Why Change Management Matters in Court Modernization Podcast

Brendan Hughes: Hello. Welcome to Scaling Justice, a video podcast by equivant that operates at the forefront of the justice space. I’m Brendan Hughes, director of marketing at equivant. All of us at equivant are dedicated to delivering innovative solutions to simplify justice.

Today’s episode of Scaling Justice is about overcoming the challenges courts and justice agencies face around the modernization of their operations. Technology is transforming all of our lives at an incredible pace, and it’s no secret that traditionally courts and justice agencies lag behind the tech curve. Everywhere I go and everyone I talk to in this space recognizes it’s not a sustainable situation, but now you’re starting to see some of that shift. Slowly but surely, you’re seeing more and more courts building for the future and starting these tech transformation projects. It’s exciting and necessary, but this modernization can come with challenges.

Today, we are lucky to be joined by an expert in leading projects, especially around technology and successfully managing the change that comes with it. We’re going to hear what change management truly means and what it doesn’t, why past efforts have fallen short, and how a people- centered approach helps new systems and processes succeed.

I’m really excited about this conversation because of how timely it is. As courts embark on these tech transformations, it’s critical to hear the perspective of experts who’ve successfully navigated these projects. Our guest is Sarah Peterson, an associate director with the firm Guidehouse, a leading advisory management and technology firm. She’s an organization change management expert and has more than 17 years of experience helping organizations navigate modernization efforts. Welcome, Sarah, to Scaling Justice.

Sarah Peterson: Hi, Brendan. Thank you for having me.

Brendan Hughes: Great. Well, I just briefly touched on your background, but do you mind providing a little bit more on your experience and why you’re so passionate about leading some of these change management efforts?

Sarah Peterson: Yeah, happy to. Well, I think the one thing I want to say is with 17 years experience, I did not start out going into change management, but throughout my career, every project I was on had a change management component to it. And so just naturally, I kind of got exposed to change management. And then in the last 10 to 12 years, as you touched on, we’re seeing such a rapid increase in technology and modernization efforts, and change management is now a key component into delivering those successfully. So that’s where I’ve really spent the majority of my career for the last, like I said, 10 to 12 years, large-scale implementations at the state level, agency level, as they’re rolling on these new technologies.

Brendan Hughes: Great. Well, I think a great place to start would just be right upfront. What is change management? What isn’t it? I know there’s probably a lot of people that have an idea in their head of what this is.

Sarah Peterson: Sure. So I think the best place to start is what it isn’t. Change management is not simply communications and training. It’s a part of it. It’s absolutely essential to have both of those when you’re doing change management. That is not what it is at the base. Change management is looking at the people involved in an organization, acknowledging that they’re going to feel the change that’s happening to them and they’re going to react to it differently. We tend to perform change management in our day-to-day lives without even realizing it. An example I want to share is if you think about a family that’s welcoming a new baby into the mix, they go through all of the steps of change management. They may reach out to grandma and grandpa, make sure they have them in place to come visit after the baby’s born. They may do a trial run, make sure everything’s at the door, a bag is packed, ready to go.

They go to a Lamaze class, do their training. They do all of the steps to get ready for the change. And so that is essentially the same thing as change. That is change management, basically. They are getting themselves in a position so that when this thing that’s coming in nine months, they’re ready for it, they can handle it. And exactly that same mentality is what organizational change management is. It’s applying it to your organization. Acknowledging that, hey, we’ve got this big thing coming. Things are going to look very different. Do we have systems in place? Do we have a help desk in place? Do we have enough things ready to go so that when this thing happens, we can sustain with as minimal disruption as possible.

Brendan Hughes: Great. Yeah, that’s a great example. I know from my own personal life that I’ve done change management three times and I don’t think I’ve gotten better at it. So I probably could have used some help along the way. Now, something that comes up often around change management is I think sometimes people think of change management and project management as very similar. How do you make a distinction between those for people who kind of think those are the same thing?

Sarah Peterson: Yeah. So project management and change management are similar. They have to be very much in lockstep at the beginning of the project. My recommendation is to be at the very beginning of the project could be successful. Change management is almost now we’re seeing with technology implementations, it’s one of the key work streams. You’ve got your technology workstream, the guys that are going out there and they’re understanding the requirements and whatnot. You have a data workstream, and now we’re seeing more and more a dedicated organizational change management work stream. They all report up to the project management team. But what’s really important and why the OCM and the project management team need to be in lockstep is any shift in how your technology or your data work streams are scheduling things. If there’s suddenly a delay here or suddenly data’s like, “Oh my goodness, there’s this group we want to go talk to.”

You have to make sure that OCM is aware of that so they can control the messaging, they can control the outreach and whatnot. Because a lot of times when you have these large scale implementations and when you’re getting your arms around the ecosystem, the stakeholders and the group you’re dealing with, you are aware of some sensitivities out there. Certain agencies may be a little bit more resistant and whatnot. So if you’ve got one of your other work streams that’s, “Hey, we’re going to go talk to this group out here,” you want to make sure they understand the backstory and they approach it in the manner that it needs to be approached. So OCM is different than project management, but very much has to be aligned with them and the other work streams throughout the project.

Brendan Hughes: That makes sense. Definitely. And one of the things that, as you made an example of before of what change management is, is that making it very relatable that I think a lot of people have probably been part of change management initiatives or big changes in their personal lives where they work. And many of them have been probably through these efforts that haven’t gone well. And so I’m sure you have some insight on why these efforts sometimes fail.

Sarah Peterson: Yeah. And I wouldn’t say fail as much as I would say they struggle. I think it’s one of those things where if you don’t have these systems in place, it’s just going to be a harder adoption for the staff and the end users. So the first one I would think of would be not starting OCM right at the beginning. If you wait and react to the change versus helping to shape the message, getting people trained and prepared, you’re already behind. Sometimes I’ve seen this where after a technology goes live, it’s, “Oh my gosh, we weren’t trained. Our people weren’t aware of this. We need to get OCM in here.” That’s a tougher battle than having them ready to go right out of the gate because now you’re in the new system, you’re trying to do your day-to-day functions. That just adds a whole nother level of stress to you.

So waiting too long to bring in OCM is one of the things I would always recommend getting it done early. The other thing is focusing on the end user versus the managers and the leadership. End users are absolutely important. They are the ones almost often, I hate to say in the trenches, but they’re the ones using the system. They’re the ones that really are going to be the most impacted. But bringing in the managers, making sure they’re aligned, leadership, making sure that everybody agrees that this is where we’re going and I’m willing to support this. Not focusing on that early on as well is an area where I think that you can start to face some trouble.

Brendan Hughes: Okay. And sometimes when you jump into these things, are there some warning signs that you become aware of early on or during the project that you can be aware of so that you know that things maybe aren’t going the way they should be going?

Sarah Peterson: I would say when you start to see a lack of engagement. So again, with change management, it’s not just communication, it’s not just training, it’s engagement. Oftentimes when you have a new technology, you’d like to go out and road show it, let people get their hands in the system, play around with it. When you start seeing a lack of engagement, lack of participation, lack of questions coming in, to me, that’s concerning because I will always say, there’s no way everybody’s really happy about this. And that’s okay. It is absolutely okay if people have very strong opinions, very strong feelings about a new technology. That means that they’re at least paying attention. They’re engaged in this. When there is just radio silence or we’re starting to see things like training participation starts to dwindle, that gives me a bit of pause. We’ve got something here we’ve got to do.

We’ve got to either switch and make training mandatory. There’s some things we’ve got to check in on and see why there’s this lack of engagement.

Brendan Hughes: Okay. And you were touching on a little bit of the frontline people and making sure they’re on board from the start. They’re the ones who are usually using the systems and the processes day-to-day and they’re the first line, but then you also have managers and leadership. What’s the type of behavior that you want to expect or you expect from leadership managers during this change process?

Sarah Peterson: I think with leadership, it’s okay to be real, acknowledge that this is going to be bumpy for a while. I’ll speak personally, but I’ll also speak to examples that I’ve seen in working on these projects. When leadership is too positive about it, when it’s just like, this is going to be great, this is going to be easy. The person who’s been using a previous system for 20 years is like, “No, this is not going to be easy. I know how to work. I know how to work quickly. Changing systems is going to have a real impact on me. ” So leadership acknowledging that and saying, “Hey, this is going to be bumpy, but we’re here to support you and putting things in place to make sure that you guys are supported.” I think that’s a big part of what leadership can do is just being transparent about that.

But one of the things I’ve seen and one of the things that we like to implement in our projects is right after you kick off a project, facilitating what we call a North Star exercise. And what that is, is getting your leadership in a room, and it can happen. If everybody’s really agreeing on this, this can go a little bit faster, but it’s an exercise where you are aligning on what are we trying to achieve through this? Where do we want to end up? And the reason that’s important is because a lot of these technology implementations are multi-year and things are going to happen. You’re going to have a change in leadership often. You’re going to have new technology that’s going to look real shiny and tempting. There’s going to be a lot of things along the road that are going to cause you to maybe want to shift off path.

And having a North Star where everyone is in agreement, all of your leadership, this is what we’re going towards, keeps things on path. And in tandem with that is when you do this North Star exercise, here’s what we’re trying to get to, but I also like to do the guiding principles. And what that does is it will help you make decisions throughout the process. Again, three years in to say a five-year implementation, suddenly you’re talking about, oh, do we want to do X, Y, and Z? This new thing came through, this new module, do we want to do this? Does it meet our guiding principles of where we want to get? Does it meet our parameters of what we’re trying to achieve? And if not, let’s put this on maybe something we do after go live or maybe it’s just a no. And having that kind of agreement and alignment with leadership is a really good exercise.

In fact, one of the projects I saw I was on, they actually made it much more formalized, which I loved. They had leadership sign it and it was this document. And then when they did the kickoff to the staff, to the agency, they had that on a poster. So when they walked into the room and did the kickoff, it looked like the constitution was very cool. They were like, “We all agree we all are behind this. ” And that gives a lot of comfort and a lot of easing of anxiety that your whole leadership team, look at us. We’ve all signed it. We are down to do this.

Brendan Hughes: Yeah. I think that’s a great idea having that visual too. There’s a poster or something that they could all come back to as a reminder, look, we’re all signed up for this.

Sarah Peterson: Exactly.

Brendan Hughes: I think now diving in a little bit more specifically to courts, what about the structure or the culture of courts makes change adoption different, maybe from other public sector environments that you’ve had experience in?

Sarah Peterson: Yeah. You would expect to see different levels of adoption or resistance to a court when you started these initiatives. And that’s completely understood just by the nature of what they do. There’s a lot of sensitivity to that. You’ve got a judge who is in control of his courtroom. So having any outsider come in and say, “Hey, you’re going to need to change everything and standardize to this new process.” You can anticipate that’s going to be met with resistance and completely justifiable. But what we would expect to see too is when you look at an implementation in the court system, the public would tend to be possibly more excited about that. More transparency, faster processing, less bottlenecking and caseload so they can get things through faster. So just kind of stereotyping a little bit here, public opinion may be like, yes, a new technology, a new system is great.

Looking at your clerks then, they may be a little bit more hesitant, they may be a little bit reserved. Okay, how is this going to help me? Because I’m going to be the one most likely in the system. How am I going to be trained? Is this really going to be more efficient? How is this going to add to my already extremely packed workday? And then like I mentioned, your judges for the most part may feel maybe more resistant to this because this is kind of their domain and now you’re telling me I have to change it to meet this statewide standard. But change adoption is absolutely possible. So when you see those three kind of levels of resistance, some are excited, some are neutral and some are very much resistant. That is absolutely normal. That’s okay. A great example of change adoption with those three kind of situations would be like the iPhone.

When the iPhone came out, I mean, you probably remember when the iPhone came out as well. Were you excited about it? Were you one of the ones at the Apple Store waiting to get in and get one?

Brendan Hughes: No, I was probably where you would classify it in the middle where I was interested but hesitant to be an early adopter.

Sarah Peterson: There you go. See, I was a resistor. I was like, “This is so silly. I’m going to just stick to my Blackberry here on out. ” And so we had that. You saw that with the iPhone. There were those camping out waiting to get the phone. There were those who were, “Let’s see how this thing works. Let’s pause and play neutral for a while like yourself.” And then people like me who were just like, “I am not touching the iPhone.” And what it takes, and that’s the same thing we’ll probably see with the judges is that they need to see examples of how it’s going to benefit them, what’s in it for me and my courtroom. And then until they see that, they’re going to be resistant. I will tell you just from personal experience, it wasn’t until I was at a gate waiting to check into a flight, I’m watching everybody go before me scanning their iPhone and there I am with my paper ticket and I’m like, “It’s time to make the change.

I got to get an iPhone.” So it’s really finding that particular thing where it’s going to appeal to the judge and it’s going to sway him. And that’s where working with public opinion, working with the clerks, letting them see the value of a new system will eventually make its way through the entire state. And so it’s kind of that mindset of if you build it, they will come. And that’s pretty much kind of the same mentality. Yeah,

Brendan Hughes: That’s a great example. That’s very pertinent, I think, where there’s multiple stakeholders in the court environment, different levels of people, different types of users that have different needs, but everybody will be impacted by this change. I think it is probably important, and you’ve probably had experience with the different types of stakeholders in a changed process and having to manage all of that.

Sarah Peterson: Absolutely.

Brendan Hughes: You touched on this as well, the public being involved in a change process. So there’s probably a need for communication to the public, transparency to the public. If a court is going to embark on a big change, it’s going to impact the way they do business with a lot of people. And so what’s that part look like in a change process? So

Sarah Peterson: When you’re working with the courts, there’s a sensitivity to it. And sometimes we kind of jokingly say, “Oh, nothing we do is really life or death.” But when you’re working in a situation with the courts, you have to have that mindset of not to go dark, but it may be. You know what I mean? There’s situations here where you really want to be respectful of the public’s reaction to this. A delay in court proceedings could create so much stress for somebody that’s just waiting to get through this process. A judge who doesn’t have all the information or who doesn’t have accurate information, that can be a problem. So when you’re working with the public, you want to be transparent about what’s happening, you want to be transparent about the benefits, why is this happening and how it’s going to benefit them. Again, it’s right-sizing the messaging too.

So when you’re working with these different stakeholders, the messaging that’s going to go to a clerk is going to be wildly different than what’s going to go to the judge because the way their roles are, the way they’re going to be trained, the way you engage with them is different because of their role. The public, you want to be able to be as transparent as possible, be as honest as possible. If you’re starting to see any sort of resistance or maybe negative feedback on that, you want to be sure that you have town halls, let them come into a room, express their concerns with what’s happening. A lot of times these trial judges are elected positions, and so you want to make sure that you’re representing and giving the public an opportunity to voice their concerns. Also, the public should always have a channel to the team.

And so having an online platform or some way where they can provide feedback, provide input, and then get responses back in a timely manner is really a huge responsibility of the OCM team when you’re doing these.

Brendan Hughes: And we’ve touched on a lot in this conversation regarding change management, what it is, what it isn’t, all the stakeholders, the different things to be aware of, what goes well, what some things to be wary of or some warning signs of things that might not be going well. If there was one or two things that you’d really want people to take away from this, you really want to stress our listeners to have or take away from this conversation, what would those be?

Sarah Peterson: Hopefully I’ve shown that change management is not just training and communication. So I would say it’s definitely starting early. Having that change management team engaged right from the get- go is important. And then the other is aligning with your leadership, getting leadership on board because that support trickles down and that can really help move the needle when you’re doing these large projects.

Brendan Hughes: Yeah. I really honed in on that one tip you had about having a document that everybody signs onto and publicizing that. I think that’s a great takeaway from that leadership perspective. There’s a lot to be said from that, I think. So Sarah, I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today. This is an issue that is very top of mind to a lot of court and justice agency leaders, and I think it’s going to be well received on these tips and best practices for undergoing a big change and the best way to go about it to ensure their success at the end.

Sarah Peterson: Wonderful. Brendan, it was my pleasure being here. Thanks for having me. Thank you.