Welcome to the Change Leader’s Roadmap Methodology, also known as the “Roadmap,” the “CLR,” or simply, the “Methodology.” This introduction provides an overview of the Methodology so you can immediately start using it to support your change effort’s success.

Using the Change Leader’s Roadmap to guide your change efforts will produce numerous positive benefits for you and your organization:

Achieving tangible business outcomes from change, transforming culture, and building organizational change capability are often seen as separate pursuits, but the actions required to achieve all three are built directly into the CLR. In other words, you can use the CLR to transform your culture and build your organization’s change capability WHILE you achieve maximum results from your current change effort(s).

Most organizational change is strategy implementation. When your business strategy requires shifts in your structure, systems, processes, technology, or culture in order to produce the results it specifies, your leaders initiate change efforts to drives those shifts. No matter what kind of change your business strategy catalyzes, the CLR will guide you through it. You can use the CLR to plan, design, and implement change solutions for any “content” of change, including technology implementations such as ERP and CRM, re-structuring, process reengineering, systems changes, job redesign, culture change, or mergers and acquisitions.

There are three distinct types of change occurring in organizations today: (1) developmental, (2) transitional, and (3) transformational. (See the Info Sheet: Three Types of Change.) While the Methodology supports all three types of change, it is specifically built for today’s complex transformational changes. In fact, the more challenging your change effort, the more value you will receive from using the Methodology.

The CLR is a true process methodology, not a simple change framework. Change process methodologies guide action across time. They help you decide which change tasks are critical, the order in which to take them, and how to execute them for optimal results. They enable you to consciously design your change process so that each task flows into the next, building momentum toward your desired outcomes.

The Change Leader’s Roadmap is based on a nine-phase change process model. Three phases are devoted to up-front planning and setting the foundations for success; three are devoted to design and three to implementation. All successful organizational change progresses through these nine phases of planning, design, and implementation. We use nine phases rather than a simpler three phase model because it enables you, as a change leader, to better manage the critical tasks of change.

The CLR is a “fullstream” process model. It guides you through the entire lifecycle of your change process, from the moment of conception through design and implementation to the complete integration of your desired future state into your current operations.

Change management typically provides support in four areas: overcoming employee resistance, communications, training, and implementation planning. While each of these is important, they do not provide all that is needed to succeed in transformational change.

The CLR goes beyond change management and is a comprehensive change leadership model that provides far more insight, guidance, and resources than do typical change management approaches. Key tasks attended to during the first three, upfront phases of setting the foundations include:

The CLR also attends to key design and implementation tasks, such as:

The CLR delivers both strategic and pragmatic guidance. It supports you to solve large, strategic issues like change strategy, project integration, change process design, and stakeholder engagement. And it also provides the pragmatic work steps, tools, and info sheets to guide execution of each task required to implement those strategies.

No two change efforts are ever alike. Their desired outcomes or content may be similar, but the presenting organizational and cultural circumstances are always different. Consequently, rigid, lockstep change methodologies can never work in transformation.

First and foremost, the CLR is a thinking discipline. It makes you conscious of what you might otherwise neglect, and informs your planning, decision-making, and execution. But the CLR does not provide a pre-determined formula of action steps for success.

The Roadmap is built on thirty years of action research with Fortune 1000 clients. This extensive experience has revealed to us tremendous insight into what is needed to succeed in transformational change. Using this insight, we have built the CLR to include all of what we know might be required in your change effort. We can guarantee that your key tasks are here in the Methodology. But we cannot tell you which ones they are. You know your organization best, so you are best equipped to make that determination. That is the beauty of this approach. You and your change leaders are always the designers of your change process. The Methodology is the roadmap, but you are the drivers determining the best path to take.

Pursuing organizational change is a balancing act between short and long term objectives. You introduce change into your organization with the expectation that it will deliver significant ROI over time. But every time you introduce change into your organization, you jeopardize short term, quarterly, operational performance. You get maximum short and long term benefit by making your change efforts as efficient as possible. In change, you want to do as little as possible because every change task consumes operational capacity and resources. But, you must do enough to succeed because failed change wastes operational resources and jeopardizes your organization’s long term viability.

As a comprehensive, yet flexible and customizable process methodology, the CLR solves this dilemma. It presents to you everything you might need to do to succeed in your change, and supports you to consciously choose which tasks are essential, which might be needed, and which you can skip. You can then proceed, and adjust your process plan as you go, adding, modifying, or eliminating tasks as your circumstances dictate.

If you did all of the tasks in the CLR on any given change effort, you would fail for sure, because you would burden your operations so heavily. We suggest doing no more than 40% to 50% of the tasks in the CLR on any given change effort. Remember this critical piece of advice: Select as few change tasks as possible, but just enough to succeed! Also, remember that what you skip on one change effort might end up being absolutely essential on the next.

The Change Leader’s Roadmap is written in a linear way, not because change is linear, but because the written word is linear. Please be aware: Transformational change does not follow a linear path. It is messy and not nearly as neat and tidy as the CLR Methodology might make it seem. In reality, when you apply the Change Leader’s Roadmap, you may be in two or three phases simultaneously, and you may need to return to tasks from previous phases. You will also need to course correct whenever new circumstances arise.

The sequence of the Roadmap does have a logical order, however, and most change efforts will naturally follow that order—more or less. But do not be rigid about the sequence of the tasks, especially in Phases I and II. Scan all of the tasks, and create the sequence that fits your needs. Many tasks may be done in parallel, or gone through in various iterations. You will always need to customize their order and timing, as well as the depth of attention, work, and resources you apply to them.

No matter where you are in your change effort, there is a path to success. Your job is to find it. The beauty of the Roadmap is that it will help you uncover it, even though it may not be readily discernable right now. Because the roadmap is so comprehensive, simply reviewing the tasks included in it often triggers insight into what is needed. As your change progresses and unforeseen circumstances arise, you will be able to use the CLR to navigate needed course corrections to your plan. If you have skipped tasks or not done them thoroughly enough, you can go back and add steps to compensate. Always remember, the path to success exists, and when it is not easy to see, rely on the Roadmap to help you find it. And then adjust your change strategy and process plan accordingly.

Leaders and change leaders alike have different styles of leadership, ranging from command and control on one end of the continuum to co-creative on the other. A facilitative approach is in the middle.

Command and control leaders assume they can create a change plan and direct action that follows it. They take a mechanistic approach to change and often neglect the required human and cultural components. They expect, even demand people to buy into a direction for change, yet often trigger resistance to that direction by how they lead. These leaders struggle with transformation because of the deeply personal, chaotic, and non-linear nature of it.

Facilitative leaders also create change plans, but are more able to adapt them to changing circumstances as needed. These leaders are more flexible. They also give more attention to the human and cultural requirements of transformation. Consequently, they have more success.

Co-creative leaders readily adjust their change plans as needed and deeply consider human and cultural dynamics even more than facilitative leaders. Co-creative change leaders possess a unique worldview we call, “WIN-Win-Win.” (See the Info Sheet: WIN-Win-Win Model). With this worldview, they discern whole systems, process, and human dynamics with greater distinctions. They do not play politics or turf games. Instead, they orient to what is best for the larger enterprise. They work diligently across boundaries to include people’s needs as appropriate, and address mindset and emotional issues with great sensitivity and understanding. These leaders have the most success leading transformation.

You may find references in the Methodology to the “Co-Creating Tab,” which is yet an unwritten further explanation of co-creating.

The CLR is structured for ease of use. Each of its nine phases is comprised of between one and six activities, each of which is further broken down into between one and twelve tasks. There is as much detail in the CLR as you might need.

The work of the CLR gets done at the task level. Phases and activities are organizing constructs that make understanding the change process easier. Organizing by phases and activities also makes the tasks and their resources easier to find.

The resources that guide the execution of each task are found within the task they primarily support. Resources for each task include: (1) work steps, (2) process questions, (3) potential problems, (4) info sheets, (5) tools, which include worksheets to execute the tool, and (6) articles that are pertinent to the task. Hot links to individual resources can be found throughout the CLR wherever they are relevant.

All of the resources are written as stand-alone pieces. Sometimes, you will want to apply work steps and worksheets within a tool, just as they are written. At other times, however, you will want to tailor how you execute work steps and/or worksheets to either make the work more fitting to your circumstances, or to streamline implementation of the task to reduce consumption of operational resources.

Not everyone using the CLR Methodology will use all of the resources provided. Project managers tend to like the work steps because they give the most direct guidance about what steps are needed to complete a task. Consultants (organization development, organization effectiveness, change management, etc.) often prefer the process questions because they provide high level guidance while triggering insights that allow them to figure out their own way of getting a task done. Executives like the potential problems because they help them assess risk and prevent problems.

All users of the CLR appreciate the info sheets, tools, and articles. The info sheets provide knowledge required to complete a task. The tools offer the most pragmatic guidance, providing the worksheets, checklists, assessments, templates, and strategic questions to design and implement a task. The articles provide information and guidance about specific change topics.

The CLR Methodology supports three primary audiences: (1) change leaders, including change process leaders, project managers, and project team members overseeing the planning and execution of actual change efforts, (2) change consultants who assist line management in designing effective change strategy and process plans, including experts in change management, organization, development, project management, quality, learning, and human resource development, and (3) change agents, including human resource professionals, mid-managers, and frontline staff supporting positive change.

Being First, Inc., offers many vehicles to assist your learning and mastery of the Change Leader’s Roadmap Methodology. You can learn about them on the Support for Mastering the Methodology page. Good luck, and may you always encounter the best in positive change!