In July, 2009, Booz Allen Hamilton published an interesting study of leaders in the U.S. Federal Government, entitled “What It Takes to Change Government.” The goal was to determine how key strategies are most effectively led and implemented.

It goes without saying that leaders in the federal sector are encumbered by all sorts of forces, bureaucratic, political and constitutional. Nevertheless, I think the conclusions the researchers reached offer valid lessons for managers in other sectors of the economy.

They studied 11 leaders–at a cabinet or sub-cabinet level–who sought to make significant strategic change in their department or agency, for example, modernizing their structure and processes or transforming to a new agency mission. For comparison, they set up a control group of other government leaders who had generated solid but average accomplishments.

The leaders who were significantly more successful in implementing change…

1. Used a strategic planning process of some form.
2. Established performance measures to calibrate progress and ultimate achievement. Furthermore, a key to their success was having only two or three goals, ones that were truly strategic, vs. tactical or operational.
3. Built relationships with external interest groups and with Congress. In other words, they reached out proactively to both external stakeholders and potential opponents.
4. Collaborated with employees, encouraging their participation. So, they looked internally as well. In addition, they devoted about half of their time actively working internally on the change.
5. Tied performance appraisal and rewards to achievement of the strategic goals. This included, in a couple of cases, removing executives who were obstacles to the strategy.
6. Were ready and willing to do a reorganization of their structure, if it was warranted. In fact, three quarters of them did conduct a re-org.

Now, here’s the rub. The leaders who were most successful bringing about change were practiced good management behaviors (which includes, of course, the above six) rather than just focusing on classic “change management” approaches.

So, a good change manager is, first-and-foremost, a good people manager. Duh!