How Employees Judge Your Change Process

Research tells us that if employees don’t buy into the process of change they won’t buy into the desired outcome of the change. (1) Is it any surprise therefore, that a survey of 5,100 global business leaders by the American Management Association found that most change initiatives fail because the leaders fail to gain buy-in to the process of change? (2)

Previous blogs have focused on rectifying this failure. These blogs recommended monitoring your team closely, teaching them how to embrace the paradox of change, engaging them in the process, and inspiring them during the early stages of the change in order to gain buy-in.

But how do you know if your attempts to gain buy-in are working? How do you know if your team is committed or merely complying to the change? Invite them to take (anonymously) the “Change Process Survey” below:

The Change Process Survey

Regarding the recent change initiative, I believe…

Strongly Disagree = 1; Neither Agree or disagree = 3; Strongly Agree = 5

1. The process of change is transparent.

2. Decisions are being made fairly.

3. Employees are being treated fairly.

4. I think the change will be good for our unit.

5. Employees are kept informed.

6. Employee views are considered.

7. Explanations are honest.

8. The organization is concerned about employee well-being.

9. Objective information is used to make decisions.

10. Employee rights are being respected.

11. My needs are being considered.

12. The organization is trying to do what is best for me.

13. Employees are being treated with dignity.

14. Our unit will be well positioned for the future.

15. In general, the salary and benefits changes are fair.

The scoring is as follows: High = 60-75; Medium = 45-59; Low 30-44. I adapted this survey so that it also serves as a summary of many techniques that increase initial buy-in to any change. So, if the team scores (you) low in any area, ask them how to improve.

Let me know how it works for you. Also, I’d love to hear how you gain buy-in to your change initiatives.

AND remember, a change well begun is half done!

Keep eXpanding,
Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Geert Devos, Marc Buelens, and Dave Bouckenooghe; Contribution of Content, Context, and Process to Understanding Openness to Organizational Change: Two Experimental Simulation Studies, The Journal of Social Psychology, December 1, 2007.

2. Dan Cohen, Building Strategic Agility, American Management Association - MWORLD, 2006, page 12 – 15.

Inspire Any Change by Changing Your Focus

Don't think of a red apple. Don't think of a red apple. What just popped into mind? You probably thought of a red apple, right? Why? Because the brain cannot work on the reverse of an idea. Neuroscientists tell us that we move in the direction of the dominant images that we place (or let others place) in our minds. Therefore, it is important when communicating with your team about change that you focus on what you want more than what you don't want. This does not mean you totally ignore problems, obstacles, or mistakes. According to a 127 women bowlers in Wisconsin, it does mean that you should emphasize the desired behaviors, skills and outcomes that support the change you want...

Professor Kirschenbaum and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin assessed the impact of positive versus negative self-monitoring in 127 female bowlers. (1)

These women were instructed on the seven key components of effective bowling (called “Brain Power Bowling” in this study). They were then divided into two groups for the next five weeks, given rating sheets and the following instructions:

Group 1- Positive Self-Monitoring. After bowling each frame, review the seven components of Brain Power Bowling. For those components that you did well, put a number from 1 to 3 in the box corresponding to that component. 1 = good; 2 = very good; 3 = excellent. If you did not do a good job on a particular component, leave the box blank. Before making your approach, it is very important to remind yourself of the correct way to complete the final 3 components...

Group 2 - Negative Self-Monitoring. After bowling each frame, review the possible errors you could have made by not following the seven component principles of Brain Power Bowling. If you made any of these possible errors, put a number from 1 to 3 in the box corresponding to that error, denoting how poorly you did. 1 = terrible; 2 = very poor; 3 = poor. If you did not make an error on a particular component, leave the box blank. Before making your approach, it is very important to remind yourself of the errors you could possibly make on the final 3 components...

Thus, group 1 (positive self-monitors) focused on effective execution, and group 2 (negative self-monitors) focused on avoiding errors. Five weeks later, group 1 improved their scores 100% (an average of 11 pins) more than group 2.

How much would you and your team improve if you focused on the positive (i.e., desired outcomes) more often?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Daniel Kirschenbaum, Arnold Ordman, Andrew J. Tomarken, and Robert Holtzbauer; Effects of Differential Self-Monitoring and Level of Mastery on Sports Performance: Brain Power Bowling, Cognitive Therapy and Research, Vol. 6, No. 3, 1982, pp. 335-342.

Eight Tools Leaders Use to Inspire Change

There are many changes affecting employees these days. Your job as a leader is to help your team commit to the changes needed to make it through these tough times. An important step to gaining buy-in to change is to inspire your team members. Here are eight tactics you can take that increase the chances that your inspiration has the intended effect:

1. Communicate a sense of urgency… emotionally. Good leaders show employees the data that proves the need for change. Expansive leaders also inspire them emotionally. You need an ocean of emotion to generate the motion. For example, Dan Cohen tells the story of the procurement manager whose project team discovered that the company purchased 424 different types of gloves when only three types were actually needed. To communicate rationally and emotionally, the manager collected all 424 gloves, put a price on each, and stacked them in the boardroom so that senior leadership could see and feel the cost of this inefficiency. (1) People will feel a sense of urgency when you communicate data emotionally.
2. Experiment with small change before rolling out major initiatives. One of the decision-making traps leaders fall into when implementing a change is assuming that the change needs to be rolled out as a major change initiative. Yet, nature and science teach us that experimentation is king of this classroom called life. So, whenever possible conduct your own small experiments before rolling out any initiative. Experimentation provides the opportunity to learn from each successive iteration. As each experiment gets you closer to the desired outcome, your team members will feel more inspired to adapt their behaviors to support the change.
3. Celebrate team members who remove obstacles to change. That which gets rewarded gets repeated. As employees try new approaches, develop new ideas, and take small steps implementing the change, reinforce these actions. The most powerful communication is rewarding action. The more employees see the new behaviors consistent with the change being rewarded the more they will be inspired to the change. Employees will also feel inspired when they see evidence that small progress is being made and rewarded. Celebrating small wins inspires team members because it also sends the signal that management is paying attention. Place your attention on your intention by rewarding those who embrace change.
4. Be the change you wish to see. This quotation from Gandhi reminds us that employees need to see words in action. They comply with what they hear, but they are inspired by what they see.
5. Set realistic objectives and milestones. When I was at UCLA, I was a member of the Dean's “goals committee.” The Dean wanted us to set forth the strategies and tactics necessary to accomplish his vision -- for the UCLA School of Medicine to become the preeminent medical school in the world by the end of the decade. At the time, UCLA was ranked number eight or nine depending upon which survey you reviewed. The Dean's goal was so lofty that most of the committee members did not believe it was achievable. They therefore did not put forth a serious effort. They went through the motions by giving the Dean’s initiative lip service and very little hip (i.e., action) service.
6. Estimate resources accurately. Employees have a specific capacity to handle change. Too much change overwhelms them. Yet, under stress, many organizations push one change after another without assessing the ability of the people to digest the change. One high-tech firm that I worked with had three major change initiatives affecting most of its employees at one time. The resources required to implement these changes were severely underestimated, while the capacity for people to absorb them were overestimated. I never could get senior management to understand this fact.
7. Maintain motivation. Too many change initiatives begin with a grand kickoff meeting and fade because of decreasing communication and leadership visibility. If you want people to stay committed to change, keep communicating and making small victories visible.
8. Be a meaning-making machine. The number one predictor of commitment is value. People only commit to that which they highly value. And what people value most are their values. Therefore, if you want to inspire people to buy into change, connect what they value to the change.

For example, when I was working in a Connecticut factory during my college days, my uncle Burt, who was the shop foreman, asked me to join him on the loading dock. As we marched past the lunchroom, I grabbed my long army coat knowing how cold it was going to be on the loading dock. As we stared at the big bins that lined the walls of the loading dock uncle Burt explained, "Dave, we have a delivery of new Kirsch rods arriving tomorrow. Tony will be installing them in the new school being built down the street. So, I need you to make room for the new rods by moving all of these old blinds from the front bins to the back.”

Do you see what uncle Burt did here? By telling me why I needed to change from working in a warm factory to the cold loading dock, my commitment level (at least subconsciously) went up. I wasn't just moving old blinds around; I was building a school! (Okay, maybe I'm getting a bit carried away here. But you get the idea.) This is why John Hammergren, CEO of McKesson (a US-based healthcare company), pointed out during their change initiative that every employee was, or would someday be, a patient in the healthcare system. This larger purpose made a big difference. When you connect values to the direction, you create power behind the purpose.

These are eight ways to inspire your team to change. Let me know which ones work for you.

Keep eXpanding,
Dave
http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Dan Cohen, Building Strategic Agility, American Management Association - MWORLD, 2006, page 13.

Leading Change By Managing Stability

My wife and I recently took Lincoln, our new puppy (a rescued German shepherd), for his first walk. As we strolled down our quiet street, a car drove by. Lincoln jumped away from the street and stared at me trembling. His frightened eyes seemed to be crying, "Woe, Dad that's way too new for me!"

How do your team members respond when they are hit by change?

People react to change in many ways. They may feel apprehensive about the new, fear losing the old, or some combination of both. Your job as a leader is getting your team to see the need for change so that they can begin learning the new behaviors needed to support the change. One of the best ways to gain buy-in to change is to explain “the paradox of change.” (1) Here’s how:

A. Draw a sigmoid curve

On a flipchart or whiteboard, draw a sigmoid (i.e., “S”) curve as seen in below.

The Sigmoid Curve

B. Label the curves and explain the curve

1. Germination. This is where new ideas are born and innovation is encouraged. Research and development (R & D) occurs here, although it's usually more research than development. Much time, money, and effort is expended with little return during this phase. Explain to your team that this is the work you do in the garden in order to get the plants to grow. Tilling the soil, planting the seeds, fertilizing, and watering are all necessary in order to move into the next stage.

2. Growth. Growth occurs when the product takes off. The market wants it and sales are great. If sales really take off, it is often hard to meet demand because the process, policies, and people are not in place yet. Production is often strained at this time because operations and plans are not fully implemented. Toward the end of the growth phase, you harvest the crop.

3. Maturity. This is that time in the product's life when demand starts leveling off. Usually the competition has joined the field and affected your market share. The crop is harvested and people wonder how they'll make it through the winter.

C. Ask your team several questions.

Ask your team what options they have when their product reaches maturity. Of course, they'll tell you that you need to start a new curve. Ask them where you should start this new curve. They'll probably tell you it needs to be done during the growth phase of curve number one, as illustrated in below. Next, ask your team a series of questions, such as:

1. How well accepted is this new, second curve?

2. Is there any tension between the first and the second curve? When they answer yes, draw a line between the curves as seen in figure 3. Label that line “bifurcation,” and define it as "the place of maximum tension between the old and the new curve."

3. How have you experienced these growth curves at work and at home?

The Stability-Change Curves

D. Discuss key ideas

Help the team understand the following key ideas via your questioning strategy. Don't lecture. If you say it they doubt it, if they say it they’ll believe it.

1. Curve one is the stability curve, while curve number two is the change curve.

2. You need both curves to survive. For example, revenue from the stability curve finances the change curve.

3. There is often tension between the two curves.

4. Different groups in the organization value and defend different portions of the curve.

5. Different leadership styles need to be emphasized at different phases of the curve. While visionary and commanding skills (the preferred styles of adventurous pioneers) need to be emphasized during germination phase, more rational and empowering skills (the preferred styles of organized administrators) are needed during the growth and maturity phase. Of course, you need all four styles all the time. Yet, successful leaders accent specific styles to meet the unique demands at different phases.

6. In a rapidly changing environment, the length of the cycle is shortening (e.g., shorter product lifecycles). Therefore, more time is spent in bifurcation - managing the tension between the old (stability) and the new (change).

7. Life is a series of growth curves. Going off to college, getting married, having children, death of loved ones, children growing up... These life transitions are illustrations of growth curves. The essence of "The Hero's Journey," (and most heroic movies) popularized by Joseph Campbell, is really the story of growth curves.

8. Old (and young) dogs can learn new tricks (change) if you give him comfort (stability).

This exercise will help you explain the need for both change and stability. They are interdependent. All those consultants teaching change management and all those books pushing change as the answer are only half right. Your team will always seek stability when they are bobbing around in a sea of uncertainty. They're looking for something to hold onto. You are their mooring.

Professor Laurence and his colleagues from Canada summarized 15 years of change research by stating, "Initiating and maintaining continuous change in an organization requires a foundation of stability. Understanding that paradox is crucial" (3)

So, how do you build your platform of stability with your team?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Charles Handy, The Age of Paradox, Harvard Business School Press, Boston 1994.

2. Harvey Robbins and Michael Finely in Why Change Doesn't Work, Texere Pub., 2001.

3. T. Lawrence, B. Dyck, S. Maitlis, and M. Mauws, The Underlying Structure of Continuous Change, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 59-66, 2006.

How to Gain Buy-in to ANY Change

Approximately 70% of all change efforts fail (1). The actual percentage will vary depending on the scope of the change and whether it is initiated in times of crisis (dramatic change) or develops in a more orderly fashion (systematic change). While the scope of your change initiatives may range from complex organizational change to simple implementation of new office policies, the fact remains that unless you follow the few fundamentals described here, your team will probably suffer the negative consequences of failed change seen below (2):

The Negative Consequences of Failed Change

Anger

Lower morale

Increased stress

Diminished risk-taking

Decreased trust in leaders

Less money for other priorities

Subtle sabotage of the change effort

Less commitment to future change initiatives

Do you detect any of these side effects of failed change in your environment? If your answer is yes, this blog is for you. Although entire books are dedicated to implementation of change (e.g., J.P. Kotter and D.S. Cohen, The Heart of Change: Real Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002.), I focus on gaining buy to change thrust upon by senior management. This is the type of change most leaders experience. Even if you are a senior executive that initiates major change in your organization, gaining buy-in is the critical first step to an entire successful change effort.

The American Management Association surveyed 5,100 business leaders around the world and found that the reason most employees don’t buy-in to change is that the leaders focus too much on the change initiative itself and not enough on the process that will get employees to change their behavior. (3) Therefore, when major change is announced in your organization, your job as a leader is to gain commitment at the individual level (i.e., your direct reports). This buy-in is the precursor to the behaviors that support the change effort because the reality is… organizations don’t change, people do. If your people won’t change, your organization can’t change.

The eXpansive Leadership Method (XLM), seen below, can help frame the process you employ to gain commitment to the change effort. We’ll focus on the first step in this blog.

Figure 13.2

The Four-Step Process to Gaining Buy-In To Change

I. Monitor Closely.

Several years ago, legendary businessman Warren Buffett recommended that Xerox’s new CEO Anne Mulcahy spend the first three months of her tenure assessing the environment. He suggested that she meet with customers and front-line employees before deciding how to implement any changes. She followed his advice and has done an excellent job in turning that company around.

Contrast her approach with a high-tech organization going through a major change initiative. Employees were asked to submit questions prior to an all-hands-meeting conducted by the CEO a few weeks after a new change had been announced. The CEO began the meeting by showing one question that actually challenged the need for the new initiative. Instead of choosing responsibly (fourth competency of the commanding style in the XLM) and using the opportunity to restate his case for the change, the CEO went ballistic, admonishing the anonymous writer that his attitude that was not going to be tolerated. The collective wind went out of the sails of all the employees. The executive who relayed this story to me said that the initiative is barely limping along because of the resistance of the “silent majority.”

Pushback is merely feedback in need of information

Warren Buffett and Anne Mulcahy understood what the high-tech CEO did not -- that the first phase of a gaining buy-in to change is understanding what is happening in the environment. (4) The environment includes your competitive situation, market position, financial performance, and your employees’ state of mind. It’s easier to lead people to a destination if you have to know where they are coming from. A journey begins on common ground.

The best leaders stay in touch during times of change. Generals George Patton and George Washington were always on the front lines. Abraham Lincoln visited the troops on the battlefield frequently. Queen Elizabeth I met constantly with her council of advisors, individually and collectively. Leaders who access their rational thinking style, monitor the environment closely (the fourth competency of the rational style in the XLM). They find multiple ways to survey the landscape in which new initiatives are launched.

Here are several tips to help you monitor closely whenever a major change hits you and your team:

A. Listen to hallway, water cooler, and cafeteria conversations during the early stages of the change initiative. Sometimes “buy-in can be a simple matter of being heard.” (5)

B. Solicit e-mails from individuals on the front lines and in the sales organization.

C. Ask your front-line supervisors to survey their employees regarding the impact of the change on them.

D. Increase your management by walking around (i.e., MBWA).

E. Meet with your direct reports more frequently.

F. Conduct all-hands-meetings and small focus groups where all questions are perceived as opportunities to understand where people are coming from.

G. Survey customers and the competitive landscape regarding why change is needed.

H. Send team members to visit with customers who see the need for change.

Adapt these eight tips to monitor your environment closely when any change initiative is thrust upon you and your team members. They will help you gage the readiness of your team members to change the required behaviors, as well as provide you with the data needed to make a compelling case for change.

What are you doing to gain buy-in?

Keep eXpanding,

Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

1. Devos, G.; Buelens, M.; Bouckenooghe, D.; Contribution of Content, Context, and Process to Understanding Openness to Organizational Change: Two Experimental Simulation Studies. The Journal of Social Psychology 12/1/2007.

2. Harvey Robbins and Michael Finely in Why Change Doesn't Work (Texere Pub., 2001.

3. Dan Cohen, Building Strategic Agility, American Management Association - MWORLD, 2006, page 12 - 15.

4. John P. Kotter, Leading Change - Why Transformation Efforts Fail, Harvard Business Review, January 2007, 96 -- 117.

5. Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford, Decoding Resistance to Change, Harvard Business Review, April 2009, 99 – 103.