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How Is Your (Change) Hearing?

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big earsMost of the time when people talk about change communication, they focus on what you are or should be saying. I know I have blogged about that on several occasions. A good change coach, mentor, or practitioner will also talk about the importance of having open communications channels, and about fostering dialogue; I’ve written about that as well. What is generally missing in discussions about change communication, however, is a focus on listening. Today, that is our topic.

If you are responsible for the execution of a change, no matter what the setting or your role in it, you cannot succeed without listening, and hearing. While the listening and hearing I will describe in a moment are always important, they take on oversized importance during change.

There are three things that you should always be listening for.

Listen for what is putting your change at risk.

Previously we have talked about the importance of taking counsel from people that tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear. This is not about being paranoid; it is about being sure that you have every bit of information that you can get to inform your decisions.

You need to not only empower people to tell you the bad news, you need to encourage them to tell you early. One of my mentors refers to this as a “red is good” culture; it is good when risks are raised early, and leaders act to mitigate them. Hearing the bad news early gives you the best opportunity to mitigate it without jeopardizing your change.

Listen for what is not being said.

During major change, resistance is inevitable. If you don’t see it, one of two things is taking place. Either it is underground, or you are going through the illusion of change rather than actually making progress.

Resistance happens. Hear it. Hear what it has to say. It is the voice of resistance that will surface many of your risks, and offer many of the solutions to mitigating them…if you hear it.

In order to both listen for and hear resistance, you need to slow down the conversation. All too often, when we listen we are in the process of formulating our response as the other person is speaking. We are hearing our answer take shape before we hear–or fully grasp–what they are saying.

Listen, and ask clarifying questions. What do you mean when you say that? Can you help me understand why? What are you seeing or hearing that leads you to that conclusion? What are you not telling me?  Etc.

Listen for the seeds of success.

There is a wonderful line in Anthem by Leonard Cohen. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

A lot of your focus during change is on the struggle, on the risks, on the challenges. It has to be; those are all part of big changes; you ignore them or give them short shrift at your own risk.

But don’t let that be your only focus. Also listen for the seeds of success. Where are those cracks? Where is the light getting in? Where are the seeds of success being planted?

You need to listen to them, because at first they may seem very small. Too often we tout the milestones: we’re on budget, we’ve run the training programs, we have launched the new benefits package. But we don’t see the real seeds of light that say we are on the way to realizing the full results of the change.

Maybe its a halt in the decline of customer satisfaction ratings for the Smithville call center. Or its a small turnaround in patient outcomes in the clinic that moved from line of service to patient team care. Maybe its overhearing someone who had been an early voice of resistance now talking up the change in the cafeteria. Or, its knowing for the first time that you have the courage to carry the change through to closure.

Listen for the seeds of success. And when you hear them, shine a light on them. Applaud them. Herald them. Help them to germinate, and to spread.

What counsel are you able to share on change hearing?

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What’s In Your (Internal) Change Toolkit?

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Picture1When people think about change toolkits, they generally think about things like assessments, guides, white papers, and the like. Those may be important, especially when engaged in organizational change. But that is not what I am talking about here. I am addressing those things that are inside of you and help or hinder you as you navigate change.

In June 1990, I was laid off. It wasn’t the first–or last–time I was out of work. This instance stands out in my mind because of one particular question in a book that I found helpful at the time. The book was Fired for Success. The question was, What do you do like breathing?

What an important question to ask as you think about your change toolkit! What do you do like breathing? What is it that comes so naturally to you that you don’t even know that it is there? What do you do with such unconscious competence that you don’t even see it as a strength?

One challenge of unconscious competence is that you can’t call on it when you need it… Either it works, or it doesn’t. On a bad day, it doesn’t. If you raise it to the level of consciousness, you can intentionally apply it when it is needed.

Below are some of the most significant “tools” in a strong change toolkit. Some you may “do like breathing,” others you may be okay at, and others you may not do at all well. You definitely want to know your strengths, and be prepared to apply them. Use this as a checklist for determining what is in your toolkit, what you need to strengthen, and what you have to add. Remember the old adage, If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

(Note that it doesn’t matter whether the change is personal, organizational, or societal, and it doesn’t matter whether you are leading the change, or are playing another role in its execution, these tools are all important. The list is in alphabetical order.)

Accountable: Whether this is a personal change or a global transformation initiative, if you do not hold yourself personally accountable for how it unfolds–if the organization and/or the people around you do not do likewise–it is unlikely to go well.

Ambiguity: Whatever your change, if it is big, you will be dealing with a great deal of ambiguity. Get used to it. You need incredible clarity on where you are going. You need incredible clarity on how you will know you are making progress, and how you will know when you have achieved success. And along the way, you need the ability to move through ambiguity. If you need “all your ducks in a row,” or to “know what’s waiting around the corner,” undertaking major change is not for you.

Big Picture; Little Details:  You need to be able to see the big picture: Where is the change going? What will the journey be like? What is required to achieve success? How will we know when we have gotten there? And, you need to be able to define (and execute or have executed) all of the infinite number of steps required to successfully complete the change. You can fudge on the little details, if you have people that you can trust to fill in the gaps in your toolkit; if its an organizational change, you should step back from the details so you aren’t micro-managing. If you are in a leadership position, you can’t fudge on the big picture; you have to own that.

Boundaries: Know when to work, and when to step away.

Courage: Big changes are not for the timid; you will be stepping into the unknown over and over again. There are risks, many of which can be mitigated if you “know the patterns” (below); but they are real, and they can be scary!

Decisive: If the change is big, you need to be able to make decisions, and act on them. And, you need to be able to do so even when the information available to you is insufficient.

Hold On; Let Go: If you are to succeed, no matter what the change or what your role, you need to know what to hold onto, and what to let go of. And you need to know when to hold on, and when to let go. (also, see Mistakes)

Know the Patterns: This tool is fundamental to all the rest; in some ways it is “Tool # 1.” There is a clear set of patterns that underlie the human response to change. If you know the patterns, you can apply the other tools to help you successfully navigate your way through them. If you don’t, you are “flying blind.” You have tools, and you may be applying them…but you don’t really understand what is going on.

Mindful: Are you one of those people who remembers getting into the car in the driveway, and then finds yourself parking it at the office? Never assume anything about your change is so routine that you can do it on autopilot; you need to be mindfully attentive every time you touch it.

Mistakes: You will make mistakes along the way. Success requires recognizing them, admitting them (which may need to be a public process in some cases), learning from them, applying the lessons learned, and moving on.

Open to Diverse Perspectives: If you surround yourself with people who see the world through your eyes, they are going to miss the same things you miss. You need to be open to hearing a wide range of perspectives.

Pay the Price: Big change isn’t cheap, no matter what. There are some changes that may not cost a lot of money, but they still require an incredible investment of time, energy, personal power, etc. You cannot avoid paying the price, so it is better to pay it in prevention than in healing.

Reflective: Step back and think about your change periodically. Have things shifted in the environment that require adjustments to the plan, or even to the desired end state? What is going well, and what isn’t? How effectively are you executing your role(s) in the change, and what do you need to do differently?

Reframe: How many lenses do you have in your tool kit? Can you reframe how you see things? Can you reframe them so that others see them differently?

Resilience: How well, and how quickly, can you recalibrate to changes in expectations? For more details, see Resilience Is Critical When Facing Challenge.

Resolve: It may be that this is the best idea you ever had. It may be that you loose sleep every night over it. It may be that you “can’t afford to fail.” All of that may be, but in the absence of resolve, it will fail. Big change means a difficult journey; you will need resolve to get through it successfully.

Story Telling: You need to be able to move people’s hearts, and their guts, not just their heads. All the logic in the world cannot accomplish that. Story telling can.

Teamwork: You can’t do it alone. Even the most personal of changes, if it is major, requires skills and insights beyond what you possess. Day-to-day you may pride yourself on being an independent spirit. At work your people may love you because you protect them at any cost. But when it is time for change, you can’t be independent; you can’t be siloed.

Trust: You are not going to get through big change alone. It’s that simple. Even the most personal of big changes affects–and is affected by–others. You need to be able to trust, and you need to be trustworthy.

What You Need to Hear: Some people surround themselves with others who tell them what they want to hear; to some degree I guess we all like to have cheerleaders. But you also need to seek counsel from those who will tell you what you need to hear, even when you don’t want to hear it.

What do you do like breathing? What else do you have in your change toolkit? Comment below.

 

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“The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be.”

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318px-1953_Bowman_Yogi_BerraIf you guessed Yogi Berra, you are right.

With Yogi’s death, his aphorisms are echoing once again. And rightly so. In many ways, Yogi was as insightful about the human condition as he was about baseball, if not more so.

As I was sitting down to write this post, I received an email from a colleague that contain several of Yogi’s pronouncements relative to our field of practice…successfully executing large scale change. This one–The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be–struck me as the one that I want to reflect on today.

At one level, it’s easy enough to agree with Yogi…and, so what? Things change. That’s the nature of time, and of life. At one time, an area code would tell you the location of the caller. (Some of us remember when “Diamond” and “Murray Hill” and “Hubbard” were exchanges that preceded five-digit phone numbers.) When you got a job, you kept the job. More often than not, you retired from the company that gave you your first job. You got married, had a family, stayed married. You were in the closet–perhaps deep in the closet–and you stayed in the closet.

The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be.

Today, an area code is more likely to tell you where the caller bought the cell phone than his or her current location. People don’t just change jobs and companies, they change career paths completely. (While pundits don’t agree on how many careers today’s new hires can expect, there is no evidence to suggest a new cycle of “career stability.”) Marriage, children, divorce, re-marriage, single parenting, and blended families are all increasingly threads in our social fabric. Coming out is now a multi-generational reality for children, teens, parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents.

Whether we are looking at our personal lives, our lives in organizations, or our lives within the greater society, Yogi’s message resonates. The future that our grandparents envisioned for us and for our parents is not the future we are living. The future our parents envisioned for us is not the future we are living. And, it is unlikely the future we once envisioned for ourselves is fully alive in our experiences today.

As I have written before, the volume, momentum, and complexity of change all continue to accelerate. We can selectively (and even collectively) try to wall ourselves off from it, but that creates its own set of stresses and conflicts as the world becomes more and more alien to us. That’s also a future that isn’t the future once foreseen.

Listen to Yogi as you create your change story. Listen to Yogi as you plan your change. Listen to Yogi as you prepare for the change journey. Listen to Yogi as you take that journey. And listen to Yogi as you live your new reality.

Whether your change is personal, organizational, or societal, you need to have a clear, crisp, easily communicated (and measurable) vision of the future you are trying to create; and, you need to know that the unexpected may require you to re-form that vision as you move forward.

You have to plan for all of the shifts in thinking and behavior that your change will require; you also need to be prepared to revise your planning as forces in the environment affect where you are going and/or how best to get there.

As you prepare for your change, brace yourself for the reality that there will be surprises, that the future won’t be what you anticipate it to be right now.

Moving through the change, don’t become so focused on executing the plan that you fail to look up, or look up to only see those things that reassure you. Because the environment is changing, because the unanticipated is inevitable in major change, you have to remain attuned or it is likely that you will be derailed along the way.

Yogi is right; the future you will be living when your change is complete will be a different reality than you set out to create. The paradox is, if you understand that before you start the journey, if you apply that reality along the way, it will still be a future that you have called forth. To ignore Yogi on this one is perilous at best.

(Image from the public domain, credited to Bowman Gum, 1953.

With thanks to Dave Martin for reminding me of Yogi’s wisdom.)

What is your reaction to this Yogi’ism? What others of Yogi Berra’s quotes resonate with you in the context of successfully executing personal, organizational, and/or societal change? Comment below.

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What’s Your “Plan B”?

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iStock_000009613557SmallHow many times have you heard that question? For me, I am sure the answer is “in the hundreds.” It began as a young boy who wanted to become an architect. And, it has come back any number of times since then in both personal and professional situations.

What’s your Plan B? 

I have now wrestled with this question and the best way to answer it for more than four decades. For me, the wrestle isn’t about “what” my Plan B is, but whether I should have one; for my clients, the wrestle is whether I should recommend that they have one.

Why wouldn’t I have–or recommend–a Plan B? Here is my reasoning. I will illustrate it with my own circuitous career path.

In fourth grade I discovered graph paper. How cool! I could draw rooms, design buildings. Suddenly my perspective went from logic and words (I was good on lined paper, but not an artist) to more creative visual thinking. Architecture became a passion that stayed with my through high school. I had a drawing board mounted under the window in my bedroom, and would spend hours lost in designing. I took mechanical drawing every semester, advancing my skills. The money I earned after school went into buying drafting supplies and books on famous architects. On career day I would visit la local architectural office. I entered competitions. When the time came for college I applied to three architecture schools, and was accepted to one. I had no Plan B. Being an architect was the one career that, in my heart, I wanted to spend my life pursuing.

As it turned out, by my junior year of college I had lost that passion. I no longer wanted to be an architect. I could probably succeed and make a living at it, and I knew that if I did, I wouldn’t feel very good about myself or my work. But by then, I had developed another passion… I was doing youth work on the Onondaga Indian Reservation, and had become very interested in Native American cultures. My new major became cultural anthropology. (“But what are you going to do with that? What”s your Plan B?”)  I continued into grad school with the same focus, thinking I would love to teach anthropology at a college or university.

Midway through the first semester of grad school I received my draft notice. The next four years were spent as an Air Force Basic Military Training Instructor (“drill sergeant”) and earning two masters degrees. My passion for Native American studies morphed to larger issues of social justice, and my focus on higher education shifted from the classroom to administration.

Eight years of various higher education positions led to four years of consulting to higher education and nonprofits. It was during this time as a consultant that I was introduced to the nascent field of change management, and realized that underneath every career shift was a commitment to executing change.

By 1990, AIDS was a growing crisis in America; I became the Deputy Director of Finance and Operations at an AIDS organization providing permanent housing and support services to homeless people with AIDS. They needed to put in place an infrastructure that would help ensure their long-term viability without becoming bureaucratic, and I knew how to do that.

And so the path has twisted and turned, even to today. The thread has always been change. It has taken me inside of organizations, and outside. I have worked independently, and on teams. I have been a residence hall director, a fund raiser, an internal (as well as external) change consultant, a coach, a trainer, a mentor, a trusted adviser.

And, I have never had a Plan B.

I have spent time exploring options. But those explorations have always been just that…where am I being pulled to go next?

Perhaps if I had a Plan B when I made some of these transitions, I would have made them more quickly. But for me, the only way to have a Plan B is to say, “I am good with doing either A or B.” And, if that is the case, then I would not be able to fully invest myself in either one. If Plan A failed (and some of them have), I would never know whether–had I been more fully committed–I could have made it work. And, given that we go into big changes in our lives naive about the difficulties that will inevitably arise, it would be too easy to walk away from the realities of Plan A to begin the uninformed optimism of Plan B.

Big changes are tough. There is no guarantee of success. That is why I always begin, for myself, with an exploration of what is in my heart…what is my passion? That is why I always urge the same reflection for both personal and professional clients. If you are not passionate about the intent of your change, how will you ever complete the journey? I have been laid off, fired, and had a nonprofit that I attempted to start fail to get the funding that it needed; in each case, I can say that I put everything that I had into success.

I have also had incredible successes. I have turned around a stagnant annual giving program, established a living learning program, and supported major strategic shifts that make a difference in people’s lives both within the corporate and the nonprofit worlds. I have continued to engage in issues of social justice. I have helped individuals successfully navigate some of the most difficult personal life-changing events one could imagine. I have taught, coached, and mentored students, change practitioners, and organizational leaders. Along the way, the changes that I have been engaged in have touched tens–if not hundreds–of thousands of lives. And I still have no Plan B.

When my clients ask me if they should have a Plan B, I tell them quite honestly that I can’t answer the question for them. I help them to understand the reasons I do not. I point out how uncertain a Plan A tough change is, and the fact that there is no such thing as “this change cannot fail;” every change can fail. I help them understand the reality of a difficult change journey. And, I assist them in determining whether developing a Plan B is right for them.

Sometimes, when the realities of change sink in they revert to an immediate Plan B…and don’t proceed with the change. Sometimes, they develop a Plan B (which they may or may not ever call on). And sometimes, like me, they dive headfirst into Plan A and leave the idea of creating a Plan B behind.

How do you answer this question for yourself? Do you have a Plan B? Do you recommend that others do? What am I not seeing that would make it an easier one to answer, or is it really as personal a decision as I make it out to be? Please comment below.

 

 

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Is Your Change At Risk of Falling Into a Black Hole?

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iStock_000015267992MediumDr. Who and the Jedi have encountered black holes. But black holes aren’t just fictional. In astrophysics, they are described as “a geometrically defined region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing can escape from inside,” (Wikipedia).

There are black holes in change too…places in your organization where the change enters…but never gets out. Or, if something gets out, it isn’t your change.

If you have been through a few changes, you have seen the effect of black holes.

  • Your boss tells you to keep on doing things like you always have. Don’t worry about the change; he’ll take care of it.
  • You hear, “If you have time to do this the new way, okay… But first and foremost we need to keep our numbers up.”
  • You go to–or watch–the town hall with your boss. When the big change is announced, you look at one another. She shrugs her shoulders; it’s the first she’s heard about it too.
  • Your boss tells you that your department is being moved across the country; you are being asked to make the move as well. But the only way that your family–those who are really going to influence your decision–hear about what all of this means is from you when you come home. your employer never engages with them directly.
  • The line supervisor announces the change; the shop steward says, “Don’t bother changing.”
  • “The play is on.” When someone is watching, you make like the change is real. When they turn away, it’s “same old, same old.”

The bottom line when there is a black hole…if there is change further down the organization, it is not going to be the change you want. After all, how far were you ever willing to deviate from how your boss says you should be doing things just because his boss’s, boss’s boss said the organization should be doing them differently?

There are a myriad of ways that black holes show up during change.

There is one way to avoid them.

Enlist your key influencers. They may be sponsors, the line supervisors who give people direction day-to-day; the ones that communicate and provide consequences, both positive and negative. Or, they may be the influencers; the ones that everyone turns to in order to get their reading before deciding what to do…or not to do.

The sponsors are generally easy to identify. But don’t be fooled. In a union shop, the line supervisor may be the sponsor when things are stable; the shop steward may well become the sponsor when you roll out the change. When the change will significantly disrupt life at work, it may be the immediate supervisor; when the change will significantly disrupt life at home, it may well be the spouse, partner, significant other, or the entire family. It may be Mabel, employee # 3, who is a billing clerk, but has been at the hub of the influence wheel ever since employee # 4 was hired.

You cannot communicate around black holes; you need to close them. You need to enlist the person, or persons, who are causing them. Or, if they are employees, you need to remove them. Otherwise, from the black hole down, the change will fail. Black holes are every bit as fatal to changes as they are to stars and planets in the universe, to Dr. Who and the Tardis, and to the Jedi.

What have your black holes looked like? What did you do to close them? What happened if you didn’t? Comment below.

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How Do You Get The Change Word Out?

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chatEffective communication of your change is one of the keys to success.

Do it wrong, and you can drive away the very people whose support is critical; you can foster the belief that the change isn’t really going to happen; you can confuse people about what you are trying to accomplish.

Do it right, and you will generate a strong network of support; you will move people’s hearts as well as minds; you will bring the resistance level down; you will gain insights on how to successfully move forward.

Other posts have addressed various aspects of change communication that I will not be repeating here. (See  “What’s Your Story,” “What’s Your Story: Guidelines 1-5,” “What’s Your Story: Guidelines 6-8,” “Telling Your Organization’s Change Story,” “Telling Your Personal Change Story,” “Who Do You Listen To,” “Speaking of Communicating…,” “Communication Goes Both Ways,” “Enlist People In Your Change,” “Are You Talking With the Right People?”)

Today’s post specifically addresses three key elements of change communication: message content, messenger characteristics, and channel effectiveness. (NOTE: This content is based on the work of the Center for Risk Communications.)

Message Content: We’ve all seen those change communications, heard them, read them. We are re-conceiving our approach to the inevitable diminution of our primary markets, re-aligning our go-to-market strategies for secondary and tertiary markets, and re-focusing our approach to maximize the opportunities provided by the growth of the Millennial Generation in the work force. 

Got it? Neither did I.

Your messaging needs to be clear; use simple language that is easily understood.

It needs to be concise. The message isn’t complete when you can’t find anything else to put into it; it is complete when there is nothing else you can take out.

The message needs to be brief. In a study released earlier this year, Microsoft found that the average attention span is now eight seconds. You may need more time than that to communicate the change…the point is, keep it short!

Finally, your message needs to be positive. That’s not to say that you should “paint a rosy picture” or mislead people about the negatives. But, for every negative statement, provide three positive ones. And, the positive ones should come first.

Messenger Characteristics: I was once working with a client that had become stuck in attempting to execute a major technology initiative. The Chief Operating Officer was saying all the right things, and shaking his head in agreement at all the right times. But, there was no traction in Operations for actually moving the project forward. As is not uncommon, the CEO saw the delays as the responsibility of the Chief Technology Officer to address; after all, it was “his project.” The Chief Technology Officer had tried everything he could to persuade and cajole his Operations peer to get on board, but to no avail.

I sat down with the project team to create a Role Map (R), charting the influence streams at the senior levels of the organization. I asked the team to identify who had the most influence with the CEO when it came to technology. They immediately named Brad. Brad was not the Chief Technology Officer; he was not even a full-time employee. Brad was a grad student who worked part-time at the IT help desk. One day he had answered a call from the CEO, and was able to guide him through addressing his problem. The CEO began to specifically ask for Brad whenever he called, and a trusted relationship had developed.

Brad was recruited to the project team; we worked with him to craft the critical messages that he needed to deliver to the CEO (clear, concise, brief, and positive). As a result, the team was able to get the level of CEO engagement needed to bring the COO into alignment and move the project forward.

Your messengers must be trusted.

Your messengers must also be credible. Brad was credible with the CEO when it came to technology-related issues. It is likely that he would not have been the right messenger if the challenge was related to the execution of a Sales and Marketing initiative.

Channel Effectiveness: Different communications channels are effective in achieving different outcomes.

If you want to inform people about some element of the change, to make them aware of it, then mass media can work. A caution here…as I have written before, this is not the most effective way to inform people of a major change.

If your purpose is to obtain feedback about the change or its execution, involve them in it.

If you are seeking to enlist people in support of the change, you need to engage them, to enter into a dialogue.

What lessons have you learned along the way about change messaging, messengers, and channels. What has, and/or hasn’t, worked for you? Comment below.

 

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