Filed under: - Change Execution, - Organization Change Management, - People Change Management, - Strategy and Imperatives, - Strategy Execution | Tags: Capacity, Change Management, LinkedIn, Resilience, Resistance
I always laugh when I see the new Snickers commercials—I admit it, I sometimes even rewind them.
They remind me that “You’re not yourself when you’re under the stress of change.”
Have you seen Robin Williams on your projects lately? This is the “Fourth and loopy” commercial where the usually very intense and focused coach is momentarily an incarnation of Robin Williams.
Very funny…because we can relate. continue reading here
Filed under: - Change Execution, - Innovation, - Organization Change Management, - People Change Management, - Strategy Execution | Tags: Change Management, Commitment, Resistance, Strategy, Vision
What if our organization was energized? If everyone understood the vision and the strategy and contributed enthusiastically to moving us forward? How would we talk to each other? Maybe it would look like the best of our meetings – agreeing and disagreeing, compromising, collaborating, loud, messy even, but always vibrant. It seems to me that internal social media should look like this and create this kind of traction.
Filed under: - Change Execution, - Leadership, - Organization Change Management, - People Change Management, - Strategy Execution | Tags: Adoption, Change Management, Communication, Leadership, LinkedIn, Readiness, Resistance, Transformation
A question. Actually a conversation of questions and lots of listening. Why? Because it’s not what you know that will engage your people – it’s what they know.
So, what do they “know”? What do they believe about this strategy / change initiative / project? If they trust you enough to be candid, you are likely to be surprised – perhaps shocked – and even enlightened.
continue reading here
Filed under: - Change Execution, - Innovation, - Leadership, - Organization Change Management, - People Change Management, - Strategy Execution | Tags: Adoption, Culture, Leadership, LinkedIn, Neuroscience, Resistance
Seeing as the real punch line is why, let’s get the answer on the table: teenagers. That’s right.
Let’s face it – we were all teenagers once so we should be able to relate to this. The October 2011 issue of National Geographic explores “Teenage Brains – Beautiful Brains” and got me thinking – not only about my own teenage years and those of my sons, but also why some people are more open to change than others. This particular article considers a phase of human development from roughly 15 – 25 years old and sheds light on the importance of physiology and brain science, in understanding adaptability.
continue reading here
Filed under: - Innovation, - Leadership, - Organization Change Management, - Strategy and Imperatives | Tags: Burning Platform, Change Management, Culture, Leadership, LinkedIn, Planning, Resistance, Strategy, Transformation, Vision
If you recognize that your organization needs either a wholesale culture change (as Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop expressed this week (2)) or tweaking in certain units, this book will provide you with an excellent framework and the language to discuss it. The authors, Cameron and Quinn, are renown in this space and the book is an expansion of decades of academic research and field application.
The foundation, Competing Values Framework, sets out a 2×2 matrix with 4 different organizational culture types (Clan, Hierarchy, Adhocracy and Market Cultures) and the authors maintain that most organizations exhibit differing degrees of each.
The beauty of the framework is that it takes the intuitive (and sometimes not so intuitive) and makes it plain, gives it structure that can be measured and discussed. As I peeked ahead to read the model, I could immediately recognize characteristics s of organizations that I have worked with. Even rough plotting current and desired state values seemed intuitive and suddenly easy to talk about. Further reading illuminating much more meat on the model worthy of further study – the Management Skills Assessment Instrument and Organizational Change Assessment Instrument (OCAI) are simultaneously straightforward and comprehensive.
The book claims that the approach provides six advantages: practical, timely, involving, quantitative and qualitative, manageable and valid. I have to concur – this book delivers.
Evidence is emerging every quarter that our most established and revered organizations are only reactive to change – are not demonstrating the capability to evolve at the pace that the market is demanding. In my opinion, these organizations are constrained by three factors: the vision of leadership, the effectiveness of their strategies and … the ability to change the cultures of these organizations. The success of our economies and our communities going forward will depend, to large degree, on whether we accelerate our commitment to these areas.
In correspondence with Professor Quinn I asked for authoritative online description of OCAI to share with you and he referred me to the Competing Values Company where you can access much more information.
Of note, the third edition, published by John Wiley, is due for release in Canada on March 9th 2011 and will contain a downloadable online version of the Management Skills Assessment Instrument and the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument.
Also of note, I think we can expect to hear the reference to “the burning platform” a lot more in 2011. It would be appropriate to acknowledge Daryl Conner who coined the phrase following the Piper Alpha explosion to articulate the notion of choice between certain death (failure) and potential life (hope). He was interviewed recently by Luc Galoppin and described this in his own words “Burning Platform: The Misunderstanding ” (Part 1 here and Part 2 here).
Footnotes:
(1) “Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture”, Kim S. Cameron and Roger E. Quinn, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, USA.
(2)“Nokia CEO Says Company Is Standing on a “Burning Platform”, Mashable, Feb 9, 2011.
Other related posts:
- Strategic Success in 2020 requires new contracts with employees
- Is your brand promise on the change train?
- The Big Wall: When change is incompatible with organizational culture
Filed under: - People Change Management, - Project Management | Tags: Adoption, Change Management, Leadership, LinkedIn, Projects, Resistance
In Change Management Communities of Practice, project professionals often discuss what to do about resistance. It often quickly comes down to how to re-direct, re-assign or even fire the “blocker”.
Why it is so much “easier” to get rid of someone else (a “blocker”) than to consider changing ourselves … ? It might be a stretch to learn to take on a difficult conversation with a resistor but that effort has significantly higher ROI potential than any of the other options.
Do Leaders have to change? continue reading here
Filed under: - Organization Change Management, - People Change Management, - Project Management | Tags: Adoption, Change Management, Effectiveness, Leadership, LinkedIn, Organization Design, Planning, Projects, Readiness, Resistance, ROI
This question, posted on LinkedIn, prompted some very interesting debate. My full response follows. Perhaps, more important than “mistakes”, the dialogue points to great OPPORTUNITIES for leaders and organizations who seek to become masters of change.
Firstly, there is an important distinction between ‘change management’ (CM) and Organizational Change Management (OCM). The question of “mistakes” resonates in both arenas. For context, we break it down this way: continue reading here
Filed under: - Organization Change Management | Tags: Adoption, Culture, LinkedIn, Politics, Resistance
“But remember this –- I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I could do it alone. Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.” – Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 27, 2010
What more needs be said?
Filed under: - People Change Management | Tags: Adoption, Change Management, Effectiveness, LinkedIn, Resistance, ROI
“How do you persuade people to disrupt their lives? You have to explain … not once or twice but three or four times … you have to convince them of the paradoxical fact that, disruptive as the gadget is, it’s not all that hard to use.” (1). Logical and desceptively difficult. What is brilliant in this story is the effectiveness – Gladwell is talking about is the sales pitch for the “Chop-O-Matic”.
Not relevant to business change? But wait this is a business that has very effectively developed and sold new products for generations. By Gladwell’s description the pitch is a highly structured communication (designed and road tested from invitation to ‘turn’ to ‘countdown’) to lead the audience from apathy to curiosity, not just to consumers but often to zealots.
There is much in this story that applies to communicating change in every organization – that applies to almost every change that we ask users to adopt whether it is a new system, say imaging records and all the benefits that come from that, or learning a software, say ERP, or even a new role. Yet, the rigor and discipline that has gone into the Chop-O-Matic pitch exceeds the communications that many organizations apply to much larger, riskier projects.
The key is to recognize the true short falls and costs of compliance-based change implementation (i.e. ‘we’ll tell them and they’ll do it) vs a proactive, customized and structured People Change Management track that expands on the relevant Chop-O-Matic protocols. Imagine if users would adopt the new ‘gadget’ with the same effectiveness as the audience buys the Chop-O-Matic.
Of course the ‘pitch’ is just one example of an effective communication format – and communication is just one component. After getting the audience to see and understand it, getting them to use it, regularly and properly, is the next challenge for most change programs – all the more reason to apply the same rigor throughout an integrated end-to-end approach.
(1) “What the Dog Saw”, Macolm Gladwell, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2009.
