Our Blog: "The LAST Word on Change"

So many ideas on the topic of organizational change management and leading change are recycled through the press, social media, and blogosphere that it is rare that I get really interested in a number of posts all in the same week.  This has been a particularly productive week in our playspace!

The greatest breakthroughs I’ve observed while coaching Change Leaders have typically included one form of listening or another.  Unfortunately, in organizational change there is so much at stake, and combining this with the additional performance pressure and ego boost that accompanies being tabbed as the official Change Leader often squeezes a leader’s conscious energy into many spaces that, intentional or not, tend to compete with staying open to feedback and listening with a finely tuned ear.  Pace, pressure, plans, progress reporting, and promise keeping all have a way of moving even the best leaders to hold h/her arm out to stop the flow of inputs “so I can just concentrate on getting sh..(stuff) done.”

In researching the things that distinguish successful from unsuccessful change initiatives and working with change leaders to re-ignite and recover failing change projects, I have encountered many things that can derail change.  Of course, the good news is that many of these are under the control of the Change Leader.  In some cases, the key is to start to make things better by looking at oneself. 

With some “found time” during a layover in beautiful Ashville, North Carolina last Friday, I grew to develop a deep kinship and respect for my two hosts. We shared stories about how we serve others and foster change.  Our kinship became immediately striking—we all have found success translating our passion and insight into tools that others can use to improve the quality of their relationships, lead from strength, and build trust. Further, we see these offerings as enabling “gifts” to those we serve, NOT a solution we pitch or process that WE populate for others. Instead, we provide a framework and experience, a “vessel” if you will, that our working partners and clients fill in to meet their needs and re-direct their own actions.

One of the four fundamental choices that distinguish successful change leaders involves the consistent and conscious choice of people over process.  Just because someone has mapped the change initiative or tried to capture this dynamic in the form of a process does not mean that process must be “master.”  In fact, abandoning the central role of leading others (um…that’s people) in favor of driving process is a sure path to recurring disappointment with change management and many major initiative derailleurs.

How complex is organizational change?...Perhaps only as complex as we choose to make it.  Let’s break it organizational change down into 99 words or less--here we go!

Too often, the consultants and guru’s writing about change actually DISEMPOWER change leaders and participants by stoking the notion that change is so unique that we cannot possibly succeed relying on what we know and the strengths we display daily.  In this way, they are altogether responsible for “Locking Dorothy and her little dog” in a dream state forever.  But wait…remember that the gal from Kansas, in fact, had exactly what she needed to change her condition all the long.

Geo-political systems and policy are typically messy, but can be understood as one type of “organization.”  As a result, they offer many learnings for change leaders.  Let’s take political and regulatory solutions (the bastions of “agenda” driven argument, parochialism, and unintended consequences) as an example.  To keep this discussion apolitical, even for the lightning rod that is Global Warming, I have raised questions here in exclusively practical terms. 

I read a good article today from HBR regarding how there are self-anointed “experts” everywhere these days.  The proliferation of social media and the web have only exacerbated this situation.  Of course this creative destruction creates some benefit in terms of wider access--opening doors to more and more sources of guidance (just as it devastated the traditional music business, but introduced so much new music and new artists to the world—literally at our fingertips).

The experience of change management is replete with stakeholders, teams, subject-matter-experts, sponsors, etc…people are everywhere!  One distinct characteristic of the most effective change initiatives I’ve driven or observed is that they are spurred by a top-notch crew of skilled and dedicated people, all consigned to uphold their collective esprit de corps.