Don’t Be Naive When It Comes to Driving Change
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leading Change
There are ample reasons for organizations to change business processes and business practices in this fast moving and complex environment. The market drivers are strong, the business justification is clear and often, ideas on how and where to change are clearly visible to some inside organizations.
It’s too bad that most change management initiatives fail, in spite of the best of intentions. With a bit of advance warning and some darned hard work however, you may be able to avoid the fate of so many that have come before you.
Learn to ask yourself some core questions and keep asking these questions and you might just put one in the win column.
At Least 8 Questions to Keep Asking Yourself as You Drive Your Change Initiative:
1. Why is this change so important? What’s important to you isn’t necessarily important to others. In fact, it might be viewed as adverse to others. Your change is likely interpreted as an indictment or even an accusation by some of your colleagues. Their very human reaction is, “if we need to change in my area, then you’re saying that I did a lousy job.” It’s easy to inadvertently corner people in this situation, and you can bet that they will fight back in some form or fashion. Beware of positive head nods from people hiding daggers behind their backs.
2. Are you being heard over the noise? There’s a great deal of environmental noise about what the firm should do at any point in time. Why should anyone listen?
3. Are the connections clear? Can you connect your change ideas to market forces, specific customers, competitive differentiators and ultimately, a clear path to create value for the firm and other stakeholders?
4. Are you experiencing a power shortage? Those with the power drive the change. Learn to grow power and influence and when it comes to promote change, life is easier. Not easy, but easier. (See: The Noble Pursuit of Power and Influence)
5. Is your message muddled? Building the case for your view on change requires relentless selling supported by crystal clear and compelling messaging. (See my post on Message Mapping)
6. Are you building a case for WIIFM with your stakeholders? The “What’s In it for Me?” other than more work, big headaches, and a possible loss of influence is a very real question that everyone is thinking about as you’re talking with them.
7. Are you getting the right kind of P.R.? Are you leveraging early successes to build excitement? Nothing attracts attention like success, except failure.
8. Are you walking and asking and listening? Building change momentum requires shuttle diplomacy. Keep moving. Spend more time with your enemies and adversaries than you do your allies. Use your allies to engage your adversaries. Always engage with respect.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Driving change is fun, frustrating, complex, confounding, rewarding, costly and often chaotic all at the same time. The best “change managers” that I’ve observed have a keen appreciation for the complex human factors involved in introducing, catalyzing and sustaining positive change. The idea may be sheer genius, but, unless you engage the hearts (first) and brains (second) of your constituents, you are at risk of joining the super majority of failed initiatives.
-Related Posts:
Management Innovation in the Trenches (at my Toolbox for HR Blog)
Leadership Caffeine: The Noble Pursuit of Power and Influence
The Career Enhancing Benefits of Message Mapping
Improving Your Odds of Success in Driving Change
There is a fascinating article on Change Management in a recent issue (Issue 2/2009) of the McKinsey Quarterly (subscription required) by Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller, entitled: “The Irrational Side of Change Management.”
And while much has been written over the years on this important and vexing topic, the authors offer some insights and ideas that they describe as counter-intuitive, but potentially helpful in improving your odds of success with these initiatives. This article alone was for me worth the hefty annual subscription price.
On a depressing, but not surprising note, the article cites a 2008 study of over 3,000 executives that found that 1 in 3 change-management initiatives fail. These low success rates have been well documented by Kotter as well as other researchers in the field of change management.
Art’s Observations on the Failure Rate: We all know that most change management initiatives fail miserably. Recall your own reaction to the latest program or makeover handed down from on high. The majority are met with emotions ranging from curiosity to outright cynicism. On the other hand, think of the rare initiative that stuck. Why did this one work? My unscientific guess is that the leaders worked hard to create an environment ripe for change.
The authors cite the 4 basic conditions necessary for change according to the theories around the psychology of change management:
- A compelling story-employees must see the point and agree
- Role modeling-employees must see management and other colleagues behaving in the new way.
- Reinforcing mechanisms-systems, processes and incentives must be in line with the new behavior
- Capability building-employees must have the skills required to make desired changes
Their thoughts on how these 4 conditions are applied: “The prescription is right, but rational managers who attempt to put the four conditions in place by applying common sense typically misdirect time and energy, create messages that miss the mark, and experience frustrating and unintended consequences from their efforts to influence change.”
The authors go on to share nine insights into application of the 4 conditions that explain why change initiatives might fail and how to improve the odds. My focus in this post is on two of the insights related to the “compelling story” condition for change.
First: “What motivates you doesn’t motivate most of your employees.”
While we tend to focus on telling stories about what has changed and why we have to change in kind, or what we want to accomplish, research shows that people respond best to stories that address five forms of impact:
- Impact on society
- Impact on the customer
- Impact on the company
- Impact on the working team (environment)
- Impact on “me”
The money quote here: “This finding has profound implications for leaders. What the leader cares about (and typically bases at least 80 percent of his or her message to others on) does not tap into roughly 80 percent of the workforce’s primary motivators for putting extra energy into the change program. Change leaders need to be able to tell a change story that covers all five things that motivate employees.”
Second: “You’re better off letting them write their own story.”
We as executives and leaders go to great lengths to tell our change stories. We call special meetings, conduct town halls, run webinars, write blog posts and often walk away feeling like we’ve done our job. We’ve spoken, the message is clear and everyone must agree or we’ll single them out as resistors.
The authors suggest that while the stories about the need to change (told in ways that address the five forms of impact) have to get out there, we would be better off listening more and telling less.
“This reveals something about human nature: when we choose for ourselves, we are far more committed to the outcome (almost by a factor of five to one). Conventional approaches to change management underestimate this impact. The rational thinker sees it as a waste of time to let others discover for themselves what he or she already knows—why not just tell them and be done with it? Unfortunately this approach steals from others the energy needed to drive change that comes through a sense of ownership of the answer.”
Art’s Observations: While there is much more to the article than I am highlighting here, just the lessons from the first two points alone are worth the price of admission. My robust translation of these points includes:
- Leaders, you’re going to have to recognize that just because you say that we need to change doesn’t make it so. Frankly, there are a lot of reasons why people will distrust or ignore your calls for change. If you don’t carry leadership credibility (beyond the title), you are likely spewing hot air.
- I love linking the 5 Impact points to the story-telling process on why change is needed. Several of these are very personal and as the authors highlight, those things that we choose and value for ourselves are much more powerful than those given to us.
- Last and not least, the idea of setting the stage and then shutting up and letting people ferret out for themselves why change is needed and what it means is something you can put in place today. Quit talking, start listening and if you do have to talk, mind your Questions to Comments ratio.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Like so many things in leading and managing, there are no silver bullets for success. A lot of really smart people try and drive change and fail. Those that succeed seem to have intuited that change is intensely personal and that their role is to create an environment where the need for change can be processed and where individuals can take control of defining the terms of change. While it seems that just when the leader thinks that he/she should be hands on, is precisely the time when he/she should step back and let go.
More soon on this compelling topic.
Five Tips for Leading Change When You’re Not In Charge
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leading Change, Project Management, Surviving Lousy Leaders
One of the things that I love about what I do as a speaker/trainer/educator is that I get to work with a lot of great people genuinely concerned about their development and the development and improvement of their organizations.
As I continue on my career respite from managing a business that’s not mine, I’m increasingly conscious of the significant gap between the needs and ideas of employees and the attention and interest of senior managers.
There are so many remarkable ideas and thoughts on improving performance that never see the light of day that it is staggering. Just a few examples:
- The managers and knowledge workers in my MBA classes in Project Management constantly agonize over the issue of: “I see how it should be done and why, and we are not even close. How do I get my company to change?”
- Specific to managing projects, it seems nearly universal that people describe mismanagement, not by the project managers, but by the arbitrary establishment of dates, deadlines, budgets and even specifications from the top.
- A valued former colleague recently reminded me that an ultimately successful mega project from our past was slowed by lack of executive management guidance to drive culture change and ensure accountability across the organization. Life looked good from the top. The view from down below was filled with pain and frustration. I don’t know why we didn’t listen.
- In all of my leadership workshops, one or more participants will raise their hands and ask something like: “I get everything you’ve been saying, but how do I pull this off with a boss that doesn’t get it?”
- I run a workshop that helps teams tame and execute a practical strategy process and the refrain is similar: “We can use this, but how do I get everyone on board. Especially top management.”
As much as I would like to opine on some easy answers for those operating from somewhere below the executive ranks, I don’t have any (that are easy). To quote Bill Clinton, “I feel your pain.”
I do have some suggestions that stop short of coup d’état, and I’m hoping for some of the extremely sharp readers here to add in their ideas.
1. My first comment is for the people at the top. WAKE UP! Leading doesn’t mean that you have the monopoly on ideas. To the contrary, leading means figuring out how to help people that have great insight into problems and solutions. Listen and set your people free!
2. Make the boss the hero. Learn to sell your ideas in the language of leaders. Just because you think something is important doesn’t guarantee that anyone else will. Understanding your manager’s priorities is a key to success with this tactic.
3. Develop the skills of a diplomat and create alliances. Many opportunities for improvement require changes across silos, and the view from the silo next to your problem is very, very different from what you are looking at. The adage, “Seek first to understand and then be understood,” is advice to live by when proposing changes across functions. You need allies.
4. Seek a sponsor by blending your new-found mastery of diplomacy with the language of executives. Make certain your idea is important enough to the firm’s core issues of executing strategy, improving service to customers and cutting costs. Beware the risks of moving upstream without your boss.
5. Create your own center of competency. Failing to up-sell or cross sell improvement ideas, you should work to optimize results within your immediate span of control. Interestingly, best practice improvements are contagious. As your team improves and visibly benefits from and enjoys the improvements, others become curious. Use this credibility to spread your wisdom.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
If you are in charge, this is easy money for you. Pay attention and do something about it.
If you’re not in charge, but believe in change, don’t give up trying to find opportunities to make a difference. I would rather crash on the organizational rocks of politics and uncertainty than labor away in futility. Never ever give up.
Readers, jump in here. Please share your thoughts and examples of success in leading change from the middle.
Managing Resistance to Change
At the risk of showing my inner-nerd, one of the more memorable sayings from the Star Trek series of shows (post Kirk & Crew) is: “Resistance is Futile.” This of course was the mantra of the Borg, a race of part-human, part machines that sought to assimilate all life-forms into their collective. Of course, their fatal weakness was that they were only able to operate as a collective…and lacked the many characteristics that ultimately serve as advantages and that make us distinct as humans. (OK, I suspect that I’ve gone beyond showing my true nature and nerdiness.)
Resistance to Change in corporate life is a very real force, and of course, the bane of existence of the many advocates of change challenging you to put aside your fears and embrace the new way of doing things.
H. James Harrington, writing in Quality Digest in an article entitled: Managing Resistance to Change—How to handle the inevitable, offers some insights and perspectives on dealing with this very powerful and limiting force in pursuit of a shift away from an organization’s status quo. He writes:
“Sponsors who drive change tend to think of resistance as an inexplicable but avoidable force that affects people. When resistance occurs, they believe it’s actually a result of somebody’s failure. Typical responses are, “What’s wrong with that person? What’s wrong with that group? Why won’t they support our change effort? There must be something wrong with those people.” In fact, such a perspective is a major barrier to successful change.”
Most so-called change agents when faced with resistance will adopt the universal tool for breaking through…the organizational sledgehammer. Instead of finesse and psychology, resistance is often met with arguing, imploring, and something a bit more insidious…political approaches to gain compliance or eliminate the roadblocks. Alternatively, Harrington offers: “Expect resistance and manage it, either through a preventive or healing approach.”
His fine and short article reflects a “seek first to understand and then be understood” philosophy to dealing with this inevitable characteristic of organizational life. Check out the rest of the article for his prescriptive guidance on dealing with resistance.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Resistance to your agenda for change might seem futile to you. After all, who can argue with the expected benefits that you’ve so eloquently and logically outlined. As Harrington indicates, you are going to pay for resistance up-front by dealing with it, or your going to pay during the life of the initiative. Some resistance can be overcome through training and education and the rest will only be solved with accountability measures. Proper investment up-front will hopefully minimize the cost and pain as the initiative unfolds.
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