“I work for a cold-hearted, soulless corporation.”
These are the words voiced by a dear friend this weekend. I assure you these words did not come from a victim like whiner. These words came from a dedicated, bright, downright amazing human being.
I share this statement because I think this is a reflection of what we see see in typical large corporations today. There’s a major disconnect between employees and executives. On one end of the spectrum we have CXOs that will do anything for short term shareholder return. On the other end of the spectrum we have employees that are an afterthought. The shareholder is king at all cost. The CXOs are there to do one thing and one thing only. Bottom line return at all costs.
I’m launching an eBook this week titled, How to Lead the **** Out of Change: A Toolkit to Make Ideas Happen. The fundamental belief in this book is that we need to get back to embracing remarkable people at all levels of an organization to make a difference, to create change that matters. We need to get back to designing change, human-centered change, that is the right change to make for employees, customers, and shareholders—in that order.
Please vote for my manifesto proposal
In addition to the ebook, I want to write and publish a manifesto on ChangeThis.com. My proposal has been approved, I just now need your vote. Please vote for my manifesto proposal by visiting the following URL and selecting, Yes. Please write this manifesto: http://changethis.com/proposal/show/3
Please spread the word and tweet this article.
Here’s a flavor of what you’re going to see in my book. Ready, set, go my friends.
Meet John.
“JOHN” introduced himself to me at a recent training course. John had the title of ‘strategic change leader’ within his company. From certification to ‘advanced’ change management, this was John’s fourth change management training course. Over dinner, John shares with me the investment his company has made in training the managers, employees, and executives in change management best practices.
I almost choked on my glass of wine.
I was astonished at the financial investment his company made in change management training, especially during a global economic crisis! The rest of our conversation went something like this:
Me: Wow. You’ve invested a lot of time, money, and resources in change management training. Is it making a difference? Are you realizing successful change?
John: (He laughs) Not really. We still struggle with executive support, management getting it, and employee resistance. The change management team rarely gets pulled in early enough in the project.
Me: Why is that?
John: They just don’t get it yet.
Me: Even after all this training and certification?
John: Yeah, even after all this training.
Me: So what approaches are you using to lead change in your organization?
John: We conduct change readiness assessments. We create sponsorship models, communication plans, training plans, resistance management plans. We manage the people side of change.
Me: Sounds like some innovation is needed in your change management strategy.
Then we paused and John sat silently frustrated with his organization’s inability to make changes.
I found it interesting that their approach was to apply assessments and templates to the human-centered process of change. Process and templates serve a purpose; however you can’t templatize your way to real strategy in the absence of critical thinking, intuitive thinking, empathy, and an understanding of human behavior when it comes to change.
I’d suggest that we need to return critical thinking to the center stage of change management and stop ‘managing change’ and start designing change that people want to adopt.
Get the change right, get the design right, and the people will follow.
Design thinking is about accelerating innovation to create better solutions to the challenges facing business and society. It starts with people-what we call human centered design-and applies creative tools, the tools of design, like prototyping, experimentation and storytelling to deliver new breakthrough innovations. Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and author of Change by Design
Your Turn
What’s your read on designing change, designing ideas, that people understand, talk about, willingly adopt, and even celebrate? If you like this post, please tweet it. Thanks!
Get on the List
In a few short weeks, I’m launching an ebook titled, How to Lead the **** Out of Change: A Toolkit to Make Ideas Happen. Get on the list to be the first to hear about it.
Cheers to a great week!
Melissa
