Technology & It’s Disempowering Power

I don’t regard myself as a troglodyte, but more often than not I am now the oldest person in the room.  That means I see value through the eye of experience before the lens of progress.

I’m getting disturbed by technology, not as a 19^th century Luddite destroying the advance of machines, but as a humanitarian who wonders about the impact of technology on people in organizations and their ability to serve their clients and society.  Technology is becoming a barrier to humans working for humans.

It is clear to me, and everyone else who has been conscious for the last ½ century, that technology has advanced the human condition.  But trees don’t grow to the sky; have we hit the point of diminishing returns.  Let me explain.

I travel way too much, so many of my metaphors come from the traveler’s world.  A week ago I phoned my friends at the American Airlines Executive Platinum desk.  They’re the best.  They’re the most experienced agents trained to serve the airlines most experienced travelers.

Here’s what happened.  My wife and I were travelling to Canada from the US on the AA reward program.  We had the opportunity to move our travel up one day.  There is no change fee for me on this transaction so I called the Platinum desk.  Everything was ok, except because I was traveling to Canada and the exchange rate on the dollar had changed it was costing me 20 cents extra per ticket to cover landing fees.  Yep, 40 cents for both tickets – and the agent could not over-ride the system – she had to get approval from the rate desk.  This was a total disempowerment of her ability to act in the interest of her client and her company.

I see this all the time in organizations when I’m working on the inside as a consultant or on the outside as a customer.  Technology has taken away the flexibility for employees to act on good judgment.  The organizations need for consistency, efficiency, and low risk has emasculated the human’s need for empowerment, effectiveness, and respect.  What does that tell you about our basic belief about the value of people at work?

At what point does this emasculation lead to gutted enthusiasm?  Is disempowerment by technology a reason for such low employee engagement in today’s organizations?  When do people simply become automatons struggling to serve high order bits and bytes?

This wouldn’t concern me if humans were only mechanical, but they’re not.  The essence of humanity is emotion.  Human gratification comes from giving.  Employees get gratification by giving to customers – and we’re taking this away from them as their emotions are eroded by electrons.

Innovation is heralded today as the panacea for success.  Really?  In a world where many people are asked not to think how can Innovation flower?  Where will employees find fresh thinking at work when they’re asked to hang up their coat and minds at the door?

Converging The 3 Biggest Management Issues of 2013

The 2013 economic indicators don’t look great!  We’re heading over a “fiscal cliff” in the US while we wait for “European contagion” as the economic engines in BRIC slow down.  

What’s a business to do?  Is this a perfect storm, or a perfect opportunity?  Will businesses sit on the sidelines and hoard cash or will they get back in the game and take risks?  We’ll know the answer in a year.

In the interim whether organizations decide to sit this one out or move forward they cannot protect themselves from three major issues:

Employee Engagement
You pick the number, but employee engagement is at all time lows and there is no reason to reverse the trend. 

Customer Loyalty
This is on the same path as employee engagement. Technology has put customers in charge of brands. 

Innovation 
Ideas are the lifeblood of an organization’s health and relevance, but “survival management” has stifled the free flow of new ideas.

These three issues are not separate; they cannot be addressed individually; they must be addressed as one.

In my consulting over recent years I have learned that: 

... employees don’t work for their organizations anymore; they work for their customers.  

It is folly to admonish employees with pleas of profitability, bonuses, and shareholder value.  It is equal folly to believe that cosmetic changes and better communication will overcome the engagement malaise.  We have demonstrated to employees that the business doesn’t want to make a commitment to them.  Employees are now reciprocating. 

When I talk with employees they show their passion and energy when they talk about “their” customers.  When left alone (I’m avoiding the overused, yet appropriate word “empowerment”) employees will work diligently to provide the best experience for their customers.  Similarly, when I talk with customers they often harbor dislike for the amorphous organizational entity but lasting admiration for the employee who made things right.

Innovation is the nexus of employee engagement and customer loyalty; however, 

we don’t build organizations for innovation, we build them for efficiency and consistency of delivery.  

In effect organizations work hard to prevent the natural alliance between employees and customers.  

Now I’m not naïve, I recognize that some times employees are bad (and should be dismissed) and sometimes we don’t want employees to think (for example when they must comply with laws and regulations).  Employees understand this.  What they don’t understand is the organization’s orthodoxies and internal controls that prevent the application of common sense in a customer situation.  

Equally, when I talk with CEO’s they want the same thing.  They want employees to act reasonably in serving their customers.  They want employees to offer up ideas that will change orthodoxies and bend internal controls in the service of customers.

So why don’t CEO’s and employees get their way?  Well because there are well meaning layers of management, systems, and procedures that get in the way.  No one is malicious, but the result is disastrous.  The opportunity for a virtuous cycle of: employee->innovation->customer turns into a death spiral of: employee disengagement -> customer defection.

It doesn’t need to be like this.  Human Resources, Customer Experience, and Innovation functions need to look at this problem from the customer point of view.  They need to ask the question:

... how do we unleash ideas from all employees so we can provide our best customer experience?

In 2013 organizations need to build hope into their workforce and “wow” into their customers.  

The End OF Change Management As We Know It?

Now Just Hit The Shot!

What do we really achieve as Change Management practitioners?  Or maybe the question is: “do we make enough difference to justify our cost?

These questions disturb me.  We may be the only profession on earth that develops business on the strength of the rallying cry: “70% of change initiatives fail.”

Let me be clear about what I mean by Change Management.  I’m not talking about the mechanics of project management to launch an idea, flip an ERP switch, or have one company buy another.   In all of these cases something eventually changes if you follow and force the steps of good project management.  What I’m talking about is whether we can transform an organization by changing its fundamental approach to business so it is better positioned to cope with its changing world.

I know that we do a lot of good.  We do remedial business education; build capability; and position people for success.  Those who work with us love us; they say it is a career changing experience.

However, at a point in time in most transformation engagements the client hits fee fatigue and the work ends.  We leave declaring victory on the strength of our other rallying cry: “change is a journey.”  How is this possible?  We all extoll the fact that the world is changing at an exponential rate, but we tell our clients that our work is a journey.  In effect we bring them to the brink of success then let them be dragged back into the tar pit as we fly off to our next opportunity.

I believe there’s something wrong with the way we work if we’re comfortable in the world of “70% of our work fails on this journey of change.”  Where is the issue?  I’m not sure, but sometimes I think we’re just too nice. 

Most of our change management methodology is build on the principles of participation and empowerment to generate ownership and sustainability.  This is great in organizations with high employee empowerment and engagement.  But these aren’t the types of organizations that typically engage change management agents. 

Organizations in need of transformation are rarely hot spots of engagement.  Have you looked at employee engagement data later?  A trickle of decline has turned into a torrent.  Clients need us because their employees aren’t empowered or engaged.

Sure, individual empowerment trumps obedience in the ideal world; but we’re rarely afforded the time and resources to change organizations one person at a time.  Our lever is to influence mass movements within the organizational setting.  It’s our job to find and force the “tipping points” to initiate these movements.  Friendly facilitation may be a barrier to transformation due to:

1. Lack of Resources:  Today’s organizations are lean; the fat is gone.  We are often working with and through people who have “a real job.”  They’re working with us in the fringes of their time.  Often they miss the deadlines for their change tasks or complete them with perfunctory poor quality.
2. Lack of Capability:  Often we’re working with staff who have no passion or potential for the work, or we’re working with high potentials that we need to teach.  We spend lots of time with either “encrusted resisters” or “neophyte sponges.”
3. Lack of Leadership:  We all know the face of leadership, and that’s exactly what we get.  A face with platitudes but no commitment.  Well, what do we expect?  Executives have dozens of competing priorities.  They never have enough time to give us the attention we’re seeking.

Are these symptoms sentencing facilitative change management to its journey of 70% failure?

Maybe it’s time to inject confident strength into our work.  I fully understand that we need to draw on people and knowledge from within the organization to develop solutions.  I know we’re the caddies; we never get to hit the shot.  However, there comes a time when the caddie has to push the seven iron into the golfers hands. 

Our biggest issues in change management are that often client team members don’t do their work, are absent from the project, and cancel meetings.  This is exacerbated when executives don’t make the needed decisions.  When this happens we need to intervene with strong conviction to:

• Select Teams:  The criterion for participation is not “availability.”  Client team members need to understand organization dynamics; be passionate about making changes; and be willing to take risks – even with their careers.
• Replace Participants:  No passengers.  No shirkers.  Members have to own their commitments.  Replacement is the answer for missed deadlines and poor quality work.
• Remove Resisters:  A big part of change management is “change – management.”  If key stakeholders don’t want to play then we need to ask that they be removed from the line of sight.
• Be an Irritant:  Our primary purpose is change, not developing relationships.  We’re not about: cooperating, coordinating, and integrating.  Our careers are dependent upon the organizations transformation, not its politics. 
• Take up the Slack:  Stop waiting for others to do their work or coaching them when they can’t perform.  Reallocate the work or do it for them.  Get the result and move on. 
• Feed the Executives:  Do the executive level work for the executives.  Executives want to look good.  They’ll demonstrate their commitment as long as everything is done for them.  Clear the path, write scripts, and make decisions inescapable.

I know there is a school of thought that says change can’t be imposed from the outside.  There is a belief that our job is to reveal change to people; have them learn heuristically and change through epiphany.  Well has this delivered high returns?  Isn’t it time to change the practice of Change Management as we know it?

"Twelve O''clock High": The Change Management Paradox

The Non-Participator

“Cut out this guidance stuff and just tell me what to do!”  That’s a quote from my son when he was nearing the end of his university education.  Like most young people he was unclear and anxious about his future.  As a good parent I was guiding him.  It wasn’t working; he wanted an answer.  That’s the paradox of parenting – it’s not your life, but you still have a responsibility.  Leading organizational change has a similar paradox.

Participation, involvement, engagement, buy-in, equality; these are all words that underlie organization transformation as we know it in the west.  These words are orthodoxy.  We believe in a democratized change management process.  We make daily decisions and take actions without questioning this belief.

I too am a believer.  I believe that participation increases the chances of success.  Maybe?

Maybe there’s a sequence here, and maybe the sequence goes back to the tireless discussion between management vs. leadership.  Maybe the foundation of transformation is hierarchical control, not egalitarian empowerment?

Let me explain.

Check out your NetFlix or i-Tunes and find the 1949 film Twelve O’clock High starring Gregory Peck.  It's a story about Peck taking over a B-17 squadron during the daytime bombing of Germany in WWII.  Peck is confronted with an undisciplined squadron with a low hit rate and high death rate.  He tries to lead the group but can’t.  He decides to enforce discipline to the extent that the men hate him so much that they all request transfers. 

Of course all turns out well.  The men get the message and Peck relinquishes leadership to the group – and it “saves the day.”  Hollywood drama?  Sure, but it makes a great point.  It reveals the transformation paradox: 

“you can’t lead if you're not in control!”

I relearned this lesson when I recently spent more than two years working in Korea.  The CEO of a $20 billion public company asked our team to build an Innovation capability within the organization to transform it from a market follower to a market leader.  A major issue holding the company back was the Korean culture of deference to hierarchy.  Everyone looked to the boss for ideas.  The deeper you got into the organization the deeper was the belief that “ideas are not my job.”

All of the innovation processes and tools used by our consulting team are based in the principle of participation.  You know the drill: everyone is equal; there are no bad ideas.  

The first six months of the project went well.  There was a lot of knowledge transfer.  Koreans love to learn.  Their Confucius based education system instills a belief in finite knowledge that can be learned and passed along.

Progress stalled as we got into the second six months.  This is where we brought teams together to use their newly acquired innovation skills.  This is where we developed insights from research; crashed insights to find ideas that had never been seen before; and assembled ideas into business opportunities.

Our teams fumbled.  We hit all of the walls: hierarchy within the teams slowed genuine idea generation; the reliance on rote learning inhibited pattern recognition; and even when we got good ideas the dynamic of deference slowed the exploration and synthesis of the ideas. 

Once the teams had reasonable change initiatives we coached them to develop plans to request funding for experiments to de-risk the ideas.  The plans were  to be based in vision, creativity, and energy.  We wanted the teams to sell ideas to their executives, not incremental business improvements.  They found this difficult.  The executive presentations were usually glorified spreadsheets – comfort zones for presenters and receivers of the information.

As we moved past the first year of work we realized that we had to change our approach.  Our biggest shift was to drop the principle of egalitarianism and take up the mantle of authority.  The Korean culture forced the paradox of transformation.

Now that I’ve left Korea I’ve discussed my experience with westerners who have practiced in other cultures like Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and other countries in the east.  The message is consistent.  Our participative approach to change isn’t an immediate fit in countries with strong traditions of hierarchy and authority.  Empowerment has to be disciplined.  This sounds counter-intuitive, but that’s why it’s a paradox.

Is the west free of the transformation paradox?  I’m not convinced.  According to a recent survey reported in the Economist only 3% of organizations are “self-managed” through a set of core values.  In the remaining 97% there is a predominance of top-down, command and control management that stifles innovation, engagement, and performance.

Are we in the west living a delusion?  Is the principle of participation limiting transformation rather than driving it?  Is the transformation paradox one of the reasons that 70% of change initiatives fail?

These questions are worthy of debate if we are to get better at transforming organizations.  Maybe we’ll find answers to make adjustments, such as:

1.  Using Authority:  People have been trained to look upward.  This is a powerful lever to start the process.  Employees need to have permission to participate.
2. Codifying Creativity:  We can’t simply sit around and “ideate” changes.  We need to be specific on: how to generate ideas, recognize patterns, and synthesize information.
3. Limiting Participation:  Can we really expect to kick start the process by getting “participation from everyone, everywhere?”  In the beginning only involve people who have the talent and passion to participate.
4. Being Out Front:  The transformation leader has to lead from in front, not behind.  Don’t delegate in the beginning.  Be on stage.  Be visible.  Make the decisions.  Knowledge will transfer in due time.

It’s Twelve O'Clock High in the transformation business.

Accountability ... barrier to recovery

Let' boot this trite use of the term "accountability." We use it whenever we don't have an answer. It's going to get in the way of the serious business of recovery - the NEW business as usual.

The starting point is to define the term. Accountability is something that I extract from someone. In a management sense it is the converse of delegation. In effect, I delegate some of my power to get something done that is my responsibility. For example: "Please complete your report by Friday afternoon and have it on my desk."

Delegation is not easy. It requires you that you break down your duties into chewable chunks so you can hand then off to others. It also means that you have a way to recognize how well these parcels of work are being done: is the report on your desk and does it have the required content.

I now have everything I need for accountability. A clear delegation downward and an equally clear specification of upward expectations - the measures. I can now hold you accountable. Did you get my work done in the way that was agreed. Accountability is purely my job. It's right brained, analytic, cause and effect management. It's me and you with the emphasis on ME.

We need accountability. Likely 80% of what goes on in organizations can be put within an accountability chain. But accountability alone isn't going to lift us to recovery. We've been in risk adverse accountability mode for more than a year. We've protected balance sheets and held onto cash. But this type of thinking won't get us moving again.

Businesses that pull away over the next year will be those that find the white space needed to grow. This will happen because people are empowered. They will not need delegated power from the organization. They will use their own power to "do what's right."

I know this concept of people acting on their own scares businesses: "...we just can't have people running around doing what they think is right - we need empowerment within established guidelines." Oh, really? Doesn't that defeat the purpose?

Well if you can't trust people to "just run around", what keeps them in check? Responsibility, that's what. Responsibility is a personal issue. It's not about the organization telling, it's about the employee doing and doing "what's right" because the organization has imbued them with a strong sense of values.

When I hear managers complain that "... there's no accountability around here anymore", usually they mean "responsibility." What they're saying is that people make commitments and then don't follow through, or they act as bureaucrats without using common sense.

When that happens, managers are really complaining about themselves. They know they have not embedded values based leadership. They know that to get anything done they have to micro-manage. They need to constantly work hard at delegating and extracting accountability.

This type of behavior isn't going to get business where it needs to go. It's time that our leaders understood "empowerment" and trusted employees to be responsible. Yes, there will be mistakes, but deal with irresponsible behavior on a one-to-one bases, not an organizational one.