Posts Tagged “Change Leadership”

In today’s business world, no competency is more crucial for a manager than the ability to spearhead change effectively and expeditiously – and in a way that fully engages all stakeholders.

As we’ve already established, change management is a systematic and coordinated approach that can be implemented on an organizational, operational or even personal level to create, lead and manage change. However, to successfully lead any change, one needs to follow a series of six comprehensive steps. These steps are manifested by The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE Change Leadership Model^TM:
 
For the successful implementation of any large project, and especially a change initiative, it is important to perform project steps in the correct order. Thus, the ASPIRE model begins at the top of the circle, with Assess the As-Is.

The Assess the As-Is gives you with some critical components to launch your change initiative:

• The awareness and understanding to explain why change is needed based on current business issues.
• A clear picture of your current state. You might have an idea of how your organization is performing, but thoroughly investigating the as-is state ensures you have the facts and not just guess work.

All this results in a platform for change that helps you establish the sense of urgency – one of John Kotter’s key reasons for failure (see posting Why Transformation Efforts Fail) – to rally support. Support is critical because for change to happen, according to Harvard Business School, 75% of managers must believe that maintaining the status quo is more dangerous than making a change.

In future posts, we’ll discuss the other steps in detail. But one final comment for now: You’ll notice, that The Brookside Group’s ASPIRE model is a closed loop. That’s because it needs to be a repeatable and sustainable process of continuous improvement that brings about meaningful change and continues to drive your organization ever closer to optimal performance. This is an important point to remember as we discuss the other steps.

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.

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.

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!

In an earlier posting, I briefly mentioned Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief cycle. Her cycle defines the rollercoaster we all ride during times of loss, and includes the five stages:

• Denial (this isn’t happening )
• Anger (why me?)
• Bargaining (I’ll … if …)
• Depression (I no longer care)
• Acceptance (it is what it is)

This cycle is often what employees experience during times of change. The instability from the unknown future state causes employees to feel they’ve lost their power or control over the work lives. The instability causes undue fear and doubt in themselves and their futures, causing them to get stuck somewhere between immobilization and depression.

Helping employees to move through these stages toward acceptance can be difficult, but not impossible, especially if we employ the strategies of awareness, understanding and participation to help them through it.

By creating awareness of the change to come, we help employees move through the denial phase and make the change a reality for them. Likewise, helping employees move to an understanding of the need for change helps them to deal with the anger they feel. Finally, using participatory methods helps employees to move through the depression and past just simple acceptance to a level of engagement in the change.

One place to look for a different take on creating awareness, understanding and participation is Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers helps individuals seeking weight loss through their Four Pillars. The Four Pillars are behavior, exercise, food and support that make up a comprehensive program of support, education, and encouragement.

These pillars take members through an awareness of their weight issues – why they are overweight – to understanding the best ways to address their issues -the right food choices and exercise – to engagement through participating in meetings or an online community.

Alcoholics Anonymous is another good example of personal change programs that address the need for awareness, understanding and participation. Through fellowship meetings and their 12-step program, members are encouraged to participate in their own healing. This is done by helping members acknowledge their situation and then finding ways to live with it.

Perhaps with a little effort, companies can work to apply these participatory and supportive means to their change efforts. 

Change is a scary process in and of itself. But add the word “transformational” in front of change and the idea has people running for the exits. Since transformational change is such a widely used term in change management, why does it elicit such a reaction?

Well, first, transformational change encompasses more than reorganizing a single department or changing a simple business process. Transformational change affects the entire business, from the front-line employee to senior management. It affects the organization’s structure, processes and culture. It creates significant disruption across the organization; it changes the patterns and assumptions found within the organization. For instance, it requires employees to work in new ways; ways that might change their ingrained, comfortable identities.

Even more important than the change associated with transformation is the implications associated with the word. Transformation means out with old and in with new. It means caterpillars are bad – we want butterflies. The only problem is that you are a caterpillar, and you’ve always been a caterpillar. And you like being a caterpillar.

Because the word transformation can start the conversation on a negative tone, the idea of transformational change needs to be carefully approached even in organizations in great need of change. Leaders looking to implement transformational change need to start with an appealing, positive vision and work backwards to the negatives of today. “I envision a world where we will be beautiful, fly with the winds and see the world… As an added benefit, we will have less risk of being stepped on.”

During the course of the reorganization, the president, HR head and Finance head conducted a number of “alignment” sessions with the organization’s top two levels. These sessions were meant to explain the rationale for the change and define the roles of those executives in moving the reorganization forward. Nonetheless, mixed messages were common when those executives spoke to their functions. Just as bad, employees told us repeatedly that senior managers were absent or silent during the most stressful periods of change.

Obvious shortcomings in the vision were, no doubt, a primary driver of the mixed messages. Unfortunately, poor leadership, political maneuvering and an unwillingness to confront unproductive behaviors created far more turmoil in the workforce than was necessary.

In the end, the team knew they had few options in addressing unhelpful behaviors from such senior executives. All the same tactics (those alignment sessions) would need to be employed, with one important addition. At the project’s initiation, the team would measure senior executive support by surveying their functions. Scores would be publicly provided to senior management “in the spirit of transparency.” Of course, transparency was only part of the rationale. Creating a sense of competition and peer pressure would become the safety net to ensure appropriate performance.

There is a continuum along which organizational changes can be planned. On one end are top-down approaches with planning done by small groups behind closed doors. The organization implements what it is told to implement. At the other end is including as many employees as possible in designing pieces of the new organization, and then tasking those same people with implementing the changes they designed. The former is exclusive, the latter is inclusive.

This company took a more inclusive route as it mirrored their culture. Directors and senior managers designed their organizations, level by level, and were then responsible for implementing the design. This choice was intended to take advantage of line managers’ more intimate knowledge of their areas and people, while at the same time building their buy-in to the change process.

The approach’s down side was employees feeling it was taking too long. Impatience led to paralysis.

The team had underestimated and under-communicated the impacts. At the same time management was dealing with business issues (their day jobs) and counseling their teams through the unsettling period of change (which encroached on their daily job performance), they had an additional burden of intensive reorganizational work upon them (a night job).

In short, the team miscalculated the burden on line management. By being inclusive, they passed a burden on to people ill-prepared to accept the challenge.

On the flip side, a more exclusive approach would have taken just as long, and perhaps longer. (All the kinks associated with any reorganization still needed to get worked out.) But, since employees would have had less visibility to the process and less day-to-day involvement with the work, it may have felt shorter.

In the end, the team concluded, “in the future we must carefully weigh the pros and cons of a range of approaches, choose the one that suits us best, build a fully fleshed-out plan, and then aggressively and continually communicate the methodology and its benefits to all employees.”

In other words, there is no correct answer – but whatever choice you make, set people’s expectations accordingly.

Recently, we worked on a reorganization of a business with several thousand employees. The company was splitting itself into smaller organizational units. Our team didn’t set the business strategy or the change plan. But we were the arms and legs to help the project team get the work done.

At the end of the project, the team documented their learnings and some will be shared over the next couple posts. We share them for a simple reason – it is highly likely that other reorganization teams will face similar challenges. The challenges themselves aren’t “secrets;” what created the challenges, where the challenges occurred and how they were addressed are. In any case, here are some real live challenges to plan for as you work on a reorganization.

#1 – Crystallize the Vision and Case for Change

While there were several important themes supporting the reorganization (like “accountability” and “customer focus”), these themes didn’t effectively crystallize into a clear and compelling picture of the envisioned future. Because the vision wasn’t clear, the team struggled throughout the project with several issues:

• Decision making became more complex since there were no clear “stakes in the ground” on which to base priorities. Everything was an ad hoc decision. Nothing was principle based.
• The team was left in a reactive and responsive mode vs. being proactive with a clearly defined strategic goal.
• The team was unable to effectively communicate an appropriate understanding of management’s vision of the future. (The team wasn’t quite sure themselves). When the team did communicate, there were conflicting messages:
  • “This is not a cost-driven exercise,” and “Design an organization that reflects some level of reduction,” or,
  • “Business process management and execution is critical to our long-term success,” and “We can design our processes after we set the organization;” or,
  • “Do it right,” vs. “Do it fast.”

The team’s #1 lesson: “When considering large-scale change, nothing should be more important than crafting an iron-clad and understandable case for change and an engaging vision for the outcome of the change. This includes creating specific examples of how employees would experience the change as enhancing their work lives. Use focus groups to test the vision for how understandable and engaging it is.”

I found a recent Business Week article about what happens after the corporate layoffs to be a good example of why Dilbert continues to be such a popular comic.

The article discussed, in a rather glib tone, how interior designers are persuading executives “to do something—anything—with the space where employees used to be” after their downsizing efforts.

Now, I’m all for ensuring the remaining employees stay engaged and recognize the need for extra special care during this time. Heck, I’ve been there. And I’m all for recycling – whether it be paper, plastic bottles or office furniture. But seriously…recommending the newly empty space should be used for quiet rooms, massage chairs and plasma TVs seems a little insensitive. Would employees left behind really find it appropriate that their colleague of 15 years has been replaced by the new plasma screen in the hallway?

Perhaps it depends on what stage of coping the remaining employees might be in at the time these initiatives begin. Anyone familiar with the Kubler-Ross grief cycle understands there are seven stages a person goes through during any type of traumatic change, whether it be the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job. The stages are shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and acceptance.

More power to the interior designers who can improve our work environments through creative uses of space, lighting and furniture. But timing is everything. Making these types of changes while employees are in the shock, anger, denial or bargaining stages would most definitely cause negative consequences.

But perhaps it might make sense if done during the accepting stage, especially if the employees are given a voice and participatory role in the reconfiguration of their workspace. This ownership would involve them in shaping a new future, and not in Dilbertizing their situation.