Connections video: Relationship-based change management

When you’re taking on a big project like an ERP implementation, you might find that the question “What about change management?” comes up a lot.

Right now, “change management” is a big buzzword — but here at Syte, our approach to helping our clients navigate change is a little different.

Change management comes from a deep understanding of our clients, and we rely on relationship building to help them get where they want to go. Navigating change gracefully — with the least amount of tumult — boils down to a few key things: connection, collaboration, and communication.

In today’s video, I turn the idea of change management on its head and show you how you can navigate change by being real, honest, and transparent with everyone involved in your projects.

Good morning, Erin Koss, CEO at Syte Consulting Group, here with you today. You know, we’re rolling into Fall and we’re starting to think about what’s on the docket for our larger projects in January. A lot of our clients start doing their ERP implementations after the first of the year and one of the things that comes up in questions that we get asked are “How do you think about change management?”. This has been such an interesting topic for us recently because we get this question a lot from solution providers that we are asking to evaluate on behalf of our clients as they consider ERP solutions. This is one of the things we’ve been thinking about and that we’ve been trying to communicate to our family-owned business leaders. I did want to share with you today about ways to think about change management that maybe is a little bit different than you’ve thought about it before.

Think of it like you’re taking on a large project and all the consultants are throwing at you “What about change management? What about change management?”. It just feels like a big buzzword to me and I just kind of want to break down what I think it really is. My go-to is to put together the methodical structured approach and present it out and say here it is, right, this is what it looks like and there is a way to do that.

It certainly feels good for someone like me who’s been in project management and set in the process of how things are supposed to roll for so many years. Yet, what change management is about is about deep knowing and understanding and relationship between Syte, in our case, and our clients. Sometimes, this also extends to the solution providers and what we find is change management is in our DNA. This comes from being really experienced in what we do. For us, that’s ERP, process improvement, and solution implementation.

It comes from that experience, but it also comes from a deep knowledge of our customers business, where they’re at, and where they’re trying to go. Our job is to help them get there. What change management looks like in that context can really vary. It can really vary based on what their needs are. Do you speed up? Do you slow down?

Do you take a pivot? Do you take a turn? It’s like a road map where you’re going from the west coast to the east coast and the road is closed and you need to do something a little differently. All right, so I must be honest about the background noise that you’re hearing and I’m just going to call it out like it is this crazy thing, right? This is our new puppy, Janie, who you probably heard us heard me talk about in our last video and she is wanting to get out of her kennel and play with her squeaky toy, which everyone says, don’t get the dog a squeaky toy and I did. So there it is. We’ll put her back for a minute and we’ll wrap this thing up. All right? There you go.

Change management for Syte is embedded in our experience, in our care, understanding and knowledge about our clients. How does change management show up for you and the people that you work with? You’re navigating something new, something different.

It’s great to have a process and an approach for managing change and it’s not the thing that’s going to get you necessarily where you’re really trying to go. The process and approach is a starting point, but it’s the deep connection and relationship that will really get you there. Where does that show up for you in the work that you do with your customers, with your employees and with others? I really encourage you to ask yourself that and maybe think about how managing change might be something different than you thought it was at the beginning.

One last thing I’ll say is the other element of managing change that we find is important. Two things. One is communication. Constant communication.  When you’re navigating twists and turns and doing things a little differently than maybe you expected to, that relationship and that trust is built on a lot of communication and consistent communication.

Reliable and predictable. The other is transparency. If seeing what’s true, even when it’s hard, right, clients and people don’t like to hear we were going this way and now we’re going this way. Not everybody likes to hear that change is hard.

I think acknowledging that in our communications in a transparent way is important as well. Let’s see if I can summarize this thing. I got a little hijacked by the cute puppy. There’s a structure and approach to it that’s important.

It gets you out of the gates and at the end of the day, what’s going to get us there is connection, relationship and communication and transparency. It’s knowing one another, it’s knowing how to talk with one another. It’s knowing how to be honest and open and transparent with one another as things shift and pivot. This is particularly important when we’re doing a project that is high stress or taking us out of our day job, being added to our day job.

It’s extra work, so there’s more stressors. So, again, built on relationship change management. Let’s turn it on its head and think about it in a slightly different way and have more meaning and more success in the end and feel better to people when they reach that finish line that they felt like they were cared for and listen to and part of the process, I hope you have a great day. Take care.