Sometimes I like to check out some of the change management-related videos on YouTube - you’d be surprised what you can find there.  The other day, while watching another video, YouTube suggested I watch this one: 

Rick Ross’ premise here, in case you’re not inclined to watch the video yourself, is that ‘change management’ is an outdated relic from the ‘industrial age’.  Judging from his website, I think that when he refers to the ‘industrial age’, he means ‘before technology dramatically changed the way organizations function’.  The implication in this video is that ‘change management’ is outdated and doesn’t adequately allow for the organization to have input into change strategy before a change is implemented.

However, the truth is that recognizing the need for adequate organizational input - and Ross’ suggestions for how to make this happen - is already a best practice in change management.  We’ve talked about listening to employees before; in fact, it was the subject of our very first blog post.  His suggestions aren’t a modern twist on the dinosaur that is change management - they’re what every good change management practitioner is already doing.

Ross mentions a company called Humana, which got 26,000 of its 40,000 employees to start using a social networking tool for better internal communications.  That sounds okay - though as a change management professional I’d be looking for better than a 65% adoption rate - but according to this article, if Humana had done a better job of soliciting input from different parts of the organization, they could have achieved a much higher level of compliance across the company, faster.  

Of course, there’s always a “but…”

Sometimes, a change doesn’t lend itself to large-scale organizational input. 

In the Humana example, the CIO didn’t spent a lot of time engaging the organization prior to the change because he decided that it was more important to just get started with the social networking tool quickly rather than waiting months while they collected input from 40,000 employees.  And sometimes that kind of approach makes sense.

There are other situations in which large-scale organizational input isn’t appropriate:  Maybe the changes are part of a plan that needs to be kept under wraps for legal or competitive reasons; maybe a decision is made to try a small pilot program before the change goes organization-wide; and even I can admit that some changes are too small to warrant a lengthy dialogue period.

At the end of the day, it’s still ‘change management’

Whether you spend a lot of time on organizational input or not, the strategic plan and implementation of change is still ‘change management’.  You are still managing yourself and your organizations through change change.  Change management is really just the act of harnessing the power of your people in order to achieve a certain goal. That's never just a relic of a bygone age - it's your silver bullet to success.

Imagine:  You’ve created a new organizational structure which turns the traditional hierarchy on its head.  Your new org structure is new!  It’s creative!  It’s innovative!  Most importantly, you know it’s exactly what your organization needs in order to move to the next level. 

You announce your new structure on a Monday morning, and tell everyone that it’ll go into effect two weeks from that Monday.  You take the senior leadership team through an exciting PowerPoint presentation detailing your plans, then send them out to make it happen in their departments.  You’re excited - the future is so bright, and your organization is going to be so well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunities coming down the pike!

Cut to:  Six months later.  You’re sitting in a conference room with your senior leadership team, trying to figure out how, exactly, your business has fallen so dangerously behind the competition.  The innovative organizational structure that seemed so promising 6 months ago has dissolved into chaos, your top performers are starting to evacuate, and if you don’t come up with a miracle, fast, you won’t be at the head of the boardroom table much longer.

So what happened? 

(Change + innovation) - (change management plan) = Changerous

Things get changerous when you try to implement a whole new model without a change management plan.

“Change management?!” you scoff.  “Who has time to be that boring and old-school?  Around here, change is hardwired into our DNA.  We’re dynamically synergistic, we’re early adopters!  We’re so far ahead of the curve we’re practically Zappos!  Go on - take your Gantt charts with you, while our all-Millennial workforce conducts our entire business via Tumblr!”

Rriiigggght.

Here are 3 things you might want to think about:

1. Done right, change management plans can (and should) be just as innovative as the change itself.  It might help you to know that Google had a very detailed change management plan for the implementation of Google Glass
2. Your business may have done a lot of changing in the recent past, but that doesn’t mean you’ve gotten better at it.  In fact, it may mean that your employees don’t bother to make changes because they know next week they’ll have to do it differently anyway
3. Your 20-something employees may seem amenable to change, but their lack of experience may make it difficult for them to really implement it effectively.  Even the brightest, most agile employees need to understand how their jobs will change, and how all the new pieces fit together.

Think about it this way:  You’ve been driving for years, and you’re pretty good at it.  Then someone hands you the keys to a Maserati, says, “It’s all yours - have fun!”, and walks off into the sunset.  You get in the car, turn the key in the ignition - and then realize it’s a stick shift, which you’ve never driven before.  Trying to get it out of the parking garage without getting a couple of lessons in driving manual transmissions?  That’s changerous.

Aaron Antonovsky was a social scientist at the Ben Gurion University in Israel who studied what he called salutogenesis, or “how people manage stress and stay well”.  The goal of his research was to understand how some people remain healthy their whole lives, no matter what happens to them, while others do not. 

He said that our orientation to life was comprised of three main areas:

• Comprehensibility (how we make sense of our world)
• Manageability (our sense of control and our belief that we have the skills to do what needs to be done)
• Meaningfulness (how interesting and purposeful we find life to be)

These ideas are particularly relevant when we’re thinking about change within an organization:

• Change is most likely to succeed when the people affected by it also understand it (comprehensibility)
• Change is most likely to succeed when the people involved are confident that they will be able to cope with it (manageability)
• Change is most likely to succeed when the people affected by it feel that it has meaning and purpose for them (meaningfulness)

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that addressing comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness in your change strategy is crucial to success.  Here’s what I mean:

Comprehensibility:

I’ve written before about how communication is the #1 factor in the success of change.  Comprehensibility happens when you establish the right ‘story’ around a change, and then communicate it clearly, consistently and often.

Manageability:

It sounds trite, but it’s true:  People really are capable of great things when they know that the people around them (especially those in leadership positions) believe in them.  When you empower your employees, and let them know that you have faith in their ability to successfully navigate a change, you’ll find they’ll exceed your expectations, every time.

Meaningfulness:

Want to derail a change initiative, fast?  When your employees ask “Why are we doing this?”, answer them with “Because head office says so.”  (A close second is “Because we’re driving shareholder value,” when you know the person you’re talking to doesn’t actually own any shares.)  If you want people to put in the extra effort required to implement a change successfully, you need to help them understand why and how it is important to them:  “It will make your day-to-day job easier,” or “It will allow our department to contribute more to the bottom line, which means our bonuses will increase.” 

And now, I dare you to use ‘salutogenesis’ in a sentence this week!

'Change' seems to have become a hot topic for businesses again.  As a change architect - and someone who makes her living from organizational change - I find myself greeting the news with mixed emotions.  On the one hand, I’m thrilled that more organizations are recognizing the need for change.  On the other hand, 70% of change initiatives still fail in some way, so it’s not like organizations are getting better at it.  And sometimes it seems that ‘change’ has become a strategy in and of itself:  “We need to improve the bottom line.  Let’s change…something!”

Organizations are still looking for the mythical silver bullet, that proprietary alchemy which will magically make their changes work.  Each time they set out to change, they look for some new silver bullet, because the old silver bullet didn’t work.  The problem is that it’s not about finding a magic bullet - it’s about recognizing that successful change needs the right strategy and implementation.

I’ve led lots of change projects over the years, and not one of them has failed.  That’s not because I invented a magic bullet - it’s because I’ve spent more time than most people learning to understand the way I, and the people I’m leading, react to change. 

It’s important to remember that being the ‘changer’ (the leader of change) is much different than being a ‘changee’ (one of the people affected by the change).   Within an organization, senior leaders are used to thinking of themselves as ‘changers’.  But when their change initiatives don’t succeed, it’s often because they forgot that they’re also ‘changees’ - and that their reactions to change, as a changee, are influencing the process in a negative way.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that you are Joe (or Josephine), the CEO of a $30 million company in the retail sector.  You’re on your way to work (where you’re scheduled to be in an important meeting as soon as you arrive) and discover that your usual route is closed thanks to unexpected roadwork.  You’re forced to follow a detour that not only takes longer but goes through an area with which you’re entirely unfamiliar.  The delay makes you feel panicky about missing the start of the meeting,  you’re unsettled by the confusion of the detour - and when you finally get to the office, you can’t shake your feelings of anxiety.

Then you dash into the meeting, where you’re hit with some bad news from your VPs.  “Oh, great,” you think.  “Once again, they’ve all failed to meet my expectations.  They’re always disappointing me - what the hell is wrong with them?”  You decide you’ll have to ‘do something about it’, but the thought of having to spend hours coaching your senior leadership team through the next quarter just sucks all the energy out of you.  By the time you head home for the day, you feel like you’ve been been on a forced march through the desert - and you never did get around to tackling all the other items on your to-do list for the day.

When this kind of relatively small, unexpected change unsettles Joe (or Josephine), it’s not hard to understand how big change can cause anxiety, even in senior leaders.  Anxiety can lead to a lack of action, sudden changes in direction, or apathy - and when the leader of a change is paralyzed, inconsistent, or detached, it’s not surprising that the rest of the employees are similarly affected.  (And thinking things like “my team is always disappointing me” is almost guaranteed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

So if you’re finding yourself leading a change project which isn’t going well, the first step may be to look in the mirror.  Are you bringing your anxiety to bear on the project?  Are you setting your team up for success by believing in their abilities, or are you letting them meet your expectations of failure?  Most importantly, are you modeling the kind of enthusiasm for change that you need to see in them?

As the person who initiates change within the organization, you may not be affected by the change in the same ways that those lower in your organization will.  But here’s something to think about:  Change is just as much about ‘how’ as it is about ‘what’ - and how your employees react to change is directly related to the way you do.