Deeper Than the Headlines: Sensegiving in Change Management and Compliance

Sensegiving in Change Management

Recently, I was talking with a friend, a long-time compliance colleague. As we grew more comfortable in the conversation, he confided in me some current frustrations in his compliance leadership role. There seemed to be a common theme: the pain and difficulty associated with organizational change as it relates to compliance.

This colleague is bright and capable. He understands the rules and regulations and knows where his organization’s compliance is weak and where it is strong. But he struggled when tasked with implementing organizational changes as they related to new compliance mandates. I couldn’t help but think that some of his difficulties had to do with the pain any organization experiences when they’re required to change (for any reason, compliance related or not). Change is always a challenge.

Most of the compliance officers I know are not formally trained in change management. However, looking back over personal experiences, compliance officers who were successful in their role were somehow good at change management. Perhaps they’d gained the experience in prior work settings or it just came naturally to them. In either case, my friend could probably relieve his frustrations through some thoughtful guidance on how to manage change in a compliance context.

The concept of sensegiving is something that every compliance professional could benefit from. Sensegiving, in the context of organizational change management, is the process of helping others make sense of the reason, need and rationale for a change. The science and study of change management in organizations is rather robust. For example, see the Journal of Change Management and the article “The Critical Role of Moderators in Leader Sensegiving: A Literature Review” from the December 2015 issue.

The research behind sensegiving is more extensive than can be given here and I am by no means an expert on the topic.

However, one thing rings true to me as I thought about my compliance colleague’s struggles. According the article referenced above, “change initiatives entail a high risk of failure if leaders cannot convey the underlying sense to employees…Moderators of the leader sensegiving process represent a critical but underexplored factor of sensegiving during organizational change.”

I think where my friend was struggling was in the messaging and methods of helping employees make sense of the required organizational change because of new compliance mandates. Sometimes, the reason for the regulation doesn’t even make sense to us as compliance officers but usually there is some story we can tell or some ‘sense to be made’ of the reason for the required change.

As compliance officers, it’s incumbent on us not to just ram new rules and regulations down the throats of those within our organizations. Part of our responsibility is to tell the story or reason why such regulations are being implemented. Even if those we are telling don’t agree with the regulation, if they can better understand why something is being done, they’ll be more likely to buy-in at the front-line level and it is this buy-in that is crucial for true change and compliant behavior.

How do you handle difficult situations and organizational changes? Leave your helpful stories in the comments below! I’d love to hear your ideas.