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“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”
As many five-year-olds might recognize, that bit of wisdom comes from Dr. Seuss. But for a lot of grown-ups, managing change seems to be more complicated.
The evidence is all around us:
The Association for Corporate Growth, a top player in the mergers and acquisition arena, says only 20% of deals live up to original expectations.
The Association for Talent Development (formerly ASTD) says employers are spending record amounts on training. Yet Quality Magazine reports less than 30% of all training is being used on the job a month later.
At a time of widespread agreement that improving education is critical to America’s future, the National School Board Foundation says systemic reform nearly always breaks down because of poor implementation.
Change-by-announcement, change-by-slogan, and certainly change-by-executive-decree are doomed to failure. Successful organizational change involves—requires, in fact—the active, willful participation of the people affected by the change.
Chris Laping is a guy who gets it. With 25 years of information technology and business transformation experience under his belt, he’s written an insightful book titled People Before Things: Change Isn’t an End-User Problem.
I interviewed Laping and walked away with these tidbits.
Rodger Dean Duncan: Enabling change, you say, requires the influence of three conditions: Alignment, Design, and Capacity. Please elaborate.
Chris Laping: After many years of executive experience, I noticed that when leaders (including me) were pushing change there was an inordinate amount of attention on coercing team members to comply.
Here’s an example. Let's suppose a large-scale IT system is being implemented. Leaders often rely solely on communications and training to get people to do what they want. And when people don't do what they want, leaders often push more training and communications. It's like, "The beatings will continue until morale improves!" However, what I learned over time was there are conditions that must be in place before project teams ever lift a finger on implementation or team members ever begin using some new technology. These conditions "set the table" for change, so to speak, and greatly improve the chances of success. These conditions include Alignment, Design, and Capacity.
Alignment is ensuring that everyone knows WHY we are pushing some new change, not just WHAT we are pushing. Design is ensuring the new system, process or policy is directly mapped to the WHY, and nothing more (thus reducing complexity). Finally, Capacity is enabling people to accept and adopt something new by giving them the time of day to do it and master it.
Duncan: Many good leaders have discovered the importance of connecting followers to a compelling why. What’s been your observation and experience with this?
Laping: My experience is that most leaders don't actually talk about the why, at least not beyond the business case. In business school we learned about setting up a mission statement, goals and strategy. By their very nature, these things are very what-focused. Unfortunately, it's hard for people to get excited about the what. Instead, people are incredibly motivated by making a difference and purpose-driven motives. So there's a great opportunity for leaders to consistently use why language—and to repeat it day-in and day-out.
As an example, let's say executives decide they want to invest in growing and developing their people so they will implement a new learning system. Instead of telling people in the organization that IT will be implementing a new learning system, team members will be much more engaged if the executives communicate, "We've heard our team's feedback about wanting more growth and development opportunities. So, we're taking on a new effort to do that."
The other thing I'd briefly mention is that in many cases leaders do talk about the why, but unfortunately the why they are sharing is not aligned across the leadership team. As a result, team members get conflicting messages, which makes them feel like children of divorced parents.
Duncan: You say complexity is the No. 1 enemy of great design and execution. What are the implications of that for a change leader?
Laping: The implication is that leaders have to stay engaged when new solutions are being implemented and ensure that their teams are designing only to address the why. When they don't do this, changes in policy, process or technology can get bloated. If I return to the learning system example, the main goal was to grow and develop team members. That requires limited functionality. But if leaders give the organization "permission" to implement a "learning system" with no connection to the why, many requirements and functions could creep into the design—things that might be nice for a learning system but aren't needed for growing and developing team members. This creep creates complexity, which downstream causes training and communication nightmares. Honestly, this creep is also responsible for missed deadlines and budget overruns.
Duncan: A common approach to communication is the think-analyze-change model. You prefer the see-feel-change model. Please explain.
Laping: I love the way Chip and Dan Heath explain this model. They say that when building followership for a new idea, there's a tendency to provide a bunch of concrete data in PowerPoint presentations because the thought is if people just analyze concrete information they will think differently and eventually change their behavior. It turns out that most people aren't that rational. The model the Heath brothers push is that when people see something, it makes them feel something and that feeling leads to change. Since team members are so visual, communications should include pictures, videos, and simulations that invoke emotion and empathy. Again, this is a really great way to connect people to the WHY.
Duncan: You jokingly refer to some ineffective communication practices as “Dr. Seuss language.” What do you mean?
Laping: We've all worked in environments where we receive a memo from a CEO or read some new policy from management and wonder what the heck they're really saying—lots of words with no meaning. I think this happens because leaders believe that "transparency" is important. But even more important than transparency is clarity. So I encourage folks to really consider their messages. Are they being clear and providing direction or are they providing "Dr. Seuss language" which is mostly riddles and rhymes?
Compliance and fear of being sued is the No. 1 reason Dr. Seuss language is used. What I would ask is: If a message is in riddles and rhymes because there's fear of being sued, what's the win for communicating non-actionable and confusing language?
Rodger Dean Duncan is the bestselling author of CHANGE-friendly LEADERSHIP: How to Transform Good Intentions into Great Performance.
