A couple of months ago I wrote about some of my experiences moving into the country and onto a small farm, and how incredibly clear that made the importance of process management and continuous improvement.
It’s been exciting and a little surprising to see how applicable my regular day job is to my new after-hours lifestyle!
One thing we have noticed though is how tiring it can be to adapt to the new routines and requirements of country living. Change is never easy, but when it’s significant and regular, it becomes exhausting. The experience can be the same in our organizations, with significant impact.
Gartner refers to it as ‘change fatigue’ and in the last 10 years the number of staff willing to support change in their business has halved due to it. According to Gartner research, less than half of employees experiencing above-average change fatigue are willing to stick around in any organization.
What they suggest, and something I’m excited to explore with my clients, is an alternative to traditional change management that reduces that fatigue and achieves better results for both the business and the people in it.
What is open-source change management?
Open-source change management is a collaborative approach, focused on people working together rather than a top-down strategy. It’s about cooperating on making change happen – management, process people, and subject matter experts on the frontlines all contributing to creating better processes and helping the business evolve. What makes this resonate so clearly for me is that I only have to look out my window each day to recognize how well it works.
Empower employees to contribute
One of the key principles of open-source change management is listening to the people on the ground. Your operational teams are your subject matter experts and know their roles better than anyone, so they should have a voice in how to improve their workflows.
Something we noticed when we first got our calves was that feeding them was a headache. These are not small animals, and getting them to gather and feed wasn’t easy. Then we noticed something: around the time of day we were thinking about putting out their feed, they’d naturally congregate by a certain gate. Normally we’d try to herd them into a pen from there, but it occurred to us – why not feed them there?
Our animals are the subject matter experts on being livestock. Our cows know best how to ‘cow’ and we’re fighting an uphill battle to make them behave differently. They have their own schedule, with needs and instincts that they communicate as best they can and that need to be recognized and worked with. When we understood this and shifted the feeding to the gate they gathered at, feeding time became so much easier.
Recognize different process possibilities
Not every team is going to work the same, and while standardization is helpful in many ways, it can also hinder process excellence when it’s applied without consideration for the context. Some teams, operations, and even divisions will have greater or lesser needs for oversight, compliance, or risk management. Identifying those needs and working with the teams to address them ensures effective change happens the first time, rather than by trial and error.
It was clear to us coming onto the farm that we’d be responsible for providing the necessities for our livestock: food, shelter, water, and companionship. What quickly became clearer was that those needs, while uniform, were more or less work depending on the animals involved.
Our calves showed that they were pretty self-managing in some ways, coming to the sheds at sundown, ready to be indoors for the night. Sheep, we soon discovered, are not quite that smart. They’re happy to wander and graze and will end up freezing in the dark.
While sheltering the calves each night wasn’t much harder than opening the gate and closing it behind them, for the sheep it meant going out to herd them into the yard then coaxing them under cover for the evening. Understanding their different needs and behaviors helped us refine the processes for dealing with them effectively and efficiently.
Collaborate on the best way forward
Not every process can be dictated by the operations of course. Compliance requirements and risk management need to be addressed, and that requires operations to shift their thinking too. This is the strength of open-source change management. It’s never a one-way conversation but a dialogue that explores all the facets of the process requirements and finds the right path forward.
With our menagerie, not every instinct is going to be catered to because they’re part of a bigger operation that is our lives. To this crazy mix of animals we also added a very boisterous puppy. The golden retriever is full of energy, but he needs boundaries for the health and safety of everyone involved. As his direct managers we need to recognize his needs for exercise and adventure and discovery, but also must contain his more chaotic impulses.
It becomes a collaboration to find the processes – the operational guidelines – that allow him to live his best life while not interfering with the bigger operation.
Like any young retriever, he loves to run, but that’s not always appropriate. He needs to be on his lead when we walk through the calf paddock so he doesn’t race off and startle them or roll in things we don’t want to have to wash off him. However, the next paddock is empty and we’ve decided it’s his to race around madly in. This process means he gets his exercise, and we don’t have to factor in a daily dog bath or agitated cattle. It’s a process that we’ve come to together that increases the outcomes for everyone.
Change is hard, and when people feel they’re being tossed around by it with no chance to own it, it gets exhausting. Open-source change management is a better way to approach it, engaging everyone in the process of making things better, and allowing them to do what they do best within the most effective and efficient frameworks.
When people feel like they’re partners in change, they’re less likely to be fatigued by it, and everything evolves more smoothly. Just like the farm, it doesn’t mean it’s not hard work sometimes, but it’s much easier when everyone is working together.