Month: March 2021

If I simply say, “The staff is bad,” you have no context for the statement.  Depending on your frame of mind, you may believe that I’m speaking about the employees of an organization.  If you’ve recently been on a long walk or hike, you may sense that I’m speaking about a stick used for walking.  In either case, you’ve used your own perspective and experience to fill in the gaps where I failed to be explicit.

The problem with this is when we’re changing organizations, we have no way of knowing what context people are approaching our communications from.  We can’t assume that they’re encountering our messages with the right frame of mind, which is why we need to provide some context for our communications and for the need for the change in the first place.

Start with Why

Simon Sinek’s popular book, Start with Why, implores us to explain why we’re doing things before we explain what we’re asking for or how we’re asking for it to be done.  This is solid advice, as anyone who has met a toddler knows that “Why?” is their favorite question.  Even adult learning theory acknowledges the need for adults to know why what they’re learning is important to them.

Too often, organizations fear that sharing the challenges of the current market will scare employees too much, and they therefore minimize the real threats to the organization’s long-term viability in favor of creating the appearance of a shimmering future.

Mirage

The problem with a disconnected vision is that it often appears to employees – and outsiders – as a mirage.  It’s too hard to believe that it’s real without the framework for why the vision is possible and at least some of the major milestones that need to happen between the current state and the future state.

John F. Kennedy’s address to the United States Congress imploring everyone to make sending a man to the Moon – and returning them safely home – a reality is often heralded as the quintessential vision.  It escapes the risk of being perceived as a mirage, because everyone in Congress and the entire American public knew of the progress that had already been made with the space program.  While the trip to the Moon was a fantastic scientific and technological leap, it seemed possible because of the hard work that had already been done and the successes that had already been seen.

Communicating Context

Effective communications about change explains the current situation honestly, including both strengths and weaknesses.  It evaluates opportunities for the organization to grow and considers the threats to long-term survival.  (See SWOT & Pestle for more.)  Communicating completely builds trust and enables people to believe in the proposed vision.

The vision must then be built on the context of the organization and the environment and must seem possible based on what is known now – or can be known through effort.  Providing the contextual pieces that make the vision the one that those doing the planning believe is the best option makes it easier for everyone to buy into the believability of the vision.

With context in place, fewer people will resist, and more will engage in creating the vision even if the path from the current situation is difficult and dangerous.

There’s something about the idea of a curse that harkens back to a time of mystery.  It calls back to a time when we didn’t understand much about the world, and everything was magical.  Lurking deep in the idea of the curse is that someone might be able to influence your luck and therefore doom you.  Knowledge, on the other hand, is a prized asset, something that can be held in the minds of people and, in some cases, recorded into ways that others can use it.  Together, the curse of knowledge is something that we should fear – but too often, we aren’t aware and therefore don’t.

In leadership and change, the curse of knowledge is all about what we know and the expectation that others know it as well.  At some level, we’re aware that we need to educate the organization about the change.  We need to explain why, where we are today, and where we want to go to.  We need to explain the high level of how, what changes are being made at a high level to accommodate the change.

You’re Soaking in It

The problem is that we often attempt to deliver these messages all at once.  We expect that the process we went through to reach these insights and proposals aren’t necessary for others to go through.  We assume that they can accept radical reorganization of their worldviews without the benefit of time to process and accept the information.

To us, these changes didn’t occur in a flash of inspiration – even if it felt like it.  They came through the continual soaking in the idea of the current state and the market forces that might erode the base from our current state.

There’s an old Palmolive commercial series where women are getting manicures for their “dishpan hands.”  The technician is telling them about a new dish soap that doesn’t leave hands as dry, and the client asks about it.  The answer is “you’re soaking in it.”  The beauty of this commercial is that we often find ourselves in situations and we fail to fully realize it.

Compression Without Loss

The organization cannot afford for everyone to go through the processes that led to the need to change.  Reaching the detailed agreement on every aspect and in every way wouldn’t be effective.  We must find a way to compress the experience and package it in a way that doesn’t lose anything important.

Computer compression is a wonderful thing that promises reduced transfer times or reduced storage.  The idea is that you can faithfully reproduce something with less space by using mathematical algorithms and structures.  It’s effectively what we’re trying to do when we’re compressing the journey of discovery to the change for others.  Computer-based compression is limited to about 2x on average.  However, when we shift from an exact reproduction to an approximation, the average compression jumps.

This is the way we compress images.  By agreeing to the degree of loss of detail that we’re willing to accept, we can make images smaller.  The higher the quality, the more time and space it will take.  The decision shifts from whether to share a picture to how to share it in a way that is effective.

Stripping the Non-Essential Bits

In sharing the planned change journey, we must find a way to share the essential bits and remove anything that’s not essential.  We can do this best when we’re willing to test our messages on others who have not been involved with the change process.  Small pilot groups or trusted friends can provide the feedback we need to know what parts of the change message we must keep – and those we can part with.

Because of the curse of knowledge, we must rely on others to help us tune the message, or we’ll fall subject to the curse and doom ourselves to failing.

Daryl Conner started the analogy.  It was in relation to a literal burning oil platform off the north coast of Scotland, but it’s been misunderstood, misused, and driven to extents that weren’t intended.  However, fundamentally, making it impossible for things to stay the same is a time-honored strategy to force change to happen.

Burn the Boats

Legend has it that, in 1519, Hernán Cortés landed in what is now Mexico and ordered his men to burn the boats so that they wouldn’t be tempted to try to return home.  (There is some question about whether they burned the boats or simply ran them ashore.)  This is perhaps the first recorded situation of someone ensuring that they wouldn’t be going back on their change.  Obviously, this isn’t the gentle, friendly, persuasion approach to ensuring change – but it is one way to ensure they didn’t go back.

Sometimes drastic times call for drastic measures.  While it isn’t typically necessary to take such drastic actions in the changes that we make today, sometimes it’s useful to create some barriers to going back.

Jumping

Literally, the reference to the burning platform was based on a man who jumped from certain death on the platform to possible death in the seas below.  In that situation, the decision was appropriate, because staying on the burning platform wasn’t viable.  However, that doesn’t mean that every change should involve a burning platform – literally or figuratively.

While fear is a powerful motivator, it’s also an unpredictable one that has the frustrating possibility of freezing people where they are instead of motivating them to change.  As a result, it’s important to mitigate the amount and kind of fear that’s used to motivate people towards change.

Lighting the Truth

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t honestly let people know if their current situation isn’t sustainable – that their platform is burning.  However, it does mean you should pause before lighting the platform on fire.  You want to expose the risks of staying the same without igniting fear in the minds of everyone to the degree that they’re immobilized.

Deepwater Horizon

The name of the drilling platform that resulted in the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was Deepwater Horizon.  The ultradeep platform didn’t simply catch fire while drilling, it exploded, killing 11 men and starting the largest marine oil spill in history.  While the platform was not intentionally destroyed, the platform was operating with risks that ultimately led to the tragedy.

In addition to the tragic results, there were long-term changes in regulation, monitoring, and safety of deep well drilling – and some more aggressive limitations.  The report on the incident was nearly 400 pages and wasn’t complete until over 9 months after the accident.

The Challenge

The real challenge of burning platforms is that they’re unpredictable.  In your change effort, you neither need nor should ignite one.  If you’re standing on a burning platform, you should share that knowledge as clearly as possible to others without trying to accelerate the burning.  Instead of focusing on the burning platform itself, you should be focusing your change efforts on the hospitability of the alternatives.

If you’re leaving the platform for a pleasure cruise, there’s no contest.  If you’re leaving it for cold, hypothermia-inducing, shark-infested waters, no amount of burning platform is going to make you desire the change; you’re only going to be willing to jump because you have no alternatives.

So, while it’s possible to speak of burning platforms in your change effort, you’re more likely to get results if you can make the alternative more appealing.

The role of the change manager isn’t always as clear cut as we might like.  In smaller initiatives or organizations, we’re a one-man band.  In larger initiatives and organizations, we’re a conductor – or a member of a jazz ensemble.  Here’s how to navigate those waters.

[Disclaimer: I abhor that the English language uses the male noun to mean refer to both men and women with an inference towards male only.  Often, I will intentionally switch pronouns between male and female.  However, I rarely switch from, for example, fireman to fireperson, because it’s awkward for the reader.  In cases where is an alternative is available, such as policeman to police officer, I will use those.  There is no suitable replacement for “one-man band.”  I ask that my readers accept that I’m not intending to minimize the powerful women who fill this role.]

The One-Man Band

One of the impressive things about the change managers is their ability to adapt and reach into related areas of expertise to fill essential gaps.  In smaller organizations, change managers must provide communications expertise and training support.

Instead of working with a dedicated communications team, the change manager is required to develop communications plans and sketch, if not write, the communications themselves.  While this is a skill set that every change manager should possess, it’s equally a skill for which there are dedicated professionals.

There are entire professions around learning and development.  However, when they don’t exist in your organization or they’re too busy with other initiatives, it becomes incumbent on the change management professional to step up and design training and productivity aids that support the successful changes the organization desires.

Of course, project management is a key skill that keeps the project aspects of the change running smoothly as well.  Effective change managers often adapt into providing project management services for small-scale projects where a dedicated project manager isn’t available.

Changes need certain elements to be successful.  If they don’t exist, the adaptable change manager may find that they have to create them.  The opposite end of the spectrum comes when there’s a larger organization and a larger, better-funded project.

The Conductor

When there is an internal communications team, training and development team, and project management team, the role of the change manager changes from one-man band to that of conductor.  A conductor doesn’t play all the instruments in the symphony.  Nor is the conductor the best player of any one instrument in the symphony.  Their power comes from their ability to help the symphony members coordinate and work together effectively.

Instead of being tasked with the developing the communications plan or the individual communications, an effective change manger facilitates these into the larger set of activities happening in the change.  Project managers are able to manage the day-to-day tracking of progress, freeing the change manager to look for how stakeholders aren’t being supported sufficiently with the planned activities and artifacts.

In the role of the conductor, the change manager may occasionally step in to help out in an area.  But they will most frequently look for the gaps that may cause the change to fail, much like a jazz musician looks for ways to keep improvisational jazz going.

Jazz Musician

In a jazz ensemble, there’s no one leader.  The music is led dynamically as different musicians add their performance to the piece, and it constantly evolves.  In organizations with well-managed disciplines for internal communication, training and development, and project management, the role may feel more like that of a jazz musician dynamically finding ways to add to the process in the service of the overall performance.

Change managers shouldn’t be afraid to do what they need to do as a one-man band, to lead like a conductor, or to perform as a part of the ensemble in the overall flow of creating success for the change.

Most of the time when we’re working to change an organization, we’re focused on the benefits of the change.  We’re speaking to the utopian vision of what can be.  However, to be effective at change, we must acknowledge that every change has negatives and loss.  And sometimes the negatives can’t be predicted.

Resisting Loss

As I explored in Why People Don’t Resist Change, people don’t resist change.  Built on William Bridges’ work in Managing Transitions, people resist loss.  Sometimes that loss is known or can be anticipated, but sometimes the loss is unanticipated.  Therefore, we must consider not only what we anticipate people may lose but also the things that they think they may lose – and the things they don’t even know they might lose.

Conquistadors, Christians, and Chaos

The Spanish conquistadors in their quest for gold decimated the Latin American peoples they found with disease.  African cultures were destroyed by the imperialism of French, Belgian, Portuguese, and British colonials.  The Native American Indian cultures were destroyed by the European settlers as they made their way from East to West in North America.  Even aboriginal tribes in Australia were disturbed by farmers and eventually Christians.

In the early 20^th century, there were still untouched aboriginal tribes who lived in the Stone Age.  Their best tool for cutting wood was a stone axe.  They were difficult to make and not very effective, but they were all the tribe had.  Christians who wanted to share the good news of Christ with these “uninformed” natives brought to them their beliefs and steel axe heads.

Side-stepping the issue of imposing your religious beliefs on another group for a moment, there was a bigger problem, and one that was caused not by malintent or even paternalism.  It was an unintended consequence that unraveled the very fabric of their society and led to unintended consequences.

Rituals and Results

In these tribes, the cost of stone axes made them things that only the elders possessed.  The younger men would come to the elders and ask for the use of the axe head.  As a part of this, they’d compensate and pay homage to the elders.  This was a part of the fabric that bound together the tribe in a set of interdependent relationships.

When Christians introduced these steel axe heads, they did so by primarily giving them to younger men and women, thereby eliminating the need to maintain the relationship with the elders.  The result was that the social fabric of the tribe became frayed and decayed.  It led to prostitution and the “misuse” of the innovation itself.

Not even the most enlightened could have foreseen what redistributing power in the form of a precious axe head could do.  The intended consequence of raising material comfort never materialized, as those with the axes ultimately failed to use their additional time in ways that would move them or their society forward.  So, the innovation of a steel axe head didn’t contribute much to additional material comfort.  It only left the tribes with challenges they had never encountered.

Social Responsibility and Monitoring

Change managers cannot predict the unanticipated consequences by their definition.  They can, however, find ways to monitor the change in such a way as to be open to discovering the emergence of harm, so that it’s possible to forestall further damage to a group.  In this way, change managers can accept that it’s possible the change may cause harm and, at the same time, take steps to guard against it and stop it if necessary.