Are you creating an MVP for your change management initiatives?

Change projects with a small budget, limited resources or that are supporting an agile technology project can benefit from foregoing big-bang style communications and adopting a MVC — minimum valuable communication. Here’s how:

On one of my recent projects working as a change management consultant, I supported a large European corporation who recently (and separately from my project) started a mandate to work in a more agile fashion. It is something I enjoy and try and consider in each of my projects how can I bring some of my startup experience into traditional German organizations. But the general story is common: top-heavy corporations are eager to become “innovation incubators” and adopt organizational buzzwords like agility or digital as they feel the heat from the speed, growth and candor of smaller organizations who have used their size to their advantage in gaining market share.

While that’s an interesting topic, it is not the focus of this article. My focus is rather: How can change management experts coach organizations in this transition phase? — Between process-driven organizational cultures to move-fast-and-break-things agility and fall somewhere in the middle?

Let me introduce you to the MVC: The Minimum Valuable Communication(s)

You have heard of a MVP: “The smallest thing that you can build that delivers customer value.”For the development team, the focus is on learning: building a basic version of your idea to collect feedback from real users as soon as possible to be able to iterate on what’s actually needed from the POV of the users. For the user, the focus is on value: at what stage of development can they begin to derive value?

We can take this same methodology and apply it to change management and communications. The MVP of change and communications is as I like to call it, an “MVC” — minimum valuable communication. Here the focus is on distilling out the most important message (for a given time range) for the most important users.

How can you begin with a MVC?

1: Start with the traditional first stage of change management, a stakeholder analysis (you can also do a stakeholder map). The key is: know who you’re dealing with, who has to be communicated with and get confirmation from your client.

2. Here’s where we diverge from tradition: Next up, we need to identify the “high-impact stakeholders”. High-impact stakeholders have such an impact on the project that they need to be treated specially, like board members.

Ask the group: who do we absolutely need to report to, for failure to do so would result in project termination/delays? These are high-impact stakeholders.

It’s best obviously to do this with your client to understand, from their perspective, who is special.

Once you have your super users/high-impact stakeholders, you’ll want to set up a short workshop to work out with the client what the MVCs are for each group.

To start the workshop, I like to use something called Commander’s Intent. Write out the two questions on a white board or show them on a screen and ask your client to spend a couple of minutes jotting down answers independently (& silently) to the two questions on post it notes.

Once the two minutes are up, collect the post its and add them to the board. Cluster by content and distill down the main message. This may take some discussion but focus on getting this ironed out in five minutes or less.

These who sentences will be the backbone of the rest of the workshop. make sure to reference them throughout. What’s key is that the two statements purposely do not contain a whole lot of information which prevents them from becoming obsolete come updates or changes and it offers freedom to expand on the message for a particular group.

Next up, bring back the users. On big print outs of something like a “minimum valuable communication canvas” (see below for one example other’s can be found here, but it’s basically an application of the business model canvas). Go through the questions for each group:

Now you’ve got two important sources of info: 1) the overarching message and action for your project and 2) the change impact of your initiative on your highest impact stakeholders.

Put the two together: With both your guiding principles defined in the Commander’s Intent and your canvases for change, map out a big chart on a single sheet of flip chart paper. You only need four columns: one for the group, and one for your MVC, one for the frequency of communication and another for the communication channels.

In an ad-libs type format, write the key messages out in three bullet points or less (sentences are best!) per high-impact stakeholder. Outline the frequency that’s required and the best channels to reach this high-impact group.

Example MVCs:

1. This project at (company) is important because _________ we are on track according to _________ so far we have already delivered the following results _________, _________, and _________. We are planning to do _________ next.
2. The status of (project name) is _________ but we need guidance on _________.
3. The most important strategic updates from the project are _________.

Benefits of the MVC:

1. If time or resources is an issue that makes individual stakeholder interviews not possible (although highly recommended), this approach distills down the message in a couple hours for all high-impact groups
2. For clients this means leaner communication costs!
3. You focus on value — from a user’s perspective. This means instead of what benefits your client, you are focusing on value for the end user/stakeholder. This is in line with human-centered design principles and the general UX principle of empathy because you will inevitably be integrating their direct feedback
4. Depending on the outcome of your stakeholder mapping, you may end up focusing on early adopters — which makes later change initiatives easier once you have won them over
5. Similarly, you will likely find that your high-impact stakeholders are the people who know the project best and the change the best. This makes communication efforts easier
6. The constraint of focusing on only the most important message means your message won’t get watered down or complicated from an information overload
7. Because you focus on bite-sized messages that are small and tailored, when the need arises, you can pivot the message or form of communication much easier
8. The MVP method is focused on learning and similarly the MVC will also help change managers learn where the message is missing
9. You will harness the power of constraints
10. Lastly, my favorite topic: bias reduction. The more time you spend crafting long winded messages, the more attached you become to the output and less able you are to let go and change/iterate when necessary. This is called Escalation of Commitment and its mirrored in Ed Catmull’s memoir on running Pixar in the story of the “beautifully shaded penny”

What else can you try?

Running a huge change initiative with more than five high-impact groups? Try instead to run this exercise every sprint and only focus on the most influential stakeholders for that particular sprint instead of all at once

Have you used a change canvas before? Share you experiences and what you found most helpful!

Resources:

1. Presentation template by Slidesgo
2. Icons by Flaticon
3. Images & infographics by Freepik
4. Other, more detailed change canvases can be found here: https://leanchange.org/resources/canvases/