Introduction
He called me early in the morning and asked if I would be willing to sit down with his organization’s change team as they mapped out what they were tasked to do by senior management. As he explained over the phone, his team was to initiate change in four major divisions of the company and to institute all new systems related to customer service and project management across the entire company.
Furthermore, this level of change was going to impact all departments within the entire company and all teams within each department. So far, the change team had figured out that there would be an extensive number of projects happening at the exact same time, and that the whole thing all had to be accomplished in less than 24 months.
“So, do you think you can help us?”, he inquired.
My initial thought was “this is going to be too much change, happening at a pace that does not work.”
After a moment of reflection, I responded. “First, I believe you are trying to move at the speed of software rather than at the speed of people. Second, there is a difference between clock based change and organizational based change. In the former, every thing works smoothly because the hands of the clock keep going around the same circle hour after hour. In the later, people do not work through change quickly. Within organizational time, there are always endings and new beginnings happening at the same moment. There are changes and transitions that need to be managed carefully. All of this will come with a normal amount of confusion, resistance, and denial. Before we get started, I have some specific recommendations for you and the team.”
And so, we began a conversation about where to begin this level of complicated and complex work.
Start With Yourself
In the beginning of organizational change, the first person who has to change is us. As Peter Block wrote, “If there is no transformation inside of each of us, all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institution.” Charles Fishman builds on this idea when he wrote, “You can’t change the company without changing yourself.” While this may seem elementary on one level, it is deep and profound when we grasp that most people and most organizations have a natural resistance to change. Most of them want to preserve status quo rather than engage with the messy and complex work of change. If we are going to be successful change agents, then we need to confront this tendency within us, and figure out what to do.
First, we must explore the following quote by Kevin Cashman: “If you want to become a better leader, you first have to become a better person.” So many times, people working on change initiatives do not try and improve their own skill base as part of the work. They do not choose to learn more about themselves and their own defaults. As Margaret Wheatley wrote long ago, “When presented with an unknown, we default to a known.” With this in mind, we must create a personal development plan as part of the work of leading change rather just an organizational change plan.
Second, Richard Farson notes that “Most often what gets organizations into trouble are faulty leadership styles, poor internal relationships, and managerial blind spots. The delusional hope of a troubled organization is that it will be saved without having to make changes in these highly personal areas.” To help in the work of becoming a better person and thus a better leader, and in order to make the critical changes in the “highly personal areas,” effective change agents seek out allies and confidants who can be a mirror as the process moves along. The best change agents need a mirror by which they can evaluate their own behaviors and their own mindset. This individual or individuals can help them understand the impact of their faulty leadership styles, poor relationships, and managerial blindspots. It is through self-examination and re-evaluation that we understand the importance of letting go of our old ways of working in order to embrace new ways of working, engaging with new systems, and new people and teams.
As William Bridges noted so many years ago, “every beginning starts with an ending.” If we seek change and new beginnings, then we must be open to ending our old ways of working. Furthermore, we need to role model this so others know we are committed to do the work, not just talking about it.
And the first thing we must role model is being a person who conducts themself with the utmost integrity. Effective change agents know that their actions and their words matter. Therefore, they embody the highest standards of personal and professional behavior. They also expect others to do likewise.
Second, effective change agents proactively choose to make personal connections with all the people they meet. They do this by finding common ground with each individual or team, even if there are vast generational differences present. In particular, they do this by listening carefully and with undivided attention. They recognize that this is crucial to leading people through challenging times and challenging situations. In short, the best change agents know that integrity based behavior always precedes the spoken word or the strategic plan. Integrity always precedes understanding, clarity, and commitment.
When we start with ourselves, and when we find people who will mentor and coach us along the way, plus when we consciously role model integrity based behaviors, we will build a solid foundation for all that will follow.
Build Common Language
The next step to being an effective change agent is to create common language and a cohesive team. The combination of these two will empower the entire change process.
People often ask me why I focus so much on creating common language when there is so much work to get done when initiating complex organizational change. The answer to their question is not one many people like. When I have gotten called in as a consultant to figure why change is not working, one of the first problems I routinely encounter is that people are using the same words but defining them in completely different ways.
For example, the following words are regularly used in the world of change: strategy, goal, objective and project. Without a common definition and a shared understanding of what these words mean, many groups leading change de-evolve into turf battles, and silo based behaviors. They do not cooperate well and do coordinate the multiple initiatives that are being pursued.
Another common problem is the actual word, change. For some leaders, this word implies innovation and doing things profoundly different than current standard operating processes. For other leaders, this word means to do things better and to improve what is currently being done. While it may seem like I am being picky over such small things, I have learned from experience that when the group leading change does not have a common language and understanding, then their capacity to plan and to execute their plan struggles and, over time, even fails due to miscommunication problems.
And these miscommunications can generate a high degree of problems at the team level, too. As we all know, a team of people who are leading organizational change will encounter normal and challenging periods of conflict around ideas and speed at which change must take place. They also will encounter the normal challenges around decision-making and execution of those decisions. And even more so, they will encounter the normal problems around holding each other accountable for delivering the parts of the agreed to plans that they are responsible for over time. All of these problems happen, even to the best of teams.
However, the best teams build trust at the one to one level, and the team level, and they do this through common language and common understanding about why change needs to take place and how it should take place. They do not solely base their actions on the use of authority, power, or influence as much as integrity, respect, and extremely thoughtful listening. The best change agents I have ever met over the course of multiple decades understand one simple and very powerful idea: Great leaders do not create followers; they create partners and colleagues. And common language and its impact on teamwork are highly influential in creating partners and colleagues, particularly when change is complex and complicated.
Co-Creation Leads To Co-Evolution
A long time ago, James Belasco and Ralph Stayer in their book, Flight of the Buffalo: Soaring to Excellence, Learning to Let Employees Lead (Time Warner, 1994) wrote: “The primary purpose of strategic planning is not to strategically plan for the future, although that's an important purpose of the exercise. It is primarily to develop the strategic management mind-set in each and every individual in the organization. The purpose of the process is not only to produce a plan. It is to produce a plan that will be owned and understood by the people who have to execute it.”
As Tom Peters used to say, “This is a blinding flash of the obvious.” However, many leaders fail to grasp the significance of this short paragraph and the key concepts within it. Most leaders and their teams focus on planning the work of organizational change and then working the plan. They completely miss the key concept that the plan and the subsequent work needs to be “owned and understood by the people who have to execute it.”
I believe many people miss this key point, because most leaders do not want to put in the time and effort to define and then create the aforementioned “strategic management mind-set in each and every individual in the organization.” It just takes too much time and energy. Most leaders and change agents feel pressed to make something happen now.
Nevertheless, not having this degree of clarity and subsequent ownership generates problems over time, because what will happen is that those involved in making the desired changes happen will approach the entire process as a one-and-done. They will make one change happen and then they will return to status quo or normal SOP. They will, in essence, declare that “the war is over and now we can all go home.” In short, they will abandon the effort of finishing the plan in order to reduce the amount stress and normal chaos that comes with making complex organizational change happen.
However, great leaders grasp the aforementioned concept and recognize that by inviting people into the planing process, they are in essence co-creating the plan rather than just creating a plan. Furthermore, they understand that as a plan is being executed, it will need to evolve over time due to the normal, unforeseen variables and situations that surface as change unfolds. Rather than presenting a rigid set of instructions or tactics which must be executed no matter what, thus creating the potential for organizational vulnerability or decline, effective leaders must support the co-evolution of the plan as it is executed. In essence, we must own the plan and evolve the plan as we execute the plan. This is where having common language, a cohesive team, and a strategic management mindset become extremely important and powerful. They are the keys to short and long term success.
Sell The Problems
“Nothing stops an organization faster than people who believe that the way they worked yesterday is the best way to work tomorrow,” writes Jon Madonna, retired Chairman of KPMG International. “To succeed, not only do your people have to change the way they act, they’ve got to change the way they think about the past.” As Dee Hock, founder/CEO emeritus of Visa International, notes: "The problem is never how to get new innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.”
When seeking to be an effective change agent and leader, the more we focus on the future means the more we have to deal with the past. Every day in organizations across this country, status quo dominates how people think and how they work. It is their conscious choice, or unconscious default to every situation. Rather than embrace change, most employees believe that business as usual is working and delivering acceptable results.
Understanding this natural tendency to maintain status quo, the best leaders and change agents have the ability to sell the problems related to maintaining status quo. They are gifted in pointing out how doing something new, better or different is less dangerous than maintaining business as usual. When they sell the problems related to maintaining status quo, they often point out external market factors that are changing the business whether we like it or not. But, at the exact same time, they also are able to define how internal systems, structure, and culture may not be able to support the changing needs and expectations of the customers. By painting a holistic picture, both inside and outside the organization, people, over time, become convinced that business-as-usual to totally unacceptable, if not dangerous to the company as a whole. Then, and only then are they willing to focus on ending one way of work and beginning a new way of working.
© Geery Howe 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment