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“What are you going to do with the leaders who will not change, that we have not done”, is a paraphrase of a comment that comes from almost all mid level early in the engagement conversations. Of course the reverse from senior leaders replaces leader with person.
Problems here; pay attention.
Change management is not a coercive process to convert individuals. The focus does not need to be on resistance. To direct energy to those who someone assumes will dig in is insulting to that person and should be embarrassing to the person who asked. When someone displays a resistive behavior there is a reason. If you expect to get any change to happen you must plan on addressing those reasons, which, by the way, is the answer to the question, because reasons are never really addressed-it is too painful.
Addressing those reasons open up a spiders web of connections to structure, process, performance measures and internal politics. It is amazing how quickly CM becomes transformational. Or, as is typically the case, more coercive.
My response to the question/comment is something to the effect of “what is your access to senior leadership”. It usually appears tenuous at best. My version of access is influence; theirs if often more about emails answered. If you do not have a collaborative link to leadership then not only will the empathetic approach not work, but neither will the coercive.
As an external the link to the leadership is usually the first move to address their concerns. If they are talking about the same people/person then I see an invitation for a three way collaboration rather than an unscalable wall.
High level change management has two or three spots in the timeline/process where I always feel it is essential to call a conference room late-morning-into-lunch meeting to wrap our arms around the big picture. I do not take forcing the invite lightly. One of the reasons I can be bold enough to take a chunk of first or second horizontal executive time is that an interesting thing always happens…something new, something potentially “viral” (in a good way), something specific to the client organization appears. It appears in the form of a new word (languaging at its core) a diagram, chart or picture.
One of those meetings (4 hours long) at a Fortune 50 firm created all of the above- a chart, a diagram and a picture. It was a picture that bore a striking resemblance to a camel. “It looks like we drew a camel”, I said on our sandwich break… that connection, that potential analogy, that unique to that organization picture, was all it took to begin creating a model. You might call that the second step of languaging.
The third step, now I hear a year later, after an all hands presentation by the client, was a wildfire spread of the analogy to different parts of the company around the world. Which has since morphed into functional and regional interpretations of the camel analogy, chart, picture and model.
It is nice that a camel can go a long time without water, can stand extremes of heat and has a face that takes a little time getting used to. All great languaging leverage points. Those up and down humps are also helpful to illustrate passage of time, levels of effort and participation. Carry that a little farther and you could say certain parts of the camel are better at carrying a heavy load (and certain camels are stronger).
This type of analogy languaging has happened a couple of time with clients… Maybe we should count them as deliverables…
The chief energizer and “bouncer off of ideas” in my life Alan Schnur woke me up and reaffirmed some beliefs I have about the last year, smiles and laughter (or lack thereof) with his blog post for today-
http://tinyurl.com/ygj9dbz
Yes of course, smiles and laughter have everything to do with change management.
The ones at end when you can be happy about success
The ones in the middle that are a result of camaraderie and shared sacrifice/difficulty
The ones during the project track that have to do with humility and self-deprecation
The ones at the beginning when mapping out dreams and visions
The smile from a compliment along the way
The laughter of a team bouncing ideas
The quick smiles between team members locked up in day long working sessions
The smile you get when you hand over an unordered coffee
If I could package up the smiles and laughter as actual tools in the Change Management Tool set, I would. In your initiatives make time for banter and low key exchange to get the release of laughter and the warmth of smiles.
Especially after the last year or two.
Words are powerful tools in change management.
Change Management words can become tools for communication, horizontally in your organization.
Addressing semantics to gain shared meaning can create mini-detente’s.
One of my favorites is the word training. As in “let us know who needs to be trained for this change and what they need to be trained on”.
Trained or educated?
For me training is the development of specific skills. The closer to something one can do with their hands the purer the definition. It is rote and it is repetitious and it takes practice.
Educated, for me, is informed, made aware, engaged in dialogue, perhaps to the point where the educated can comfortably teach others.
Now what if the owner of change or the chosen implementer of the change sees the two as the same thing? By my definition each will require a different kind of commitment, possibly in a different environment or venue, facilitated in a different way. To make them the same removes the potential for stakeholders to dial in their level of participation at a given time.
Trying to “train” (my definition) information is one of the failures I see in many change approaches.
Those are two misunderstood words, there are many more.
I mentioned mini-detente. It is hard to agree to disagree (which often needs to happen to move toward shared goals) without a little semantic exchange. It is the job of the change agent to facilitate a standoff that can grow into a partnership. In fact many times you can see change management as the phases- standoff, semantics, mini-detente and finally languaging to feed the next initiative.
The short and long answer is no.
The rare occasion where the two perspectives magically mesh is when an expert speaks to a receptive audience. It does not take long for ego to show itself to undue the bind.
From my days as a presentation coach to now I have seen this, explained it, created exercises to address it and cringed when a model for communication or worse change management has the “speaker” perspective.
If you expect or hope for attention, understanding and dialogue you have to understand your issue or topic from the listeners perspective. And I am not talking about the kind of listening we do for TV or music or informational lectures. The listening I am thinking of is the kind that elicits questions, that goes through an interpretation in the listeners mind and that can lead to that person transferring the knowledge and learning to someone else.
What does this have to do with change management?
If you want something to happen- say you have vision for your organization that will become a change initiative- you will automatically have the speaker perspective. After all it is very important to you. But you will need the help and participation of others. Others who probably do not have the same interest in the implementation of your vision. In order to team with them you will have to translate your vision into words they understand. To borrow from yesterday’s post- you will need to EXPLAIN.
That won’t quite get you to a true listeners perspective, but no language translation is ever perfect. The act of explaining, trying to use someone else’s language to gain understanding, is powerful. Going to the next step of facilitating dialogue toward understanding is the key to successful change management communications.
I have been shown refreshing splashes of soda in thousands of commercials over my lifetime. To date I have had one taste of Coke and one of Pepsi. Period. The ads, obviously, did/do not work. Force feed images all you want. People can actually make their own decisions based on fact and emotion (enjoyable emotion not the kind that makes you wonder how you got there).
So why do many change initiatives use a “sell the soda” marketing model?
If Change Management really does need to be sold you are starting off well behind the curve. If emotion has already been rubbed raw by that approach in the past there will be no curve (maybe a deep trough).
Explaining would be a much better approach.
My own version/model is to use the 5 W’s –Why, What, Where, When and Who. Effective Change Management communication is about putting the change in a context that makes sense from the stakeholders individual perspective. Disseminate information then connect it to work and motivation. The emotional tie will follow.
You may even get some urgency out of that glue. Not the “I have to have a soda (change) now (not sure why- just know I HAVE to have it)” urgency, but the, “that makes sense I am excited to participate” kind.
When all the connections are made and the work is done and change is visible, maybe then a tall, cool sensible glass of…water is in order.
Have you every done the kid safety drill?
You know, the one where you get down on the ground and crawl around looking for potential danger? Of course, kid that I am at heart, I rolled, slid and somersaulted too…
The world is entirely different down there.
That, for awhile anyway, is the world of a toddler.
The people side of change has danger (real or imagined), hidden obstacles, an intense right in front focus, movement similar to a crawl (for its snail like pace) and an overall obliviousness to the presence of anything on this list. A good change agent does multiple versions of the hidden danger exercise. He/she must look from the perspective of a distracted and singularly focused child and from the adult who sees clearly the danger. Somewhere in between is the positive, practical, realistic description of the environment. There could very well be a different description for each person/stakeholder. The exercise might even change for a group of stakeholders. Think about a group of children crawling on that floor-different environment, especially if a few get ahead and stand up…
In keeping with our analogy-
If you think you will be able to corral that kid/stakeholder away from the danger (distract, keep busy, drag, pull, push, order…) then you are either very confident in your abilities or opening yourself up for the result. In the change process that result is projects that get delayed (should have fixed that outlet first), quality that deteriorates, stubbornness (which either increases the danger or leads to apathy-yes even with that kid on the ground) and rebellion (obvious with the kid, subtle and detrimental to the organization and culture for the stakeholder).
As the executive for an initiative you would do well to run this exercise of perspective through you head on your own before and after expecting it of your change agents. Get good at it and you will be able to fix danger early if it is real or call it out for what it often is- fear of the unknown. Right back to your role of describing end states and the journey/environment to get there.
As with any buzz term (employee engagement being high on the list of buzzes), group think and assumptions cloud a clear understanding of a motivated individual…
Bringing your dog to work might be cool and something to brag about with your friends and running with an impassioned leader may feel good, but having your work matter and understanding why is the ultimate motivator.
Lots of great things have happened with intense participation in dirty garages and corporate basements. Consultants are intensely motivated and their work environment is often the last pick spot (and it changes constantly with little stability). I am guessing that few of them have “an emotional connection” to the client organization as a whole, the client and the stakeholders yes. But not in the way that connection is used to push the term “employee engagement”.
To the work yes.
The challenges then are-
strategy must make sense
it must be communicated to connect to individual work
that connection and success must be rewarded and reinforced.
The ultimate challenge?
Getting past that first step…
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You do have one?
Placing an external change management resource high in an organization is incredibly powerful. Leveraging that power in a way that is honest and effective is an approach few C-level executives choose to use. I will make the assumption that this is a tool at the bottom of the box that you did not know you had.
This is what has happened when I have lived this role for a client-
The employees are shocked and surprised like a kid who gets two pieces of candy at the store instead of one.
- Because this makes the executive instantly accessible in a new, and comfortable, way
- This creates a clean and quick feedback loop for both changes and for the executives’ perspective and the employees’ perception
- Leaders in the middle of the organization gain an advisor (albeit on a different level)
- It elevates the importance of change
- It honors the difficulty in making behavioral change
- Strategy is reinforced (and gauged and questioned and built upon)
- Collaboration is encouraged in a more acceptable way than a vertical approach (or change management buried in the middle of the organization)
- Communication is reinforced
- and lots more…
Yes all of these things could be present in a well run organization.
Yes you could be doing (or trying to do) all of these things
Yes you have “people” internally to do all of this
The difference is like a speaker talking “to” the audience rather than dialoguing with the listeners.
Leverage for change management is all about initial perspective, assumptions and approach. Your trusted advisor should understand that from both your stakeholders and your perspectives.
They are a powerful rarely used tool in the bottom of your toolbox.
I dug back into some seminar sheets for executive consulting I did back in the days when my focus was executive communication. This is the second of those tidbit tip sheets. The information applies just as well 10 years later.
-Whether or not they agree with you your audience members are there to listen to your information. Notice I did not say that they are there to listen to you. Unless you have quite a following or are famous, it is your content they are looking for. Keeping this in mind is your first step in conquering fear and anxiety- the two plagues on presentations.
-Learn to be outward in your approach to formal communication. Pay attention less to what you feel you have to say and more to how you could say it multiple ways (knowing learning styles can help here). Most speakers are hung up on themselves either out of fear or because of misdirected ego.
-Always keep in mind that your most hostile listener in terms of agreement/disagreement probably holds the information you need for your own argument. Just as business bloggers now respond to negative comments so should you integrate the full spectrum of your argument or message.
-Measure your success by how fully you describe rather than “tell” your message. You can measure your connection to the audience by the number and quality of the questions you get.
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