How Change Management Has Evolved Over The Last 20 Years with Doug Wolfson
While change management is a critical aspect of organisational success, there was much less recognition of its importance in years gone by. In this episode, I chat to Doug Wolfson about how change management has evolved over the last 20 years, and how community and connection play a vital role in driving better outcomes for organisations.
Doug Wolfson is the director of Pivot Consulting with 25 years experience in change management. He works with organisations going through major transformation initiatives at both the strategic and the operational levels, and is passionate about supporting change management professionals to connect with one another and continue to grow in their practice.
In our conversation, Doug shares the driving force behind establishing The Change Management Institute, a community of like-minded professionals who come together to share their experiences, insights and knowledge.
There has been much progress in the industry over the last 20 years, and Doug talks about the changes he’s observed, such as the shift towards more agile approaches to change management. We speak about organisations recognising the need to become more adaptable to ever-evolving circumstances, as well as the importance of engaging people managers in the change process.
Changes within an organisation can present many challenges, and we often see these initiatives attempted, yet fail. This can lead to cynicism among middle managers, who have experienced the coming and going of well-intentioned game plans that never truly stick. Doug speaks about the importance of working with these leaders in the middle, who can grasp high level strategy, as well as bring insight on how to get things done. When it comes to overcoming scepticism, co-creation is key.
For change management to continue to advance, its practitioners need to be dedicated to continuous learning. Doug emphasises the importance of gaining insight from others and borrowing wisdom from fields such as design thinking and neuroscience.
He shares all about Rethink Change, an events-based entity he co-founded that brings industry professionals together, and we chat about the upcoming Rethink Change conference that will focus on the latest trends and insights in change management.
Sign up for 10% off your Rethink Change Conference ticket by entering your details below. You’ll receive a special 10% discount code just for EVER Change & Communication subscribers!
Doug has a wealth of knowledge from his many years in the industry, and I hope this episode challenges you to think about the ways in which you can create innovation in your own methods of communication, collaboration and engagement.
Kate: [00:00:00] [00:01:00]
Hi, hi, friend. Welcome to another episode of The New Way. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you've been having a great week so far. I have. My guest on the show this week is Doug Wolfson, the director of Pivot Consulting with 25 years experience in change management, he works with organisations going through major transformation initiatives at both the strategic and the operational levels.
He's also an adjunct facility member at The UNSW Business School in Sydney, where he teaches change management courses within their MBA program. Doug was one of the co-founders of the original Change Management Institute here in Australia back in 2005 and more recently, a couple of years ago, he co-founded Rethink Change, which is an events based entity Which brings together thinkers in the change management [00:02:00] field to share their insights at conferences and webinars. In this episode, you are gonna hear about the original driving force behind establishing the Change Management Institute, how the change management industry has evolved over the last 20 years, super interesting, and why change managers really need to get better at engaging people managers and just how they can do that. And the worst transformation program that Doug has ever supported in his career. I'm gonna share a spoiler with you. It was not a success. That program, you're not gonna be surprised.
Everyone has one of these stories and I loved Doug sharing his. We also talk about the 2023 Rethink Change conference that's coming up in Sydney this year, in August. I asked Doug to share what it's all about, some of the speakers and the topics and the theme of the event. I've got my ticket, and if it sounds like your kind of thing, well, I might see you there.
You know, I've just realised as I'm putting [00:03:00] this intro together for you, that the importance of community and connection is a theme that ran through our whole conversation. Anyway, enough with the intro. Let's get stuck in. Here's my conversation with Doug Wolfson. Enjoy. Doug, I'm thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that we are talking today. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Doug: Uh, thanks Kate. I'm really pleased to be here and, uh, it's a wonderful morning here in Sydney.
Kate: Oh, well, we were talking about the weather before. It's a very cold and gray and rainy day in Canberra, so I'm a bit jealous of the Sydney weather right now. I want to start with a question I love to ask people. I know that you have been in the change management space for a long time, even though you look very, very young and vibrant.
Everyone who's been involved in this space has got some war stories. What has been, without naming names and embarrassing people, what has been the worst change or transformation program that you've ever come across? What was it that made it so bad? [00:04:00] Please spill some tea.
Doug: Ooh, that's, that's a hard one. I recall and, and won't necessarily again, drop any names, of working for a kind of a quasi-government organisation that worked really, really hard for the team that I was working with. This was a bit earlier in, in my career. And the problem was, is most of the next level down of right below that kind of C level, were trying to run interference and by, I would call it by pocket veto, were trying to sabotage the project by not releasing the required people and talking a lot behind the scenes. So what a lot of people would consider as resistance was very clearly there, even with a lot of the efforts that we were trying to do, the project or the program of work didn't end up resulting in a successful outcome.
Kate: [00:05:00] Yeah, I was gonna ask if resistance or that kind of a very, very negative response is happening at the level, just under the C-suite. That's still a pretty senior, kind of level if they're not on board.
Doug: Yeah, and in this particular case, it was actually funny when I recall some of this, when I was trying to understand and, and explain some of the work that I did around change management, the explanation someone came back to is, whenever we have some new top level people, they come in with some, they think, great ideas and try to change things, and we just wait it out and then there's a change of management. And so to them they had a good laugh. That's what change management was about.
Kate: I haven't heard that exact, but I'm gonna keep that in my pocket and use that cuz I have, well, I'm sure all of us have worked with stakeholders at this point where we've heard, I've been here for 40 years. I've seen managers come and go. It's gonna keep staying the same. [00:06:00] So.
Doug: The reality is sometimes, and I've been involved in a number of these, the changes that you're working on was something that had been worked on five years earlier, and we're actually not quite resurrecting and hopefully it's done better and, uh, with more involvement with lower down and, and it's co-created.
Some of the programs of work that we are all on is another iteration of something that was tried earlier and didn't work well. A lot of those middle managers have seen this before. This show before.
Kate: Yes. And are kind of feeling a bit cynical about things, understandably so. Yeah, we have team right now working on a very, very big and very important, uh, change program in federal government and the initiative that they're supporting, the reason why it's happening is because it failed the first time around. So they are giving it another go. And this time with considering supporting the people side of that change. That's great.[00:07:00] I know that a while ago, you helped co-found The Change Management Institute, didn't you? Am I right in saying that?
Doug: Yes, so probably about a half a dozen people back in, I think it was around 2003, I had been running a community practice, um, with a number of people at the time. I was approached by someone else who had this idea, and there was about six of us again, six or eight, and over about two years we worked to pull it all together.
We did officially launch The Change Management Institute, I think in 2005. So I remember going down to the New South Wales government agency getting the, the forms to incorporate as a not-for-profit. I wrote the first, um, marketing plan for the, the CMI. I even remember the first three people that were officially paid members who were, end up, were mates of mine. Yeah. And then was on the board for, uh, two, three years and with kids and other things going on in life. Then I had to pull away and fortunately, [00:08:00] we had, uh, a few people that were very committed to the CMI and continued to, um, provide a lot of their own time, cuz it's voluntary, and the Change Management Institute's quite a big organisation at the moment now, and so quite proud of, uh, helping to kick that off a long time ago, about 20 years ago.
Kate: My gosh. It is 20 years ago almost. God, I'm getting old. Wow. I'm so interested, at that time, because the CMI now is, yes, it is a really important, uh, association, organisation for change managers to be connected to and others working in that space, what was the driving force at the time? Do you remember?
Doug: For me, I've always been very community minded and I enjoy kind of enabling, equipping other people. We just saw an opportunity to get people together to share ideas and also a bit of a community. There was not as many people doing change management back then. It has grown exponentially probably in the last 10 years, the, [00:09:00] the number of people that are working in change. And at the time it seemed like the right idea. There was a bit of, I would call it a gap in the market. There wasn't an association at the time. There wasn't something like the CMI or the Association for Change Management Professionals.
Uh, they actually came afterwards. Uh, so there was a, a gap in the market and then we marketed that gap and we, we built it out. Yeah, it was quite successful at the time. A lot of hard work.
Kate: I bet. Yeah. Well, two years to develop it. And so you just mentioned something, I agree as well. I do see, uh, this space, this industry, many more people over the past decade working in this space. What are some of the other evolutions and changes that you've seen in the space over, I'm gonna say 20 years?
Doug: Yeah, it's a long time, isn't it? So, again, going back about 20 years ago, there was not as many people within that world of change management, what we would call change management. I recall in most kind of programs or coming in doing [00:10:00] consulting, I had to explain to people what change management was. Uh, that was a little bit frustrating.
Some people saw it as a bit of communications or kind of the softer things. These days it's a lot more accepted. In fact, some organisations will actually budget a certain amount of money, you know, of a project. It could be 10% to say, you know, this is something that's important. What I've seen, Kate, is there's a variety of people that come into change management from lots of different kind of backgrounds.
So there, there is unfortunately... quality is very different from a point of view of change practitioners. Very different, and have a different starting point. Some people go through a three day kind of call it training type of certification, and they think that's all they need. Not really, but the reality is that's kind of the what, that's the cookie cutter approach.
That's that recipe. What's important is the why, you know, so [00:11:00] why am I doing these templates or doing it this way in this kind of phased... and in my experience in mentoring and coaching people and I come across, there's a lot of people that know the surface level within change, but they don't understand some of the foundational pieces, understanding kind of motivations of people and human behaviour, systems theory, for example.
So those are some of the basics. But to your other part of the question about what's changed, I'm delighted to see other disciplines come into kind of change. So people drawing on Agile, for example, drawing on design thinking, drawing on neuroscience, behavioural economics, um, would be another area.
And so I think it compliments a lot of the change type of work that we do. You and I may intuitively do some of these things and may have always done that, but it's good to understand the science kind of behind why we do some of the things that we do.
Kate: Yes, [00:12:00] I agree. Sometimes that can be very helpful in terms of validating or legitimising a particular approach to something and being able to communicate it, uh, in a way that may meet the requirements of decision makers in a business case and all of that kind of thing. I, I agree. That is a fascinating insight. I agree. I think one of the most exciting things about change management at the moment is the way that change managers are able to borrow insights and wisdom from all of these other really cool fields that you mentioned, to help make things better, to help make the change better for people.
I think that's so exciting. I know that there's something I'm now, I'm kind of diving into the work of change managers. I know there's something that you and I are quite aligned on in our thinking and that is about the ways that change managers engage with people, managers, you know, when they're in the space of [00:13:00] implementing a change program and supporting a change program.
And I have a feeling like you and I agree that this area of how change managers are kind of engaging with people, managers or team leaders, whatever we want to call them in their organisations where they're supporting a transformation initiative can be a big lost opportunity sometimes.
Doug: Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's a good point. I think the danger that some people in, not just change, but just in programs in general is have that Head Office kind of mentality, the ivory tower of building something for the business or the stakeholders, the receiver. And again, this is where I like the whole idea of the disciplines and, and those insights out of agile and kind of design thinking, about the idea of co-creating. This is where a, a space that I've always kind of played anyway. The real importance of, getting your stakeholders involved, not only in the design and the development, but in the [00:14:00] delivery elements. We shouldn't be doing that as practitioners, and in some cases, might be an outsider, a consultant, and sometimes they have teams internally, but it's the business leaders who are the, individuals that should be leading the change within their areas.
And so the first thing I do when I get involved with an organisation is meeting with certainly our stakeholders, our leaders, our managers. But through that different hierarchy, the middle managers in particular are the areas that I go to first. They have a high enough view probably to understand the strategy, but a low enough view, they actually know how these things get done.
The piece that I often hear, Kate, is that, um, when you talk to some practitioners, and it's probably more junior people, they think in that cookie cutter approach when they think about leadership involvement, it's about having a senior leader send out an email, hold a town hall, and that's [00:15:00] just kind of not necessarily the icing on the cake, that's just the surface level.
You need to actually get out there and work with your business manager or organisational managers and leaders. It's their change. They're the ones that have to own it afterwards, so let's build it with them.
Kate: Oh my gosh. I could not agree more. Absolutely those middle managers, that's the knowledge bank of the engine room, of the organisation. It is their change. If it's going to succeed at all, the change is gonna be felt and seen, observed in that space on, on the ground there. Uh, If I'm a change manager and I'm not confident, I don't have a lot of experience with engaging with middle management and kind of doing that co-creation that you mentioned, what are a couple of tips that you might share with me to kind of get started in that space? To approach that?
Doug: So I would say even for a more junior person, the first part is just going out and making the introduction. [00:16:00] So even sending, if someone's new in an area, if they're internal or even if they're external coming in and saying, this is who I am. I'd love to meet with you and get your ideas, your concepts, and just meeting with someone.
I've never been turned away by anyone. Someone may say, I'm busy at the moment now. Can you come back in a couple weeks? And it's like anything else. You experiment, you test and learn for someone, you figure it out. You know, there's plenty of middlemen. The first meeting doesn't go, well try it again, but you should feel confident.
I've been doing this for a long time and it's just taking a risk, having the conversation with someone and people are always very happy to share their thoughts if they can help influence what the outcome is. So I would say to people, Just do it. Send an introduction email. This is who I am. I'm going to send you a meeting invite, you know, in the next week.
And you'll find even before you send a meeting invite, someone will write back saying, this is fantastic. I would love to meet with you and [00:17:00] share that. And then you send your meeting invite. And so you've preempted that acceptance of the, um, the meeting invite so someone knows why you're sending.
Kate: Yes, I agree. I think it's highly likely you're gonna get a very warm reception, and I think it can be really useful to think about that co-creation part, as you may have insight and information about the intent of the change program that the person you are meeting with does not yet currently have, or you have in a different kind of way, and you may have some expertise in change management that might be really useful.
Doug: You are almost flattering the other people saying, you may have this information, this expertise, and people want to hear that. We're coming to them. It's their business. They know how it works, and if there is gonna be that new way of working, those individuals want to contribute to it.
Kate: Absolutely. A new way of working always still about respect and agency. So, uh, it's always best to kind of [00:18:00] lead with those, I think, as much as possible. I wanna ask about Rethink, Rethink is a conference for people listening who haven't heard of that.
And this is something else that you have helped co-found recently. I'm kind of, I understand you are a creator. Enjoy, uh, doing that. Tell me what inspired you to co-found Rethink? Do I call it Rethink Change? Do I call it Rethink Change conference?
Doug: So it's a Rethink Change conference, which is happening on the 11th of August in 2023. So this year. So this will be our second conference that we are running, you know, it's in Sydney and, online for those individuals that can't make it to Sydney. So the story began during Covid. So, a colleague or mate of mine, Janine Ellison, probably four months after the start of Covid, when we were more freedom to move around over a glass of Shiraz, we were out just having a nice chat, reconnecting ourselves. Said, isn't this [00:19:00] so nice? Wouldn't it be great to get a bunch of people to come out, give people a reason to come out?
And we said... again, Janine's been involved in change for a long time as well. And so we decided to, uh, at the time, maybe it was a, it was a foolish thing to do at the time, but we said, why don't we get some of our colleagues together to present? We thought we can get a half dozen people to present and we could get a couple dozen people to come along.
So the intention in the beginning was a small type of conference for about 30 people. And the idea initially was rethink, you know, let's look at some of our ideas of change. How have they changed over the time, for senior change people? That's what we were looking for. And have it more conversational and then reconnect.
Wouldn't it be great if we could all enjoy the idea of having, uh, some conversation and thing. In the end, Kate, the conference was postponed three times. Each time we had a date, there was another wave of Covid, and so we [00:20:00] persevered. So our initial plans of a small kind of intimate gathering of 30 people ended up being 150 people.
Kate: I guess word got out. You had the longest marketing cycle ever.
Doug: Yeah, we had a hundred people face-to-face and 50 people online. And we got excellent, uh, feedback both from the people face-to-face and online and just that real feeling of community. A bit of a gap, again, people felt that that was something missing.
And we have been delighted and some fantastic presenters. So another thing that I do is I teach within the university area around, uh, change management. But what you often get from colleagues or other people is we learn ourselves. So for me was a great opportunity to learn from other people that know a lot more in certain areas, certain disciplines that I don't know. So as a continuous kind of learner, it's a fantastic opportunity.
Kate: Yeah. Oh, look, I, I am attending this year's and I'm looking forward to it. Uh, it looks [00:21:00] like you've got some very interesting speakers. And by the way, for anyone who's listening to this who's interested, we will have links in the show notes to everything so that you can easily go check it out and learn about it. Tell me what the theme of this year's conference is.
Doug: So this is around future focus and foundations. One of the areas that we wanted to make sure is one future focus. So what are some of the themes or what are some of the trends that may be coming through? But at the same time, let's have some foundational areas there. So for people that may be new, they can find their feet as well.
So we're, we'll have a number of case studies. Uh, there's something around neuroscience around, we'll look a little bit around, AI and Chat GPT, design thinking, coaching. Uh, some influence. So there's a little bit for everybody. And then this year we're also having a day before we have some, uh, pre-conference masterclasses.
The other piece, Kate, that I would love to offer to your podcast [00:22:00] listeners is a discount. So if it's all right with you, we will provide your listeners with 10% off. They'll just have to contact you or EVER Change and then obtain the discount code.
Kate: That's great. We will, uh, set something up so it's really easy for people to access at everchange.com.au/rethink so people can just head straight to that landing page and so we know. And then we'll send you that code so that people can grab the 10% off and come along. Join me and join Doug and meet a bunch of other people. Well, we'll link to everything to make sure it's really easy for people to find. Doug, thank you so much for your time today. Tell me if people would like to keep the conversation going with you, how can they best connect with you?
Doug: So I would say certainly on LinkedIn. So I'm on LinkedIn as Douglas Wolfson, although I think Doug Wolfson comes up as well. They can also, uh, find out more about what I do and, [00:23:00] and what my business does at pivotconsulting.com.au. So I also do a number of trainings for business leaders and practitioners. And then another plug just for rethink change.com.au.
Kate: And we'll link to everything. So if people are interested in keeping the conversation going or if they've got any questions, they can easily hit you up in the nicest, kindest, friendliest way. Doug thank you so much for your time today. It's been great to chat.
Doug: Uh, thanks Kate. I really appreciate the invitation to come along.
LINKS
CONNECT WITH DOUG:
Website: https://pivotconsulting.com.au/
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/douglaswolfson
CONNECT WITH KATE:
Download my Energy Management Toolkit here!
Website: https://www.everchange.com.au/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ever-change-and-communication