If you need to realign your organisation, take heed of the Five P's of Change!

I am sure you have heard of the 4P’s of Marketing (expanded to the 6Ps) but have you heard of the 5P’s of Change Management? There are several iterations of the 5P’s and if you were to Google it, you might come up with a couple of them. In this post, we will jump in with our version of the 5P’s and share with you how change can work for you if you focus on purpose, performance, process, people and progress.

Purpose

All models are unanimous on this score – your purpose. Why are you changing and what are you trying to achieve? You need to articulate the future you are working towards clearly; and to tell everyone that this is where each is headed. This starts with senior management, where there has to be unity in thought, word and deed, and then cascaded down the ranks. If leadership is not strong nor unequivocal, chances are your change process will flounder.

Performance

You next need to articulate the metrics that need to be met to achieve the purpose. The most widely used model is balanced scorecard, which identifies 4 perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes and learning. Some organisations add one or two more perspectives like employee satisfaction, vendor engagement or even sustainability. Once identified, key performance indicators (KPIs) should be articulated. Remember, KPIs need to be “key”; hence there shouldn’t be too many of them in each perspective.

Process

The processes are the means by which the change will be effected. According to the different scorecard perspectives, different business units and departments will need to come up with their various processes to meet their KPIs. Taken together, these processes will make change a success.

People

This is the KEY element for change. Many leaders just look within their organisation but there is a need to look out at the ecosystem and work the value-chain. Therefore, internally, we need to look for are the capabilities of our people, and what we need to make the change a success. This requires that we either upskill them or to employ new capabilities. Externally, we might need to educate our suppliers and even industry regulators as we make innovative in-roads.

Progress

Once you have worked out the preceding P’s and started implementing them, you will need to monitor its progress against the scorecard. You must be on the lookout for what will work and what needs tweaking. You cannot assume that once these are done, the change will be a success. All change is simply work in progress and hence, you need to keep up the momentum until you reach your steady-state situation.

Give them assurances

Laying out the 5P’s is easy; implementing it may not be so. You need to work through the different layers of hindrances. As they say, most people are resistant to change and the best way to overcome that is to give them assurances that failure will be tolerated, and be specific with what you want them to do. The last thing you need is to announce the change, and then expect the people to come up with the actions. That will not happen. You must therefore be on it all the time to make your purpose the new normal.