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Through my research I settled on a statement that I think everyone should become aware of: “The human heart desires to be heard, understood, and acknowledged.” As a husband, father, and leader, I try to “practice what I preach” so I listen to my wife and my kids. In some of the conversations and media consumption my wife and I have been going through lately, we have been diving into empathy.

This morning I happened to listen to a podcast with John Maxwell and Simon Sinek in which Simon stated something so succinctly that I wanted to share it:

When I hear people talking about the system is broken. There’s no mythical system, it’s us. Our society is a collection of individuals, and whatever the balance of behaviors from those individuals is the system you get. And so, it starts at home, it starts with us, and so, we want to change the system, this elephant, the only way to eat an elephant is one mouthful at a time. And so, I think we need to set ourselves in a course to become better listeners ourselves, and there’s a difference between listening and hearing. You know, hearing is understanding the words that are said to you, listening is trying to get to the meaning of the words that are said to you, with an appreciation that sometimes people say the wrong thing, they say what they’re trying to say badly. Sometimes emotions are involved, sometimes they get flustered, and it’s not for us to take their words personally, or to even pick apart, but to rather try and show up with curiosity, to really understand the meaning. What I’m describing is empathy. We show up with empathy. That’s all this is, and to look past the superficial.

Simon Sinek

I appreciate all that is said in that paragraph. I was really grateful that he discusses looking past the superficial. In a conversation I had the other day, I was discussing how the individual was upset and I understood their being upset, but they were focusing on a secondary issue and not the primary issue.

I aim to focus on the primary first and to put the second things second. With empathy, I want to “draw out” the depths of what the individual in front of me is saying.

The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.

Proverbs 20:5

Notes from a great talk on the do’s and don’ts of Change Management, specifically related to ITIL.

Key take-aways from this IDC Report from 2014:

• the average cost of an infrastructure failure is $100,000 per hour.
• 80% of failures are due to custom adjustments of current tools to meet DevOps practices – meaning: a breakdown of process, or lack of process (incorrect SOPs or human errors), causes these types of failures

Change Management is about coordinating/collaborating resources, especially people, across an organization and preparing them for a change that’s about to happen. Ensuring the people are ready, the technology is ready, and the process is ready so that it can be effective and efficient as it moves into production.

There is risk involved with Change Management. If a change fails, it can deteriorate the business. There is knowledge required for Change Management. The stakeholders need to be prepared with the right knowledge of what to expect.

With that in mind, Why is Change Management important?

1. Operational Excellence
   It is simple to focus on doing a lot of things instead of the right things. Change Management helps keep focus on the business strategy and doing the right things.
2. Management of Risk
   Managing Change ultimately is managing risk. Changes get thrown into the mix constantly, but if it doesn’t add business value, is it the right thing? It could be a major risk to the organization, to the financial resources, and to the customers perspective.
3. Overall Strategy Support
   Change Managers maintain focus on keeping the business moving towards its goal.

The 8 Do’s and Don’ts of Change Management

Do Coordinate and Collaborate across the organization

Make sure all stakeholders, customers, users, and the business are aware of the change – communication is key.

Don’t overlook the role of people

People are the key. It is human nature to not like change, but as a Change Manager we need to help individuals become not just compliant, but compassionate. When people really believe in the change, they buy in and they do the right thing.

Do know your inventory

Understand your resources and their capability. Be familiar with your Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Configuration Management System (CMS), and the Service Knowledge Management Systems (SKMS). These should follow a service model (how services are delivered) underpinned by your services, infrastructure, people and capabilities. This knowledge allows the Change Manager to foresee problems and how the change in one area might affect other areas.

Don’t introduce too much change at once

There’s a rhythm to change. Too much change will cause “red flag” syndrome where the changes become ignored. The Change Manager needs to understand where the business and the customers are at and find that balanced rhythm.

Do communicate to those who need to know about the change

The Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC) is the document used to communicate change plans to the organization. Use this to: Track the list of approved changes and the proposed implementation dates. Provide visibility to key stakeholders on the status of changes being introduced in the production environment. Nothing is worse than having something change when you didn’t know anything about it. This causes incidents and distrust. Individuals will start ‘looking’ for negative aspects and things begin to be disrupted.

Don’t think about change in a silo

A change, no matter the size, can have domino effects. Therefore, any change is an organizational change and needs to be communicated in a way that anyone in the organization can see the value and its alignment with the vision.

Do approach change management from a Service-Oriented perspective

Look at the service and how it affects your customers and the relationships within the organization.

Don’t pick technology that doesn’t support a holistic perspective

This is in alignment with the “Do” from above – sometimes processes are inter-related. Make sure the technology takes the organization as a whole into account. You don’t want to change the tech in one area and it ends up causing an entire division to no longer be able to communicate strategic information. Remember from the IDC report – customization of tools accounts for 80% of failures.

Change Management affects everything in an organization.

In summary, the 8 Do’s and Don’ts of Change Management can be quickly navigated by this excellent list of the 7 R’s of Change Management: For proper impact assessment and understanding of benefits to risk, these seven questions should be asked.

• Who RAISED the change?
• What is the REASON for the change?
• What is the RETURN required from the change?
• What are the RISKS involved in the change?
• What RESOURCES are required to deliver the change?
• Who is RESPONSIBLE for the build, test and implementation of the change?
• What is the RELATIONSHIP between this change and other changes?