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When I bought my wife an engagement ring, I learned what it meant to live off scraps for months so I could afford it, but I also learned about the C’s of buying the right diamond, cut, colour, clarity and of course, carats. If you focus on one of these C’s, like carats, you could end up with a really big rock, but leaving cut, colour and clarity behind will mean you end with a dirty pebble. So you’ve really got to focus on all the C’s, make each of the best you can if you want a sparkly stone that’s going to impress and last the distance.
Change management is the same, we must pay attention to the Three C’s, they are non-negotiable and we must excel in each sphere.
Competency
The first C is for Competency where simply put, we need to have the knowledge and skills to achieve the change required of us. We must answer the questions, do our people know how to change, our people leaders know how to lead our people through change, are we ready, willing and able to make the change?
Capacity
The second C is Capacity. Do we have time in addition to our day jobs to commit the effort required to make and support the change? Do we have themental space required to think through and emotionally navigate the change? Will my team and my leaders have my back as I fail and learnthrough the change?
Community
The last C is for Community. Do we know who’s who in zoo across our organisation responsible for, or impacted by, the change. Have we identified the key players, their roles, the competency level they require to perform their role and can we network these people effectively to work as one distributed team?
Just like buying a diamond, we may have a preference and some will go for colour, ‘I want a yellow diamond’, or carat ‘the bigger the better’. The problem is that you focus on only one or two of these critical success factors, then the whole thing is for nought.
For example, let’s say you’ve got the community all sorted and competency is high, but people don’t have capacity for the change and we end up withfatigue, working long hours over extended periods and that’s simply not sustainable.
What about if the capacity was sorted plus a strong community in place but not the competency to do the work, now you end up with frustratedemployees who are feeling their way through uncertainty and frustrating themselves and others along the way.
Lastly, let’s say you’ve got high levels of competency in the team, and the capacity to do the work, but you have embedded a strong community of practice, now we end up with finger pointing where change is done UNTO us rather than WITH us. Inclusivity and collaboration are dead in the water and our effectiveness is only as deep as our single person influence.
So if you want to do change management right, its one of those things where you’ve really got to do it all, or don’t do it at all.