Driving Organizational Change with Patterns
One of the great challenges facing software leaders is introducing change within their organizations. Not change for its own sake, but change that drives their organizations and teams towards new levels of performance and capabilities. The first thing every leader should understand is their internal inclination towards change and the overall change adoption curve. Geoffrey Moore introduced change adoption levels in his breakthrough book Crossing the Chasm. The below table captures the change phases he identified –
|
Change Inclination |
Percent of Groups |
|
Innovators |
2.5% |
|
Early adopters |
13.5% |
|
Chasm |
|
|
Early majority |
34% |
|
Late Majority |
34% |
|
Laggards |
16.5% |
The key point in the book is that it takes momentum from the innovator and early adopter community to adapt to any new approach, technology or product. And, in order for the change initiative to be successful, these groups need to drive it across the chasm into the early majority for broader adoption.
While the book was focused on marketing and new product introduction, the same inclination applies directly towards organizational change itself. Each of of us has a change type or inclination that aligns with one of these areas. And any change will follow the above flow as it becomes instantiated within the organization.
If you haven't realized it yet, 6th Sense Analytics is clearly an innovator / early adopter play for software teams. In previous blogs, I've discussed the Big Brother effect that can be disruptive when deploying our analytics. From that perspective, a change strategy is required to increase your success.
Change Patterns
A useful resource focused on this area recently became available. The book is entitled Fearless Change – Patterns for Introducing New Ideas, by Linda Rising and Mary Lynn Manns. It takes the patterns paradigm and nicely extends it towards change introduction within technology organizations. Both Rising & Manns have extensive experience in the patterns space and Rising is also relatively well known in the Agile community.
Consider patterns in this context to be small tools that any change agent can use to create, influence, and guide organizational change. In fact, as I share the patterns, you'll probably see many that you've already used. In many cases, they're simply common sense approaches to initiate and direct change.
They've grouped the patterns into themes across the change curve phases covering – throughout, early, later, and resistance as the themes. I'll list a few of them in this post to give you a flavor for the patterns and usefulness, following up in the next post with more.
I hope you'll not only get a flavor for them, but be inspired to begin looking at change in a different way, perhaps do more research and start filling your “change agent” toolbox with more patterns or methods to truly enhance your Change Agent capabilities! Below is a set of patterns for the throughout theme –
|
Theme – Throughout
|
|
|
Pattern Name |
Summary |
|
Evangelist |
Change needs a champion who is willing to share their vision and passion for the change. |
|
Small Successes |
Remember to recognize and truly celebrate each success, no matter how small. They will generate momentum. |
|
Step by Step |
Declare a goal and take small steps towards it. |
|
Test the Waters |
When faced with a change opportunity, use some of these patterns and test to see the results (receptivity) to change. |
|
Time for Reflection |
Take the time to stop, reflect on what's working, what's not, and adjust as required. |
Get a feel for the patterns? I hope so. And no rocket science here, just sound advice for change agents. More to come in the next post…
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