No time for change?

Recently, I was working with an arts & culture nonprofit, reviewing impacted groups and helping them think through the right tactics for each team, when they said "(x group) says they don't have time for this". It's a familiar refrain: in most organizations, whether they be nonprofit, higher education or associations, there's always a team that runs flat out most of the year (hello, marketing), and has little to no downtime to absorb new systems and ways of working.

As a leader or consultant, it presents as a no-win situation: How do you engage and enable a team when they don't have any time to give? The choices seem impossible. You can: A) Bulldoze them in the name of "gotta get it done" (creating secondary risks around sentiment and resistance), or B) Let them hang out on the legacy system interminably, dooming the transition to failure.

But, is there a middle path?

Beyond just "time"

Before assuming it's purely a bandwidth issue, step back and examine what's really happening. Here, it's helpful to consider confounding barriers. Specifically: 1) Is the impacted team aware of the coming change, and 2) do they have a desire to participate? If the answer to these questions is "no", your approach must also include tactics to address these areas before you work on the capacity and timing question.

Balancing compassion with the overall project objectives is key, and open acknowledgement that the ask of their time and engagement will be challenging for them is important.

Find the "best-worst" time

With a team like Marketing, they may be in a constant cycle of campaign preparation and execution, supporting the rest of the organization. Assuming there is a calendar of campaign activity, identify 2-3 periods where the work is less intense, such as after a big conference or year-end campaign. Within that, are there days of the week or even times of day within these slower periods that are especially good for engagement?

Meet them where they are: Support to match

Using the information you gathered in conversation with the time-constrained team, think through a few different channels and avenues to provide support. For example, I worked with another nonprofit whose marketing team was very motivated, but was understaffed and in a heavy season of event-based promotion and participant recruitment. We talked to the team and found a way to hop into to their existing team meetings, parsing out a few big meetings into several 15-minute sessions, with a constant stream of updates to help them stay informed and included. 

Following this example, you can schedule discovery conversations during existing team meetings, add a team-specific support time for user acceptance testing, and follow team trainings with office hours and 1:1 adoption support meetings.

As change managers, exec sponsors and transformation champions, progress is key and we can't abandon the end goal. However, we can find ways to support impacted teams with flexible engagement strategies and give teams some deference (and acknowledgement) to help us get there together.

Recap

1. Address awareness and buy-in first - Determine if the team understands the change and wants to participate. Work to build awareness and desire before tackling scheduling constraints.

2. Choose times, together - In collaboration with the team, identify the 'best-worst' windows for discovery, user acceptance testing, and training.

3. Provide flexible support - Provide additional support to help with enablement and adoption (ie. schedule discovery conversations during existing team meetings, add support time for user acceptance testing, follow team trainings with office hours and 1:1 adoption support meetings).

Originally posted on Goat Rodeo.