gain support from organizational leaders?
- What are the critical components of a change management program?
- What can be done in your organization to provide the base for a successful change management program?
- How can trust be generated, established, and sustained?
- How can we best ensure that employees feel they are a meaningful part of creating a better future?
References
Conforto, E. C., M. Rossi, Eric Rebentisch, J. Oehmen, and M. Pacenza. Survey Report: Improving Integration of Program Management and Systems Engineering. Presented at the 23rd INCOSE Annual International Symposium, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA, June 2013. Available at https://www.pmi.org/learning/library?q=Survey+Report%3A+Improving+Integration+of+Program+Mana gement+and+Systems+Engineering
Erskine, P. ITIL and Organizational Change. Ely, England: IT Governance Publishing, 2013. Knotter, John P. Leading Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2012.
Project Management Institute (PMI). Governance of Portfolios, Programs, and Projects: A Practice Guide. Newtown Square, PA, 2016.
Sirkin, H. L., P. Keenan, and A. Jackson. “The Hard Side of Change Management.” Harvard Business
Review, October 2005. Available at https://hbr.org/archive-toc/BR0510.
Author
Ralph Rowland Young
