How and When to Utilize an External Advisor for Your Large Change Project

Large change projects usually involve whole institutions or organizations engaged in longer-term, system-wide efforts to reduce unacceptable behaviors in order to obtain legal compliance (e.g. reducing sexual harassment) or reduce negative behaviors affecting organizational climate (e.g. bullying). Change projects often also include efforts to promote positive behaviors such as collaboration, teamwork, better customer relations, adoption of new systems or creating a more welcoming organizational climate. These change projects typically last a decade or more from start to finish, are authorized by top leadership and are typically led by a high level team.

The first task of a change team is develop an overall plan regarding the scope of the change project, spell out the underlying change process and the operational steps involved. For example, if the purpose is to reduce the incidence of behaviors such as sexual harassment, the first step involves collecting valid assessment data about its incidence (in a way that can be repeated periodically to assess effectiveness of the ongoing effort). The second step is to identify Identifying appropriate interventions, such as educational programs, clarifying relevant policy, creating robust hearing procedures for resolving complaints, and developing clarity about consequences for those who violate the policy. The third step consists of refining how these interventions are developed, how they are communicated, how they are implemented, how their effectiveness will be periodically reassessed and how needed course corrections will be made.

I have hired external advisors for large change efforts I led and have also served as an external advisor to others with such change projects. Based on my experience, it's a wise decision for the change team to hire an external advisor early on at the beginning of the planning process. An external advisor is an important variant of leadership coaching where the client is not an individual but the change team and its change goals. Similarly, the primary emphasis is not professional development (though that will happen), but instead is helping the team achieve change project success. Use of an external advisor is appropriate and needed because it's rare that the members of the change team leading this effort have ever worked together to launch and then manage such a large change project previously (which is one major reason why these efforts often fail early on). An external advisor is usually one or two individuals with relevant expertise and experience that regularly meets with the change team monthly or every other week. The external advisor brings a valuable outside perspective, prior experience managing change efforts, as well as the very important ability to speak with top leadership in a way the internal change team cannot.

If you are about to appoint a change team or have been approached to serve on one, here are some key issues to consider:

• Be sure to include the cost of an external advisor into the change project budget. If you consider the financial value of the time devoted by change team members and potentially many others who become involved as the change process rolls out, this cost is a small component but can dramatically improve the chances of change project success.
• Since a change project taking a decade or more is very likely to outlast the leadership who initially authorized the change project, it is critical to "leadership-proof" the change project. This means making the effort so central to the organization that new leadership will also be committed to the effort. For a discussion of why this approach is necessary and of several ways to "leadership-proof" a change project see the following short article.
• Since large change projects often take longer than initially estimated, it's important to consider how this possibility would be accommodated. There are many reasons for this: resistance to the intended change may be greater than expected or the intended changes prove to be more complex than anticipated. External factors can also temporarily delay or slow down the effort, such as an economic downturn and/or budget cuts, changes in technology used, unexpected organizational issues, leadership changes, or as has occurred recently, a sudden but prolonged public health issue like a pandemic.
• Recurring reassessments of the behavior of concern may indicate that the intended change is indeed happening, but is experiencing diminishing results over time. This is to be expected. One large university's effort in the 1980s to reduce the incidence of undergraduate females experiencing sexual harassment from faculty and staff, initial survey results revealed that this harassment was experienced by 25% of undergraduate women. These surveys were repeated every three years. Following aggressive educational and policy enforcement efforts, the rate was cut in half to 12% in six years, but it took another nine years to cut the rate in half again to 6%.
• Recurring assessments may also reveal that the negative or positive behavior of concern is taking new and unexpected forms, requiring needed readjustments to the interventions being used and/or changes to the underling change process itself.

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