When it comes to change it does not take long to find out if a stakeholder sees the glass half full or half empty. It does not take long to see that they may think the glass will soon empty out. It, thankfully, also does not take long to find those future change participants that think there might just be a way to fill the glass (there are even some who think they can WILL it full).
You see things; and you say “why?” But I dream of things that never were, and I say “Why not?” – George Bernard Shaw
To deal with this glass-filling-perspective-dilemma thing let’s borrow from the Presidents top secret team of behavioral scientists. Time link for the actual article.
And let’s assume the end state is a nice full glass of water.
Knowledge
We need to be able to communicate why it is important for the glass to be full. We need to gauge where this will take place. We need to figure out who would be good at this, our current capacity to use that talent and whether or not that person/those people know enough to see the advantage of our end state. We need to figure out and explain and guide the actual process of getting the glass full. Once we get that figured out we need specific tasks. And we need to know when the glass will be full.
To accomplish this we need to gather and communicate all of the data that will guide decision making. Knowledge, data and information that can be received at the individual level is one of our ways of getting this glass filling to happen.
It needs to be Easy
This could very well be a lot of interaction, a lot of questioning, a lot of evaluating of the data we grab. To someone who sees that glass stuck, just fine the way it is, or by some magic losing liquid, our knowledge gathering may seem difficult (and perhaps a waste of time). So we need a translation to easy. This needs to be easy. That is our second tool for making this happen. If inclusion and “getting everyone on board” is going to make this seem complicated, take longer (which always looks less easy) or be confusing then we need to be careful about who does what.
Everybody must be doing it
But then again… the more people that jump on board the more we get to use our third behavioral tool- if everyone else is doing it grabbing more is easy. In our case it might be building group think on purpose, because liking the idea of the glass full is one step toward helping fill it. With CM we can use a little of the “everybody WILL be doing it” approach (I mean that in a good way not because the change was a cram job of orders). As much as being something to do it must be something that makes sense.
And sometimes we need a shove
This comes as the last option.
In some way it will probably be used in every change initiative. Done creatively (especially if there is consensus of the good and bad that will come with this change process) this option can also come earlier. The shove is rewarding things that connect with the end state and punishing for those that do not (that is different than punishing for not participating).
Making certain things mandatory is another option. We just have to make sure mandatory feels more like a choice (see previous three behavior levers) as a non-choice. The best general example of this is automatically placing everyone in 401K’s and having them opt out. They do not choose on their own…which means they rarely choose to opt out.
Maybe in our case we get to drink from the water when we have reached the end state if we participate in the journey to get there.
