Proceedings

April 30, 2009

8:30 am The journey of 1000 miles begins with one step ... and a plan: Growning an enterprise-wide capability to lead change in the Coast Guard

Stephen B. Wehrenberg, Ph.D., HR Strategy and Capability Development, Director, Future Force and Director, Executive Development, US Coast Guard

After introducing the Coast Guard, Dr. Wehrenberg discussed how culture forms and is changed.  He showed a circular diagram which describes “structure influences behavior which creates events, which accumulate to patterns about which stories are told and heroes emerge becoming culture (which the drives structure and behavior, etc.).  His point is that culture is very hard to change and impossible to change quickly. 

Wehrenberg then proposes the adoption of what he calls “Enterprise Change Management” which is structured, research-based, holistic and scalable.  He describes this as “a guerilla approach” to OCM, that is facilitate by structure and the use of templates.  Finally he introduced the group to a newly formed organization “The Association of Change Management Professionals” that will provide

9:15 am Irresistible Force Meets Immovable Object: Managing Change in Military Organizations

Ruby Butler DeMesme, Public Services Transformation and Change Solutions Group BearingPoint

Ms. DeMesme defined four principles for managing change:

• See the complexity – emphasizes the difference between complicated situations and complex situations in terms of scope and predictability – change management becomes more critical as the situation veers more toward the complex.
• Understand the limitations of linear solutions – complex situations defy linear attempts to solve them, requiring leaders to look beyond the obvious, simple solutions.
• Navigate to a “North Star” – such situations require a bold vision and strategy that provides common goals and objectives, which must be consistently communicated with conviction.
• Lead for Greatness – complexity requires strong leadership that takes risks, challenges subordinates, and rewards excellence.

10:30 am Designing and Implementing Horizontal, Collaborative Organizations to Improve Performance

Frank Ostroff, Managing Partner, Ostroff and Associates, LLC

Mr. Ostroff focused on a description of the “Horizontal Organization,” a focus on the process that cross boundaries among pieces of the organization or enterprise.  This is not the same as a “flat” organization.  Horizontal Organization achieves 44% better time/cost/quality results in his experience.

Mr. Ostroff did not make his slides available for attendees.

11:15 am Collaboration: Achieving Change in The Department of Defense

Dave Wennergren, Deputy CIO, DoD and Vice Chairman, Federal CIO Council

Mr. Wennergren provided a “Top 10 List” of wisdom for how to create culture change in government (provided backwards here because that’s how MS Word works):

• Be a Positive Force for Change – leaders get the behavior that they exhibit and tolerate.  Recommended reading:  Leadership is an Art by Max DePree.
• Transparency and Trust – transparency brings out truth and truth leads to trust; trust reduces fear and supports speed.  Manage by attention to truth.  Recommended readings:  Speed of Trust by Stephan Covey (the younger) and Execution by Larry Bossidy.
• Be a Learning Organization – for our organizations to change, the existing workforce has to be agile, because they (boomers) aren’t going away.  This means we have to create organizations that are capable of learning.  Recommended reading:  Wikinomics by Tapscott and Williams.
• Power of Alignment – alignment is brought about by measurement, sensing what is going on.  Outcome based measures are essential – e.g., aircraft ready for tasking (rather than aircraft parts replaced), or personnel ready to fill a real slot, rather than just number of personnel available.                         
• Power of Teams – teams are essential as our work gets more and more complex.  Social computing, crowdsourcing are important ways to reinforce the power of teams. 
• Storytelling – stories are an essential way to communicate in support of change, to tell people what the value proposition is.  There is always a status quo story that is the underlying belief system of an organization; the leader has to replace that status quo story with a better story, the change story.
• Polarity Management – leaders have to manage polarities – opposing forces that can keep us from acting.  Example:  the need for security vs. the need to share.  If the forces of security get the upper hand we have a “self-inflicted denial of service attack.”  If the forces of sharing get too strong then our enemies can get access to everything – a balance must e struck for us to operate effectively.
• The Status Quo can’t get a Bye – in most organizations the status quo continues to be funded unless it’s explicitly shut down – in other words, inertia favors the status quo.  We can’t allow this to happen – the status quo must justify itself just as much as its replacement – sort of internal zero-based budgeting.
• Move with Speed – time is your enemy in the change process; focus and convergence lead to agility; small investments make a huge difference – pilots can be used to achieve “escape velocity.”
• It helps to ride the waves of change in society – if possible take advantage of what else is going on – e.g., social computing, cloud computing provide opportunities for leverage if they match with the change your organization needs.  Service oriented enterprise capability provides focus for quick delivery.                                

12:00 noon Lunch with Speaker

David Plouffe, Campaign Manager, Obama for America

Mr. Plouffe described his experiences during the recent Presidential campaign.  He emphasized the importance of persistence, sticking with the plan even when things don’t seem to be going very well.  He discussed the importance of grass roots, bottom-up change – giving the example of how no one in the establishment of the Democratic Party gave Obama much of a chance early in the campaign.  It was their ability to leverage social media to get to the grass roots effectively and efficiently that enabled them to succeed.  Plouffe said that traditional communications and media are nearly dead, replaced by video and social media.

Mr. Plouffe did not use any slides.

1:30 pm Panel - Leading Change: Moving Organizations and Culture

Chris Beiswenger, Executive Vice President, HCL Axon Americas

Mr. Beiswenger discussed the role of the transformational leader and what the characteristics such a person are.  “The most powerful human transformational leader is a leader who has nothing to lose and only pride to gain.”  Leadership matters more than we think because all large transformation efforts undergo their ups and downs and without a strong leader to get them past the down periods, the program will die.  Such a leader has 4 characteristics:  the ability to synthesize and articulate the vision, strong personal values (Principles), a deep understanding of cultural values, and a service orientation.

Zachary Tumin, Executive Director, Leadership for a Networked World Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University                                                                                                                                             

Mr. Tumin focused on the importance of collaboration – leaders have to lead their organizations to the water of collaboration and help them drink from it.  “In a network world no organization or company can succeed by going it alone.”  “Great leaders always say ‘I can’t do it alone’ and ‘ We can always do it better.’”  “Make every consumer, customer and worker a sensor for your enterprise or project.”

Kenneth E. Russell, Ph.D., CIO, David H. Murdock Research Institute

Dr. Russell focused on collaboration and leadership.  For Dr. Russell, an effective leader of change maximizes communication, provides an effective governance structure, and provides a clear link between “business functions” and the “business.”  An effective leader also doesn’t delegate too much, especially down too many layers.

3:30 pm Panel – Making Change an Element of Strategy

John Schmidt, Chairman VP, Global Integration Services, Informatica, and Chairman, Integration Consortium

Mr. Schmidt noted that constant, but in-control change is an ideal state for most organizations.  Effort is needed to overcome change resistance.  There are three Critical Success Factors for accomplishing this: 

• A mix of personality styles,
• Long-term flexible architectures
• Sustainable integration methods

Dwight Toavs, Ph.D., Professor of Systems Management, National Defense University

Dr. Toavs described transformation as a matter of strategic alignment that involves five types of activities:

• Define nature and dynamics of transformation
• Assess organizational environment
• Map connections and dependencies
• Focus Governance
• Ensure Strategic Alignment

Patricia Bush, Vice President, The Palladium Group

Ms. Bush described three stages in the change process:  unfreeze, effect change, and breakthrough and sustain.   She then discussed how to build a case for change and defined the various types of adopters, from innovators and early adopters to laggards.  She also discussed four types of change agent roles:  advocate, subject matter expert, point person and coordinator.

May 1, 2009

8:30 am Transformation in US Air Force Logistics

Grover L. Dunn, Director of Transformation, Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Installations and Mission Support, Headquarters U.S. Air Force

Mr. Dunn first described the change challenge confronting the US Air Force (USAF).  In particular he pointed out that there had been a long history of continuous marginal changes, but major changes had rarely reached their potential.  Mr. Dunn noted several challenges particular to the USAF, especially that the risk of mission failure was particularly high (given the lives at stake) and that the “change absorption cycle (how long it takes to build and sustain a change, 4-5 years) is longer than the leadership cycle (2-3 years).  And he pointed out that while it is relatively easy to change an organization in crisis, it is very difficult to change one that believes it is successful – and the USAF is a very successful organization.

Within USAF Logistics, change management is being pursued in the following ways:

• Dedicated people/resources to do this full time
• Got Senior Leadership endorsement & periodically renew it
•  Awareness Surveys and Periodic Briefings
•  Developed, socialized, coordinated a plan - LogEA
•  Built/socialized a full up “Campaign Plan”
•  Brought In Professional Change Management Expertise
•  Conscious CM Strategy/Plan including a comm plan
•  Engaged our internal AF communications weapons
•  Hired a “Persistent [person] ” to run this thing

Mr. Dunn defined himself as the “persistent [person] ” in question and noted that it was critical to build change management into large scale transformation programs from the beginning.  He then described in some detail the activities that had taken place or were planned within the Expeditionary Logistics for the 21st Century (eLog21) and Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) programs. 

9:15 am Panel – Making Change Work

Ron Kohler, Practice Area Lead, Vector Research Center, TechTeam Government Solution, Inc.

Mr. Kohler discussed the importance of the team in collaboration.  He pointed out that commitment is strongly influenced by social networks and shared goals that then go on to build trust.  The system integrator, user community, and program management must play to the same game plan covering clear roles and responsibilities and working toward the same goals.  Similarly, the government program manager must maintain consistency of purpose and message.  Mr. Kohler then described the types of social networks and how they influence the ability of people to work together in a team situation.

Mitch Fleischer, Corporate Analyst, Vector Research Center, TechTeam Government Solution, Inc.

Dr. Fleischer discussed the role of consistency in the delivery of change management services and the role of metrics in maintaining that consistency.  He then described threes areas of “success” in  change management:  commitment, organizational readiness, and individual readiness for the specific change.  Dr. Fleischer discussed metrics for both change management outcomes and processes and gave specific examples of each.  He concluded with a discussion about how to use the metrics to influence the results of a change management effort by completing the feedback loop to bring results to the attention of management.

John Pourdehnad, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Poudehnad discussed a different types of change (reformations vs. transformations), why it is so difficult to change, and some of the major approaches to addressing transformative change.  He particularly focused on organizations as social systems and the characteristics of transformative leaders.

Pamela Waters, Organizational Change Management Team Leader, Office of Major Projects, Department of Technology & Information, State of Delaware

Ms. Waters first described the experiences the State of Delaware had implementing ERP systems – their first attempt in the late 1990’s was a real failure, but no attempt was made to include a change management process.  In 2001 when they tried again, this time with a strong change management component, it was very successful.  This led to the creation of a permanent change management team with the Department of Technology and Information.  Ms. Waters described these events and then described the standard change management methodology being used within the Department.

Quimby Kaizer, Associate Partner, IBM

Ms. Kaiser presented a summary of the results of IBM’s Making Change Work Study and provided insights into the benefits of change management from a quantitative perspective. 

10:45 am Workshop: The Organizational LOE--- An INDIVIDUAL Approach to Managing ORGANIZATIONAL Change

Victoria Grady, DSc, The George Washington University

Dr. Grady conducted this workshop with two of her research assistants.  The workshop discussed the Model of an Organizational Loss of Effectiveness (LOE). This model hypothesizes that an organization experiencing a loss of stability, e.g. during organizational change, will exhibit symptoms that are predictable, measurable, and can negatively impact the overall effectiveness of an organization. These symptoms include; decreased productivity, decreased morale, decreased motivation, increased conflict, increased absenteeism, and increased turnover. Based on similar types of diagnoses for individuals, if a significant number of the symptoms, e.g. a majority, are present in the organization’s behavior, the result will be an Organizational Loss of Effectiveness (LOE).