Why is change management so important?

Because in my view, it’s essential to outline a vision, motivate employees through it, bring them along, and keep them informed. The goal is to simply carry out the process within the timeframe, planned budget, and required quality, and not to do more harm than good. After all, a change process should be described where 1+1 doesn’t just equal 2, but 2.5 or 3. There are consulting firms that exclusively deal with change management, and on the internet and in literature, you can find countless flow and circle diagrams telling you what to do. This clearly shows the outstanding importance of the topic, but in the end, for me, it can be reduced to one essential core message: Talk to your people!

When is it used?

Well, basically everywhere change takes place. When you think of change management, you probably have extensive and highly complex projects in mind. But it starts with smaller scenarios, such as tool implementations. During the implementation of our communication tool Slack, for example, we relied on targeted training and offered comprehensive information opportunities. As a result, the tool was well received and quickly established itself in everyday life.

For larger changes, change management is used wherever the organization and employees face a massive change that will alter their workplace in the future in terms of tasks, location, company culture, philosophy, etc.

Own reproduction of the Change Curve according to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

What does active change management mean to you?

For reasons of confidentiality or discretion, you can’t always involve the organization and employees in all topics from the first moment. I have personally experienced such scenarios several times, for example during the merger of two companies. Initially, there is only a small circle that is informed about the impending change. You can’t talk to the employees about it for a certain period, but it’s usually just as impossible to prevent information from leaking somewhere. This mini-vacuum at the beginning of the process will always exist because you can’t immediately inform employees comprehensively.

The more professionally you manage this upstream process, the more confidentially it is handled, and the clearer the initial communication takes place, the less you will initially frighten the organization. So it’s important to optimally prepare the transition, communicate very confidentially and, above all, clearly.

Thus, after the initial communication, the impression is created that people are being dealt with openly, transparently, and honestly, and they feel involved. And that’s actually what active change management means to me: You have to pick people up as soon as possible, you have to talk to them honestly and show them both options and risks (up to job loss). It’s very important to address such things openly and honestly from the beginning; otherwise, rumors will only arise.

What risks need to be considered during the process?

Even if employees behave very discreetly before the initial communication, they may have a certain premonition. This creates a risk in terms of fear and uncertainty. They ask themselves: What’s happening? Why don’t I know about this? Will I even have a job tomorrow? Therefore, it is particularly important to disclose the concrete effects for each individual. Because if you tell employees that something will change and we will grow larger, each individual wonders: And what does that mean for me? Especially in corporate mergers, staff reductions can occur for efficiency reasons. That’s why, in my opinion, it’s important to specifically address the individual functions (in smaller companies even the individual persons) and show them what the change means for them.
In the further course of the process, there may also be opposing currents within the company or the workforce, even though you involve all employees, continuously take them along, and communicate transparently. One should pay very close and meticulous attention to this and react immediately. As soon as you notice that any groups or counter-movements are forming, you should address them openly and weave their criticism into the process. If you don’t perceive such resistance, ignore it, or try to hide it, this can negatively affect the entire process.

Misdirected or omitted change management measures burn into an organization very quickly and are only removed from the company with great difficulty. If the process doesn’t work, you lose employees, things won’t move forward as quickly, and the change will be dragged along for years. It then takes a lot of effort and a long time to turn the distrust back into a positive scenario.

What factors are crucial for success?

“For me, there are five essential success factors in change management:

Five Factors for Successful Change Management

First and foremost for me is the already mentioned honest and open communication.
Equally important to me is the involvement of employees. Of course, you can’t involve everyone, but the workforce should be significantly involved in the change process through selective representatives of the individual interest groups. Applied to us, this means: If we change, I wouldn’t just do it internally with Felix Kirschner at the board level, but form mixed teams and involve all stakeholder representatives in the process.

It’s also important to achieve short-term goals as quickly as possible. In our private lives, we often feel the same way: If you’re working towards a goal and see little progress throughout the year, it’s not very satisfying. Many things in large change processes will take years, but I believe that you can set the goals in such a way that each department can celebrate its first smaller successes within weeks or months. This approach motivates employees and thus maintains the tension arc to implement long-term goals as well.

In the course of the change process, you should also build and describe the objectives, visions, and strategies accordingly. What exactly this looks like depends a bit on whether we are changing internally, where these aspects already exist, or whether, for example, two separate companies are being merged. In this case, you try to bring together the different approaches of the past. These are the factors that don’t give employees the feeling that the other is being imposed on them anyway. This can be extended to all other areas as desired. And with that, you also arrive at a particularly important topic for successful changes: cultural identification.

How do you create deep cultural identification in a corporate merger?

It starts with very banal things, because it’s usually not high-flown things that evoke emotions. For all employees to identify with the newly created organization, for example, a neutral company color is chosen and a completely new name is needed. In addition, the company should be built up at a completely neutral location. When merging two companies, care should also be taken to ensure that the organization is staffed equally. Ideally, the better one gets the position, but in terms of successful change management, I would rather rephrase it and say: first, parity should be the priority. If this is absolutely not feasible, then I would start putting the better ones in place. But if there are reasonably comparable options, I would always grant the different factions that each gets a resort they want, similar to the allocation of ministerial posts in coalition negotiations.

How do you specifically deal with this topic at digatus?

I don’t approach this in a particularly academic way, but rather try to tackle the process with pragmatic means. When a change process is imminent, I primarily rely on early communication through established channels and our internal tools, such as the intranet and Slack.

During the months of the hot phase, I then mandate management and myself to allocate more time for employees. This means spending more time on-site in the offices and having more time for individual employees, simply to clear up a lot in bilateral conversations.

I would first rudimentarily describe the change management process itself, as well as the short and long-term goals, the timeline, and the communication approach. But at the core, I try above all to take a lot of time for individual employees, affected groups, and organizations. To conduct maximum information policy, I would offer information calls for all who want to receive updates in a faster or higher cycle. Additionally, we use our digatus academy format for various training offers and practical sessions.

It’s also important to me to deal with it openly and honestly, and therefore to involve employees, or at least some employees, in the process as early as possible. Specifically, I work a lot in one-on-one conversations or group discussions and try to reduce fears and generate enthusiasm and motivation for the change process.

Thank you for your time and your insights on this exciting topic!