New is not automatically better. New is just new.
Trying and testing new methods is absolutely positive and effective leaders must constantly force the issue of challenging the status quo. That does not mean that the leader is blindly committed to new methods.
Some organizations have embraced an innovation only to find that the desired outcome has not been realized. The efficiency and improvement were no where to be found and the ease of implementation has been an oxymoron. In fact, during and after the change, things became much worse but unfortunately, no leader had the courage to raise a stop sign and cease the insanity.
An important part of innovation is to insure that the new method, process or product actually delivers the desired result set. The effective leader must monitor and test all of the assumptions associated with the innovation effort to insure that it is on track. If the results slip, the effective leader must be honest in their assessment and in some cases, stop the innovation.
One sure way to disengage team members and breed a jaded response to change is to narrowly assume that all that is new must be better.
Showing posts with label change management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label change management. Show all posts
Monday, October 4, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Monday Mentor-Week 30-Leading Others Through Change
Just because you are comfortable and supportive of a change does not mean your job is done. You have to lead others through that change.
A couple of common pitfalls to avoid in leadership include assuming that everyone else is as comfortable with change as you are and that you cannot have any impact on the cycle of change. The truth is that you have great influence over how the cycle of change impacts your organization and no two people will react to change in the same manner. Your role as effective leader compels you to guide your team through the change event with the minimum loss of results and with maximum effectiveness.
Your role in leading others through change has an interesting little rub point. Just suppose for a moment that you do not agree with or support the change and cannot reconcile even the slightest elements of it. That does not let you off the hook in guiding your team through the change. Whether you support it or not, you must be a willing and enthusiastic leader during changing times. This is your responsibility to your team and your organization.
There are three primary ingredients needed to helping others and an organization as a whole deal with change. The first and a very critical element is input. The best time to seek input on change is before change occurs but that is not always possible because of business needs or issues outside of the control of the organization. Input from those affected is the biggest cure to the depth of the mourning phase in the change cycle.
In the most simple terms, it is allowing team members and other stakeholders to define key elements of the needed change. It is soliciting opinions about how to accomplish the desired outcomes and looking for the unintended consequences that were previously discussed. The effective leader lays out what the desired outcome is and then allows team members to provide input on how to accomplish those objectives.
This is not allowing the inmates to run the prison but rather an attempt to achieve full buy-in and support for a change initiative. Just because you are seeking input does not imply you are running your company or department as a democracy. You are still free and empowered to enact the direction or change that you choose. People are far more likely to embrace change when they have input and feel as if they were part of the decision making and direction.
This cannot be overstated. Input equals buy-in. It cannot be bought. It cannot be achieved in a slide show. Buy-in only occurs with input.
The second key ingredient of leading others in change is communication. Input reduces or eliminates the depth of mourning in the change cycle and communication will reduce the amount of time the mourning and embracing parts of the cycle last.
As a person in a leadership position, you have heard things like “no one likes surprises” or “I wish someone would have told me this was coming.” Those statements and those like it are cries for information. Information that can only be delivered through frequent communication.
In order to guide team members through a change event, communication prior to the event occurring is critical. Your team needs time to process the changes, see how it impacts them and find the positive outcomes. Through your personal communication, you will provide them with the answers and give reassurances that the changes are needed and the impacts will be minimized. Without the communication, they will fill in the blanks for themselves and you risk them focusing only on risk based or failure based outcomes.
The standard rule of thumb for change based communication is to over-communicate. If you meet with your team twice a month, double that in a changing environment to focus on those changes and provide redundant information. Send out weekly or even daily status updates that talk about the change and how it is going. Be more open than ever to answer questions and address concerns.
The most surefire way to raise anxiety about change and lengthen the time of coping and embracing is to effect the change behind closed doors. Changes need to occur with transparency and in full view.
The final element of leading others through change is developing cultural tolerances and conditioning about change. Without the consultant speak, that is putting your team or the entire organization on notice that you and your team will be nimble and in a constant state of evolution.
Easily said but a little bit harder to actually pull off. There are several techniques to utilize including reminding team members about the previous changes that they have encountered, worked through and embraced. Another technique is not to focus on the history of the company or department and focus more on the future or vision and the need to change to in order to achieve that future view.
Change tolerance can also be achieved in a daily operational manner. If you routinely change and modify work flows and assignments (i.e. rotating jobs and schedules), dealing with larger scale organizational change is easier. Condition nimbleness by rotating assignments, hours and even where a person sits. That also helps with reducing the comfort to complacency equation.
The final reminder about leading others in change is about you. Remember that the example that you set in change management is extremely important and the team you lead will take a big clue about how to deal with change from how you deal with change.
A couple of common pitfalls to avoid in leadership include assuming that everyone else is as comfortable with change as you are and that you cannot have any impact on the cycle of change. The truth is that you have great influence over how the cycle of change impacts your organization and no two people will react to change in the same manner. Your role as effective leader compels you to guide your team through the change event with the minimum loss of results and with maximum effectiveness.
Your role in leading others through change has an interesting little rub point. Just suppose for a moment that you do not agree with or support the change and cannot reconcile even the slightest elements of it. That does not let you off the hook in guiding your team through the change. Whether you support it or not, you must be a willing and enthusiastic leader during changing times. This is your responsibility to your team and your organization.
There are three primary ingredients needed to helping others and an organization as a whole deal with change. The first and a very critical element is input. The best time to seek input on change is before change occurs but that is not always possible because of business needs or issues outside of the control of the organization. Input from those affected is the biggest cure to the depth of the mourning phase in the change cycle.
In the most simple terms, it is allowing team members and other stakeholders to define key elements of the needed change. It is soliciting opinions about how to accomplish the desired outcomes and looking for the unintended consequences that were previously discussed. The effective leader lays out what the desired outcome is and then allows team members to provide input on how to accomplish those objectives.
This is not allowing the inmates to run the prison but rather an attempt to achieve full buy-in and support for a change initiative. Just because you are seeking input does not imply you are running your company or department as a democracy. You are still free and empowered to enact the direction or change that you choose. People are far more likely to embrace change when they have input and feel as if they were part of the decision making and direction.
This cannot be overstated. Input equals buy-in. It cannot be bought. It cannot be achieved in a slide show. Buy-in only occurs with input.
The second key ingredient of leading others in change is communication. Input reduces or eliminates the depth of mourning in the change cycle and communication will reduce the amount of time the mourning and embracing parts of the cycle last.
As a person in a leadership position, you have heard things like “no one likes surprises” or “I wish someone would have told me this was coming.” Those statements and those like it are cries for information. Information that can only be delivered through frequent communication.
In order to guide team members through a change event, communication prior to the event occurring is critical. Your team needs time to process the changes, see how it impacts them and find the positive outcomes. Through your personal communication, you will provide them with the answers and give reassurances that the changes are needed and the impacts will be minimized. Without the communication, they will fill in the blanks for themselves and you risk them focusing only on risk based or failure based outcomes.
The standard rule of thumb for change based communication is to over-communicate. If you meet with your team twice a month, double that in a changing environment to focus on those changes and provide redundant information. Send out weekly or even daily status updates that talk about the change and how it is going. Be more open than ever to answer questions and address concerns.
The most surefire way to raise anxiety about change and lengthen the time of coping and embracing is to effect the change behind closed doors. Changes need to occur with transparency and in full view.
The final element of leading others through change is developing cultural tolerances and conditioning about change. Without the consultant speak, that is putting your team or the entire organization on notice that you and your team will be nimble and in a constant state of evolution.
Easily said but a little bit harder to actually pull off. There are several techniques to utilize including reminding team members about the previous changes that they have encountered, worked through and embraced. Another technique is not to focus on the history of the company or department and focus more on the future or vision and the need to change to in order to achieve that future view.
Change tolerance can also be achieved in a daily operational manner. If you routinely change and modify work flows and assignments (i.e. rotating jobs and schedules), dealing with larger scale organizational change is easier. Condition nimbleness by rotating assignments, hours and even where a person sits. That also helps with reducing the comfort to complacency equation.
The final reminder about leading others in change is about you. Remember that the example that you set in change management is extremely important and the team you lead will take a big clue about how to deal with change from how you deal with change.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Monday Mentor Week 23-Change Resistance
To fully understand change we must examine why people are resistant to change and there are many reasons and underlying factors.
In a working environment, change is resisted because it will lead to a loss of power. A person is currently performing at a high level and has achieved expertise in their area. With a change to a process or function, they will no longer have that level of expert power and they fear that their personal performance will no longer be recognized at a high level. Visualize someone typing along at 85 words per minute on their IBM Selectric typewriter and how they feel that their performance and expertise will be threatened by the introduction of the personal computer and word processing software.
Another primary cause of change resistance is found in a basic human dynamic. Humans need to have levels of stability in their lives. Attachment, connection and some predictability. For many people that stability is found at home or in connections outside of work. They have stable relationships with friends, relatives and community members. They have lived in the same place for a good chunk of time. There is predictability outside of work.
Other people do not have that stability at home and thusly seek it at work. Imagine someone who’s life is chaotic outside of work. No stability in relationships or predictability in routine or interactions. They come to work to seek the stability and attachment that is not there in their personal lives. These people will tend to be a little more resistant, if not down right hostile, towards change. This is another example of how important it is for a leader to know and understand their team members to lead effectively, especially in a changing environment.
Among the most common factors in change resistance is also a personal dynamic related to human behavior. I am married. I love my wife but there is an aging factor that occurs in relationships with individuals and organizations that is related. Early in our relationship, I opened all the doors, bought flowers for no reason, purchased mushy Hallmark cards and beat a path to be helpful around the house. Twenty five years later I still love my wife but my diligence on some of those early behavior has waned.
What occurs in interpersonal relationships, like with me and my wife, is comfort develops after performance is stabilized. Far more dangerous is that complacency follows comfort in most instances. In organizations, a person develops comfort in their job, performance and methods. Complacency and an auto-response type approach frequency follow. Another day, another dollar. Going through the motions. Punching the clock.
Any element of change rocks that complacency. It forces people off of the treadmill and requires them to think instead of auto-process. It makes the complacent uncomfortable.
Fear of the unknown is also a common factor in change resistance. When the future is defined and clear, with a known path towards it, there is little fear. When the future or even just tomorrow is unknown, clouded or veiled, the little darkroom of fear begins to process potential outcomes. Those outcomes, for a variety of reasons, is most often negative consequences associated with the change. That is where the “oh my gosh, I am going to loose my job” and “things will never be good or the same” type of comments originate.
The final change resistance factor is rather odd because it does not occur universally but it does occur with high frequency. Some people resist change because they fail to recognize any positive outcome from the change event or the changed process. They focus only on the loss of the current and not on any benefit derived from changing and evolving. My mother hates computers. Not for any particular reason but she hates them and everything about them. She will not touch them and experiments to help her embrace email and on-line banking have failed miserably. She see no benefit and only bad. Her identity will be stolen, viruses will infect, it costs too much, it wont work correctly.
Some of my mother’s octogenarian peers have discovered the joys of social networking, the efficiency of email and the fun of creating photo albums on the computer. Not my mom, all she sees is the negative outcome.
In a working environment, change is resisted because it will lead to a loss of power. A person is currently performing at a high level and has achieved expertise in their area. With a change to a process or function, they will no longer have that level of expert power and they fear that their personal performance will no longer be recognized at a high level. Visualize someone typing along at 85 words per minute on their IBM Selectric typewriter and how they feel that their performance and expertise will be threatened by the introduction of the personal computer and word processing software.
Another primary cause of change resistance is found in a basic human dynamic. Humans need to have levels of stability in their lives. Attachment, connection and some predictability. For many people that stability is found at home or in connections outside of work. They have stable relationships with friends, relatives and community members. They have lived in the same place for a good chunk of time. There is predictability outside of work.
Other people do not have that stability at home and thusly seek it at work. Imagine someone who’s life is chaotic outside of work. No stability in relationships or predictability in routine or interactions. They come to work to seek the stability and attachment that is not there in their personal lives. These people will tend to be a little more resistant, if not down right hostile, towards change. This is another example of how important it is for a leader to know and understand their team members to lead effectively, especially in a changing environment.
Among the most common factors in change resistance is also a personal dynamic related to human behavior. I am married. I love my wife but there is an aging factor that occurs in relationships with individuals and organizations that is related. Early in our relationship, I opened all the doors, bought flowers for no reason, purchased mushy Hallmark cards and beat a path to be helpful around the house. Twenty five years later I still love my wife but my diligence on some of those early behavior has waned.
What occurs in interpersonal relationships, like with me and my wife, is comfort develops after performance is stabilized. Far more dangerous is that complacency follows comfort in most instances. In organizations, a person develops comfort in their job, performance and methods. Complacency and an auto-response type approach frequency follow. Another day, another dollar. Going through the motions. Punching the clock.
Any element of change rocks that complacency. It forces people off of the treadmill and requires them to think instead of auto-process. It makes the complacent uncomfortable.
Fear of the unknown is also a common factor in change resistance. When the future is defined and clear, with a known path towards it, there is little fear. When the future or even just tomorrow is unknown, clouded or veiled, the little darkroom of fear begins to process potential outcomes. Those outcomes, for a variety of reasons, is most often negative consequences associated with the change. That is where the “oh my gosh, I am going to loose my job” and “things will never be good or the same” type of comments originate.
The final change resistance factor is rather odd because it does not occur universally but it does occur with high frequency. Some people resist change because they fail to recognize any positive outcome from the change event or the changed process. They focus only on the loss of the current and not on any benefit derived from changing and evolving. My mother hates computers. Not for any particular reason but she hates them and everything about them. She will not touch them and experiments to help her embrace email and on-line banking have failed miserably. She see no benefit and only bad. Her identity will be stolen, viruses will infect, it costs too much, it wont work correctly.
Some of my mother’s octogenarian peers have discovered the joys of social networking, the efficiency of email and the fun of creating photo albums on the computer. Not my mom, all she sees is the negative outcome.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
From Business Week: Change By Design
For those of you who have attended our Innovation or Change Management programs, this article will sound very familiar. Elements of Object Oriented Innovation, Champion Challenger Method and Managing the Cycle of Change are referenced.
By Tim Brown
As the center of economic activity in the developed world shifts inexorably from industrial manufacturing to knowledge creation and service delivery, innovation has become nothing less than a survival strategy. It is, moreover, no longer limited to new physical products but includes new sorts of processes, services, interactions, entertainment forms, and ways of communicating and collaborating.
These are exactly the kinds of human-centered tasks that designers work on every day, and over time they have evolved a body of skills to help them do it. It is time for this type of thinking—design thinking—to migrate outward and upward into the highest levels of leadership. Business leaders, hospital administrators, university professors, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) need to integrate the methods of the designer, just as designers need to broaden their reach from the crafting of objects to the shaping of services, experiences, and organizations. Design, in short, has become too important to be left to designers.
Read the rest of the article at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_40/b4149054679916.htm
By Tim Brown
As the center of economic activity in the developed world shifts inexorably from industrial manufacturing to knowledge creation and service delivery, innovation has become nothing less than a survival strategy. It is, moreover, no longer limited to new physical products but includes new sorts of processes, services, interactions, entertainment forms, and ways of communicating and collaborating.
These are exactly the kinds of human-centered tasks that designers work on every day, and over time they have evolved a body of skills to help them do it. It is time for this type of thinking—design thinking—to migrate outward and upward into the highest levels of leadership. Business leaders, hospital administrators, university professors, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) need to integrate the methods of the designer, just as designers need to broaden their reach from the crafting of objects to the shaping of services, experiences, and organizations. Design, in short, has become too important to be left to designers.
Read the rest of the article at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_40/b4149054679916.htm
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