Tag Archive for: communication

Resistance is Inevitable

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Great ideas, great people and great projects have fallen victim to resistance to change. Resistance is a
natural part of the change process and exists in many forms. Look for these structural and physiological
reasons people resist.

Fear of the unknown: When a leader announces a change, whether it is a new computer system, moving
to a cross-functional team environment or even a move to a new building, it can be scary. The
announcement of a change threatens this comfortable ‘today’ the employee knows and introduces a
‘tomorrow’ that she doesn’t’ know.

Threat to expertise or prominence: Threat to prominence is based on the perception that something
someone values will be taken away. A leader who values the size of the budget, the number of direct
reports, the title or even the location of the office may resist any change that threatens one or more of
these things.

Lack of Support: A motivated and hard-working innovator still may not be able to change because of the
lack of support around him. This lack of support or structure may include:
1. Lack of skills or information
2. Mismatched evaluation system
3. Lack of resources, rewards, or recognition
4. Lack of appropriate reporting or collaborative relationships

Working against the Brain: If employees have ingrained habits and are suddenly asked to make new habits,
the brain must work harder. This goes against the brain’s natural inclination to conserve energy. Many
books such as The Power of Habit are great resources for understanding the physiological challenges when
we ask people to work differently.

Recognizing the many root causes of resistance, improves understanding. Improved understanding leads to
better ways to address resistance.

Ways to get started include:

1. When there is fear of the unknown, do a better job communicating what the future looks like for
that person.
2. When there is threat to expertise and power, acknowledge what is going away but also reinforce
the positives and opportunities.
3. When support is missing, advocate for people and budget to address what is lacking. Explain the
risk of not addressing these gaps.
4. When habits are being changed, educate people about how to recognize habits and what it takes to
change them.

Dealing with resistance isn’t easy but it’s a central part of change management. Expect it, recognize the
type of resistance, and find ways to address it.

Successful Change in an Agile Environment

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Setting up infrastructure to ensure that change management tools can be optimized for an agile environment is important groundwork for ensuring that changes succeed when iterative agile work begins at full speed.
When changes are happening in rapid succession very quickly, it is important to have an infrastructure that allows the team to focus on the content of each change rather than some of the more structural foundations of change management work.
  • Clear team roles and responsibilities
  • Forums for leadership alignment and discussion
  • Mechanisms for documenting stakeholder impacts and communication delivery
  • Mechanisms for delivery of learning material
  • Feedback mechanisms that ensure employees have a way to provide quick input to the team.
Roles and Responsibilities
Clearly documented project with Unregulated contaminants team roles and responsibilities are particularly important in fast moving change environments. Letting each team member know who is responsible for performing different tasks, even at a high level, helps ensure the appropriate change management activities are planned and executed so employees are ready, willing and able to change. Establishing this foundation at the start of the change effort will enable the team to maintain the speed and efficiency that agile environments demand.
Leadership Alignment
Even when changes taking place are small, it is important that leaders are aware and supportive of the changes. At the start of the change effort, ensure that there are regular forums to share information about changes with leaders. These forums, used throughout the project, ensure leaders understand what is changing and how people will be impacted.
Stakeholder Impacts
Having a place where information about how each release or wave of change impacts people is stored and shared could be as simple as a collaboration software workspace such as OneDrive, SharePoint or DropBox. Making sure there is a place to hold the information, and that the people who need to see or use it know how to access the information sets the project up for success.
Communication
When changes are coming in a series of releases or waves, having functioning systems that efficiently and effectively get information out and back saves time and increases the value of the change management effort. Defining the key communication vehicles for the project at the very outset of the effort and ensuring the team and vehicle owners know that you will be using them, are important to ensure that people are ready, willing and able to work in new ways.
Learning
When changes are happening every few weeks or months, you need to plan up front for an easy and quick way to get materials to people who need them. Defining the learning or training approach, the format of the materials, and how they are released to people should happen as the change team starts on the project to enable the team to focus on the content of each release rather than formats and delivery processes. If you’ve been looking to buy a business in Fort Myers because you’re moving nearby, you can visit Truforte Business Group’s website to find some great looking options.

Because changes happen in such rapid succession in agile change environments, often the inclination is to keep looking forward to what the next change is rather than supporting people who have just experienced a change. It is important to have infrastructure to gather feedback after a change is released to help ensure that people don’t revert to old ways.

The Blind Spot

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You’ve probably heard the phase “actions speak louder than words”.  What are your actions saying? 

Tacit communication is the type of communication that is invisible, unspoken, inferred, or implied.
 It communicates much more than our words often do.  It is a key part of how we relate to one another and gather meaning, and it unveils what’s behind our intentions, assumptions, prejudices and biases. 

Understanding what our actions are really saying requires us to have a good deal of self-awareness and actually seeing what for many may be a blind spot.  

The key to understanding and managing your own unspoken messages is a healthy dose of introspection.  Ask yourself….

  • Do you value some opinions more than others?
  • Do you have unspoken beliefs about how things should be at work?
  • Do you give all an equal opportunity to succeed?
  • Do you have relationships that you value above others at work?
  • Do you truly, deep down, care about someone’s opinion or idea? 
  • What do you truly want out of a situation, your job, your life?  

Ask questions of yourself and see what you can uncover.  If you are stuck, turn to someone you trust that will be honest with you about the messages you send.  The more diligent you are at uncovering your blind spot, the more effective you become as a leader. 

 

What Kind of Person Manages Change?

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Change is tough for organizations, and helping people navigate through change takes a special kind of person.  There are of course leaders that need to champion and sponsor change.  But there are also people that need to actually manage the change and help people in the organization work through the transition.

There is a lot of hard work involved in helping people in an organization change the way they work.  So what are the characteristics of great change managers?

  1. They’re empathetic. The ability to continuously ask and answer the question “what would I want and need if I were in their shoes” is a critical skill for an effective change manager.  Having empathy and understanding what others are experiencing and what will help build commitment is the core of managing change. When it comes down to it, anyone who has a good strong sense of the golden rule (“do unto others as you would have others do unto you”) has the basic stuff to be a good manager of change.
  2. They’re good communicators. That may seem obvious, but it is really an important skill for successfully managing change.  Good change managers communicate simply.  They interpret complex messages and distill them down to simple, easy bits.  Effective change managers tailor their message to their audiences, and they use lots of different communication vehicles well.
  3. They are naturally influential and generate informal authority.  Effective change managers naturally draw others to them.  They don’t need formal authority to have influence over others and they are able to leverage their networks to make things happen.  They are persuasive and likeable.
  4. They have courage. It is not always easy being on the front lines of an organizational change.  Change managers are often times put in a position to be “representing” the interests of the people impacted by change with the people who are creating change.  That can put the change manager in situations where they need to say and do things that are unpopular.  They may need to tell leaders and or associates things that they don’t want to hear.  Change managers need to be willing to call things like they see them, even if it is unpopular and not typically expected in an organization.
  5. They are discreet and maintain confidences.  Change managers can be put in positions of having sensitive information.  During focus group meetings, interviews, or just hallway conversations, it is not uncommon for people to share specific information about specific individuals with change managers.  If a change manager divulges information that they have agreed to keep private even once, they lose credibility and trust.  It is imperative that change managers know how to keep a secret.
  6. They’re organized.  Some people assume that managing change is mostly art and little science.  But managing change usually requires tremendous exercises in logistics and orchestration.  Being organized is a critical skill for effectively managing change.
  7. A bias for action.  Change management has a bad reputation among people who think managing change is only about asking questions and analyzing people.  Managing change is both art and science.  While questions should be asked and assessments made, real change comes when action takes place.  If someone doesn’t actually do something with the results of assessments, the exercises are moot.
  8. They get their hands dirty.  Change managers can be speaking to executive committees in the morning, and stuffing envelopes in the afternoon. Good change managers are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get stuff done.  Anyone who is not able or willing to dig into the nitty gritty (editing a poster, developing talking points for leaders, editing an agenda for an important meeting) is not going to be as effective managing change as someone who is.
  9. They are subject matter experts in the field of organizational change management.  They understand the human and organizational dynamics of change, as well as the many methodologies that describe ways that change can be managed.  In addition to general change management understanding, great change managers have experience in several different change environments to see how change unfolds.  Having “stories” to share is always helpful when managing change.
  10. They are personally comfortable with ambiguity and change.  An effective change manager can navigate through ambiguity relatively well, and is more comfortable than others working in a changing environment.  Being part of a change project is by its very nature an environment of change.  But it is also true that most changes are not linear, stable activities.  There are ups and downs, periods of acceleration and periods of deceleration.  People who are not comfortable with the ebbs and flow and the ambiguity of change (scope changes, a new leader that enters the picture, changes in direction) will have a tough time effectively managing change.  An effective change manager quickly assesses a shifting situation and adapts to the new environment.  And they don’t get upset or anxious about it.

Changing for the Workforce of the Future

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Can you imagine fully half of the people who work for your company being either contractors such as the best roofing company in Denver, CO, temporary workers, or freelancers?  That may very well be the future we face.

A 2012 Economic Intelligence Unit Study shows that by the year 2030, 50% of the workforce will be made up of contingent workers.  The U.S. contingent workforce is made up of self-employed individuals, independent service firms, entrepreneurs and temporary workers. By 2020, 40 percent of American workers, or nearly 65 million people, will be contingent, and shortly thereafter that percentage is expected to rise to 50 percent.

Others confirm that the use of contingent workers is already on the rise, and will continue.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as reports from the Staffing Industry Analysts, a research and advisory firm focused on staffing and contingent labor, have demonstrated that the number of contingent workers has been increasing year over year for a few years.  And in June 2011, over 34% of the 2000 organizations surveyed by the McKinsey Global Institute said they plan to use more temporary labor in the next five years.

The trend is clear.  But are organizations ready for it?

Work in the future will be more collaborative, flexible, and goal oriented.  Temporary workers will need to be sharp, and stay sharp, to keep their jobs.  An organiztaion with more and more people flowing into and out of it will need to be radically different than today.

A current client of ours is working on a large project that requires a lot of consultants.  A full time staff person spends over 80% of her time giving out and tracking computers that are given to consultants.  Can you imagine if half of their workforce was contingent?  If the task of managing assets is so cumbersome now, the process and technology implications of a 50% contingent workforce would be astounding.

We have several large clients that are working on becoming more “digitally enabled” in order to meet the needs of their customers.  But with all we have heard from clients about embracing technology to meet the needs of future customers, we have not heard any talk at all about how to be more digitally enabled to meet the needs of their future workers.   The shift to more temporary workers will change how an organization works with its people in profound ways.

Current technology certainly makes workers more “plug and play” ready.  But it will need to make significant strides to meet the needs of a future more transient workforce.

Our clients will have to re-think how they manage people, how groups form and disband to tackle work, how people are on-boarded and rolled-off, how corporate cultures are built and maintained, how they attract and evaluate temporary workers.

They will also need to embrace technology and new digital technologies in an entirely new way. More digital maturity can help organizations build stronger connection to their staff… especially temporary staff.  Not only allowing access, but also targeting communication, facilitating relationships between roles, connecting people to other people and ideas.

Organizations that will win with workers of the future will be more mobile, and will be more agile by providing more personalized or customized needs for each temporary worker.  They will flex based on the work, the location, the worker, and the required interfaces with other people within the organization.

If you are thinking about where your organization will be in 20 years, think about your customers, your products, and your markets.  The demands they place on your organization will certainly challenge you to change.  But also think about your staff.  You might be surprised at the magnitude of change that meeting their unique needs challenges you to also.

Key Messages are Key during Organizational Change

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We have seen more organizations than we care to remember that have waited and waited and waited and waited to say anything at all about a change that was being implemented.  And when they finally did start talking, it was as if a flood of information had just breached a levee.

If you have ever been on the receiving end of the “flood” style of communications, you know it isn’t really effective.  In fact, burying people in details about something that is happening in an organization before people even know “why” is this happening actually usually backfires.  People shut down, tune it out, and duck into their cubes to wait for it all to pass.

Understanding the key messages that should be sent about a change at any given time is critical to effective communication and change management.  Outlining what to communicate and when is a great start to ensuring that a consistent and relevant message stream reaches people in the organization.

To make it simple, start with outlining your initial “level 1 messages.”  These are simple statements that answer questions such as: What is this project or change?  How does this link to other projects or initiatives going on?  Why is this important?  What is the end result? What is the timing?

If any of the “simple statements” above is more than 30 words, try again.  It is too much.

The “level 1 messages” should be consistent throughout the project and set the context from beginning to end.  It is like saying we are taking a trip from New York to California.  We will have different messages along the way about where we are, who is driving, sights along the way, etc…. but we always tie our messages back to the fact that we are on a trip from New York to California.

Next, develop “level 2 messages” that address group specific impacts and concerns. These might change over time as we learn more and additional concerns are unearthed.  But start by developing answers to the following questions for each group that will be impacted:  What specific impacts will this group have?  How will specific concerns for this group be addressed?  What specific job changes will happen?

The key messages are a critical component of an effective change management program.  If you can’t answer some of these questions now about a change you are involved with or are managing, most likely impacted stakeholders can’t either.  And until they can, the change won’t stick.

“Off-Shoring”, “Right-Sizing”, “Out-Sourcing”… Whatever You Call it, it Means Big Change

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For organizations seeking to reduce costs by sending work to other countries, the
path is long and difficult.  Off-shoring may be absolutely necessary for your organization to remain competitive or possibly just stay in business, but don’t underestimate what it will take to do it and do it right.  With the pace of change around the globe these days, even the basic questions like “Where should we send the work – India?  Ireland? China?” may be hard to answer.

What is also hard, but often overlooked, is how to deal with the people within an organization during the process.  There are two primary groups you need to think about when you are off-shoring:  the people who will lose their jobs, and the people who will be left behind and will watch the process unfold before them.  If off-shoring doesn’t take into account the needs of the people who are impacted by it, the gains that you hope to make can be lost by large scale disengagement, decreased productivity, and massive turnover.

During organizational transition, everyone is affected.  People who will lose their jobs are obviously impacted; but also, employees who don’t lose jobs may experience guilt that they “survived” and fear that they could be next.  The things we do to help both groups transition are completely inter-related.  For the “survivors,” the #1 factor that contributes to their experience of the off-shoring is their observation of how those who lose jobs are treated. It’s easy to write a good resume headline once you know the steps. Visit Sweet CV’s website to learn more.

During out-sourcing (well, any time actually), there should be an underlying desire to treat people with respect and dignity.  It sounds easy enough, but it can be difficult in situations like this.  It’s not as if we intend to treat people poorly, but sometimes we just forget what people need or we just get too busy and forget about the people impacted.  Every day, you need to ask yourself, “Are we doing for people who will lose their jobs what I would want to be done if it were me that was going to lose my job?”

As you make every decision, keep the golden rule in mind.  How would you want to find out your job was being eliminated?  Most likely, you’d like to hear it directly from your manager in a one-on-one conversation rather than in a meeting of 50 people.  And you probably would want to hear it before anyone else in your group heard it.  While it is logistically difficult, the effort will pay off.

Remember that the people who will lose jobs are also likely friends of people who will remain a part of the organization after they are gone.  If the people leaving the organization are treated poorly, not only do you engender ill will from organizational alumni who are out there bad-mouthing your organization, but you also plant the seed with employees who will stick around that you might not treat them so well either in the future.

While the work of off-shoring is difficult, it doesn’t mean you should steer away from off-shoring.  Just go in with your eyes open about the work it will take.  Treating people well is not about just coddling people.  It is about getting the business results you are seeking by keeping your organization engaged and productive.

Helping Others Say a Hearty “Yes”

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Joseph Campbell, best known for his work in comparative mythology, is quoted as having said “the big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”  Although this quote wasn’t made in the context of organizational change, I have been thinking about the applicability to change management.  The best change leaders do just that, they help organizations and the people within them say a hearty yes to the adventures ahead.

Although saying yes and opening up to adventure sounds great, it isn’t the first instinct for most of us.  Most of us instead instinctually have questions… we want to know more about how we will be impacted.  We say “maybe,” “let me think about it”, or “this isn’t what I would have chosen.” Just take a moment to think about how this dynamic may play out over and over again in your own life in small ways.  We know that people tend to try to re-establish a sense of control, and most of us probably have ample personal examples of that to draw on.  Now from those simple examples, think about how it feels to hesitate, and how it feels to say yes.  Questioning can feel like a like a lot of intellectual work, and saying yes can feel like an emotional release and even bring cautious exuberance.

Good change leaders understand the natural hesitancy to say a hearty yes.  Having questions, gathering information when applied productively can lead to good things for individuals and organizations.  In fact the ability to address the logical reasons for change, to outline the business case, is critical for any effective change leader.  This is the price of admission.  And this task alone, the intellectual challenge of winning over the minds, can be a challenge.

The best change leaders however recognize that there is another significant piece of work to be done, to win over the hearts.  This is the emotional work of letting go and opening up to new ways for now.    Great change leaders move people not only through compelling arguments, but through paradigm shifts.  In my observation, what moves people from “no” to “hearty yes” is less often an intellectual argument, and more often a feeling.  The moment when individuals shift from a position of hesitancy to a space of possibility is often more about inspiration, vision, and trust.  An intellectual argument might get you to the place of a reluctant yes.  But great change leaders take organizations to the space of a hearty yes… to the space of possibility, creativity, collaboration, flow.

To speak to the hearts of employees often takes a great deal of courage.  It means acknowledging the very human side of business, which is often devalued.   It means talking about things that are sometimes uncomfortable.  It means addressing fears and telling the truth.  It means reducing the uncertainty when you can, and acknowledging the unknown when it exists.

As I reflect on some of the best change leaders I have worked with, the ones that inspire a
hearty yes, I realize that they are also great story tellers.  This is something I imagine Joseph Campbell could appreciate.  They make the complex simple and they use metaphor or analogy to create an “ah ha” moment that allows people to embrace possibility.  The research of Dr. Robert Leahy, Director of the American Institute of Cognitive Therapy, shows when people are anxious they often fill in the unknown with a negative outcome.  The best change leaders offer a story that fills in that uncertainty with possibility, and
calls the individual forward.

This story telling might be as simple as saying “but what if…” in a focused one-on-one conversation.  Or it may be painting a radical picture of the future for a crowd.  It may be like suggesting you can’t see a masterpiece through a pin hole.  Whatever the method, great change leaders help individuals feel moved to step into the journey.  That although there is an uncertain outcome, there is great possibility particularly if we choose to say a hearty yes to our adventure.

Contributed by Gina Giannitelli, a Consulting Director at Change Guides LLC

A Simple Word – “Thanks”

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When many of us in the US are getting ready to hunker down with family and friends to enjoy our Thanksgiving holiday, it is a great time to think about giving thanks at work. 

It’s so easy to forget to say thanks.  We are all busy.  There are a million things going on.  We expect people to do their job and get on with it.  But just showing someone a little appreciation now and then can mean the difference between a “punch the clock” mentality and a committed and engaged co-worker.   

Leaders are often trying to figure out the best ways to incent people to do their best.  Of course they talk a lot about money.  And money is certainly nice.  But when leaders just take the time to show some true and honest appreciation for the work people do, the sacrifices they make, and the extra effort they spend…. they are always surprised by what a difference it makes in the outputs they see. 

And saying thanks is not just on the shoulders of the boss.  We should all thank our peers for their support, their ideas, and their companionship.  And we should even thank our boss for what they do. 

You likely spend more waking hours with your co-workers than you do with your family and friends.  These people are like your family.  Like it or not, you are in this together.  You are a team.  You are there to catch each other if someone falls.  You are there to catapult each other over the wall.  If any one person in your organization fails, the entire organization suffers.

Be grateful for each other.  And tell each other “thanks”.  People will appreciate it.  And so will you when they thanks back.

Just Treat People with Respect

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I was in a situation this week with a client where I witnessed a “higher up” treating someone who worked for him in a way that was completely and totally appalling.  He was rude, he was condescending, he was just down-right nasty.  Sadly, this is not totally new behavior for this guy.  I have seen it a few times – this was just the time that it really seemed “over the top.” 

This guy doesn’t walk around exuding “mean”.  In fact, he very adeptly hides his nastiness with a veil of a “fun guy” persona.  He is always quick with a witty story, a funny joke, or comfortable banter about weekend plans.  But when push comes to shove, he can just be mean. 

As the nastiness was unfolding before my shocked eyes, it was clear that the root of this guys bad behavior was firmly planted in his own transition through this change.  While he is a leader of the change we are working on, he is also affected by it. 

If I look at his behavior through the lens of an observer of organizational change, I see a person who is struggling to maintain control and a sense of purpose… not just a rude guy.  

He is not a project management guy, but he was put in a project management role… a highly visible project management role.  He is trying to control the you-know-what out of every element of this change.  Unfortunately, his efforts are backfiring.  Every time he clamps down and treats someone like doo-doo, his team members check out even more (several are already looking for the exits).  “Why should I bust my hump putting together a 20 page strategy or a detailed plan if I know you are going to dump all over it and basically start from scratch anyway?”  They have a point. 

It must also occur to him on occasion that there is not job “waiting” for him when this project is over.  If this project goes well and happens quickly, there might not be a place for him.  And if it goes poorly, there might not be a place for him either!  Not an enviable situation.  But he is not doing himself any favors by chasing team members away and behaving poorly.  A highly visible role is a double edged sword… the executives he is interfacing with are not dense.  They see the nastiness and are not digging it. 

I don’t believe he is a bad guy.  But there are lots of other people who experience change and uncertainly without getting mean about it.  All he needs to do is treat people with a little respect.  It’s not that complicated.   I hope he makes it.

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