How The Role Of The Change Manager Is Evolving And The Impact On Your Career Growth with Sharon Connolly

If you’ve been in the change management space for some time, you’ll know that this field has evolved, particularly over the last few years. My guest today is Sharon Connolly, a seasoned change manager in the financial services industry and we’re talking today about some of the misconceptions about change management, the role of change managers, and the essential skills needed to succeed in this ever-evolving landscape.

Sharon Connolly is the founder of Change Superhero, providing training, templates, and coaching for change managers at all levels. In this episode, Sharon shares her perspective on how the industry has shifted in the last 15 years and why many organisations will struggle to understand what change managers do. 

The role of the change manager has undergone significant transformations, especially since COVID-19. Sharon notes that change managers are now finding a seat at the decision-making table in some organisations, no longer operating solely under the project manager's umbrella. This elevation in status allows change managers to contribute to strategic discussions and ensures that change is considered holistically alongside project management. Sharon encourages change managers to actively advocate for this role and assert their expertise in shaping the change journey.

Although change has become more complex, often requiring change managers to navigate multiple projects simultaneously, we now have access to valuable toolkits, processes, and systems. We talk about how the resources available to change managers today help them stay on track and strategically approach their projects. 

Sharon also offers some incredible advice for change managers looking to optimise their roles. She suggests that change managers should design their ideal jobs by focusing on tasks they enjoy and embracing the power of delegation. Sharon also shares her top tips for change managers as they ascend the ranks within an organisation and we share a discussion about the pros and cons of being a consultant versus a full-time employee.

We also talk about the importance of networking and staying visible within the change management community. Sharon encourages change managers to share their knowledge and expertise generously without expecting immediate returns and being a role model for change within your organisation. Sharon and I covered so much in this episode and I know you’re going to find so much value in this conversation.

Take a listen now. Enjoy!

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Kate: How has your role evolved over the last few years? Is your job as a change manager or a change leader getting more challenging? If you've been thinking about your career recently and what's next, you're really going to enjoy today's episode. I'm excited to welcome Sharon Connolly back to the show, as well as being a change manager in the financial services industry.

[00:01:27] Sharon is also the founder of Change Superhero. That's her consultancy where she provides training, templates, and coaching for change managers at all levels. Sharon and I talk about how the role of the change manager has really shifted in the last three years and what this evolution means in a practical sense for folks that are working in the change space day to day, we cover a heap of ground in this conversation, including whether or not managing change has become more complex for change managers.

[00:01:57] How the change manager role is evolving, you know, from employee to contractor to consultant. And what that means for you. We talk about the pros and cons of each of those, how to design your ideal job as a change manager. I love this. Sharon shared something that you would need to hear. It's a strong reminder.

[00:02:16] And we also talked about the skills that are becoming increasingly important for change managers to deliver. Sharon shared three in particular, which I thought were really, really cool. get ready for a fun, insightful and energising episode. You know, I always love talking with Sharon because her takes are always so grounded in the practicalities of what it actually means to be a change manager day to day. Let's get into it and you're going to see what I mean. Here we go. My conversation with Sharon Connolly.

[00:02:45] Hi, Sharon. I'm so glad that we're talking today.

[00:02:49] Sharon: Hi, Kate. I'm very pleased to be here.

[00:02:51] Kate: It's great to have you back. the first thing I want to ask you is in your experience through your career in, in change management, what are some of the biggest. Weirdest, most common misconceptions about change managers or change management that you've come across. Is there anything that's kind of really stumped you, made you laugh out loud?

[00:03:14] Sharon: Well, first of all, we have to appreciate that change management is really only, what would you say? 15 years old. Prior to that, we had different job titles. We were doing, this is me, I was doing change, but I was, a training manager or even. type of project manager or program administrator. So we've only had that job title for around about 15 years.

[00:03:38] And in a lot of organisations, when change managers start, people still don't know what they do. I'm going to call on what is a massive bugbear for a lot of change managers. Oh, you, yeah, you do the training and the communications and change managers go crazy over that. But I would say. yes, we do the training and communications, but we do it with a change lens.

[00:04:02] So, I think there's a misconception and the direction for a lot of us to do administrative tasks. Bring it on. We're really well paid to book those meetings and buy those muffins if that's what you want me to do for $1, 500 a day, sure, I'm just going down to Baker's Delight for you now.

[00:04:23] Kate: You've made a great point actually, change managers and people working in the change space do run training, they do communication, they do engage stakeholders, they do these very practical doing things, but they bring a certain perspective, they understand the context.

[00:04:41] Sharon: If they're allowed to, and here's the difference is that as a change manager, particularly as a change lead or a senior change manager. you don't want to be directed as to this is the communications to do when they say do the communications, as long as you've got free reign and you have got the ear of the leadership team or a change practice, as long as you've got those senior people, you've got their time and their trust. I think it's absolutely fine. To own the communication and own the training, but you want to be able to make sure that you're doing it with your change expertise as input.

[00:05:18] Kate: Yes, now you just mentioned and I agree that change management as a thing, as a title has really only been around for not very long, about, you know, 15 years. know that you and I both agree The role and the field is evolving. Do you think that change management and the role of the change manager has evolved a lot? You know, in the last 3 years or so since covid?

[00:05:41] Sharon: Yeah, I'm seeing that change managers. Now, have a seat at the table in some organisations. So this could be a change lead or a change director, but previously, a lot of the time the change, professional would work under the project manager. Now what's happening their role is elevated and it's being seen that actually these guys do different things, even if is just as we were saying that the communications and the training the change professional needs to come and talk about the journey and the transition as something that happens alongside the project management not Under the project management.

[00:06:21] And I think as change leaders, we need to take responsibility and fight for that and say, I need to come to the steer co with you. It depends on the governance in the organisation, but change managers should fight to actually have their say and put their case for how the change runs in a project, not just be directed by the project manager. And I think that is happening.

[00:06:46] Kate: Yeah, I agree. I think that change is happening as well. Along with the establishment of CMOs, change management officers, and kind of change portfolio management. I think all of that is working to elevate. And from change managers that I talk to and engage with, I think that they are seeing that change themselves, they are successfully negotiating, that and kind of building trust with those internal stakeholders, because that's kind of a key part of it to, uh, as you say, like fight for it, you know, like to kind of get, to that level. I agree. I think that is happening.

[00:07:24] Sharon: I think they need to grab it though. And so many change managers, because I do quite a bit of change coaching now. And so many of them come to me with imposter syndrome. They're amazing. They're fabulous. And they worry about the skills that they've got because they take them for granted because so many things come naturally to them. They don't realise that their Stakeholder engagement and negotiation and the way that they can take a complex project and break it down into different steps and explain it to their audience. They think everybody can do that and they really can't. And there are so many skills that we have that we need to own and recognise a very valuable skills.

[00:08:05] And they come to me saying, Oh, I've just got this job. I'm really worried that I'm not up to it. I'm really worried and I don't know what to do on day one and I think I'm going to get found out. And after I work with them for a couple of sessions, they're like, Oh my God, I'm awesome. I didn't realise how awesome I am. And they are, they really are.

[00:08:25] Kate: Yeah, good on you for doing that. I agree. It is so hard to value the skills that you are good at. We judge ourselves based on our internal world, our thoughts, our feelings, our insecurities, our doubts, our experiences with our past and we judge others by what we see externally. We see the confidence we see the delivery and we think, Oh, God, there's a gap. I'm not going to be able to do it. It is so challenging without guidance and without it being called out, you don't even realise that you are not valuing things that are easy for you. 100%. Do you think that change is becoming more complex for change managers? That this, this field of work is getting trickier? Or is it more simple these days?

[00:09:10] Sharon: No. And the reason that I think that that's not the case is that we realise going back to your PMO, we now realise that we need toolkits and processes and systems. When we look back, and I said that I, even though I didn't have the job title, but 15 years ago, I was a change manager, I didn't have a framework. I didn't have a toolkit. I didn't know exactly the processes that I was going to go through. I just did things. Whereas now I rock up to a project or I coach somebody saying, okay, this is what we're going to do in our first 30, 60, 90 days. How long is the project? When's the training going to happen? And we've got the timelines and we run it much more strategically than we used to.

[00:09:59] I think that because we've got systems and processes and checks and a community, things, more complex changes are happening, and we have to quite often juggle multiple projects. So that makes things more, more complex. But in terms of our delivery of it, it's getting simpler because smart changers out there are setting themselves up for success and they've got this massive toolkit and this framework that if they go off track, they can pull themselves back in. We have other complexities like, is it a waterfall? Is it agile? Is it lean? And we've got all of these other things that get thrown at us, but if we remember we've got these tools that we can just pull out and use and we stay on track and we check in with our community, we're good.

[00:10:48] Kate: Yes Oh, I love that. Thank you for pointing that out. I think that's a great point. I hear a lot of people in In the change space, talking about how their roles are becoming increasingly more challenging, increasingly more difficult, that they are being given more and more responsibility. so I think that's a wonderful perspective. If you're just listening to this and you're feeling like, Oh, God, my workload is going crazy and think about your toolkit.

[00:11:14] Sharon: Do you know what they're not doing there though? Is there, they're not delegating. So this is, I think, very important for change managers to enjoy and love their work is that they need to look at when you get to a more senior position in the organisation and you're asked to write your change strategy.

[00:11:32] Change strategy, change plan, change roadmap, whatever you want to call it. You look at all of the things that you've got to do in there. I've got to do stakeholder engagement. I've got to do impact analysis. I've got to run the webinars. I've got to do the survey and the change manager goes. I need to do it all.

[00:11:50] What they should do is think, what do I hate doing? I really hate delivering webinars. I'm going to write in the plan that those webinars are outsourced to the SME or the change champion. And we forget to design our ideal jobs. And of course you can't always do that. Sometimes you have to suck it up and do the webinar, but at least propose that somebody else Does the things that you don't like to do. Not the things that you want to learn more of because if you want to learn more about Lean, or you want to learn more about creating a SharePoint or creating a video, then take that and put that as a stretch goal.

[00:12:28] But if you hate technology, outsource creating the SharePoint to an external provider or to the IT department. Try at least to design a job where you do the bits that you love or you want to develop in instead of going, Oh, my God, I've got all this stuff to do. You don't, you don't, you have people that you can outsource it to. Say, I need a change analyst.

[00:12:52] I need to get the EA to come and be seconded to change. There are lots of options. And this is again about us being more senior and saying, I need assistance to deliver this. Project manager would say, I need two BAs and a project admin,

[00:13:10] Kate: Yes. Thank you for sharing that. That's a great, super great reminder for people. So as change managers are kind of elevated to the project manager level or program manager level, depending where they are, There are different types of skills and even perhaps techniques or approaches that are required are going to be helpful for you to be successful in that role. What do you think some of those key skills are?

[00:13:39] Sharon: Focus on what you've employed to do. And as change managers, we come in and we see the landscape and we see so much that can be changed. We immediately want to revolutionise the way that learning is delivered in the organisation.

[00:13:52] We want to change the culture. We need to look at the business requirement document or the business case and understand what is it you need to do in this 6 months or 12 months or 18 months. As part of that, you might be able to nudge some of the Cultural change inside the organisation. For example, if you create a SharePoint and you get people to come to that, to self serve their learning from what you've done, you've got some organisational change.

[00:14:24] So number one, focus on the business requirements. Two, prioritise what you can do now and what you need to do in the future. So people will come in and say, I've joined this project. It's an 18 month project and they haven't got a warranty period and they haven't got testing.

[00:14:45] It's day one. You go live in 18 months. Let's take the testing and the hyper care and the warranty and you can put it on your timeline for January because you can worry about it then. So it's about pacing yourself. So number one is really focus on what you need to do. Two is not try and change the culture of the organisation whilst you're in a project.

[00:15:08] You can scatter little bits of unicorn dust that will impact the organisation going forward. And three, really focus on doing what you can do now and putting the other stuff on your timeline and getting to it then. So those are, those are my three tips for how we can be more effective, at that level. If I told people to do just one, it's always look at the business case. What do you need to do to be successful? Because that's what you're measured on.

[00:15:41] Kate: It's about clarity, isn't it? And keeping yourself very clear and focused. You just said something I love, which I would love to hear more about, which Do not try to change the culture of the organisation from inside a project, the single projects that you're on. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

[00:16:02] Sharon: Yeah, I'll go back to the example that I had there, if I'm hired to put in a new expenses system or a new CRM, okay, that would be relevant to a lot of people. I'm here to put in a new CRM or I'm here to put in service now. And as I'm doing this, I can see this is a change immature organisation.

[00:16:22] We've got no framework, the organisation doesn't know what change managers do. We don't have a good LMS. I can see all of these problems because I come from organisations that have got different setups and are more change mature. Inside my CRM implementation, I can't influence the LMS. I can't say you need a change framework.

[00:16:48] What I can do though, is I can do a brilliant job inside my project and I can make it visible so that people say, I really liked the way that you delivered that learning. I've never seen a SharePoint like that before. I noticed that you've collaborated with the other change managers. And then through the excellent job that you do in the project and also natural nature to give and share and learn, those things can fall outside of your project and a couple of things happen, even if you don't stay in that organisation, if you move on, you leave the organisation more skilled and better equipped than when you got there. And, this is what happens to me a lot of the time, is that you easily get your next project in that organisation. so at the moment I'm working in a capacity where I'm working a few days here and a few days there rather than full time.

[00:17:42] So you start one project, you do cool stuff, and then people call you and they say, I saw that video that you did. Can you do one for us? I noticed your material in the change plan. Can you come and help us? So you get the opportunity to network and get work inside the organisation. And of course, those people will leave and go elsewhere and then they call you to come in.

[00:18:04] But it's really about doing a brilliant job inside your own ring fenced project, but sharing and hoping to influence the organisation, rather than saying, I can't possibly do this because this organisation doesn't have a change framework or it's everybody's doing things differently. Acknowledge that and set the best example so that they come to you and say, tell us more about that. Show us how to do that.

[00:18:31] Kate: Be the role model. It's up to you to elevate that your behavior can be the guiding the North Star on the culture change. Thank you. And fabulous example. I think a lot of people are going to relate to. Something that you and I have talked about is that we are seeing. A shift where change managers may have been employees or really embedded in the organisation, and they're kind of becoming consultants and advisors in some situations. Not in all situations, but I'd love to get your take on it. How much is Yeah that happening?

[00:19:05] Sharon: The only reason to be employed as a full time change manager is if you really want a career path inside an organisation. So if you're looking at a C suite position, head of transformation, something like that, then you need to take the salary cut. In most cases, you need to take the salary cut, become a full time change professional inside an organisation and work your way up in the organisation. So that you've got the benefits of the training and the mentoring and the visibility.

[00:19:37] If that's not of interest to you, I think you would be pretty crazy not to be a contractor because the rates are double a lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time they're double. But then you get the situation where you finish your role and you may be out of work.

[00:19:55] As I was mentioning earlier, whilst you're sitting out of work, things will come to you. And then you think, hang on a minute, I'm okay doing a bit here and a bit here. And you end up being an accidental consultant. You may not have planned it, but you're an accidental consultant.

[00:20:09] And then you, think, well, I'll just keep going with this until people stop asking me to do bits and pieces. And maybe you're a permanent accidental consultant and you love it, and then you build and you grow that. But sometimes then people run out of work and then they go back to a full time role. And it's getting older as well, as you get older and you have got a big network and people know what you do. And if you make sure that people know what you do, as they move through organisations, they'll come back. They'll come back to you for the areas that they know that you will, will help them with.

[00:20:45] And also if you're smart, you haven't spent all of your well paid contract wages on holidays, clothes and champagne. So you can enjoy that. You can enjoy that time off. I think that that's the way that it will go. And the other reason that I think is that increasingly as we, as more change managers adopt the mindset and the methodology, some of the things that I spoke about being more strategic, having the frameworks and the processes, organisations will realise that some of the stuff that they were paying change managers to do, they could have somebody less senior do that if the change manager can direct them.

[00:21:25] So I think the other thing that happens is this is, this is what I do a lot of the time I will come in and I'll write the strategy. I'll write the communications plan, I will design the training, and then I will leave it to be leader led or with change champions or with change analysts doing that. So I'm coming in and my skills are being used and valued in the right way, and I'm not buying the muffins for $1, 500 a day.

[00:21:54] Kate: I agree. I think that targeted effort, it's smart. It makes sense for organisations to have key experts in their area of strength, supporting and delivering for them at those key moments through a change journey or a program, a transformation programs journey.

[00:22:13] And I, I agree with your point that it is kind of different strokes for different folks, isn't it? If you are seeking that career path, then being an employee is appropriate. If you are interested in kind of having a more stable ongoing, you have a single client, that contractor model. And something I see is that a lot of contractors are kind of embedded almost in the organisation, almost as a quasi employee for the period of the project that, you know, the delivery that's required, but they're not permanent. They're going to be gone.

[00:22:44] Sharon: They get booted out after, depending on the organisation, sometimes one or two years, they can't stay for longer than that. So that's challenging. And I think that's quite short sighted of organisations because they, they lose all of that IP, all of that IP goes out the door. They can't afford to carry on. They're not willing to carry on paying them. And then all of that IP goes out of the door, but you know, that's, that's just the way it is. The only challenge that you've got with the approach that I'm talking about there being almost that helicopter consultant is your visibility.

[00:23:15] So people finding you and you have to network and you have to make yourself visible and not all change managers are comfortable doing that. So it's about putting, shining the spotlight on you, doing the podcast, making sure people know what they can come to you for. We both know that's a big job, putting yourself out there, deciding what you want to get known for.

[00:23:39] The way that you have to continue to do that is quite relentless, isn't it? You can't go, oh, look, I'm going to stop. You can put your gym membership on hold, but you can't put commenting on LinkedIn on hold because you're, you're, you're gone, you know? So it's about doing the freebies. It's about networking. It's showing up. And I think the most important thing, this is our strength. Most change managers cannot help but help people. I am somebody that cannot scroll past if in a Facebook feed of any feed, if somebody says, where can I get a Anything insert name here, where can I get who knows somebody I cannot help but comment.

[00:24:25] That's why we change managers is because we naturally want to help and support people. So, it's about doing that and giving back without expecting anything in return. It's about generosity of helping people and giving them your, your skills.

[00:24:42] Kate: Yes, that's lovely. Gosh, I love every time that we talk together. But I know we've been chatting away for a while. So let me know how can people who would also like to connect with you. How can they keep the conversation going with you?

[00:24:57] Sharon: So find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I also have a website, which I'm sure you'll pass on to people, which is Change Superhero. Tons of free templates and what you should definitely do for Change Superhero is sign up for tip of the day. It's mostly technical tips, but they're technical tips for things that will make your life easier as a change manager.

[00:25:19] So it's about being able to produce those presentations and that content and those videos, all of those artefacts. So, uh, sign up for the tip of the day on change Superhero, and then just drop me a line on LinkedIn. Love a chat. Love to connect to people. And if you are a change manager that's struggling with imposter syndrome or you want to have a chat about your career, then I do now do coaching as well, which I'm loving. Absolutely loving.

[00:25:44] Kate: we'll link to everything in the show notes and I know that information about that is on, uh, your website as well. Thank you so much. What a fabulous conversation.

[00:25:54] Sharon: Oh, it's been a pleasure, Kate, as always. Thank you.

LINKS

CONNECT WITH SHARON CONNOLLY:

Website: https://www.changesuperhero.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonconnolly/

CONNECT WITH KATE:

There are 4 different Change Leadership Styles. Which one is yours? Take my free 2 min quiz to discover your Change Leadership Style here!

Website: https://www.everchange.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drkatebyrne/