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.