In Order to Succeed at Change: Focus, Focus, Focus

There is one basic truth about implementing change – the greater an organization’s focus on the change the more likely it is to be successful. Therefore, it is incumbent on executives to demonstrate change leadership and set one to three change goals for their organization.  That’s it, ONE to THREE change goals at any one time.

Stop the Madness!

I am working with an organization on a firm-wide operational excellence initiative in order to improve key processes and thereby enable the sales force to have more time to sell.  My biggest concern on this project is the top sales executive who has six change goals for her sales force on top of the two change goals that cut across the whole organization with the operational excellence initiative.  With eight goals, her global sales force is likely to have inconsistent adoption of the operational excellence goals.  Worse, the large number of change goals she has set are likely to have a negative impact on her team’s ability to deliver their numbers.  A sales force who cannot deliver their numbers places the larger organization in jeopardy.

Another example of a lack of change leadership, my firm is working with a client for whom we are delivering sales training to their global sales force.  The Vice President of Sales Effectiveness, the project sponsor, has nine initiatives going on currently, of which the sales training is only one.  The VP recently told us that if he had an additional $100,000 to spend he would invest it in change management consulting services to help him drive the myriad of initiatives.  Unfortunately for this VP, no amount of change management consulting can change human nature – people cannot focus on that many goals and still run their business effectively.  He is likely to see few of these initiatives succeed in the long-term.

Both these sales executives are smart, accomplished, and truly want to move their organizations to a better place.  So why are they trying to do too much too fast?  Sales executives are conditioned to focus on the short-term.  They have to deliver quarterly number.  Their tenures average approximately 18-24 months (significantly lower than other executives).  Their day-to-day work and career path both reinforce short-termism.  Compound this short-termism with a budget cycle that has a 12-month time horizon while most large-scale organizational changes take more than a year.  Essentially, you have a recipe for cramming in too many change goals in too short a time frame.

Less is More

So how do change managers get executives to focus on fewer goals in order to accomplish more?  It is best to start by changing executives’ mental model.  Most executives have an inherent “fire hose” mental model of change.  Push a large amount of change at a “high velocity” (i.e.,  relying on authority) through a proven change methodology and you will get change by overwhelming the status quo.  This is precisely what NOT to do and why so many change initiatives fail.  Instead, change managers can help by replacing the executives’ “fire hose” model with a “magnifying glass” model.  Just like a magnifying glass can channel the sun’s diffused rays into a small, steady stream of heat so to does a limited number of change goals channel an organization’s collective time, energy, and effort into a precise ray that can ignite transformation.  The “magnifying glass” mental model helps executives to start asking themselves and one another the right questions:  do we really know  the root cause of our problem?  do we really understand the handful of levers to pull in order to get the change we want?  what order should we pull these change levers in?  early on, how will we know if we are having an effect?  When the executives move from the fire hose mental model to a better magnifying glass mental model, you will begin to hear a different dialogue among executives.  This change in dialogue is your leading indicator that their mental models have shifted.

Bottom Line:  A limited focus on one to three change goals is the foundation of successful change.

How can you help executives to limit the number of change goals in their organization?

Blurred Vision: Why Executives So Often Underestimate the Effort to Change?

Executives routinely underestimate the time, effort, and energy necessary both of themselves and their employees to implement change successfully.  Why does this happen so often?  In my work with national and global Fortune 1000 clients, I find that there are many reasons that executives underestimate the effort necessary for organizational change.  The two most common reasons are a mindset of “so let it be written, let it be done” and a tendency to myopically diminish the “whirlwind” of running the business.

Reason #1:  “So Let It Be Written, So Let It Be Done!”

This is the line from the old movie Moses and the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston.  The pharaoh routinely spouts this line and everyone scrambles to obey.  It is very unlikely that modern-day executives would speak, let alone act, so imperiously.  However, it does illustrate the mindset of some executives that once a decision is made, especially made after careful consideration, long debate, and political consensus building (or infighting) that the decision to change is more important than the act of changing.  Confusing the decision to change with actually implementing the change is a useful organizational mirage – executives get to congratulate themselves and each other on making a tough choice without actually changing anything.  Executives who fall into this seductive mindset mistake the authority to make a decision with the ability to execute an important change.  They run the risk of never really understanding the extent of activities necessary to embed the change and are frequently disappointed later with the results.

Reason #2:  “Who is Steering the Ship?”

In their book The Four Disciplines of Execution, Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling talk about their personal revelation that the “enemy” of change is everyone’s day jobs.  The need to address the immediate challenging issues of that day, the unexpected or intrusive demands of customers, the need to make ends meet now, and the e-mails piling up in the inbox all conspire to take our attention away from the future state and the change necessary to get to that state.  Yet, because this is the norm, executives assume that employees and they themselves can repeatedly rise above the whirlwind of daily activity to execute new, critical, long-term change.  That is not likely to happen unless a firm’s leaders work very hard to make the change incremental enough and focused enough to cut through the swirl of daily demands to manage the business.  To deal with the whirlwind, ironically, less change is more change.  Executives who underestimate the daily concerns of the business do a huge disservice by running the risk of burning people out with unrealistic expectations about the pace of change.

A Dose of Reality Goes a Long Way

So if you are a change leader, change manager, or change agent, how do you get executives to appreciate the time, effort, and energy necessary to embed a change?  I have found that it is critical to make the change tangible and personal for the executives.  One way to make the change tangible is to provide the executives a change roadmap or project plan that details all the activities necessary to execute the change.  Better yet, have the executives build the change roadmap with you.  When the executives see the large number of activities to complete, they are less likely to underestimate the size and scope of the change.  A way to make the change personal for the executives is to front load the change roadmap with multiple activities that they have to complete.  The more public the activities, the better.  For example, it is usually appropriate to deeply involve the executives in early-stage communication efforts across the firm.  Front loading will make the executives more sensitive to the necessary juggle between embracing the change and running the business that managers and employees will go through while executing the change initiative.

Bottom Line:  Know the two most common reasons that executives underestimate the effort required to change.  Be on the look out for these reasons among your own executives.  Work to make the change both tangible and personal for the executives to reduce the likelihood that they will continue to underestimate the effort required for success.

What have you found helps executives properly assess the effort required to execute organizational change?

The Most Important Competency for Change Leaders: Acting with Integrity

In my last post, I highlighted Gail Severini‘s Top Ten Competencies for change leaders.  It is an accurate list.  It is a useful list.  But, it is an incomplete list.  The most important competency of a change leader is the ability to act with integrity.

Focus on Wholeness

Integrity’s root in Latin is integer, meaning “wholeness” or “oneness.”  By focusing on being “whole” change leaders keep their inner world of emotions and thoughts aligned with their external actions and vice versa.  This inner-outer alignment is difficult to maintain, especially as leaders are pulled in multiple directions at the same time.  However, it is an essential emotional anchor.  In times of turbulence, stress, and high anxiety, people revert.  Leaders who can maintain their inner-outer alignment, revert as well but they do it to an authentic personal core that sustains them and offers a role model of how to deal with change successfully to those around them.

Avoid “White Knight” Syndrome

Because major organizational change often involves a high degree of uncertainty, it provokes fear and anxiety not only among employees but also among change leaders and managers.  We all crave familiarity regardless of our position in the hierarchy.  Too often those of us who call ourselves change management professionals forget this simple fact.

Some leaders react to insecurity by digging in their heels and resisting the change.  Books and professional journals are filled with pages and pages about how to deal with this type of resistance.  Other leaders charge in like the white knight and attempt to make it “all better,” thereby, reducing employees’ anxiety as well as their own.  This white knight syndrome is even worse than outright resistance.  It feels like it helps but it does not.  Leaders who want to make it “all better” are setting themselves up for personal disappointment and their employees up for disengagement.  On more than one occasion, I have acted as a white knight and can tell you from personal experience, it always ends badly.

White knights inherently have to claim that they know more or have more control over the change than they actually do.  Because change is nonlinear, claims of certainty or having the “inside track” on the initiative or knowing how this change will turn out are at best educated guesses.  Leaders who act with integrity acknowledge the high degree of uncertainty in any change.  They appreciate their own and others’ anxiety about change.  They speak honestly about what they do know and don’t know.  They acknowledge their own limits and fallibility in an appropriate manner.  They reduce anxiety not by playing at being a hero but by describing how they are handling the same difficult emotions as those around them.  Change leaders lead by showing alignment between their private and public selves.

Bottom Line:  Seek your own “wholeness” so that your thoughts, emotions, and actions align.  That alignment will help you to avoid catching white knight syndrome.  It will also enable you to role model successfully dealing with change.

What do you think is the most important competency of a change leader?

Top 10 Competencies for Change Agents

One of the most important things about collaboration is finding like-minded people who can challenge you. One of my favorite bloggers is Gail Severini. She blogs about change management at Change Whisper. Check out her excellent post on the ten competencies of effective change agents.

Change Whisperer - Gail Severini, Symphini Change Management Inc.

What competencies should leaders and agents excel at to be successful? Are you building a Community of Practice or Centre of Excellence?  What’s on your list?

Below is my top-ten list for change agents―with a bonus for change targets. A previous post provided my top ten list for change leaders.

Late addition: Some might ask why there is no mention of methodologies or tools here—to which I would like to quote my friend Tamara Moore “A fool with a tool is still a fool”.  Perhaps the two single most critical success factors in executing change are the quality of the sponsor and the agent.  So what makes for “quality”?

Change Agents

1. Trustworthiness—As change agents, we need to earn the respect of leaders quickly so they will seriously consider our advice and factor it into their decisions. This is the foundation of a relationship of partnering that recognizes the value each brings to…

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How Much Change is Too Much Change?

There is a limit to how much people can change in a short period of time.  Chip and Dan Heath in their book Switch discuss how the rational side of our brain can quickly become exhausted trying to keep the emotional side of our brain focused on the change.  Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling in their book The Four Disciplines of Execution call for leaders to be much more selective in the goals of any change initiative – focusing on one or two “wildly important goals.”  If change fatigue is a real problem in organizations, why are leaders often reluctant to recognize that going too far, too fast in a change effort is a great way to get no change at all?

Lack of a Change Methodology

While we often think that leaders should know how to initiate, lead, and sustain change in their organizations, the truth is that most do not know how to actually execute a change initiative – the mechanics elude them.  That fact does not mean leaders are incompetent or uncommitted.  It means that they don’t follow a proven change methodology because they don’t lead change initiatives frequently.  This can cause leaders to have unrealistic or naive expectations of what it actually takes to change both themselves and employees.  For example, I recently worked with a group of executives deeply engaged in and committed to an enterprise-wide change initiative.  Our discussion focused on the importance of communication in order to build awareness about the initiative among all employees.  I described how important it was to have between five and seven significant communications (e.g., events, one-on-ones, e-mails, etc.) before employees even understood what the initiative was supposed to accomplish.  The executives were shocked that it would require this many communications just to build awareness of what the initiative hoped to accomplish (not buy-in from their people, just awareness).  Most felt that one or two enterprise-wide communications would be enough.  Once we began to discuss the amount of e-mails and dialogues that occur in an employee’s daily interactions (lots) and the percentage of those communications focused on the initiative (just a little), they relented and committed to upping their own communication efforts around the change.  Change management and organizational development professionals can help leaders by ensuring that all initiatives are informed by a proven change methodology that keeps leaders focused on the mechanics of change necessary for successful execution.

Misunderstanding the Limits of Authority

McChesney, Covey, and Huling point out in their book that often executives mistake “stroke of pen” changes with “behavior-based” changes.  The former is all about simply having the authority to commit necessary resources.  (I like to call them “So Let it be Written, So Let it be Done” changes after the pharaoh in the movie the Ten Commandments.)  On the other hand, “behavior-based” changes are about getting people to commit to actually changing behaviors in their daily routines.  Frequently, leaders fail to accurately identify when a “stroke of pen” change becomes a “behavior-based” change.  An example of a “stroke of pen” change is when a Chief Sales Officer (CSO) decides to buy a new customer relationship management (CRM) system to keep track of important customer data.  The CSO is the highest authority in the sale force and responsible for it producing results.  The CSO puts the new CRM system in the budget, builds a business case for why the technology is important to the sales force’s ability to forecast accurately, and defends the decision politically with other executives.  The CSO needs planning, resources, and political savvy to purchase the CRM but it is well within his/her authority to do so.  An example of a “behavior-based” change is actually getting the sales force to put their customer data into the CRM system in a way that helps the CSO more effectively run the business.  For all the CSO’s authority, getting accurate data entry is unlikely to occur simply by mandating this behavior change.  After all, high performing sales professionals simply have to say to the CSO, “Would you rather me be out there selling to customers and making our numbers or sitting here filling out electronic paperwork?”  Most leaders fail to differentiate between “stroke of pen” and “behavior-based” changes.  As a result, these leaders treat “behavior-based” changes the same way they treat “stroke of pen” changes.  Worse, they then try to command behavior change, which will always fail to produce sustainable new behaviors.   Change management and organizational development professionals can help leaders by encouraging them to accurately identify when and what parts of an initiative are “stroke of pen” changes versus “behavior-based” changes.  Additionally, it is important to have frank discussions about the limits of personal authority when trying to achieve lasting behavior change.

Unrealistic Mandates from Above

The third reason that leaders fail to recognize that going too far, too fast often results in no change is that they are often under unrealistic mandates themselves.  In this day and age, everyone answers to someone else.  A senior leader is frequently responsible to the CEO or to shareholders.  If the CEO or shareholders have inflated, unrealistic expectations about what it takes to execute change successfully, they are going to exert pressure for results faster than any leader can successfully deliver them.  Change management and organizational development professionals can help  leaders to build solid roadmaps for how change will cascade in an organization and coach leaders on presenting these plans to higher-ups.  Often reporting on progress on a change roadmap is sufficient to satisfy a CEO or shareholders (at least in the early stages).

Bottom Line:  Fewer goals increase the likelihood of successful change.  One to three behavior change goals is a good range.  Leaders who focus themselves and their teams on a small number of goals have a higher probability of getting better change results.

Change is Both Rational and Emotional

One of the biggest paradoxes about change  is that it is both a rational and an emotional process.  You will often hear organizational development practitioners and change management professionals talk about the fact that successful change requires influencing both people’s thinking and feelings.  Until now I have always felt this observation was both significant and shallow.  How do you actually manage BOTH people’s rationally calculating and emotional reacting sides simultaneously?  The best guidance I have seen on actually “how to” do this comes from the book Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath.

The basic premise of the book is that our own brain has two independent systems, one rational and the other emotional (a well documented fact in neuroscience).  These two systems function simultaneously all the time, therefore successful change management addresses the different needs of both.  The Heaths then use a metaphor first developed by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt of a Rider (our rational brain) sitting on top of an Elephant (our emotional brain).  This simple metaphor instantly helps us to quickly understand certain change phenomena.  For example, when people are suffering from “change fatigue” it is because their Rider has been pulling at the reins of the Elephant for a long time trying to get the elephant to go somewhere that it did not want to go, which is exhausting work.

What the Heath brothers have done better than anyone else is to distill a large body of important research on “how to” affect change, by working with both the Rider and the Elephant, into easy to understand principles that anyone can apply.  (Interestingly, change initiatives can fail either because of the Rider or because of the Elephant, but the Elephant often gets the most blame.)  The key concepts for both the Rider and Elephant are listed below:

The Rider (i.e., the brain’s rational system)

• The Rider has a finite amount of energy and therefore cannot direct the Elephant for long periods of time.
• The Rider is usually focused on what does not work and will analyze, analyze, analyze a situation without taking any action.
• Because of these two “flaws” the Rider needs crystal clear directions, including:  (1) identifying critical behaviors in the current environment that are getting the results you want (i.e., home-grown best practices by top performers), (2) scripting critical behaviors so the are easy to act upon, and (3) defining graphically the destination we are headed towards (i.e., “We will put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade.”).

The Elephant (i.e., the brain’s emotional system)

• The Elephant allows us to rationalize why change should be ignored (e.g., there this always too much work, not enough time, something else more worthy of our attention).
• The Elephant wants to do things that feel good and is spooked by changes in the environment.
• Because of these two flaws the Elephant needs motivation, including:  (1) feeling urgency to act, (2) a sense of security (i.e., incremental, baby steps toward change), and (3) a new social identity.

If there is one part of the book that proves disappointing, it is the chapters on “shaping the path,” another metaphor that the authors use for making changes in the environment in order to change behaviors.  While the authors acknowledge the profound effect that changes in the environment have on people’s behaviors (and I would argue it is a stronger effect than either the Rider or the Elephant produce on their own), the author’s three principles in this section don’t come across as profound or deep.  This might be understandable given the wildly differing environments in which change takes place.  For a better understanding of how to change the workplace environment in order to initiate and sustain behavior change, look for Greg Shea‘s forthcoming book on work systems.

Overall, the book is an incredibly important resource that should be read by organizational development and change management professionals as well as the general public.  The magic of this book is that it makes change management accessible to the public through (1) the use of metaphors that enlighten and (2) examples of how to apply each principle in a variety of situations.  Making great research accessible to the public is almost as big a contribution as the original research itself.  The Heaths have done a great service to the change management profession by translating research into applied principles that anyone can use.  More importantly, they have done an even greater service by putting the tools of change management in the every man’s and every woman’s hands.

Bottom Line:  A must read!

Principle #3: Successful Change is Possible (if we follow some basics)

Change is swirling all around us so now more than ever we need to manage change effectively.  To manage planned change, we should apply some basic but hard-won knowledge, including:

• Change is fundamentally about heads AND hearts.  Successful change combines both a persuasive appeal to our intellect and a deeply felt emotional understanding that we want to make this change.  Every change methodology should harness this appeal to both the rational and emotional sides of our own minds.  Intellectually, we need to clearly know the goal and specific behaviors to help us get to these goals. Emotionally, we need create urgency, show how change can be made incrementally to avoid the fear factor, and cultivate a sense of social identity about the change we are engaged in creating.  The biggest mistake in change efforts is that there is only an appeal to our intellect and not enough of an engagement with our emotions.
• Change at the “individual level” takes a clear and predictable path.  While it is true that everyone changes at their own pace, everyone does walk a similar change path.  By knowing this path, we can help individuals understand, adjust to, and engage in new behaviors.  The path usually starts with the head, “where are we going?” and “why?”  Next, people need to want to change; to have a strong desire to alter what they are doing.  This step is the path is often the hardest because it involves our emotions, which are often muddled when it comes to change.  After that, we need to modify people’s skills and their work environment in a way that aligns with the change.  Finally, we need to reinforce both the intellectual and emotional foundation of the change through incentives and on-going feedback.  Prosci, a change management research firm, captures this individual change path in their acronym, ADKAR, which stands for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement
• Change has to be systemic.  This means that the focus of the change has to be about changing factors in the workplace (information flow, feedback, processes, tools, workplace design, reporting relationships, authority, etc.) as well as changing factors in individuals (training, selection, and motivation) in order to produce sustainable behavior change.  The second biggest mistake that is made during change efforts is that we only try to change factors in individuals and not the workplace.  This is seen in those organizations that repeatedly send their people to training for every performance problem and expect change to magically take place as a result.  As human beings, we have very sensitive “social antennae” and strongly respond to social norms.  Changing workplace factors have an outsized effect on our belief that change is “real” because it alters our environment in easily observable ways – engaging our sensitive social antennae.
• Change has to be systematic.  Just as there is a predictable path that individuals follow when going through change, organizations need a framework to follow in order to make change successful.  These frameworks may be as simple as Kurt Lewin’s classic “unfreeze, transition, re-freeze” framework or as long as Kotter’s eight-step framework.  More important than the specific framework is that it provides a sense of where the organization has been on its change journey and what should be doing next.
• Change is NOT about consensus; it is about critical mass.  This is perhaps the aspect of change that most surprised me when I was getting started in change management.  Originally, I believed that the goal was to get all stakeholders on the same page.  What I have learned since those early days was that some stakeholders are more important than others.  As a result, in order to get successful change, you need the cumulative support of the right stakeholders.  Wasting effort trying to get all stakeholders onboard is a sure way to stall your planned change.  Instead, focus on getting the right stakeholders to commit in order to build the necessary momentum for change.

Bottom Line:  Change is hard but not impossible.  Between 50-70% of change efforts fail to achieve or surpass their stated objectives.  While there is no guarantee that any planned change will be successful; by appealing to intellect and emotions, appreciating an individual’s response to change and working with it instead of against it, taking a systemic and systematic approach to change, and working hard to build a critical mass of stakeholders, you can significantly improve the chances of success.

How Has Change Been Successful Here?

At the beginning of a major change initiative, ask client stakeholders this deceptively simple question, “How has change been successfully implemented here?”  You will find the range of responses that you get quite astounding.  Below are a few of the most common:

• Awkward Silence – This question often brings up uncomfortable memories of how unsuccessful previous changes have been for the organization and many stakeholders would rather be silent.
• Leader Only – A variation of the “Awkward Silence” response, in which a leader cites a change that was based on the loosest definition of “successful” in order to save face for the company or him/herself.
• In a Galaxy Far, Far Away – Stakeholders cite a change that was successful, however, it took place many, many years ago.  Details on why the change was successful are few and far between because many of the stakeholders may not have been part of the change and only heard about its success.
• Smallish Success – Stakeholders are able to cite a successful change; the scale of which is many degrees smaller than the change that they would like to make.
• Bits and Pieces – Multiple stakeholders are able to cite different factors for why they think different strategic initiatives were successful.  This given you a patchwork of factors that can create successful change.  There is rarely strong consensus among the stakeholders on which factors where most important.
• Continuous Improvement –  This is the rarest response.  The stakeholders are all able to cite recent, large-scale, strategic initiatives that were quantitatively successful.  The stakeholders usually have come to some kind of internal consensus on why the changes worked so well.
• “That’s Why We Hired You” – This is the most defensive of the possible responses.  The stakeholders have tried to turn the tables and put you (the consultant) in the “hot seat” instead.

Regardless of the expertise and change management methodology that you bring to the strategic initiative as a consultant, a change that feels “organic” to a client (i.e., part of their culture/way of doing business) is going to be more successful, even if the strategic initiative is to change that culture.  The reason to ask this question is that it tells you a great deal about what the client stakeholders know about creating successful change in their own organization.  Client stakeholders who respond with “Awkward Silence,” “Leader Only,” and “In a Galaxy Far, Far Away” know very little about what makes change successful in their organization.  They will want to rely more heavily on you as a change management professional to “make it all right.”  As a consultant, don’t be tempted to take on all this responsibility for success.  Instead, begin to set the expectation that part of the change initiative must include finding out what makes change successful in this organization.  The client stakeholders, with your assistance, will collect data on what is and is not working in order to make a series of mid-course corrections.  The project will take longer but the stakeholders will learn what makes change successful in their organization.  The stakeholders are at the “crawl” stage of knowing how to make change successful.

Client stakeholders who respond with “Smallish Success” and “Bits and Pieces” are usually aware that they need to know more about what makes change successful in their organization.  They are frequently the most open to learning.  Thank the client stakeholders for sharing this information with you and visibly build the handful of best practices they cite into the change management methodology that you use.  Encourage the stakeholders to be continuously be on the “look out” for what is working during the change initiative.  The stakeholders are at the “walk” stage of knowing how to make change successful.

Client stakeholders who respond with a track record of “Continuous Improvement” are rare.  When you are working with a group who can cite significant, measurable results from prior strategic initiatives and WHY this worked, it is a goldmine.  Incorporate their best practices into the change methodology in visible ways.  This will help to build their personal sense of ownership for the strategic initiative.  Often, this is a competitive advantage that will enable the initiative to accelerate or go more smoothly.  As a consultant, the value you can bring to this group is twofold:  (1) help them to identify the patterns behind why a certain constellation of factors makes change successful in their organization and (2) build their personal capacity to use these patterns across the organization on all sorts of strategic initiatives.  The client stakeholders are at the “run” stage of knowing what makes change successful.

The “That’s Why We Hired You” response is probably the most tricky for a change management professional.  Effectively the stakeholders are trying to make you solely responsible for creating success in their organization.  Even if you are an internal consultant this is a heavy burden to take on and totally unrealistic.  Change happens when a critical mass of people determine that they cannot do things the same way that they usually do and get the results they need.  No one person, and certainly not a consultant, can make change successful in an organization that has experienced little or no success with strategic initiatives in the past.  When the client stakeholders respond in this mode, it is an important “teachable moment.”  Use it as an opportunity to clarify the role you play as a consultant and the division of responsibilities between you and the stakeholders.  You want to move the needle so that the stakeholders leave that dialogue knowing they are responsible for finding out what make changes successful in their organization but that you can help them discover this important information.

Bottom Line:  Asking, “How has change been successful here?” helps you to gauge whether your client stakeholders are ready to crawl, walk, run, or need help just recognizing their own responsibility for making the change happen.  This is essential data.

Organizational Development Needs to Move “Beyond the Organization”

One of the best thinkers on organizational development (OD) that I have encountered recently is Christopher Worley of the University of Southern California.  He is a senior research scientist at the university’s Center for Organizational Effectiveness.  Worley was one of the keynote speakers at the OD Network 2011 Conference in Baltimore.  At the conference, he talked about the need for OD to change if it was going to remain relevant in the 21st century.

Three Management Resets

His key idea is that there have been three management resets over the last two hundred years during which changes in technology, market demand, and organizational capacity required a significant realignment.  According to Worley, we are currently in the third reset.  It is a period marked by rapid changes in technology (e.g., sources of energy, access to information, support for creative work) and market demands (e.g., increased uncertainty, the search for sustainable economic returns, ecological health, and corporate integrity).  All these external forces require a different organizational capacity than most company currently possess.

The Role of Organizational Development in the Third Reset

The third reset requires companies to think about themselves not as single, autonomous entities but as part of a wider system.  Few, if any, companies can hope to tame the highly uncertain and continuously turbulent environment all by themselves.  Instead, forward thinking companies are forming inter-organizational alliances in order to gain some level of influence over their environment.  Gone are the days of a single “heroic” company.  Instead, the current reset puts a premium on “clusters,” “packs,” and “tribes” of companies working in a coordinated matter to strategically support and grow together.

As a result, OD and change management (CM) professionals need to move beyond a focus on managing internal company interfaces, processes, and talent as we did in the second management reset.  In the third management reset, our efforts should be directed to helping our companies and clients manage the interfaces between organizations, coordinate processes across partners, and mobilize the talent of allied companies.  Moving beyond our own organization’s “borders” and working in alliance structures is where OD and CM can contribute significantly more value.

Moving Up the Value Chain

Does this mean that our past work of managing internal company interfaces, processes, and talent is not longer relevant?  The answer to that question is a resounding, “No!”  After all, no company wants an ally who does not have effective internal interfaces, efficient processes, and engaged talent.  However, this inward-looking perspective is the equivalent of “navel gazing” in the current environment.  OD within a company is the new “low hanging fruit.”  Instead, OD and CM professionals need to move up the value chain and seek to create inter-organizational effectiveness in order to truly add more lasting and sustainable financial and social value.  Ironically, as a profession, we have often worked hard to help people and companies move up this value chain.  It is now time to swallow some of our own medicine.

Bottom Line:  OD is important and in order to remain relevant in the 21st century must focus more on building alliances that proactively help all its member companies to adapt to rapid, incessant, and unpredictable change.

Resistance to Change: A Naturally Occurring Phenomena

Initiating change creates resistance to that change.  The ubiquity of this action/reaction cycle means that all organizational development professionals should be prepared to manage resistance and work hard to turn intransigence into support (or at a minimum, acceptance of the change).  We should not view resistance negatively, even when it does not feel comfortable or safe to deal with.  Resistance is a natural response to change.

Why Do People Resist Change?

Research and practitioners’ experiences point to four reasons that people resist change:

• Our brains are hardwired to prefer the predictable
• The work that people do shapes their identities
• Employees perceive that their important needs may not be met
• Previous experiences with organizational change were associated with pain

How Can We Help People Manage Their Own Resistance?

Each of these four causes of resistance requires a slightly different approach.  However, universally, each approach must put helping the people affected the change at its center.

• Tap into Previous Positive Experiences – Since our minds prefer what is predictable, it is important to connect the change with prior, positive experiences.  One of the most powerful ways to do this is to link a current change to successful change that the organization has previous undergone.  Alternatively, demonstrate how this type of change has been successful at other organizations that employees admire.  Create stories and metaphors that emphasize successfully achieving change.  In addition, share (don’t hoard) information so that you create transparency about the change.  In general, it is the unknown that people fear.  Give advanced notice and specific details about how each individual will be affected by the change.  All these efforts make the change less alien and can make even a complex change seem incremental rather than dramatic.
• Engage Self-interest – Since we spend so much time at work, what we do at work for 8, 10, 12 hours a day shapes our identities.  As a result, no one (including you and me) wants to be told that their identities have to change. One of the most powerful forces shaping personal identity is self-interest.  Being able to assert our self-interest is a the heart of our autonomy.  By helping employees recognize “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM), you ensure that each individual can define how they may benefit from the change.  When combined with dissatisfaction at the status quo, these potential benefits can help people recognize a future where they should be better off.
• Resolve Objections – People also resist when they feel that a change is not taking into account their needs.  In order to resolve this resistance, find out about employees’ key needs.  Begin by acknowledging that their feelings and perspectives are important.  Next, ask questions to understand their concerns.  Most resistance is broadly stated but the need driving that resistance is probably much more narrow.  Probe in order to uncover this need.  After gathering information about the need, position a potential solution and ask for feedback from the employees to see who well your solution takes into account their need.  Based on their feedback, question again and adjust your solution accordingly.  Keep checking until you have adequately aligned with the need.
• Don’t Require Pain – Previous, poorly managed organizational changes leave scars on employees.  When this happens too often, organizations get internal reputations for creating, not change, but pain.  Soon, operant conditioning kicks in and employees come to assume that change = pain for them.  Naturally, they resist something that they perceive causes discomfort or might hurt them.  When working with an organization that has previously handled change poorly, it is essential that employees be invited to become actively involved in shaping the change.  While active employee participation should be at the center of any change effort, in the cases where employees equate change with pain, it is even more important. Participation creates buy-in as employees get a sense of control over the change.  This buy-in reduces resistance to the change.  Additionally, employee participation ensures that if and when pain emerges during the change, it is quickly identified and steps are taken to minimize its impact.

Bottom Line: We should anticipate that resistance will be part of any change process.  We serve our clients best when we get them to also accept that resistance is part of the change process, show them the causes of that resistance, and help them develop the strategies and skills to effectively manage that resistance in others and in themselves.