Structure changes that themselves drive change

Establishing and Enhancing An Internal Consulting Group As A High Impact Change Program
Dr. Bill Trotter, Managing Director, AIMC

Overview:

Since one of the key goals of the internal consulting function is to help lead and facilitate the organization’s change programs, it is important to integrate key change management principles into establishing and further developing their consulting practice within the organization.

In a recent survey of the members of the Association of Internal Management Consultants (AIMC), nearly 90% of these groups had change management as one of their key areas of practice, which has increased dramatically over the past five years.

Many of these internal consulting (IC) groups are also involved with more comprehensive enterprise-wide change management programs, which require a more rigorous and systematic approach. In addition, a number of our member IC groups work directly with top management or the “C-suite” to cultivate a change leadership program and process which will have maximum impact on the organization.

The rest of this article focuses on the process for establishing or further developing an IC group through the use of best practice change management methodologies, across three phases:

• Mobilizing Support for Developing The IC Group (Change Preparation)
• Establishing the IC Group (Change Implementation)
• Sustaining the IC Group (Continuous Improvement)

Mobilizing Support for Developing the IC Group

The process of mobilizing support for establishing or expanding an internal consulting group is much like the change preparation phase of any significant undertaking, involving analyzing the situation and planning the initiative. This is typically comprised of seven key activities, as follows:

1. Developing the Case for Action: This consists of laying out the specific impacts of forming or further expanding the services of the IC group, including the anticipated benefits, investment and support system required. It is also important to link to proven best practices approaches including an internal consulting process model and performance measurement scorecard (both of which are available through the AIMC).
2. Assessing Change Readiness: This involves a formalized assessment of the readiness of both leadership and potential client organizations to support the IC group and identification of key issues which need to be addressed.
3. Fostering Stakeholder Engagement: Then a proactive program to follow-up with key stakeholders needs to be adopted to clarify any issues identified in the change readiness assessment and position key constituencies to help ensure success.
4. Establishing Communications Program: This starts with the development of an overall communications strategy followed up by a series of meetings and messages covering the key objectives of the IC group and followed by periodic progress updates.
5. Developing/Enhancing Key Consulting Processes: In a start-up mode, it’s important to establish consistent processes for relationship management, internal operations and staffing/development early on (as described in the AIMC Consulting Model). In a business development/expansion mode, the relationship development and management process is particularly important in cultivating key stakeholders and positioning for success.
6. Developing Core Competencies Needed for Success: A key success factor in developing and sustaining an IC group is ensuring that important competencies are in place. The change management area has become increasingly important in recent years, with this rising as a critical service area (now nearly 90% of IC groups surveyed versus just over 20% five years ago). The AIMC Competency Framework for both individual contributors and leadership details 14 key competencies for internal consultants along with a straight-forward self assessment approach.
7. Formulating a Performance Measurement Plan: As with all major change initiatives, measuring the performance of the program is critical to both initial success and longer-term sustainability. The AIMC’s Internal Consulting Scorecard provides best practice metrics in the areas of financial targets, operating processes, relationship management and people/culture.

Establishing the IC Group

Effectively establishing an IC Group focuses on ensuring effective execution of the program and is similar to the implementation phase of any significant change effort. This typically involves six key activities:

1. Managing Client Relationships: Our research indicates that this is not only one of the most important areas of focus for internal consultants, but also one that frequently does not receive adequate attention. Key aspects include implementing and maintaining the stakeholder management program and communications plan. Here, it is important for the IC liaison to be viewed as a member of the client’s project planning team and be able to help identify important change management aspects early on.
2. IC Staffing with Change Management Expertise: A structured training and mentoring program needs to be in place to provide core change management skills to the internal consulting staff. Many IC groups are adopting a more formalized change management training curriculum for their consultants, and a number have expanded this focus to include clients and other managers across the enterprise.
3. Developing Superior Project Management with an Integrated Change Program: In order to help ensure the success of the projects in which they are involved, many IC groups have developed project management methodologies with explicit/structured change management activities. Here, the IC often assumes the role of coordinating the requisite change elements of the project and transferring this knowledge to other team members.
4. Aligning All Consulting Processes with Change Management Best Practices: This involves an ongoing effort by the IC group to monitor best practices in change management and embed them into their consulting processes, including relationship development/management, program/project management and employee development
5. Operationalizing the Performance Measurement and Management Plan: The balanced set of performance measurements mentioned earlier needs to be integrated into how the IC group manages both its projects and ongoing operations. Specific techniques, such as client feedback surveys, change readiness assessments, after action reviews and consultant skill development tracking should be utilized where possible

Sustaining the IC Group:

The four activities in this area are focused on institutionalizing and growing the influence of the IC group across the enterprise, and are analogous to key continuous improvement activities in any major change initiative, including:

1. Managing Client Relationships and Transferring Ownership: This first involves focusing on developing good ongoing relationships with client organizations including a proactive role in their planning process and helping to identify opportunities for improvement. A second key area here is transferring the ownership for project implementation and associated change management to the clients and process owners, and adopting an ongoing coaching and support role.
2. Building Capabilities Throughout the Organization: This starts with viewing each project as an opportunity to build project and change management skills into the organization through the client members of their project teams. In addition, a number of IC groups have developed a network of gate-keepers or satellite consulting capabilities in organizations throughout the enterprise. This provides both additional resources from those closest to the client organization but also can be utilized as a source of new opportunity identification.
3. Developing A Supportive Culture: Here, the increasing involvement of IC groups in enterprise change management programs provides an opportunity to help influence leaderships and a broader constituency regarding the need for a proactive role in anticipating the need for change and establishing cross-organizational processes to deal with it.
4. Enhancing Change Skills and Innovation Capabilities: The combination of project team client training and instituting joint consultant and general organizational change management courses/curriculum are key initiatives to build organization-wide change management awareness and skills. A companion initiative which helps enhance organizational resilience and receptivity to change involves instituting innovation programs and associated training.

Summary:

The insights provided by change management best practices combined with a systematic application can significantly improve the chances of successfully developing and enhancing an internal consulting capability. This applies not only to those groups formally designated as internal consultants, but also any organization providing advisory services to internal clients, including: human resources, project management and information technology to name just a few.

Another key benefit of this approach is that it helps to maximize the impact of the company’s internal consulting investment not only in their projects, but also to spread key change competencies throughout the organization. One of the important benefits which companies cite in establishing IC capabilities is that it increases the focus on successfully implementing change and helps build capability to do so.