Focusing Change To Win Series – How Can You Lead to Thrive?

Series Introduction

This is the eighth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on How Can You Lead to Thrive? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

1. Why is this book important?
2. How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?
3. Why do people resist change?
4. Why bother measuring change?
5. How can implementing change gain competitive advantage?
6. Is your organization thriving or surviving?
7. How effectively are you communicating change?
8. How can you lead to thrive?

 

8. How Can You Lead to Thrive?

Clearly from this survey, leadership skills that focus change to win are at a premium. Today, change is the norm. It is neither random nor regular but hovers somewhere between. How these interrelationships arise and how they challenge organizations is not well understood (IBM & KMPG Surveys endorse this)

Why should leaders focus on their organization’s essence?

An organization’s essence is the amalgam of mission, vision, values, intent and ethics. These components should be the focus of aligning and realigning people rather than delivering the corporate directives after a strategic planning retreat. Sustaining an organization’s essence is a dynamic that requires everyone’s engagement to define and redefine under changing situations.

It’s only by leaders “inter-reacting” that they can develop people’s shared clarity about the organization’s essence – “what we stand for!” From shared clarity comes confidence, from confidence comes cohesion and from cohesion comes the freedom to decide and act. That’s how organizations will stay on track today. Many people making many decisions true to their organization’s essence.

It’s also expected that some employees (including some executives) will not “buy into” an organization’s Essence once it is clearly defined.  Leaders should then be ready for those employees and managers to transition out of the organization. This will benefit them and organizational cohesion

What are the dangers of using technology to increase control?

Technology increases the illusion of greater control which can feed a leader’s “Control Addiction”. More measurement equals more control. But measuring what is easy to measure can have the very opposite effect. The problem is that most of what is easy to measure has already occurred. What is difficult is dealing with the factors that are difficult to measure and with forecasting what is likely to happen down the road. We can’t spend more time looking through the “rear view mirror” when we have a winding road ahead of us. Technology’s cheapness and speed feeds this addiction with the past and “looking in the rear view mirror” by access to ever more data and information at the cost of acquiring knowledge and wisdom.

This condition is worsened by technologists clinging to largely sequential design and deployment processes which are not fully user or client inclusive, e.g. “Waterfall Process”.  Contrast this with agile processes which are fully supported by our contributors. See the link to comparing the Waterfall Process with Agile Methodologies.

Why do we have difficulty developing leaders that can thrive in today’s conditions?

Today’s conditions are not good proving grounds for the leaders we need. More of doing more with less, multi-tasking and the growing doubt that we may be doing the wrong things means that decision-making, and expectations are now more compressed. Consequently, entrenched expediency leads us into solving one problem so quickly that we find we have now created five more problems. We are so busy trying to solve problems there’s no time for “Where the hell are we going?” These conditions are not good for selecting or developing leaders who can work well under fluid and complex conditions.

How do we develop leaders that can thrive?

The tension between what Leaders want to achieve and their current culture prevents traditional leadership training from making a significant impact. For example, many leaders’ previous training has left them feeling that they could do a better job doing it themselves. Of course, too often this has not happened together with little sign that they have addressed their own or their junior leaders’ performance issues. The consequence is that leading up to a change they lack confidence and skills to handle the natural uncertainty that change creates. Consequently, they default to avoidance and expediency and as a result staff resistance rises morale suffers.

The conclusion is that Leaders need to develop a better framework to assess their competence to lead people, make the next and later changes more effectively.

In this section we outline how leaders can be developed to increase their chances of achieving both measurable short- and longer term results than traditional leadership training. It is based on approaches:

• Aligning People – Getting people on the Same Page
• Action Learning – Solving Difficult Problems while developing leaders’ skills

A Final Thought

Our position is that it’s only by energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else that organizations can survive and thrive. Genuinely aligned, empowered and collaborative people will outperform the competition every time. A leader’s role is to create successful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties. Leaders need to create working relationships that are rewarding not just superficially productive.

Action Points 7: Leading to Thrive

A Leader’s greatest impact is when they motivate their followers to action by appealing to their shared sense of their organization’s essence. Use these questions to rate your leaders’ abilities:

• To what extent do your leaders focused on developing rewarding not just working relationships?
• How reliant are your leaders on “command and control”?
• How well do they really engage those they lead?
• How well do they foster a culture of collaboration? Consider both internally and externally.

Leading to the Essence

Do your people know what your organization stands for? Specifically:

• How well understood is the organization’s essence? (mission, values, intent and ethics)
• How well aligned are my people with the Organization’s Essence and where it’s headed?
• To what extent do leaders use the essence to guide and coach their people?

Developing Leaders

• To what extent are you distributing and empowering leaders at all levels.
• What evidence do you see of true “inter-reaction” where success and failure are openly discussed?
• To what extent do they then take lessons learned and use them to repeat success and avoid failure.
• How well do they use processes to help people stand back, objectify problems and make people’s thought processes transparent?
• To what extent does the urgent drive out the important and mask how things accumulate, misalign and make each subsequent more difficult?

Problem Solving

• How often do your leaders try to solve complex problems with processes geared to “benign or simple problems”?

• How often do leaders face complex or wicked problems?

Leading Learning

• What expectations do we have of people to develop shared knowledge from similar situations?
• How much effort have you put into helping people express being puzzled or misunderstood?
• How well do they lead people on tackling problems and solutions by sharing understandings, resolving differences and producing agreed courses of action?
• How well have leaders, especially senior leaders, consistently expressed their expectations of learning to all levels across the organization?

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Developing Leaders for Effective Change

Leading in times of transition is at best a significant and complex challenge. At worst it can be a leader’s darkest nightmare. The tension between what leaders want to achieve and their organization’s culture often means that traditional leadership training has not equipped leaders to effectively lead the organization through major changes.
Too often previous leadership training and a history of failed change contribute to the tension between the forces for change and those for maintaining the status quo. Unfortunately, as each attempt to use training to improve leadership competence fails so do the chances of successful change decline.

One reason leadership training lacks impact (no matter how good) is the lack of rigorous and continuous linkage between advancing change and advancing competence. Consequently, leading up to a change, those expected to start the change become part of the problem, not the solution. Too often they are unable or unwilling to tackle rising uncertainty and resistance.

How can you re-engage managers and develop their leadership competence?
This blog looks at how you can develop both measurable short- and longer-term results based on:
1. Getting People On The Same Page by Aligning People and then;
2. Making Better Use of What You Have by using Action Learning to help managers solving difficult problems while developing their leaders’ skills.

Focusing Change To Win – How Effectively Are You Communicating Change?

Series Introduction

This is the seventh in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on How Effectively Are You Communicating Change?   Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

1. Why is this book important?
2. How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?
3. Why do people resist change?
4. Why bother measuring change?
5. How can implementing change gain competitive advantage?
6. Is your organization thriving or surviving?
7. How effectively are you communicating change?
8. How can you lead to thrive?

 

7. How Effectively Are You Communicating Change?  

The following is based on 684 contributors who chose to add comments on communicating change. Unsurprisingly, contributors see their people at the heart of any successful change process. They see gaining stakeholder commitment as a force multiplier of powerful change ambassadors. Essential to creating that commitment are leaders taking their people into their confidence with honesty and courage.

Surprisingly, however, our analysis also sheds light on some blind spots. Overall, contributors focus more on technique than systemic or strategic issues when communicating change. For example:

•  They (Leaders) lack the ability to motivate or hold people accountable….they do a poor job at this…..lots of saying nothing….People are told, not asked. 

Change Communication Blind Spots

Real change requires authentic communication and dialogue across all organizational levels. Although, employee’s resistance and disagreement are unavoidable, contributors show how it can be managed through multiplexed and constant communication. They stress that this only happens when change communication is centered on establishing and retaining trusting relationships. If employees feel fairness, they will trust more and trust is the glue of success.

So, what role does communication play in reducing change mistrust and cynicism among employees? Frequently, it’s people’s sense of fairness. The communication timing, involvement and sequence impact their sense of justice.

Where’s the Requiring Environment?

There seems little focus on improving alignment and change success. Issues like change management, communication, and change measurement were under 6% of contributors’ comments on communicating change.

Looking in more detail, a third of contributors said that they didn’t know of any change related communication or that their leaders don’t communicate enough.

For most contributors, real change is the outcome of authentic communication. They show how change can be managed through constant communication. Contributors often commented that trust in management was the only variable that significantly impacted change resistance.

However, comments on authentic communication and building trust seem to collide with those related to top down led change. Critical contributors point out that top down rests too often on leaders clinging to the belief that power, privilege and success lie in their core group. Whatever blend of top down and bottom up it is clear – one should be intentional and as one contributor said:

• Being solid in the values you hold as a leader that needs clearly articulating and solidifying with your change management team before you start planning. 

Our contributors are clear. Lay the groundwork for successful change before trying to carry out the next change. This starts with putting the change management team together before a specific change is planned. Then develop a shared governing set of values and design the change measurement framework.

Implementing Effective Change Communication Processes – A Questionnaire 

This 38 question instrument was developed from 755 contributor comments on implementing an effective communication change process. It is designed to engage those involved in change management and leadership in selecting relevant questions and then reaching a consensus on improvement areas.

• Analyzing Change Impacts
• Set-up Change Program with Metrics
• On-going Communication & Training

Action Points 6: Implementing an Effective Change-Communication Process

Based on your answers to the questionnaire above, use the following questions to develop your plan for developing effective change communication.

• Have you established an explicit set of shared governing values?
• How are you getting people ready for the inevitable change?
• Have you engaged stakeholders and change agents?
• Have you put the change-management team together?
• How do plan to align the team’s values of change and their expectations of one another?
• How are you going to improve leaders change communication skills?
• Who is going to ensure that real change will be the outcome of authentic communication?
• How are you going to ensure that all your people know and understand your change rationale?
• How are you going to monitor employee’s sense of fairness and trust? (Remember: trust is the glue of success.)
• How are you going to establish dialogue between groups and individuals, in often tense situations?
• How are you going to establish and monitor your change’s requiring environment? Is there a set of aligned change expectations between leaders and each individual?

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Focusing Change To Win – Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?

Series Introduction

This is the sixth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

1. Why is this book important?
2. How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?
3. Why do people resist change?
4. Why bother measuring change?
5. How can implementing change gain competitive advantage?
6. Is your organization thriving or surviving?
7. How effectively are you communicating change?
8. How can you lead to thrive?

 

 

6. Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving? 

This in-depth analysis shows the wide range of factors that go into developing the Thriving Organization. Our intent in being comprehensive is deliberate. We want leaders to select which questions are most appropriate to them.

Our reasoning is that there are no simple solutions or steps to follow. What we urge is open debate in leadership teams to reach a commitment to those few things which can make a difference between being ahead and just playing catch up.

Thriving or Surviving Questionnaire

There are 69 questions to select from divided into seven categories to help as you develop your plan for building a more vibrant and competitive organization.

1.  Leadership in Thriving Organizations
2. Change Management in Thriving Organizations
3. Planning to Thrive 
4. Agility to Thrive
5. Thriving People
6. Communicating to Thrive
7. Learning to Thrive 

 

 

 

Action Points 5: Developing the Thriving Organization

Based on your answers to the questionnaire above, use the following questions to develop your plan for developing a more vibrant and competitive organization.

 

1. Leadership in Thriving Organizations

• What is the one thing you can do to improve your leaders focus for your current change?
• What is your strategy for building leadership capacity and competence in the longer term?

2. Change Management in Thriving Organizations

• Which aspects of change management do you need to address now?
• What are you going to do differently in managing change in the longer term?

3. Planning to Thrive

• How can you improve planning for change for the next time?

4. Thriving People

• In terms of the current change, what can you do to focus people on making this change successful?
• What is your focus going to be in improving peoples change readiness and agility?

5. Communicating to Thrive

• Where do you need to focus in terms of improving communication?

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Focusing Change to Win Series – Why Bother Measuring Change?

Series Introduction

This is the forth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on The Why and What of Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

1. Why is this book important?
2. How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?
3. Why do people resist change?
4. Why bother measuring change?
5. How can implementing change gain competitive advantage?
6. Is your organization thriving or surviving?
7. How effectively are you communicating change?
8. How can you lead to thrive?

 

Why Bother Measuring Change?

Most of our contributors do measure change, but 37% either don’t measure change or they don’t know if they do or feel measuring change is too difficult. So, here’s some evidence why this is worth struggling with. For example, learning is the most mentioned benefit of measuring change (27.1%). Yet, if this is so important then why the lack of focus on vehicles like coaching, mentoring and training to capitalize on this learning.[3]

Another striking disconnect is the low numbers of those who see benefits of measuring change’s impact on marketing and customers. This is curious, as our contributors’ most common reason for losing customers is not price but poor quality (92.2%), poor follow-up by sales people (76.5%) and making the wrong assumptions about customers (64.5%). After detailed analysis, it would seem that the relationship between change and competitive advantage is not as clearly visualized as one might think.

In addition, the use of employee metrics including personal performance, resistance to change, improvement to company culture and understanding our purpose, are low compared to satisfaction surveys. Most concerning is the lack of focus on individual behavioral change and tracking pay-related rewards. This is further evidence of little focus on accountability and establishing a requiring environment

Even when metrics are agreed upon, the next challenge is creating greater transparency so that they are used to create and sustain change momentum.

What Questions do Change Metrics Need to Answer?

Overall, there needs to be more focus on developing effective change metrics. The challenge is: How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem solving and decision making?

In Section 4, we distilled contributor questions on what they need change metrics to answer into a questionnaire. We ask readers to go through and rate their current metrics under three sections:

•   Navigating during a Change 
•   Reviewing a Change 
•   Planning the Next Change 

Our contributors suggest establishing a change scorecard with their leadership team and key stakeholders. For example by:

•      Agreeing on those questions which the team needs to answer
•      Deciding what current metrics could be put to good use
•      Assessing during the change process how well they cover the risks of losing customers through poor product or service quality and poor sales follow-up.

And finally……Asking how well your scorecard helps you sell this and subsequent changes?

 

Action Points 3: Developing More Effective Change

Metrics

 

Protocol

Three themes were referenced in contributor comments about change metrics and how to test their overall effectiveness.

• How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem-solving, and decision-making?

Establish Your Change Scorecard

It is strongly suggested that you go through this process with your leadership team and key stakeholders. (See section 7 for more details.)

• Review the table Contributor Questions.
• Agree on those questions your team need to answer when you are doing the following:

• Navigating a change
• Reviewing a change
• Planning the next change
  • What current metrics could be put to good use?
  • How well do they cover the risks of losing customers through poor-quality sales follow-up during the change process?
  • How well do they inform you that the organization is reducing assumptions about customers’ view of the change and how the change responds to their needs?
  • To what extent do your selected metrics allow you to preempt or least respond quickly to competitors
  • How well do these metrics allow you to gauge and track employee stress around the change?
  • To what extent will your metrics allow you to respond quickly and effectively to employee stress before it hardens their change resistance?

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Focusing Change to Win Series – Why do people resist change?

Series Introduction

This is the third in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on Why Do People Resist Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

1. Why is this book important?
2. How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?
3. Why do people resist change?
4. Why bother measuring change?
5. How can implementing change gain competitive advantage?
6. Is your organization thriving or surviving?
7. How effectively are you communicating change?
8. How can you lead to thrive?

3. Why Do People Resist Change

Here’s the reality, Leaders need employee support and trust if their change is going to stand any chance of success. Our contributors underscore this.  If people are cynical about a change, pessimism will set in, and failure is assured. Our contributors show that there are no simple remedies, no sound bites or grizzly 7 step plans. Yet, at its core there are fundamental values that, if believed in, will offer a sound basis for planning and executing successful change. Change failures have left their mark on our contributors over the last eight years. Through their eyes, resistance is a brownfield site where change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, and treating people poorly.

Accelerated change demands more of everyone. Such change has major consequences for employees. Accelerated change failure creates cultural toxicity. Crucially, leaders need to separate the symptoms of change resistance from the stress that causes it. If they don’t, they are just like bad sales people trying to overcome objections and not realizing 60% of those objections are of the salesperson’s own creation. These contributors, they are saying that change resistance is natural, but you don’t need to make it more difficult if you do some things profoundly well.  The chart below gives a sense of the avoidable.

Change Resistance Factors

Once you recognize that Change Resistance causes stress then you can be more effective in reducing it. Our contributors say that, if leaders create clear and consistent frameworks, you help most people make informed decisions about committing to a change or not. Here’s what our contributors are saying:

• Align Expectations between leaders and people
• Set Clear Direction: Leaders clarify their change’s What, Why, How and WIIFMs (What’s In It For Me) for different groups and people.
• Develop Accountabilities: by developing the rewards and consequences that assure expectations of both leaders and their people are met.

These are sound practices for reducing and managing people’s stress, but only if leaders realize the importance of Walking Their Own Talk.

Action Points: Managing Change Stress and Resistance

All these contributors are saying that change resistance is natural, but you don’t need to make it that difficult if you do some things profoundly well.

This starts with recognizing that change resistance is caused by stress. So why not treat the cause and not the symptom? Stress is natural and good if managed. Stress is reduced if leaders create clear and consistent frameworks that help people make informed decisions about committing to a change or not. Here’s how we interpret what our contributors are saying

Clarifying the Direction:
Leaders clarify their change’s what, why, how, and WIIFMs¹ for different groups and individuals. What does this mean for me? This leads to aligning expectations.

Aligning Expectations:
This is a process flow in two directions between leaders and each individual.

Developing Accountabilities:
This step develops the rewards and consequences through performance measurement, management, and rewards that ensure expectations of both leaders and their people are met.

 

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Focusing Change To Win Series: How is your “What” connected to your “Why”? – Setting-Up Change For Success.

 Series Introduction

This is the second in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on The Why and What of Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

1. Why is this book important?
2. How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?
3. Why do people resist change?
4. Why bother measuring change?
5. How can implementing change gain competitive advantage?
6. Is your organization thriving or surviving?
7. How effectively are you communicating change?
8. How can you lead to thrive?

 

 

How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?

We take an in-depth look at how our contributors improve their chances of thriving, by communicating in ways that build trust and engage people. For these contributors, communication must constantly focus on the Why of Change & What is Expected and what the change is not about. This is the Change Expectations Framework. It engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively.
Note: You may think everyone does these three steps, you are probably wrong at least 70% of the time according to studies over the last 10 years. Here’s why it is even more important today. Most contributors (89%) say that their organizations change at least every 12 mths . These changes are driven by 3-4 simultaneous reasons for change . All these changes should have three things in common. What you expect people to:

• Stop doing, (so that they can start doing new things)
• Start doing, and
• Continue doing

Yet, this survey’s findings show that contributors rarely mention all three in the same contribution. Why is this important? It creates increased stress and potentially change resistance. It works like this.
Assuming we are always managing change with limited resources like people, money, technology and time, leaders have to manage the tension between these three elements of stop, start and continue. Then, after deciding the commercial need for change, leaders need the Emotional Intelligence to identify which groups and individuals are likely to experience unhealthy stress and resistance.
This underscores the need for leadership consensus on why are we changing. For many contributors, leader inconsistency fuels people’s natural resistance . The ever-increasing rate of change demands that leaders give clear and compelling reasons for employees to overcome their feelings of here we go again . Unfortunately, we conclude that too many leaders either ignore, or are unaware that change will be stressful for their peers and employees.

Contributors readily see the need for change to adapt, survive or improve. The world’s ever-increasing pace demands that leaders give clear and compelling reasons for employees to overcome their feelings of here we go again. That response begs the question: What can leaders do about this condition. What follows are some thoughts.
All those implementing change know in advance, to some extent, that a change will be stressful and that not everyone will be willing to engage. For example, people often work well under certain stress to increase productivity. But, under other circumstances, they are surprised at the stress that another aspect of change can induce. So, stress can be negative, positive or neutral. For example, passing in an examination can be just stressful as failing. The problem occurs when people are under excessive or prolonged stress – Unhealthy Stress. The challenge for change leaders is that stress is unique and personal. A situation may be stressful for someone, but the same situation may be challenging for others.

Action Points: Reducing Employees Stress to Manage Change Resistance

Most contributor responses indicate that their organizations change anywhere from daily to annually. These changes are often unique to the organization, the triggers for change, and how change is managed. Yet all change has three things in common.

The Three Common Elements of All Change

Defining your own change and how it is managed starts with the following:

• Identifying what you expect people to stop doing, so that they can start doing new things
• Specifying what you expect people to start doing
• Confirming what you want people to continue doing, while continuing to coordinate and keep the organization running.

Focus on communicating constantly the why of change and what is expected for your change to be effective and communicate what the change is not about. This is the change expectations framework, which engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively

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Our Corporate Ebola is Failed Change

Just like the disease, corporate change has a 50% mortality rate

 

Boise, Idaho, 10/07/14 – Local management and organization specialist publishes a fascinating new book Focusing Change To Win. It provides a prescription for combating the risks inherent in organizational change. Risks like poor revenues, lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, increased employee cynicism and fear. The endemic nature of these risks led Nick Anderson and his Nigerian co-author Kelly Nwosu to ask:

Why do some companies thrive on change while other just survive?

Answering this question led to a global study of 6000 comments from 1072 business leaders from 80 countries in 19 industry sectors with over 10,000 years of change management experience provided some powerful and practical advice and tools.

To reach this point, you have to go back to Nick’s experiences with failed change. The list, many of us can relate to includes:

• “Am I going to have a job tomorrow?”
• “Why did they let Sue go?”
• “How am I going to tell Bill he hasn’t got a job?”
• “What am I going to do?”
• “We tried this before…”
• “This (change) is only for them …..not us?”

Since those early days, his work with organizations across the business and public sector encountered a litany of failed change. His ongoing research shows survey after survey reporting that “People are the problem” (as the main reason). Percentages of failed change continue to this day ranging from 40% to 80% and many commentators agree that more changes fail than succeed. Only last September the Project Management Institute’s 2014 Report found that 56% of projects fail to meet their goals.
What is really thought provoking is that Nick and Kelly’s book show that there are those who do get it right.
But, really, isn’t comparing failed change to Ebola ridiculous? Nick Anderson doesn’t think so. The cost of a failed change can be staggering. Organizationally failed change can be fatal to both the organization and their people. Individually the stress of failed change permeates people’s lives, emerging as cycles of addictive behavior, broken relationships and financial hardship. For example, one Swedish study showed increases of heart disease was linked to poor leadership. Job insecurity has been linked to several different outcomes, such as:

• Negative attitudes towards work
• Turnover intention
• Health complaints.

Data from 400 nurses at a Swedish acute care hospital showed that job insecurity affects stress even after taking account for individual characteristics. (Naswall,Sverke & Hellgren)
A 22 country European study concluded that while job loss is traumatizing, it is not common. In contrast, the fear of job insecurity is widespread and its health impact is as bad as losing your job (Mathilde Godard). Or, how about a German study which concluded that after the 2008 recession

“People fearful of losing their jobs are 60% more likely to develop asthma”.

Closer to home, studies from Texas A & M and University of California add weight to the endemic nature of this corporate virus.

So, what can we do about this disease?

Clearly, the last 20 years demonstrates:

1. Current Theories and prescriptions are not working or user friendly.
2. The reliance on imported change processes alone are less effective.
3. Leaders are facing greater complexity, accelerating change, greater competition and more knowledgeable customers.

The critical point of staving off failed change is to recognize that there is no “cookie-cutter” “quick-fix”. Importing new theories from outside an organization increases people’s natural resistance. It truncates thinking about “why will this change work for us?” and creates divisions between the “Importers” from the rest of the organization.
So, this book advocates using facilitated discussions, questionnaires and other tools to engage people in creating their own change approaches, processes and protocols. You may be thinking.

“Why not use what’s worked from outside” “It’s cheaper and faster etc.”

Here’s what the authors concluded. Excluding people from deciding how their organization handles change risks creating greater resistance and less sustainability. Fundamentally, it excludes middle level leaders so they cannot develop to their leadership skills and risks their resistance to the point of ensuring that change will fail.
Those who thrive on change really understand this. They recognize that so many “imports” are too often seen as disrespectful of people’s skills and expertise, especially when those people have experienced failed change. Importing prescriptions needs far more thought on how to reduce the toxicity of past failures. So, why is this book important for leading successful change?
As Bill Connors, President & CEO, Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce) said:
“Focusing Change to Win is a must read and reference for business people regardless of their company’s size. Whether you run a family business or public corporation, this book has thought provoking tools and questionnaires you can use immediately. Nick Anderson and his co-Author Kelly Nwosu have done a masterful job in distilling over 6000 business leaders’ comments into such a practical set of tools. If you want your next change to be successful, this is essential reading.”
To find out more go to focusingchangetowin.com or amazon.com. Also Nick will be at the Boise Chamber of Commerce for a book signing on Wednesday 29th October from 8 am to 10 am.

For more information,
Nick Anderson
(616) 745-8667
nanderson@thecrispianadvantage.com
For more information on 10/06/2014:
http://focusingchangetowin.com

How did two guys in different countries write Focusing Change To Win?

How do two professionals from different countries
conduct global change management research and
co-author a book without ever meeting?

This internet-based collaboration was borne of their shared concerns of change management’s poor track record. These concerns grew out of their common consulting experience and by the disturbing parallels they found in senior executive surveys since 1996 to present day.

 

Since 2011, their deepening commitment is fueled by recognizing that managing change has never been more challenging. It is their mission to engage leaders and professionals in finding better ways to implement both successful and competitively sustainable change.

They recognize the body of work in change management is extensive, if not fragmented. Their book captures a set of perspectives from 1072 leaders and consultants from 80 countries and distills logical conclusions while avoiding overly-simplistic prescriptions.
The credibility of their work stems not only from their qualifications but international experience. Nick Anderson grew up and was educated in the UK where he lived in multi-cultural communities.

This formed the basis for his successful consulting experience in Europe, Middle Est and USA.in UK. Kelly Nwosu, on the other, hand grew up in Nigeria and completed his education both in the UK and Malaysia. Today, Kelly lives in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria and Nick lives in Boise, Idaho’s State Capital in the USA.

This multi-national upbringing and experience has bred humility for recognizing that they do not have all the answers and has been foundational to writing “Focusing Change to Win”.
It is their strong belief is that by developing a community of critical friends, they can deepen understanding and application of more effective change management. To this end they formed New Catalyst, a change management company focusing on training, consulting and research solutions.

To buy a copy of Focusing Change To Win: 

 

Also, if you would like Kelly or Nick to contact you please let us know.

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Focusing Change To Win

Self-Directed Learning Requirements for Learning Management Systems

Self-Directed Learning Requirements for

Learning Management Systems

(Adapted from research by Gerald Grow – Teaching Learners to be Self-Directed and others)

by Nick Anderson & Bruce Lewolt

In her highly regarded book, The End of Competitive Advantage, Dr. McGrath shows that the demise of once dominate companies, like Kodak, RIM (Blackberry), and Circuit City, was predictable due to their rigid structures that were designed to extract maximum value from what they thought was a sustainable competitive advantage. Further, that in today’s environment successful corporate structures must be designed to identify and quickly respond to a transitory competitive advantages and then move on to the next as the market changes. This means that the ability of the employees in the organization to learn and adopt new behaviors may be the only truly sustainable competitive advantage. Such an organization cannot survive with a minimalist approach to learning effectiveness. Instead they need systems that produce sustained changes in behavior, robust improvements in performance and that facilitate efficient self-directed learning.

All of this means that good learning management systems (LMS) need to produce deep and lasting learning and both guide and accelerate the learner’s progression from dependence to self-direction and learning independence. But, typically there are difficulties when an LMS adopts one-size-fits all approach that does not adapt to each learner’s developmental stage. For example, where a learner needs direction and the system is non-directive.

Another dynamic is that learners have varying abilities of self-directedness. The same learner can be very self-directive in subjects where they have both a robust knowledge level and a strong belief in their ability to perform (self-efficacy), yet need a high level of direction in subjects where one or both of these factors are missing.

So LMS design needs to reflect the stages of Self-Directed Learning (SDL) based on the Situational Leadership Model (Hersey & Blanchard). This means that LMS designers need to create an effective progression from dependence to self-direction that adapts to each learner and subject.

The first stage is to consider goals that are directly related to learning. For example:

1. To create self-directed and life-long learners
2. To create online learning that adapts to different learners
3. To allow self-directed and dependent learning to co-exist
4. To allow curriculum developers to easily create courses adapt to the individual learner.

If you are interested in having the authors speaking to your organization fill out this form.

Focusing to Win: Executive Seminar Series

This seminar series features Nick’s new book Focusing Change to Win which he co-authored with Kelly Nwosu.

These sessions provides business leaders with insights into critical areas to help focus their businesses and align their people for competitive advantage.  Each seminar helps you answer a fundamental question:

Seminar 1: How Clear Are You On The Why & What Of Change?

Seminar 2: Why Do Your People Resist Change?

Seminar 3: Why Do You Bother to Measuring Change?

Seminar 4: How Can You Implement Change & Gain Competitive Advantage?

Seminar 5: Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?

Seminar 6: How Effectively Do You Really Communicate Change? 

We take a deep-dive into a change issue that you face. You will come away with an understanding of where your expectations with key employees are aligned and not aligned, and how critical that alignment is for successful change. You will learn how to clarify and specify your own expectations as to well how you can check if they are understood. Each session helps executives assess their performance in terms of:

• How well have you communicated your expectations to your people?
• How well do you understand what your people expect of you?
• What are the likely gaps between expectations and assumptions?
• What are our options for planning and implementing success change competitively?

What do you get?

• A copy of our new book Focusing Change to Win
• A tool, the Four Blocker Alignment Analysis, to identify misalignment
• A method to help set the right expectations and get people on the same page
• An understanding of how to align agreed expectations effectively
• An example of an aligned expectation relevant to your situation
• An improved chance for successful change in your organization

What preparation is needed?

For each participant organization we have preparation guides that ask people to consider issues related to the question being posed for each seminar.

Who should you bring?

Please select up to five key people to join you who are important to successful change in your organization, such as:

• Which colleagues will help you answer the seminar question posed?
• Whose opinion do you value to help look at the question posed from different perspectives?
• Whose commitment will you need to make improvements in tackling change competitively?

What will be covered?

Each session focuses on real-life scenarios within the framework of the research findings and assessment tools developed. As we say:

“There is no role-play only real-play”

Seminar Format

Seminars are customized for clients and depending on their needs. They normally run from half-day to full-day. They can be run fact-to-face or web-based, although experience suggest face-to-face gets the best results

Maximum attendance is  20 participants!  Costs start at $150 per person per half day excluding agreed preparation time, travel and accommodation.

Why are these seminars important?

Failed change means lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, poor revenues, lost employees, increased cynicism and fear. Its residue is a hostile and toxic culture, where change resistance becomes the norm. The cost of a failed change can be staggering, from lowering morale to losing key customers due to poor quality.

Focusing to Win and the survey on which is based confirms other studies

Too many organizations are still trying to do things differently not do different things

Survey Contributors realize that working relationships are increasingly stressed in the drive for ever-faster responses to competitive threats and opportunities.

So, what are the meaningful differences between those that thrive on change and those that just survive?

Many contributors seem resigned to resistance being unavoidable yet recognize that trust in management is the only variable that significantly reduces change resistance. They seem to have little focus on improving organizational alignment to achieve change success.

For others, whatever the blend of top down and bottom up led change, it is clear – be intentional. This is invaluable to avoid being misinterpreted and mistrusted. These contributors are clear and details how to lay the groundwork for successful change.

Each seminar takes an aspect of the problem based on over 6,000 comments to give participants an assessment framework for their organizations. These   cover analyzing change impacts, setting-up the change Program with Metrics and on-going communication.

Executive Summary

Rebuilding Trust is Productivity’s Cornerstone

Globally there is a slow erosion of those binding forces for people to “go that extra mile” . The employee-employer psychological contract is  degrading.  The degree to which people identify with their job and consider job performance as important to their self-worth is slipping .In our recently published survey Focusing Change to Win identified the main culprits:

• Poor Planning
• Lack of Leadership
• Inconsistent leadership
• Poor Implementation
• Lack of Adaptability
• Lack of Communication
• Lack of Control

More than ever, we need to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their employers.

In North America, our evidence from 8 expectation alignment projects ranging from Royal Bank of Canada through Nature Conservancy to Turner Construction shows a clear trend. Leaders consistently under-estimate the gap between what they expect of their managers and what people think is expected of them. In all studies, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware.

In the UK, managers need to do more if they want to earn employee trust , according to the latest survey into employee attitudes from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Trust in senior management is declining, particularly in the private sector, with

• Only 25% employees willing to place a lot of trust in senior management to look after their interests and
• Only 41% placing little or no trust in them to do so.

Essentially, new research suggests that many employees are losing faith in their  management  yet it seems leaders have don’t connect this condition with losing ground competitively. 

Realigning Schools for the New Normal – The Administrator’s Challenge

Introduction

At school and district levels, managing scarce resources to sustain or improve results has never been more challenging. Striving for consistency and efficiency builds tensions between those who care most about equipping children for an uncertain future.

Increasingly critical eyes on the education system advocate blunt instruments like “stronger management”, more top-down management, tighter controls, and simple incentives. This is surprising since such methods are failing the private sector by dispiriting and limiting people’s contribution. So, why should we expect anything different in education?

This is aggravated by the economy. We simply don’t know what jobs will be there in twenty years. Today, apart from a few core skills we cannot know what knowledge or skills will be needed in the future.

The consequences are that teachers complain that their jobs, while rewarding, are getting harder because of too few resources, too much paperwork, crowded classrooms, students with emotional problems, low pay and high-stakes standardized tests.

Isn’t time to realign administrators, unions, teachers, parents and students? The realignment is from teaching a curriculum more efficiently, to one of inspiring lifelong learning to thrive in a rapidly shifting economy.

Here’s the case for realignment

Change Management Fallacies – Survey

The continued high failure rates of implementing change owe much of their origins to the fallacies of change management and how people view research (based on Korzybski). We would like to know how prevalent these fallacies are in your organization’s leadership team.

Please read the following and then click on the link to complete the survey.

 

 

1. Over-Simplification:  The belief that complex organizations mirror what their leadership think .

“I think we have a pretty good handle on what people think, we don’t need a survey to tell us what we already know”

2. Re-definition: A propensity to cast strong sub-cultures as sources of weakness when they may in fact contribute to the organization’s identity.

“It’s the field technicians that’s the problem. They are still resistant to the newer products ans systems”

3. Missionary zeal: The belief that a complex community can be converted to a single purpose that overrides its fractional – often factional – interests and perspectives.”

“I am sure when the see the case for this change they will come along”

4. Displacement:  the attribution to cultural causes of structural weakness.  It is not the values but the organisation or control system that is faulty.

“You know if we had a fully integrated reporting system I think we could overcome many of communication problems”

5. Scapegoating:  The attribution of group’s values to responsibility for failure.

“It’s sales responsibility to ensure good customer follow up but they just don’t seem to care and want to go on to the next deal”

6. False Attribution to one cause what is due to many causes. E.g.

“they didn’t adopt the new technology because they weren’t computer savvy”

7. Discounting: Concluding that because one factor plays a role, another does not; the fallacy of drawing negative conclusions from positive observations. E.g.

 “Our exit interviews show that people are leaving for higher pay and so it’s not anything that management can do differently”

8. Myopia:The idea that change management can divorce the individual from their working environment. E.g.

“People are change resistant because they don’t like the new curriculum”

9. Gut over Data: Drawing conclusions on implied assumptions that when explicitly stated are rejected. E.g

“Yes, I know that’s what your findings say but I think it’s really a recruitment issue”

“You can prove anything with statistics”

10. Politics: Many assumptions influencing reasoning are of the hidden, unconscious type. E.g.

 “When we presented our findings only Joe and Lisa said what they felt, the rest just looked uneasy”

11. Hereditary: Demonstrating that a characteristic is hereditary and not alterable by the environment E.g.

“We found that traditionally main land Chinese expect a “thirteenth month’s pay before Chinese New Year, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We wouldn’t have any of these problems if we could get more mid-westerners with their good work ethics”

12. Environment: Demonstrating that a characteristic is altered by the environment and claiming that it is not hereditary. E.g.

“We are getting more quality problems since we installed the new line. It’s the new displays they don’t understand”

Since all important human characteristics are environmental, therefore environment is all-important, hereditary unimportant, in human affairs E.g.

“It’s not so much their experience that matters it’s how they are led. We need our leaders to lead not shilly-shally around having more team meetings”

 

 

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

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© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Why do people resist change? Leadership Survey Findings (1072 managers, 510 CEOs, 80 countries)

Here’s the first findings from research conducted jointly with New Catalyst.(http://changeisessential.com)

Click Video link to view Nick Anderson position the upcoming publication of the full research report – Stategies for Managing Change and Winning in Todays Competitive Environment

Since change management came into fashion, a litany of failure has left its mark and our respondent’s echo what many have gone through in the last 8 years. It seems through their eyes, resistance has to be viewed as a “brown field” site. Gone is the naiveté of “a job for life” and an enduring contract between leaders and other stakeholders. Now, change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, etc. For these respondents, they paint a picture of failed change, broken trust, fractured communication and poor leadership. We summarize their comments into the following:

• Cultural Toxicity of Failed Change
• “If people don’t trust you, what change do you stand?”
• “People can’t be bothered”
• “What’s in it for me?”
•  “Not knowing the purpose of it all” – a litany of communication failure
• Poor Leadership embeds and accelerates resistance

Avoiding the Pitffalls of Strategic Planning

Introduction

Getting people focused and committed on implementing a strategy has never been more difficult as von Moltke said:

Strategic plans do not survive first contact with the enemy, and hence must be always open to revision.

In today’s competitive environment every action has many reactions that aren’t easily anticipated.  This is probably a major factor why 60% of change initiatives fail in North America and why something is going wrong with strategic planning.

One area that many executives either ignore or only pay lip service to are the cynicisms that previous initiatives strategic planning have accumulated in the organizations psyche. Here are some that you ignore at your peril

Crucial to understanding your people, as Peter Senge describes, is identifying  where people are on the apathy-commitment continuum. He identifies two areas of personal need that they want satisfied in their working lives:

• personal benefit which comes from compensation, benefits, position, recognition, or other non-tangible benefits
• personal sense of fulfillment of their life’s purpose, vision, or calling.

Leaders need to grasp how well each person’s attitude and their contribution is met directly by company goals or objectives. Then they can assess where people sit on the apathy/commitment continuum. Any misalignment between personal needs and your strategy will generate unproductive or  counterproductive behavior, if not actively managed

Getting the Best out of the Matrix

Introduction

For 40 Years few have challenged Matrix Management’s viability. Most writers remain convinced that a matrix approach is superior to a hierarchy, but why hasn’t it been more successful? This blog looks at pointing the reader to answer:

How do ensure we get the promised rewards of the Matrix?

First,  a definition for SHRM

In a matrix structure, an employee reports to two managers who are jointly responsible for the employee’s performance. Typically, one works in an administrative function, such as finance, HR, information technology, sales or marketing, and the other works in a business unit related to a product, service, customer or geography.

The matrix model is a network of interfaces between teams and the functional elements of an organization. As its simplest it is:

 think horizontal – think vertical – think interface.

Here are some of the challenges facing those thinking of improving or moving to a matrix based organization.

Problem Defining & The Consulting/Intervention Process

Problem Defining & The Consulting/Intervention Process

Calif Manage Rev. 1979 Spring;21(3):26-33.Kilmann R, Mitroff I.

Intervention theory¹ and the consulting process² have developed to provide more effective methods by which organizational change is conducted.  These methods have emerged in order to operationalize a theory of changing rather than a theory of change.  The latter is what Bennis³ found to be the focus of most discussions on organizational growth and change; yet a theory of changing is needed to create planned change in organizations and not just to explain natural change after the fact.⁴

An Approach to Solving People Problems

INTRODUCTION

People problems are very varied; they can also be complex.  There is no all-embracing theory for
understanding them and no magical formulas guaranteed to solve them.  The problem-solver, where people problems are  concerned, must be an experimenter.  There are, however, a few guidelines which, if observed, will help to  save the problem-solver from wasting time and effort on ultimately unprofitable activities.

Vision: The Guidance System for Partnering

Introduction

Developing successful partnerships can only be accomplished if there is a strong and shared sense of vision.  It is the cornerstone, and launching point for successful partnering efforts.

Visioning in a partnership if different form other uses of the word.  It is much more than a defined set of shared goals and aspirations.  It exists to offer a tangible guidance system  which provides direction to both parties and helps them carry out their larger goals.  Such a system enables partnerships to overcome obstacles and achieve results.  When they lack vision they tend to drift around, or fall apart.

Managing Change for Competitive Success – Questionnaire

This interview structure is designed to help interviewees talk about their principles and core values about leading which guide their behavior at work.  In each section, interviewees are asked about their proposals for change and how they should be implemented and then asking why they feel implementing such proposals are necessary.  It is this “why” question which is the most important.  It is the answers to these “why” questions that particularly should allow comparisons between each interviewee’s guiding principles and values of leading, in specific situations.  It should then help us decide how we are going to develop a coherent sales strategy by understanding what people mean by:

•  “building a rich, engaging purpose”
•  “creating more effective management processes”
• “developing their capabilities and broadening the way they look at the world of work”

Top Down or Bottom Up – Making Change Personal

By Contributing Blogger – Terry Merriman, PCO Associates

Implementing successful and sustainable change is tough, strategic change initiatives fail two-thirds of the time in North American business (Kotter, 1996, and McKinsey, 2009).  How can your organization succeed?  You can succeed by making change personal!  Remember, performance is personal before it is organizational.

Isn’t this a truism, a matter of common business sense?

Since when was common sense common practice! It is common for many leaders to plan their change initiative, communicate it to their leadership team, tell the organization to watch for it, set some goals and measures, and incorporate the goals in their team and department objectives.  Then, the change dies and the leadership team wonders why.  The answer; the change was never translated into personal action!

If your people don’t embraced change and those in your value chain (including your customers and vendors) it will fail.  Why?  If your people do not understand the change initiative, buy into it, and integrate it into their daily activities, it will not work. Consequently, planned change and personal action don’t mesh as people are skeptical, don’t understand why, don’t see the need, and don’t know what’s in it for them.

So how do you make change personal?

Define, Communicate, Delegate and Track change related expectations. We usually get the organization’s side of change, define and communicate, pretty well.  Where we fail is in putting the personal side of change, communicate, delegate, and track, into play.

• Define the change in terms of broad categories of activity to which everyone in the organization can relate, and specific results that benefit the organization and its people.
• Communicate the change initiative, and include the message that leadership will be expecting everyone to participate by defining specific expectations of each other necessary to carry out the change.
• Communicate More, by focusing on individual working relationships by:
  • Get each leadership team member identify specific expectations of each other as to what they must do to successfully implement the change.  Ensure the expectations are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time and budget bounded, Ethical and Recorded.
  • Have each leader discuss their expectations of the receiver expected to execute, and ensure each accepts accountability for each other’s expectation.  This helps to create a productive relationship and integrate the change into the business at the leadership level.
• Delegate by cascading the above process to each leader’s direct reports, peers, and business partners to those teams that are considered key players in the change initiative.
  • Ensure people delegate not only the responsibility and accountability but also the authority to execute each expectation. In this way people can develop ownership of  those expectations other have of them.  This step integrates the change throughout the organization as it becomes a part of each person’s work responsibilities and commitments.
  • Ensure each expectation’s originator is held responsible for assessing the receiver’s ability to meet their expectations and coach them to develop their competence.
• Track each expectation’s results.  This means each person holding accountable the person who agreed to meeting and reporting progress to an expectation’s completion.  So, the Accountability Culture is born.  The expectations approach challenges leaders and their direct reports to get personal first perspective and serves to foster improved communications between them.

The Expectations Approach makes change personal by casacading accountability for implementing change throughout the organization in a way that helps people understand the reasons for and expected results from the change, and buy into it.  We’ve found it one of the most effective ways of implementing successful and sustainable change in organizations.  The side benefits of this approach are that it improves accountability throughout the organization, and encourages creation and development of productive relationships between people, leading to improved organizational performance.

Where has this approach been used succesfully?

This approach has been successfully employed in Fortune 500 companies and family owned businesses, from new selling strategies to management transitions (See Project Summaries) It has been  shown to work in for-profit and non-profit organizations from large to small, and it also works in government organizations (it’s been used in the British Navy by its developer, John Machin).

“Change is Hard and Real Change is Real Hard!” If you want to be successful at change, you have to be prepared to tackle the hard part of change – making it personal.

Listen to The Radio Show

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

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_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

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© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Getting Committed People on the Same Page – Disturb First, Enable Second?

Last month I looked at why so many changes initiatives fail. One thing that struck me after the program was the inability to gain others commitment lies at the heart of so many failures. This is often due to the lack of interest paid by those leading change for those who have to make the change.

Previously, one stat sticks out from our work in aligning companies for change is that over 70% of leaders expectations are not known or realized by those affected by a change. Their people are not on the same page!!

Now, add to that apparently unrelated data…

An estimated 247 billion emails are sent each day

“The number of worldwide email users is projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. In 2009, 74% of all email accounts will belong to consumers, and 24% to corporate users.
Worldwide email traffic will total 247 billion messages per day in 2009. By 2013, this figure will almost double to 507 billion messages per day.
In 2009, about 81% of all email traffic is spam Source: Press release from The Radicati Group, 6th May 2009 Quoted by Digital Stats.com

Stats vary but most people seem to say each person gets 5000 ads per day.

Now here’s my point in both your personal life and at work how much time do you have to spend listening to somebody drone on about:

The latest, greatest, best, more, more…Their solutions for you….

How often, in your personal and work lives, do you have to spend listening to somebody drone on about  the latest, greatest, best, more, more…their solutions for you….

So, How do you typically react? Why should it matter to Change Management?

It reminds me of a cartoon of a family sitting at a meal table (rare enough of itself) with heads bowed and the son texts mom to pass the fries! This would be funny if I had not enforced a “no device” rule at our family meals – me included!! So, my reflections as to why we get resistant to change are these:.

Firstly, People overall forget what it’s like to be in somebody else’s head, like the research I referenced two months ago. “There’s not enough time…they cry”

Second, instantaneous communication reduces people’s patience from more deliberate consideration – we drift into the white noise, the buzz of attention deficit….but Are we challenged to really think?

Third, access to the internet has produced the most mature and knowledgeable change audience in history.

Why should this matter?

In terms of influencing people to even consider buying into your change process, be careful you are not:

Doing what you’ve always done… not getting what you want …

Whether you are influencing people in your own organization or trying to sell your service or product you will need to be more skilled at understanding where people are in their heads about change than ever before.

Change in West Michigan has come in many forms….change leaders ignore at them at their per. For example, Gilder’s vision of the future of “Cathedrals of bandwidth” will affect how people see work and how they see change. trends of exponential growth in technology and application will continue as far as we can see into the future.

The Technology Horse has looong bolted and the “Control Door” is hanging off its hinges……

So let’s stand back and see if we can start being practical. As the snow melts, I am reminded of when it snows. Each snowflake has a similar structure, yet is infinitely complex, and as each falls leads to complex behavior. If each person is a snowflake we must treat them as similar yet unique. (This is Fractal Theory..if you’re interested.

When managing change I find it’s helpful to look at how people change in a rigorous yet flexible way. It can be used to locate where individuals, groups and you are in terms of seeing the world, state similarly. This snowflake or fractal is based on a series of questions which follow a sequence – often shown as a ‘U”. The “U” is one of the most fundamental concepts in the psychology of learning and change. Readerers may remember in the last program that  we consistently think we are better than we actually are – in psychology it’s called “self serving bias”. For Example: 94% of men rate themselves in the top half of male athletic ability

Change Management’s Foundation

So, I am going to make a claim that I have never done before:

If you use the following six questions in your life, it will change your perspective of others and most importantly yourself:

Now let’s use this “U” Map to can locate yourself and those you are trying to bring to your point of view and be committed to the change

1. What is the problem?

• Do you have one and others don’t?

2. How is it a problem?

• Do they see the same linkage as you? Structure, recurrence, competitively weak?

3. What are the consequences?

• Can they see the ramifications that you do?

Now, let’s pause and ask: If you’re at 3. and those you want to influence can’t answer 1 – What is likely to happen?

If they are OK, but are they  disturbed to the degree they are willing to consider changing? If yes, we are at the bottom of the U at the Change Pivot when momentum or change energy starts to be

Now, let’s look at how people are enabled?:

1.  Why solve this problem?

a.  Do they see this change as a priority

b.  Or, Do they think we should do something differently?

2.  How to solve the problem?

a.  Are your technical people see a solution in the same frame from those in other functions

3.  What will be solved?

a.   Does cost of the present outweigh the cost of change?

So, Let’s say you are at 3. and I am at 6. Giving you an ROI ?….

What is your likely reaction?

Resistance; which I have created!

So, now you have the U – Ask yourself how many times has a sales person “Crossed the U” with you?  Ask yourself, How many times have we as change agents “Crossed the U”? with the leadership team? Only to find we left the group “not getting it!” “not on the same page” Yet it was us that left them behind

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Industry

Feedback(required)

Submit

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_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

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© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.