Driving change within an agency or organization can be challenging, and often met with pushback. However, it’s crucial that leaders pursue continuous improvement across the organization to sustainably embrace new technology, processes, and ways of working in order to achieve better business outcomes. At Excella, we’ve found that implementing change using Google Cloud’s DevOps Research & Assessment (DORA) capabilities and metrics can make a real impact within organizations.
Backed by years of research at Google Cloud, the DORA program identifies and highlights characteristics of high performing organizations who are often successful in achieving their team, department, and organizational level goals. Organizations that integrate DORA into their operational frameworks can enhance efficiency and achieve faster, more reliable solutions – ultimately leading to better business outcomes. In using DORA, Excella has helped organizations find success while ensuring employees find more joy in their work. But some organizations are less inclined to make these changes, often citing factors such as cost, time, competing priorities, or lack of control to push back on implementation. Let’s look at 4 steps leaders can take to get their colleagues on board and drive meaningful change in their organization:
1. Prioritize change by connecting it to goals that matter
Change can be met with resistance. Too often, leaders face roadblocks such as monetary constraints or deliverable deadlines when trying to implement measures for change. This is due to organizations having limited budget and resources that must be distributed across departments to achieve competing priorities and goals. To combat this, teams should rethink the way they are framing their improvement work. Ask the following questions:
- How is change going to move the organization or my team toward its goals?
- Will it deliver value to stakeholders?
- Does it contribute towards the organization’s mission metrics?
By putting the necessary change in this context, you can tie improvement initiatives to how you can drive business outcomes better, faster, or more cost-effectively. This practice has proven to bring more team members on board and convince those who may not have believed this change was a priority at the beginning.
2. Start small and take it one step at a time
Change is hard, and it can be difficult for teams or organizations to take on multiple changes for continuous improvement all at once. If you try to force change at your organization, you’ll likely be met with pushback from those who see it as overwhelming and confusing. Remember that not only individuals, but each team, and each organization only has so much capacity for change at one time. That’s why starting small is necessary so as not to overwhelm team members with an onslaught of new work. This is an area where DORA can be helpful: DORA capabilities integrate seamlessly with any given framework at your organization. This provides a way for organizations to think about how they can drive small improvements while helping leaders pinpoint where they should invest their resources at any given time.
Keep in mind that lots of small changes add up to big improvements over time. Remember the 1% rule from Atomic Habits by James Clear: by working to be 1% better every day, you will grow throughout the year and end up 37x better than when you started. Expanding this mindset to your colleagues will advance growth and promote continuous improvement.
It’s also important to take change one step at a time. Find the thing that is causing the most friction and alleviate some of that friction, and then move on to the next. And in the process of evaluating what is causing the most friction, consider whatever you have the most control over. How much agency do you have over making this change?
3. Embrace your team’s unique needs
Change looks different in every team and organization dynamic. Leaders will face opposition and resistance if they try to mold their teams to fit specific frameworks. Just like no organization is the same, no team is the same either. What each team needs within an organization varies depending on their function, their unique team members, and more. Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all framework.
Instead, you’re more likely to find success by embracing the unique makeup of your teams and adopt a framework that works for them. This flexible, human-centered approach allows each team to focus on the changes that are most valuable to them, which in turn maximizes value for the organization. Recently, Excella has helped customers pivot its organizational change strategy to take a team-driven and people-first approach, pinpointing what actions each team can take to achieve success. This has been more successful than a traditional top-down approach that many organizations pursue, as it provides unique solutions for each individual team as opposed to a standard organization-wide framework.
Learn how Excella helped a Multilateral Development Bank adopt an approach to change that fits their teams and their organization.
4. Metrics are your friend
Change initiatives are often accompanied by metrics that measure the success and value of the effort. A common pushback against change is that members of an organization don’t want metrics due to a fear of it being used against them. In some environments, missing targets has real negative consequences, and employees start to view metrics through a negative lens. Often, we see this in organizations where the metric becomes the target. When used correctly, metrics become an important feedback mechanism for the team to know whether they’re improving. By embracing these metrics teams can create better outcomes for their own team and the organization.
It’s also important to think about where change is driven from. For example, if individual teams own and drive this change, they’re likely to be more excited about collecting data and using metrics. Whereas, if the need for specific metrics is imposed upon a team in a top-down approach, team members might feel that those metrics can be used against them. We recommend individual teams driving this change and using metrics to answer critical questions, like:
- How do we know that what we’re doing is helping us or our customer?
- How can we tell that we’re succeeding in our efforts?
- What can we do to improve outcomes?
Leveraging the DORA Program for effective organizational change
Driving change within an organization requires a strategic and thoughtful approach, and leveraging DORA capabilities and metrics can be a game-changer. These capabilities and metrics not only enhance efficiency and reliability, but also foster a culture of continuous improvement within an organization. By taking these steps, leaders can successfully navigate resistance and implement meaningful transformations.
To learn more about how DORA can help transform your organization, visit their page on cultural transformation and pay close attention to the four steps of the improvement Kata model.