Easy Ways To Integrate Lean Change Management Into Your Project with Jason Little
Lean change and agile change management are becoming more popular terms these days, but do we know what they really mean? My guest today is prolific author and international speaker, Jason Little, and we’re talking about what lean and agile change management actually looks like in practice and how to integrate it into your change management program.
Jason Little is the founder of Lean Change and the author of three books, including Change Agility, Lean Change Management and Agile Transformation: A Guide to Organizational Change. In addition to revolutionising the world of change, he’s also CTO of Spero Careers Canada, a company dedicated to solving the autism employment crisis. He is a true pioneer in the change management space.
In this episode, Jason and I cover the core principles of lean change and how to start integrating lean and agile change practices into your project, particularly when your organisation is used to more traditional change management approaches. Jason shares some insightful recommendations such as using a change canvas, running lean coffee sessions and creating feedback loops. We talk about these in more detail and how you can start implementing them, starting today.
Lean change management is all about being as lightweight and efficient as possible while embracing startup thinking. The goal is to initiate change without drowning in unnecessary processes, which is something that often happens in larger organisations. Jason shares how placing an emphasis on conversation and obtaining feedback puts people in the centre of the change management program, instead of using change to simply drive results.
Feedback is a driving force behind effective change management. In this episode, Jason explains how constructive feedback loops help to course-correct and plan in shorter time frames, understanding that we don’t need to map out every single step. Implementing practices like lean coffee sessions encourages open dialogue and attendee-driven meetings, which can be a welcome shift from traditional change processes.
We also talk about the common dilemma of aligning the change process with the agile technical team while still satisfying the need for extensive documentation. This is where lean and agile change practices can shine. Instead of imposing changes drastically, Jason suggests swimming with the current and introducing fresh approaches to introduce change without alarming the status quo.
For change managers looking to introduce lean and agile change practices, it's best to start with baby steps… Co-creative change canvas sessions and lean coffee meetings are excellent ways to introduce new techniques without overwhelming the organisation. It's about finding the right balance between adhering to the established norms and introducing new ideas.
Take a listen now! I guarantee you’ll walk away with actionable takeaways from this conversation.
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Kate: I bet that you've heard the terms lean change management and agile change management thrown around, but do you know what they really mean? Agile change is having such a moment right now, isn't it? Perhaps you're working in a change project where the technical team is using an agile approach, and so it'd be useful for the change team to also work, you know, in an aligned way.
[00:01:27] But what does Lean and Agile change management? Actually look like in practice. Well, my guest today, Jason Little Knows, and he's here to help. He is the Grand Poobah and founder of Lean Change since 2009. He has been the world's leading pioneer on innovating in the change management space with Lean, agile, and Lean Startup thinking.
[00:01:53] Got some really cool ideas. In fact, he founded the Lean Change Management Association back in 2014. Jason's an international speaker. He's traveled all over the world speaking about change management, and he's the author of three books, change Agility, lean Change Management, and Agile Transformation, A Guide to Organizational Change, and in addition to revolutionizing the World of Change, he's also CTO of Spiro Careers Canada, which is a company dedicated to solving the autism employment crisis.
[00:02:26] So he is, a busy bee. He's got a lot on. Anyhow, let's get ready. This conversation is refreshingly down to earth guys, and it is lots of fun. We talk about organizational change as it really is when you are in the trenches. Jason and I cover. The core principles of lean change and how to start integrating lean and agile change practices into your project when your organization is perhaps more old school, maybe it's used to more traditional change management approaches.
[00:02:57] What do you do in that situation? Jason has a lot of recommendations for you. He also shares a bunch of very practical concepts and tactics. Things like using a change canvas, how to do that. Running lean coffee sessions and creating feedback loops. These are methods that you're gonna be able to start using straight away today.
[00:03:19] Jason also mentions a number of different books and models and strategies. I know you're gonna wanna check those out too, so we've linked to everything that he mentioned in the show notes for you, so it's really easy to get to. Okay, here we go. Let's dive into my conversation with Jason Little.
[00:03:35] Jason, hello. Hello. I'm so thrilled that we're talking today. Thank you for joining me.
[00:03:40] Jason: Hey Kate, how's it going?
[00:03:42] Kate: it's going great for me. It's the morning here. I know it's the evening for you, but, so I've probably got a lot more energy. You know, I'm full of beans. It's the beginning of the day, whereas you are winding down.
[00:03:52] Jason: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Close to the end of the day, but I guess you can tell I'm Canadian. I say, how's it going? Eh? As opposed to, how are you? Is it, how are you?
[00:03:58] Kate: well, look, I, I've got so many things I want us to dive into, but the question that I have coming up for me straight away is, I have heard that back in the day you were a product manager, a scrum master, agile coach, and that somewhere along the way you realized that agile practices.
[00:04:18] We're way more about change than about the practices. And I'd love to know, was there a moment, were you kind of hitting your head against a wall? Was there a pattern? Was there a big explosion that made you come to this realization? How did you kind of get to that point?
[00:04:33] Jason: Two come to mind. So yes, I started my career as a developer. So back, back in the mid-nineties, and I think one of the first ones was I was uh, professional services manager or something like that. So we had a development. Team. We had a customer support team, we had an implementation team, and we were all using three different systems.
[00:04:53] So when I took over as product owner I kind of had to, I. Log into all three of these to find out, you know, what were, what were the most recent support cases, how are the implementation projects going, what are the features that are being built and stuff like that.
[00:05:07] And I thought, well, this really sucks. I want to try to consolidate all three of those. you know, that's a classic change management project, right? And I didn't know any better, so I just bought some food and. Brought all the teams into one room and said, this really blows. Like, I don't, I, I have so many different things to manage and it's just harder to keep track of stuff.
[00:05:26] Do you think we could look at maybe consolidating these or trying to do something to figure it out? And we ended up doing that kind of together as a whole group to, to find something that would work for all of us. The one that really, I guess officially got me into change was, I guess probably the first or second big agile transformation that I worked on for a telecom in the mid two thousands.
[00:05:48] And it was, everybody's had this, right? You're sitting there one day and you're just like, I. Why doesn't, this is not hard. Like, why doesn't anybody get this? This is so fricking easy, I don't get it. And then I realized, oh, okay. It really has nothing to do with Agile. It's all about change. And then that, you know, the last 15, 20 ish years has been Agile's just a trigger and it's just a shiny thing. And it's really about interactions between people more than anything else.
[00:06:16] Kate: I agree. It's the, the best and the most annoying
[00:06:21] Jason: Yes.
[00:06:22] Kate: part of work, whether you are in change or not. And so since then you are prolific, you have written and published a number of books, talked extensively, travelled the world, run workshops. What motivates you to share these ideas?
[00:06:39] Jason: I think it's, you know, from starting in software development and then getting into agile coaching, which again is all about change. It was always conversations with people that They got some aha moment from something that we were working on. It was either, you know, okay, I really get it now let's try to figure out how to get this done, or This company's never gonna get it.
[00:06:59] Screw this, I'm gonna go find a job somewhere better. So it was always about how to make a positive impact for people. And the, the first book was it was just the ideas have been rattling around forever, and then it just needed a story to wrap itself around. And then I used a platform called Lean Pub to release it chapter by chapter.
[00:07:21] I, I don't know if anybody still uses that, but like back in the day, the whole lean startup approach to publishing was kind of really, really hot. And yeah, people just started reading it.
[00:07:31] Kate: Oh, I like that. That makes it more accessible chapter by chapter even for you thinking about tackling that project. so I'm going to, Bring it back to the very beginning. what is lean change management and how is it different from kind of standard or traditional change management?
[00:07:50] Jason: the lean is more so the dictionary definition of the word. So as lightweight and as thin as possible, you know, if, if you get your processes audited because you're in a regulated organization, you know, and you have to get a 65% to pass your audit shoot for 40, right? Like, try to just barely fail it because you want the least amount of process that doesn't get in the way of doing the actual change work.
[00:08:18] But most of the, the lean part is inspired by a lean startup. So the whole idea that. Before I was actually working in a company before I was a product owner there, and we spent a million and a half bucks and a year and a half building this product and couldn't sell it. And that was, you know, A month later, the Lean Startup came out and I went to um, the Lean Startup Machine, which is a weekend that they bring people in and you pitch an idea, and then whoever does the most customer validation by the end of the weekend, they win a prize.
[00:08:49] And our team won. And that got me hooked on Lean Startup. So it was like, what if we did this in change? And then that was, you know, so the part of Lean Plus change management is as lightweight as possible. And the other part is think like a startup.
[00:09:03] Kate: Wow, that's so cool. That weekend would've been amazing.
[00:09:06] That's such a clever way to win it. The most engagement, with your stakeholders wins. It's true. It's true in change as well. Do you think that these ideas about lean and even agile, are they becoming more important in businesses, in organizations, or have they just always been important?
[00:09:23] Jason: I think it's just changed. you know, somewhere around 2012 ish. 20 12, 20 13 Agile started becoming a big business. So, a lot of the intent was lost. You know, that's when a lot of the big scaling frameworks started coming out. And I, I'm kind of, there's a lot of agile people kind of before 2012 that are just still really angry that these evil business people have taken over our beloved Agile.
[00:09:49] But for me, I'm like, use whatever you think is gonna work. But the intention kind of got lost a little bit. And instead of it being coming from a place of values and principles, it started to become how can I use these agile tools to make people work harder and faster. So it's, it's kind of been used more of a, like a stick and, and change, like when I see people using quote unquote agile change, it's, How do we do change at people faster kind of attitude, which is the opposite of, of what the intention was.
[00:10:22] So, I think a lot of companies That are doing some of these things and you know, we, we get to have some good laughs when they're not having successes and go, eh, look how stupid these people are. They've been transforming for 20 years and they still don't get it. It's 'cause they don't need to. You know, the banks in Canada, who I pick on all the time they've been transforming for like 15 years and the banking system in Canada is closed.
[00:10:45] There's like the big five, maybe the big six. They don't have to transform or innovate. They just need to protect that whole ecosystem. So they just kind of go around in circles and things. They improve their processes every little bit here and there, but you're not, we're not talking like meaningful change in transformation.
[00:11:04] Kate: Hmm. That's very interesting. The banking system in Australia sounds pretty similar, where there's a big four or five. There are smaller, more innovative banks, but those banks invest a lot into transformation programs. Almost continuous you know, they call them different things and say they're taking a different approach or there's different key messaging around it. But yeah. That's very interesting. What an insight. I'm gonna keep thinking about that. Hmm. I love what you said about the lost intent. Something that when I talk to change managers in my network.
[00:11:40] Something I hear a lot is, particularly if they're working with larger organizations, maybe they're in the public sector or any kind of larger organization there are two things going on at the same time. they wanna be agile, agile change.
[00:11:56] Let's do that because you know, particularly in IT areas or digital transformation, those teams are, the technical teams are kind of working in Agile, allegedly. so let's align the change processes the change method to that so the team can all work in harmony. And at the same time, there's this requirement.
[00:12:16] For some really big documents, and by big I mean literally large many pages of like a change management plan or strategy that is signed off by, you know, up the chain as a kind of a. I think probably a risk management or a sense of assurance for leadership up the line. And so these tensions between these two approaches exist and I know that it's something that the change managers that I talk to kind of rub up against and find really frustrating and they're not really sure what to do about it. Is that something that you've seen in your experiences as well?
[00:12:56] Jason: Oh yeah, yeah. Everywhere. That's it's common part. Part of it is I guess the incongruent nature of the request to go agile. And a lot of the times it's corporate me too-ism, because it's so popular nowadays. Like everybody's doing it, we might as well do it too. And the other part, especially once you get into enterprises, it's more.
[00:13:19] You know, having to produce all that documentation is typical because somebody's got to make sure that we're getting our 2 billion bucks a year value out of the consultants that we've hired. So the pattern here, like with our banks, it's a 12 to 18-month cycle, so they might have. Big consulting company a who we won't name for 18 months, and then they get sick of them and they fire them, and then they bring in big consulting firm B and then a couple of departments hire some independents and boutique shops and stuff.
[00:13:52] And somebody has to justify that in a budget. I think that's reasonable to ask, but there's different ways to do it. Like, off camera, I was telling you about a couple of friends of mine and one of them who's out in Perth, she Charlotte, She was asked that same thing and she kind of took the documentation and pushed it aside and, and ran a co-creative change canvas session without asking.
[00:14:11] and the stakeholders are like, well, I guess we don't need all that stuff. Now we've got, like, we have the conversation, it's stuck in our heads, and now we have a one page roughly with a plan. Let's meet every couple of weeks. So there's ways to satisfy. Nobody wants the documentation.
[00:14:26] There's some unmet need that exists. And I think for us as the change people, we, we have to understand what it is that they want and why, and not just either fulfill the order or just complain they don't get it. 'cause it, it doesn't help.
[00:14:39] Kate: yes. That's a great perspective to have to take that as a sign that it's time to kind of look deeper, to understand the needs and intent of the stakeholders and the leadership team and that type of thing you just mentioned a change canvas. Session or workshop. Tell me more about that. What is that?
[00:14:57] Jason: So it's, it's inspired by Toyota's a three. So if anybody remembers any there's a really good book, The Toyota Way by Mike Rother. The A three report was born from Toyota because the, the CEO, there would never read any paperwork or reports.
[00:15:13] He would go to the gemba, which is a lien thing for go where the work is happening, to find out what's going on. So people would summarize things on one page, basically, so that all the canvas to change. Canvas is just, it's a summary of all the important bits that you need to know, and it's the conversation that creates it. That's what you want.
[00:15:31] Kate: that's where the value is.
[00:15:32] Jason: Yeah, you intentionally leave it. It's like, user stories in Agile, which have been horribly... let's not even go there.
[00:15:40] Kate: guys, you should see, you should see Jason's face as he says that. Amazing. He felt real pain just there.
[00:15:47] Jason: yeah, there, there are. Play a placeholder for a conversation. There, you know, a user story is Ron Jeffries has the three Cs, you know, convert card. You write it on a card so you can't cram all the information on it. That forces you to have the second C, which is a conversation so you can understand what this thing means to developers, business people, whoever.
[00:16:08] And the third C is confirmation. How do you know it's been done? And fulfilled. And that's similar with the change canvas, right? It's not the artifact, it's the co-creation and the conversations you have to create the information and to pull out unknowns and risks and have conversations. And the canvas is just the thing.
[00:16:27] So you can go back and a couple of months and go, were we even close to what we wanted? You know, what's gone on since then? Should we redo the canvas, et cetera?
[00:16:36] Kate: That's great, and thank you for mentioning those resources. We're gonna link to everything in the show notes, so it's really easy for folks I think promoting that idea of the canvas and the conversation is so spot on there is the distinction between traditional change management and more agile or lean approach is that, more agile and lean approach.
[00:16:56] A principles based approach is kind of just the reality of change. I think there's safety in thinking about a traditional method where it's linear. People start here, then they go here with their emotions, then there's this need that we need to meet. That's great. But in reality you know, there are ups and downs and Unexpected sideways things come up.
[00:17:21] I really love the emphasis on genuinely real life engaging and having conversations. I think there's a big focus on conversations that I, I. Really, like something else that I'm interested in is about fostering constructive feedback loops and kind of setting that up, and I would love to hear more about your take on that. Why is that something that we should be thinking about?
[00:17:45] Jason: I think 'cause it's the feedback is really what drives the next cycle of planning. So one of the great things about an agile approach and whatever domain is I. we, we talked about the documentation part, right? Where agile doesn't mean no documentation. It doesn't mean no planning. It means we do smaller chunks of planning in shorter time horizons.
[00:18:09] So we plan for what we know now. We know the faster we get to action, the faster we're gonna learn, and that feedback goes into the input into the next cycle. you know, it's, it's not like everybody in the organisation has completely forgot about where we're headed. We all know we want to go north, right?
[00:18:26] So we don't have to plan for every step to get north. We just kind of have to course correct every once in a while and go, are we still roughly going north? You know, or have we completely done a 180, are we, you know, a ditch somewhere? And the sooner you take action, the more you get feedback One organization I did some work for, when we did a session with about 200 folks in this conference center, we were actually getting people to ask the CEO and the CTO in a multinational organization, questions in real time through their phones. And it was being projected on the screens behind them.
[00:18:57] And we were putting surveys up as the change team. There was like 25 of us orchestrating this event. And the feedback was, you know, is this event making it more clear why we wanna do this change? I. And even the bad answers were put up there. You know, if people thought it totally sucked and it was worse.
[00:19:13] Now, you know, that was maybe like 5% of the people that responded. But we want all that feedback because that's the best way to know what's really going on.
[00:19:23] Kate: Hmm. That sounds amazing. That's a great tactic. It also sounds like that is something that requires courage from the leadership team to kind of have that level of transparency and visibility and, and real time. How can change managers, if I walk into an organisation I'm at the beginning of my engagement with this particular project and meeting people, how can I kind of start to introduce more agile and lean change management practices?
[00:19:56] You mentioned before that your friend Charlotte just didn't ask and ran a workshop. is that something that you would recommend?
[00:20:03] Jason: that's one for sure. Another one is lean coffee. So when you do your regular status meetings or whatever, run it like a lean coffee session. Instead of like a traditional meeting with meeting notes because.
[00:20:14] Kate: Tell me what a lean coffee session is.
[00:20:16] Jason: So that's where the attendees of the meeting decide the topics. So you have a theme, and the theme is the change project or the transformation or whatever it is. You have people write down what questions do you need answers to so we can keep heading off in the right direction. That would be an example. They'd write down the questions, they vote on them, so everybody gets two or three votes and the question with the highest votes we talk about.
[00:20:38] That's one way to show people that were listening. That's one way to flip your meetings to being attendee driven as opposed to agenda driven. I usually find that when you. Intervene in whatever the, the normality of the change ceremonies are just with a different facilitation technique.
[00:20:56] That's usually the best way in enterprise organisations or more conservative ones. 'cause they expect things a certain way. You know, they expect the t p s reports and you know, the 10 page PowerPoint and stuff like that. One Fortune 50 company. We actually, on a couple of pilots, we would do both. We would go to the, the stakeholders.
[00:21:15] We would go in the old world, you know, here's the 25-page PowerPoint that we lift off with. What we just did over the last half hour, produced this one-page canvas. This is how we do things a different way. Pick whichever one you want. We don't really care. And some teams took the old way 'cause they were, it just, they were more comfortable.
[00:21:33] With that. And then the others, most of them took the other way 'cause they felt their approach to change was too bloated anyway, so they wanted something that was thinned down. But it's, it's stuff, it's kind of like swim with the current, like, don't throw a giant rock in a pond unless you really have to.
[00:21:49] Kate: I agree. I think I love that. Go with the current, identify the current and be creative. Go with it. There's always ways to add some freshness, add some newness to to your approach or the approaches that they're used to doing. But it sounds like baby steps could be quite a good way to start.
[00:22:08] I have run lean coffee sessions. They are really powerful. If this is something, if you're listening to this going, Hmm, how could I do that? What would I do? And that might be a bit scary because I'm not in control of that. I've talked about lean coffee sessions with uh, some of my colleagues before, and for me there's a key mindset shift about being a facilitator and what that means, what your role is when you are genuinely engaging in a lean and agile kind of process with change and, and co-design and what your role is there.
[00:22:43] I think they're amazing and the voting up of ideas is such a powerful, cool thing to do with stakeholders. I've got one more question for you and that is you have been all over the world running workshops, giving talks, engaging with people, and I'm sure you would've heard. From all kinds of people about the shit that comes up in their change program and stuff that they have had to deal with.
[00:23:08] And I would love to know. When you think about it kind of globally, are there some key themes that you've discovered in change at work that it doesn't matter, kind of what country, what cultural differences, geographic differences, are there some key kind of themes or ideas that always seem to repeat for you?
[00:23:29] Jason: Yes, there's two main ones. One is leaders at the top kind of get a, a bad rap for not. They don't support it, they don't understand it. We have to treat them with kid gloves and we can't tell them what's really going on. They'll be mad. I find the opposite is true.
[00:23:45] They don't care. They be brief. Be bold, be gone. Tell me what's going on 'cause I can't help you. And that's universal from anywhere that I've been. And I guess the second one that's kind of close, and maybe it's similar, is they just don't like being embarrassed. Like they don't like being the last person to know.
[00:24:03] Doesn't matter if it's, you know, Scandinavia, where the, it's a much kind of shorter power distance index where there's not much of a status difference between people or South America where it's higher. They don't want to be the last person in the room to know as a leader. 'cause they're supposed to know everybody's got a boss that's on their back for something. So keep them informed, but give them the real story because I find they appreciate it more and it makes change so much easier. 'cause you don't have to stress yourself out about it. You can just go, Hey, you know what Sally, like, everybody thinks this sucks and nobody wants to do it. And they appreciate that more often than not.
[00:24:40] Kate: Amazing. The power of yeah, just being genuine, transparent, and. Treating people as peers who have agency.
[00:24:50] Jason: There you go. Perfect.
[00:24:52] Kate: It's so powerful. Yeah. It's the missing link for so many things, that recognition of agency and, you know, being genuine peers and colleagues.
[00:25:00] Thank you so much. I feel like we could keep talking all day, but. Let me know. How can people, if they would like to connect with you, keep the conversation going, how can they get in contact?
[00:25:10] Jason: Leanchange.org is the best way to find me. You can find me on, I'm not hard to find. You can find me on LinkedIn, but Leanchange.org is more or less where everything is. You can reach out through chatbot and email and everything else.
[00:25:22] Kate: Awesome. We're gonna link to everything so that people can really easily stalk you. No matter where they are in the world, they'll be able to connect. Thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation.
[00:25:33]Jason: Yeah, this was fun. Thanks, Kate.
LINKS
Resources Mentioned:
CONNECT WITH JASON LITTLE:
Websites: https://leanchange.org/ & http://agilecoach.ca/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonlittle/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lean_change
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/