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The question invariably comes.  “How long will this ‘transformation’ take?”

The client is thinking that, like the children of Lake Wobegon, the employees of this company are above average, so it won’t take long. But whether it is a merger integration, a change in direction or a large-scale reorganization, it almost always takes longer to achieve the vision than the client would like. The reason is simple: it takes time to move a group of people to do anything, and moving a group of people takes work.

Take this example from my vacation: seven people deciding on lunch. The conversation started at 11:30 and covered the following topics: choice of food, best place to obtain, who would drive, relevant allergies, how the choice would mesh with the dinner choice, what would be for dinner, confirmation of location, take out or pick up, getting a menu, what the kids would eat, the need to make a quick phone call, the need to change shoes, cleaning the back seat of the car, forgetting the cell phone, and who would sit in the front seat. The cars left the driveway at 12:10. It took 40 minutes to accomplish the simplest of tasks.

Granted, part of this debacle was the effects of Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill available time. Given that it was vacation, time was aplenty, the adults weren’t truly hungry, and the kids weren’t screaming. The debate stretched on because it could. Unfortunately, decisions at work can drag on as well – and so does the transformation.

So what is a change leader to do? The answer is simple: cut the available time. When establishing goals for a transformation, a leader cannot just set the long-term, visionary goal. A leader also must set milestones along the path, and hold people accountable for achieving the interim goals along the way. The change leader must create a sense of urgency by helping people move from milestone to milestone as quickly as possible. The leader must break the long visionary journey into a series of discrete, focused trips.

Summer vacation has ended, and so has the big trip to see family. During our trip, my brother unintentionally provided a great observation on change.

He has had a lot happen recently. He finally found and married the woman of his dreams and ended his wild and crazy single days. He bought his first home; became neighbors with his mother-in-law and brother-in-law; became an uncle to a severely autistic boy; changed jobs from a big company to a start-up; began working out of the spare bedroom; turned 40; and became a father himself. On top of all this, his wife broke her foot three weeks after giving birth. The poor guy is definitely going through change.

In the middle of a long conversation about all that has happened, his wife called from the bedroom: “David…  John needs to be changed.”

My brother, physically tired, but filled with fresh memories of his recent lifestyle, arose from the couch, and observed, “John likes to be changed a lot more than me.”

His cynical observation is worth putting into a change management context. Unless the current situation is outright unpleasant, nobody will want change. The leader’s job is to show why the new way is better than the current.

In defense of my brother, he couldn’t be happier. He is just going through the process of change, and realizes denial and anger won’t help. He also realizes he can’t really bargain with a woman with a broken foot. If possible, he is happy and depressed at the same time. (Either that, or he needs to be less subtle in bargaining with me to change the diaper!)

I continue to work on material for several speaking engagements and am currently focused on “what is on the mind of the C-Suite.” The methodology is highly informal, but some clear trends begin to emerge:

• Economics – Today’s economy has made it all the harder to continue prior trends. Credit is challenging, commodities have sky-rocketed, inflation has awoken, the housing bubble is deflating, the dollar has slid greatly, confidence is weak, and the tax code likely will be changing next year. Good news is limited and some potential risks have turned into realities.
• Agility and Innovation - Companies that can move quickly win. How does a business create new products and services and implement more productive ways of working quickly and effectively? How does an organization spark and nurture collaboration and flexibility?
• People – The data is clear. Engaged people create superior results. How does a C-Suite attract, identify, hire and motivate the highest quality talent? Millennials have different expectations of their employer. Long-term employees are leaving with years of knowledge. Engagement is a here-and-now challenge. Tapping the supply of talented people that can lead and execute well in the new world will only get harder. How can they make people a competitive advantage? How can they effectively manage the employment brand proposition?
• Community Responsibility - Whether the issue is climate change, sustainability or corporate social responsibility, there is an expectation that employers contribute positively to the communities in which they do business. It isn’t just nice-to-do anymore.
• Corporate Governance - Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley may be distant memories for you, but you probably don’t sign and certify your company’s governance structure. More than one C-Suite member has voiced a worry about “their signature,” and “on my watch.” It may not be sexy, but it does take time.
• Constituency Management - Will there ever be enough time to pay attention to shareholders, regulators, customers, suppliers and employees while staying at the forefront of personal and professional development? Don’t forget – the C-Suite also must demonstrate – occasionally – the merits of work-life balance as well.

Even if the list is not perfect, the reality is that there is a lot to worry about before looking at today’s sales, tomorrow’s advertising, or next year’s business plan. Today’s CXO needs people who can execute well so that they can address long-term opportunities for the business.

Measurable outcomes – on macro and micro levels – are vital to an effective change initiative. So, too, are rewards and consequences for individuals whose behaviors either support or prevent success. This takes us to the fifth step in The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE Change Leadership Model^TM, “Recognize Results.”

You’ll recall that in step three – Plan Programs – you began to outline your strategies, timelines, tactics and measurements to reach the goals you set in an earlier step. It’s during the “Recognize Results” step that those measurements begin to come into play.

Let’s use a simple analogy: a long car ride with a bunch of young children. When you reach your destination, you should celebrate the accomplishment. Whether it is ice cream, a swim in the pool or some other form of reward, it is time to celebrate. Importantly, however, you also should recognize the behavior during the journey. The rule about nine carrots and one stick is probably about right. “I like the way you played with your sister, and I also liked the way you invented the game with the trucks. Next time, I would appreciate it if you didn’t throw the fries at your brother, however.”

It is the same in a change initiative. You will be surprised how far you will actually travel. Celebrate the milestones. Importantly, tell everybody what they are doing well – and do so publicly. Nurture the momentum you’ve started.

I’m working on a presentation for a human resources conference, and as part of the presentation, I’ll be covering why transformation efforts fail. Covering the topic, however, presents me with an interesting dilemma. Should I talk about the failures I have seen? What would this say about me? “Presenting the world’s best speaker on the subject of failure….”

After careful consideration, I’ve decided to reference others.

Perhaps the best work on why transformation efforts failure comes from John Kotter of Harvard. His 1995 article in the Harvard Business Review, entitled “Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” qualifies as an oldie but goodie. If you haven’t read the article, it is worth the $6.50 to download.

His major point is that successful transformation efforts happen because leaders do eight things right, and they do them in the right order. Here are Kotter’s perspectives on the eight mistakes leaders make:

1. Not establishing a large enough sense of urgency
2. Not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition
3. Lacking a vision
4. Under-communicating the vision by a factor of ten
5. Not removing obstacles to the new vision
6. Not systematically planning for, and creating, short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Not anchoring changes in the corporation’s culture

My thoughts:

• A consultant is sometimes hired to help with Nos. 1-3, and political delicacy is frequently required. The consultant may need to say, “The emperor has no clothes.” He or she also may need to follow that up with, “and doesn’t listen well either.”
• Nos. 4-6 are the gory hand-to-hand combat steps of change, and the consultant must be in the background. If the consultant is highly visible during this phase, unintended morale issues will likely result. A consultant can help with tactics and execution, but the leaders of change must be the employees themselves.
• Consultants are usually not around for Nos. 7 and 8. The engagement has ended. Consultants usually see #7 and #8 when they are reviewing the shortcomings of previous changes.

In an earlier post, we talked about the need for companies to use modern communication methods – such as blogs, RSS feeds and text messages – along with traditional methods – such as e-mails, posters, and newsletters – to effectively reach different generations in the workplace. Based on a new study by Randstad, communication styles are just one of the many generational differences affecting companies today.

The study claims the four different generations in the workforce: Matures, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y – have very little interaction with one another. Gen Ys, in particular, are not interacting with older generations. 

This lack of interaction feeds dysfunctionality:

• A new generation has entered the workforce. Those Gen Yers are associating most readily with those of the same age. They don’t associate with older generations.
• As Gen Yers gain experience and mature, they look to take on more responsibility.
• Although some in the older generations willingly share the knowledge necessary to help the younger generations, others view their growth as a threat.
• Information is withheld to protect individual positions of power and organizational performance suffers.

Unlike money, you can take knowledge when you go. Matures and Baby Boomers are retiring and taking knowledge out the door. If the Gen Yers had been interacting up the generational ladder (and vice versa), much of the critical knowledge would have been passed.

The coming retirement wave and near-term economically-driven reductions in workforces are combining to create a clear burning platform for businesses to act upon. To help plug the brain drain:

• Company leaders must understand there are real differences in how the different generations view leadership, respect authority, view work, relate to each other, and put simply, come to work.
• Lead by doing. Anybody who has supervisory duties has a responsibility to inspire top performance from their team, and to do so means understanding that team members will have very different drivers and definitions of success. With that understanding, strategies can be built to best inspire each generation. As an example, give Baby Boomers the recognition they desire for their contributions, while offering Gen Y employees “passion, humor and straight talk.”
• Senior managers have always needed to ensure junior managers had the right workplace sensitivities. Generational awareness must be added to that list of workplace sensitivities.

Connecting the generations will help change their perceptions, encouraging awareness and understanding about the strengths each group brings to the company. Without this awareness and understanding, employees will continue to work within their comfort zones and companies will miss opportunities to build long-term competitive advantage.

A 2006 study from the European Users’ Group and the University of Mannheim provides some insight into spending on Organizational Change Management during SAP implementations. The big takeaway: half the respondents are spending more than 5% on people-related topics.

In our experience, as organizations grow in size, people-related issues expand even more quickly. Although the study did not provide specifics, it would be fair to assume smaller businesses are spending less than 5%. To get the necessary people and technical alignment, larger businesses spend more than 5%.   

It is safe to say that companies are constantly changing their ways of working to find better ways of going to market. Strategies are changing, processes and technology are being upgraded, functions are being reorganized all while quality improvement and cost reduction programs abound. Change has become the status quo.

It also is safe to say relatively few employees are actively engaged in their work. Recent surveys from Gallup place the level of active engagement at 26% and Blessing & White place the figure at 29%.

The disconnect between strategic actions and employee engagement, particularly at the middle management level, is of significant worry to CEOs. In PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ 2008 CEO Survey, 50% of CEOs stated a lack of engagement or motivation of middle managers to drive change represented a critical barrier to effective change. It isn’t too hard to imagine the CEO turning the helm of a battleship wondering, “When is this thing going to move?”

So what can be done to move the battleship? In our work, we have found five strategies to be helpful:

1. Awareness – Put simply, communicate, communicate, communicate. Nobody has ever over-communicated during periods of change.
2. Understanding – One-way communication can generate understanding on simple topics. “Submit your forms by Tuesday,” doesn’t need a conversation to ensure understanding. More substantive change – such as changing a job’s responsibilities – does. Unfortunately, change sends most managers in the opposite direction of conversation. They do not want to confront change’s unpleasant aspects, and wind up having less dialogue with their teams than they would during “normal” times. Working around this tendency comes in strategies 3-5.
3. Participation – Employees who shape their own future will have a vested interest in the success of that future. Draw people into the could-be vision, enable project teams to design their own future state, provide education and training. Do anything and everything to get people involved. What they build will usually far exceed what the leader would design. Sometimes, however, what they build will fall short of the leader’s potential design. Shortcomings in design will be more than made up for in execution. They own it, and they will make it work.
4. Measurement – There is a concept in quantum mechanics saying it is impossible to measure something without affecting its attributes. (Explaining quantum mechanics is for another blog, however!) Measurement calls out performance – both the good and the bad. How measurements should be used depends on the organization’s culture.
5. Leverage – When in doubt, use a lever. Why spend three hours explaining a concept to five managers? Spend two hours explaining the concept to one director. Let the director drive the concept with the managers. People want to hear about change from their supervisors – not a project team. Invest heavily in the top of the organization chart and the battleship will move much faster.

Last week was a busy week. We began work with a new client and I was battling a mini-depression over an assessment that my profession might add no value to society.

My battle started with an article I read about Wall Street wizards, hedge funds and derivatives. The author, an Andy Rooney-type, claimed if a person couldn’t explain what they did for a living in two sentences, they weren’t adding value to society. Farmers, doctors, plumbers and janitors were all on the good list. “Liquidity tranche default analysts” were definitely on the bad list.

So if I can’t define “organizational change management consultant” in two sentences, does this mean I am not adding value to society? Does my mother-in-law have any idea what I do when I say I:

“Help clients’ managers lead their people quickly through organizational changes. I help by being a project manager, strategist, writer, teacher, coach, scorecard keeper, presenter, analyst, tactician, assessor, trainer, and graphic artist.”

The answer is no. Those two sentences, although accurate, really don’t get the meaning across. I’m afraid I have failed the author’s test. I need more than two sentences.

If unbound by the two sentence definition constraint, I frame a conversation about the work to be done with questions about an organization’s relative potential for success:

1. Does it have the right goals and plans? Are the right goals established for the situation? Will the plans enable the organization to reach the goals?
2. Do people understand what they are to do? Great plans that aren’t understood have no value. How does the leader ensure people understand the plan? Are they organized to succeed and have all the enablers necessary to achieve the goals.
3. How engaged are people to achieve the goals and work the plans? The right plans, even if well understood, will not be successful if people don’t want to make the necessary effort.

Depending on the answers, the organizational change management consultant’s job changes greatly. At the most general, the consultant’s job is to help the organization answer yes to all these questions. The specific work changes based on the nature of the challenge, the scope of services being retained, and the tactics required.

Regardless of the author’s perspective on whether certain jobs add value to society, there is value to an organization in moving past change and returning to its mission. The faster the move, the more value is created. If a consultant can speed that move, the consultant helps create value.

As an aside, I decided on Sunday the author was wrong – which just happened to be Father’s Day. Sometimes more than two sentences are needed. To prove the point – try defining “father” in two sentences. Or – obviously – “mother.”  

Stefan Stern has written a great piece in Financial Times on transformational change and uses two examples to buttress his claims. The success story is the opening of a new terminal for the cross-Channel Eurostar train service. The failure story is the opening of the new British Airways terminal at Heathrow airport. The highlights of the Heathrow story are provided below:

“consider the horrors of the launch of Heathrow’s T5 in March. Sure, as far as the construction of the site was concerned, it was a triumph, a £4.3bn project completed on budget, on time and in full. But in spite of BA running a three-year change programme, called “Fit for 5″, we all know what happened come opening day.

Baggage handlers tried to warn their bosses about the problems they could foresee. The site is huge. Employees, who had not had enough training, simply did not know where they were supposed to go. More time had to be allowed to get staff from their locker rooms to the arrival and departure gates. And, as for the lockers – the new ones were not big enough to hold all the baggage-handlers’ clothing and belongings, including bulky wet-weather gear. Parking space, also far from the terminal building, was inadequate.

Managers were told about all these things. And BA chief executive Willie Walsh did not appear to know how grave the problems were. (He later told MPs that he had taken a “calculated risk” pressing ahead with the launch date.) But the clock ticking down to the March 27 opening had kept ticking, and apparently it could on no account be stopped.

Managers sometimes complain that their people “hate change”. That is just not true. People hate stupid change, change that they have no influence over, change that is simply imposed on them.
To err is human. We all do it, even – you will just have to believe me here – journalists. But looking back at the T5 fiasco, it seems clear that a bit of honest, straight talk (and action) at the right time could have helped avoid much of the subsequent aggro.

How hard is it really for managers to recognise these basic truths: that staff (including managers) need to be trained properly to do their jobs well, that employees on the ground may have useful things to tell you about the reality of the work they are doing, and that large-scale, difficult changes need to be prepared for thoroughly?

So much in the world of management seems ultimately to be a matter of common sense, of basic human decency, in fact. You could almost believe that most management foul-ups would be avoided if only people did a bit of serious thinking first. Employees could then get on with their work calmly and productively. Life would go serenely on. And, in this blissful world of efficiency and success, there would certainly be no need for management columnists.”

There would be a whole lot less need for management consultants as well!