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Newsweek article has my head spinning on a creative streak. http://tinyurl.com/27krc5j or the old fashioned paper version-much more tactile. It turns out the reason for that spin is a process of looking at something from the familiar and facts, to searching for other connections hanging around in our brains, to refocusing on the tie. And “Bam!” as one creative says- the “aha!” moment.
This is the creativity of ideas. It is the ability to see things from a different angle, perspective, approach. This is innovation at its core.
What it requires (ideas and therefore innovation and… possibly change?) is the ability to have divergent-convergent thinking. Adults, and it appears children too, thanks to our move toward a rote approach to education, spend a lot of time and are measured on the convergent side. Think deliverables, results, specifics. Divergent is less nurtured, if at all, and tends to have something to do with crayons, pens and scissors (usually not pencils).
When it comes to people, task and change management this presents a dilemma. Convergent thinking will create some urgency, quick wins and action and run roughshod over aha moments. By nature change if it is at all horizontal requires divergent thought. It certainly needs a few aha spots. Which means a change practitioner should be adept at fusing right brain to left and or bringing that out in others. A really good practitioner/leader would build those possibilities into the system/process/structure and fabric of the organization.
First neutral. Idle, listen to the engine, gather your thoughts.
Use all five gears- six if you have them- at the right time and efficiently.
If you are looking to get the best gas mileage draft the car in front, coast on the hills and move smoothly from gear to gear.
Urgency has its place in Change Management (hint it is not the first step and in fact that is out of order- see how the gears go from one to six). Think of it this way-
First gear gives you traction it is strong powerful, but not exceptionally fast.
Second picks up the pace a little. It is slow and smooth enough to stop if necessary.
Third works well as a gear to go through to transition to more speed.
Fourth to cruise. Cover ground. Add results. Cross off mini destinations.
Fifth you can feel the wind. This is the place for urgent accomplishment. All the riders are there, gas mileage is the best, the future comes into view quickly. A caveat- it is really frustrating to stop here. Yet there is no reason to continue down a road that goes nowhere…
Sixth. Really how often do you get this gear? It is expensive, it probably requires more maintenance, it may be window dressing. It is the coveted though isn’t it?
I will leave it to your imagination to fill in the pieces for each of the gears in Change Management.
In business/life people have to work together to figure out, to make a plan, to accomplish tasks to get to results. I start with that assumption and follow with the assumption that every organization has a process and a structure to get to the results sentence period.
Is this naive? As in having or expressing innocence and credulity.
It turns out the process and the structure are always there. The effectiveness and application of both is the issue. Enter Operational Change Management. Everyone who has anything to do with CM will agree that at its core it is about illustrating a goal, having energy behind the goal, getting participation, following the change path and reaching an end state. Well look at that. Those steps match perfectly with the core operational steps. And I might add look like the hundreds of models I have seen out there.
If it is this simple why is it that it never (yes I chose that word on purpose) happens?
Each of the steps in my first paragraph have major stumbling blocks thanks to people and money. CM done well, at higher levels connects the two. CM that is not done well seems to only address the people (and process). I have yet to see an organization (and few practitioners with the understanding and visibility needed) that can weave this connection.
Maybe it is just too big a task? Maybe it is because organizations do not have anyone, or any entity, responsible for the gluing? Maybe it is because the attempt is either first made internally without external help or done solely on a model from an external influence? Am I naive in thinking it is entirely possible to weave this people, process, money and method web?
I am trying to think of the title for this operational change management person…
VP of the Big Picture?
SVP of PM (people and money)?
Den mother (father)?
Ah, you say, what about VP or Organizational Effectiveness, VP of People, COO? First one is process, second is people, third one is close. CEO… maybe (in a naive perfect world).
I am not going to work toward an answer here. A solution though is running around in my head since we have laid out the root causes… I can just picture being able to pour something out of a can and have it spread over and through the organization. The something would carry languaging, process, structure, collaboration, method and B-12 to all the right places.
… and warning sign number one.
Because, for me, it is, “what do I need to know?”.
Doing before knowing is the mark of an inexperienced consultant (or the forte of a contractor). This question from a client is an indicator that some knowledge exchange between the two of us may just be the answer.
So what will I need to know?
The most important need to know is the description of the end state (not the current state, not the future state and not the black hole gap in between). There is a whole lot of why built in. This is not the why you are thinking of. It is not the “why” business case for the change (that will help in the overall description). It is not the “why we need this now” version. It is not the why we need this at this point. It is certainly not a search for justification. And it is not a question that gets a quick answer of because.
It is the why someone would be willing to participate and contribute to the effort. It is the why someone would want to be involved. It is the why the organization needs this (maybe a humanized and respectful business case). It is the why the future will be better when the end state is reached- yes a journey, yes difficult maybe, yes all of those things inherent in change- pretty and not so.
If I have marketed well in my own work , the owner of the change, the keeper of the cash, the leader the light shines on (the glaring one, not necessarily the one for the award ceremony) will be the person to open the gate for the path to the information.
The need to know will-
- Reveal the org. chart formal or hidden
- Illuminate structural flaws in the organization
- Illuminate cultural flaws in the organization
- Alert the hamsters on the wheels (which stop and look, which keep mindlessly running on the wheel?)
- Provide a broad stroke of the history of change in the organization
- Clue me in to the connection between leadership, stakeholders, vision and satisfied end states
- Provide clarity on the ability to take, give and assume responsibility and accountability in the organization
- The horizontal, vertical, diagonal and circular connections (that’s the hidden org. chart) present or not
Ok I concede this will create a list…
- A packed schedule of short interviews with a strategic mix of stakeholders.
- Somewhere in the mix of number one- a visual spider web chart of connections current, and connections needed, to first create and then get to, the end state.
- A list of the communication vehicles current (and connected to the change) and missing.
- My own secret list of movers, shakers, gatekeepers and agnostics (in general, not necessarily related to this change).
As with most clients maybe not what you were expecting?
The practice of Change Management (this is the “what I have seen” view) is missing a clear perspective of root causes. Admittedly finding the core of organizational difficulties, not just the work of CM practitioners but also day to day operations, is not easy, takes time and requires insight and empathy- a tall order. An order that should be filled though, because symptom chasing solves little, lays a bad path for the next go around and diminishes the ability of CM overall.
Here is an example-
A method focuses on resistance of stakeholders. It lays out a series of communications, surveys, assessments (readiness which strikes me as the silliest of terms if you are automatically expecting resistance) and pretty pictures to represent the data. The data is “interpreted” and then the practitioners follow their pattern of educating on “the change process”, “gaps” (CM methods love to include gaps), transitions (ditto for this) and the five stages (or 8 steps or 10 boxes) that stakeholders must and will adhere to/pass through to accomplish the change. Everything that is gathered and collected illustrates symptoms, results of the change difficulty.
To get anywhere and to truly be successful at the end state causes need to be addressed.
Short of me (and it is truly an uphill battle) I have never seen a practitioner who takes that information gathered (because despite its poor perspective and damaging assumptions does gather some good data- I love data as much as the next practitioner) and uses it to address the root causes that have created the symptoms that produce the “resistance” that live in the house that Jack built…(I couldn’t resist).
Very often (here’s where I would like to have some good data) strategy-poor or lack thereof-is a root cause. Equally powerful is a performance system that runs counter to the objectives of the change. Culture that has not been molded to be innovative or at least receptive to enhancement can be another stifling root cause.
Therefore the first step of any major horizontal, “transformational” (if you like that synonym) change is to look with a magnifying glass (at the first horizontal I might add- might as well start the real change from the get go) at strategy, the performance reward equation and the good and not so of the organizations culture. That view through the looking glass will illuminate symptoms before they even appear sans expensive, time consuming and often detrimental data gathering.
Change can flow like water.
While the practitioners and internal leaders I meet are focusing on addressing the difficulties and specifics of change I find myself illustrating how change should work in organizations.
It should flow like water.
That “water” carries the change itself forward as well as communication, collaboration, compromise, structural and procedural adjustment and business relations based on skill and responsibility. When something needs to happen to move toward the end state I make the connections to, in effect, clear the path for the flow.
Taking the analogy further-
The flow will redirect around the rocks if it is powerful enough.
In fact it can cover and inundate the rock when participation is high and the change makes sense.
It will carve new routes forward.
While touching one spot others will be touched since water (and positive sensible, responsible change) is always connected; always moves in patterns.
Does your change act more like a waterfall? Perhaps beautiful and refreshing at first sight, but crushing, devastating and forceful in a single direction upon further inspection…
A question from a client leveraging change management for a merger- “What is the most important thing for us to keep in mind?”.
Let’s use a sugar into coffee (or tea or water) analogy.
The coffee is the parent entity or merger; the sugar the “mergee”. The parent company protected by the strength of the cup will stay intact; the company bought will, at some point depending on the purity of the sugar, dissolve into the coffee.
The sugar people may see ruin (an old fashioned CM consultant will call this resistance- big mistake, see almost any post in this blog). The coffee people will see a sweetened cup of coffee (and fail to see it is not the same cup of coffee anymore).
From a business perspective the sweetener should add to the revenue mix in some way. The initial add though is typically an innovative, start up approach and mentality, not necessarily existing in the parent organization. That mentality, from the business side, is represented by a product or service that augments the parent companies offerings.
The dilution, the enhancement, the changes from the originals, the sweet/the bitter and all they imply, is the answer to the question.
The way to get all that to work together is to acknowledge, then define the strength of the purchased entity, the value of the addition to the parent company and the best scenario to retain the innovative strength of the purchased firm in the new packaging of the parent company.
The rub is that the parent company stakeholders must understand the cultural tie and connections of the purchased group, the sugar people. They are obviously talented and skilled and they were able to show that under a different banner. The purchased company must understand that businesses grow and with that growth they must morph into new forms- sweeter coffee can be a great thing and is not possible without the sugar.
The external change management consultant- yes, External, this would be almost impossible to do right internally (and a third party arrangement may border on internal, keep that in mind) helps the clients to create an end state that can keep the strength of the sugar and not let it get too diluted in the coffee. That strength must be a reflection of the competencies and skill of the sugar people. This acknowledgement, recognition and inclusion must eventually overpower the bonds the purchased group has to their former flag.
Anything that emphasizes the big deep cup of coffee and delegitimizes the value of a single grain of sugar is going to make a messy, foul tasting cup of coffee.
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.
Guiding large scale change, as you have read in previous posts, is a balancing act between big/small, close/far, future/past and wide angle/zoom. All of these relate to “personal depth of field”. Change benefits from using the correct lens at the correct time. Let’s face it some of us have the wide angle attached and some the macro zoom. That is good if leveraged.
Same tree, same standing spot, same time- different lens.
How long does it take for you to see the tree from the previous vantage point? Or how much did you want to see more of the first picture?
I personally want to see what the swing looks like…the neighbors yards, clouds in the sky?… I know it could all be important at some point.
Just as important as looking at the texture of the bark and the positioning of the branches should I decide to climb the tree.
With change management you must know when to use each lens, who to choose to manage that perspective, how to communicate the knowledge gained and how to break the block between those who see the bark and those who see the sky.
There is a theory in quantum mechanics that it is possible the future influences the present (and possibly the past). I dug into it in a recent Discover Magazine article.
And did my best to understand the true meaning for quantum mechanics, but big picture mentality that I have…
I got to wondering how that might look for the change process.
It could mean there are multiple versions of result and effect. Basically versions of success and failure. Successful establishment of process and an adaptation of culture to speed change if the future has anything to do with it should be the hand that pulls in the present.
Less success would be fed by a status quo that requires to much time to adapt and therefore guides a less powerful approach to change.
Or look at it this way- in any large change initiative during the design of the end state imagine how the future would look if the present path was smooth. Do what it takes to not just progress toward and get to the end state but create a path to the future (that in this perfect world is feeding back in the moment).
From experience I would say there is a feeling of inevitability, a magic carpet of forward progress, on smooth exciting change initiatives that might just be guided by a different hand of time (or lack of time as a dimension).
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