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!
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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
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Melissa
Great post. You could write a book about this statement:
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.
Perhaps you already did. I'll put it to you: Do you think that this organization doesn't get it because they have too many templates? Would less be more here?
Phil,
Thanks and welcome to RIVERFORK! Glad to have you here. It looks like you have an impressive lineup of books on technology, process, and organizations. http://www.philsimonsystems.com/
Regarding your question, "Do you think that this organization doesn't get it because they have too many templates? Would less be more here?"
I think this organization is so (hell bent) on process that they forget that process is a means to an end. They spend more time on process that they do on creating the relationships, the connections, necessary to create a movement, to incite change. I'm intimately familiar with the change management process they follow and it has little to do with intuitive thinking, critical thinking. It has a lot to do with templates and process. Yikes! Process and templates are not how you incite change.
Cheers to you and I wish you great success with your writing, speaking, and consulting! Perhaps our paths will cross some day – that would be cool! I followed you on Twitter – stay in touch.
Regarding your comment about a book… In a few short weeks, I’m launching an ebook titled, "How to Lead the **** Out of Change: A Toolkit to Make Ideas Happen." I'm crazy excited about it!
Melissa
http://twitter.com/riverfork
Hi Melissa
Yeah, I saw that. I was being a bit facetious.
Looking forward to catching it and thanks for the follow!
As you know Melissa, I do quite a bit of work in the brain dominance area using the HBDI. It seems to me the use of templates in John’s situation is common. It is highly likely that the left-brain dominance is playing out (common in executive leadership teams) – relying on data and process to make decisions. The innovative, creative and people side is represented in the right brain and it has been my experience with executive teams that this is under-represented in many discussions and decisions.
While the organization thinks they are managing the people side of change, they really are managing the process, it just happens to centered on people- a big difference. The challenge is to educate the leadership on their blind spots and help them to see where to leverage capabilities to meet their challenge.
Lynn, so glad to see your words of wisdom here. Thanks! Go right brainers!
Melissa
Lynn–no kidding on the comment that the right brain is under utilized on the executive team!! I love the charge–"let's make 10% profits this year" vs a deep discussion on how we are going to do that (change process).
Melissa–really great work. I am a 20yr exec most of which was spent around change leadership. Love what you are doing! The current way change is handled is outmoded. I never did it the traditional way either–but I always got good outcomes–people grew.
Thanks Debora! I appreciate your comments. I'd like to use your quote in the marketing of my ebook that is coming out Monday, March 15th. Can I quote you noting this sentence, "Melissa–really great work. I am a 20yr exec most of which was spent around change leadership. Love what you are doing! The current way change is handled is outmoded."
Please let me know! If you like, you can shoot me an email at mdutmers@riverforkconsulting.com
Thanks and I'm glad you found RIVERFORK!
Cheers,
Melissa
Boy change is a tough one, and you know I think in fairness to all of the templates in and training, they are coming from the right place I think which is trying to ready people to make a significant adjustment. Ultimately, in my view anyhow, 99% of what determines whether a change in an organization succeeds or fails is the senior leadership team, and more directly the CEO.
It takes a great leader to say, these are the things we should focus our time and these we should not. Unfortunately more often than not, CEOs aren't brave enough to do this, so instead they just focus on everything, which of course doesn't end well. If you want to lead people in a new direction, you have to actually say, "Hey! We're going this way!"