Change is Change: How Change Happens

The PC party announced in early 2018 that if they came into power they would repeal Cap and Trade. The reader’s digest version is that Cap and Trade was put in place to incentivize businesses and people to adopt greener technologies to lessen the effect of global warming. Feel free to add political commentary about how that statement is wrong, but it’s good enough for this story. While there’s more to it than this, the cancelation of the Ontario electric vehicle (EV) rebate has easily been the strongest bone of contention.

In June of 2018, the PC’s were put into power and one of their first action items was to put the wheels in motion to cancel Cap and Trade (C&T), which they changed as of July 11, 2018. As it relates to EV rebates, in Ontario consumers are eligible for up to $14,000 in rebates if they buy a PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) or BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle)

The change of canceling EV Rebates had these main stipulations:

•  Any EV must be registered and plated by September 11 to get the rebate (AKA The Transition Period)
•  Any EV must have been ordered before July 11, or already in dealer inventory

The Liberals cried foul, the Conservatives rejoiced. The consumers who bought a $70,000 Tesla complained that they could not longer afford the car because since Teslas are ordered directly from the manufacturer, technically they don’t meet the ‘dealer inventory’ stipulation. If the car was ordered before July 11 and registered and plated by September 11, our economically advantaged members of society were left out in the cold. 

Fast-forward a few weeks and Telsa sued the Ontario government citing Tesla was unfairly targeted and, long-story short, they won so Tesla models were now covered under the aforementioned stipulations. Yay!

A couple of days ago Greenpeace announced a lawsuit against the Ontario government as well citing:

“The lawsuit alleges that Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative government "unlawfully failed" to engage in public consultations over the cancelling of the program, as required by Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights.” - (courtesy of CBC - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/greenpeace-suing-ontario-government-over-cancellation-of-cap-and-trade-program-1.4819250 )

Will it work? Only time will tell, but this is a fantastic lesson in how change, no matter what type of change, works. Change in our organizations mimics how change happens in our society but for some reason we are desperate to sterilize, standardize and think if we can just get the plan right by following a prescribed method, it’ll all work out.

The Trigger

(All Change is triggered by an action guided by a belief)

All change starts with some action based on someone’s belief that their way is better, or what is being done currently is wrong. Someone, for some reason, is upset with the status quo, or they finally have an opportunity to change something they never liked in the first place. In the case of this example, the PC government believed C&T was not in the best interested of Ontarians. Right or wrong, it’s a belief. A belief that C&T doesn’t benefit the majority, and doesn’t matter because climate change isn’t a thing, or that a carbon tax isn’t the right thing. Whatever the real reason, it’s a belief.

Many years ago I was working with a client that was using Scrum. The CTO resigned and when the new CTO came into power, ‘Scrum’ and the lingo associated with Scrum didn’t make sense to him because he was a Lean guy. That is, ‘velocity’, ‘story points’, and ‘burn-down charts’ didn’t help him understand what was going on. So we started using ‘cycle-time’, ‘lead-time’, ‘cumulative flow diagrams’, ’throughput’ and other Lean terms to essentially describe the same thing, but in language he could relate to.

His belief was that Scrum was too fluffy and not descriptive enough compared to his knowledge of Lean. I didn’t care either way…it was his shop, not mine.

The Reaction

There is an initial reaction to the trigger

The change management world is obsessed with resistance. If we could only somehow create the best change resistance mitigation strategy, we could overcome it. In this story, what do you suppose the Ontario government’s resistance management strategy is? Sending out a survey? Better stakeholder management? Better documentation? Nope, they pushed a change and are banking on the Newtonian approach to change. That is, if they put enough force into the change, it’ll work out in their favour.

For every action, there is an equal, and opposite reaction. In the world of physics, this is true, in the world of change, this is partially true. The opposite and somewhat-equal reactions to what the Ontario government did are the two lawsuits and hordes of blog posts, facebook posts, and lobbying that have happened to counteract the original change trigger (namely the cancelation of C&T). Some of those include:

 - The Federal government put $420 million earmarked for Ontario on hold: https://globalnews.ca/news/4312147/ontario-cancels-cap-and-trade-federal/

 - Protests started against the PC government: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ford-protest-1.4747246 (for more than just C&T)

At some point, enough noise will prompt the Ontario government to react to the reaction. Simple said, a rising ocean floats all boats. Remember #MeToo? #BlackLivesMatter? #NoGuns? The majority of the general public didn’t care about any of these topics until enough people with enough clout, whether that means popularity or political clout, made enough noise until society couldn’t ignore them anymore.

From the perspective of the PC’s, the Liberals and tree-huggers (BTW, we own a PHEV so I am a tree-hugger) are resisting change. From the perspective of the Liberals and the tree-huggers, the PC’s are idiots who are trying to destroy the planet. The PC’s may desire to overcome this resistance, but good luck with that given how emotionally charged this change is.

Who’s right? It all comes down to #1 on this list…beliefs. No one can prove C&T is better or worse. Our society is far too complex to know with reasonable certainty. We can only make educated guesses from our past experiences, and the facts we can see in the present because we cannot see the future so our beliefs guide our actions.

A quick story:

In another organization I worked for, an external consulting firm tried to implement an absolutely insane Agile testing policy. Of course all of the Agile coaches were up in arms, but when we brought their plan to the teams and people who had to do the work, they had one of the greatest laughs of their lives because it was simply impossible to implement that plan in their context. So from the perspective of the consulting firm, WE were resisting change, and from our perspective, THEY were clueless.

Well, they were clueless. At least that’s my belief.

The Chaos of Push and Pull

Both sides push and pull until one concedes to a compromise most people can live with.

It’s on now! 

At this point, in our organizations, we talk about rolling out change. In large organizations, we talk about piloting a change and then scaling it out when we’ve ironed out the kinks. David Morris recently did an excellent 5 minute talk about how the approach you take to change is the most important aspect of the change. It isn’t the roles and responsibilities, documentation or other management activities, it’s fundamentally how you approach the change in the first place.

The Ontario government used their political power to force a change, now those negatively affected by the change are pushing back hard. In this example, what’s the alternative? After all, when the Liberals came to power in the federal election, one of their changes was to change Canada’s voting system. They said they’d have a team consisting of all 3 parties to assess and review what Canadians wanted. When they found out Canadians wanted the change, they decided not to do it anyway.

The PC’s used Newtonian force for the C&T change, the Liberals used co-creation, to a degree, and both were met with outrage. The interesting part is the overall response to these changes. There is far more outrage for what the PC’s have done with C&T as opposed to the Liberals going back on one of their campaign promises. Depending on who you talk to.

That’s what David is referring to. The approach you take to change shapes how your change will unfold. If you start with force, you’re in for a battle. If you start with co-creation, you’re probably still in for some type of battle, but maybe it won’t be as bloody, or maybe you can change the change before it needs to be implemented with brute force.

Remember my story of the great Agile testing policy? It was pushed with force. We absorbed and redirected the force through co-creation. That is, we brought the change to the teams and had them decide what was, and wasn’t possible. We brought that back to the people who decided and most of the plan was scrapped. 

The End?

Most, if not all, change models/methods/frameworks have some logical start, middle, and end point, whether that’s current state->transition->future state, or un-freeze->change->re-freeze.

Is there a logical ending point to a change? In terms of project, scope and cost management, of course there is. Of course none of that has anything to do with whether or not the change worked, it’s just responsible business because people paying for the change need to justify the spend. That probably sounds like a back-handed compliment. Is’t not intended to be. Business is business.

Most of what you see on Linked In, or popular business sites are from the perspective of consultants, or companies that offer change management training or services. Of course we need to attach some sense of certainty, otherwise, why would anyone want to pay for training or consulting if we say “we can’t ensure anything…we’re not psychics!” 

Actually, I did that with a prospect once. They asked what I could do to ensure people follow the training I give them. I said, “nothing. If they don’t want to do it, they aren’t going to do it.” They said “oh. Uh, we need to re-consider what we want to do…bye” and hung up! 

They never called back. That’s as simple of a change readiness assessment as you can do. Challenge those that say they want change and you’ll know very quickly if they’re serious and ready for it.

Most of the people who come to my workshops have a specific problem they want to solve. They’re looking for an action that they can use to respond to a moment/event/trigger that started elsewhere. They may be using a certain change framework, and it’s good enough at a high level, but they don’t know how to facilitate or coach their way through an intervention or event.

Here’s an example, I was in a large financial institute that wanted to implement DevOps in IT. I was talking to two people in their OD (Organizational Development) team that were tasked with managing the change. As they described the change, I doodled the blast radius of the change on a whiteboard and based on how they described the change, I knew they were using a certain change management methodology.

So I told them the reason why the change wasn’t taking hold was because they were using the wrong change method. Hilarity ensured for a few minutes while they attacked me, my family, and everything I stood for since birth. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but yes, they were offended until the VP said “OOOOOOOOOOWWWWHHHH!!!!! You just did to us EXACTLY, what we’re going to those folks!!!!”

They pushed, IT pushed back harder. 

They reacted to the pushback by adding more process, roles, and rules, IT became apathetic.

Trigger: we want to implement DevOps

Reaction: Screw that, we know how to do our jobs

The Chaos of Push and Pull: OD - I see your resistance, and force you to comply with these new rules. IT - I see your new rules, found a loophole and maliciously complied to it.

Over the years, the stories people have told me ( https://leanchange.org/stories ) that made change more enjoyable for most people was the approach taken because we are social creatures and our organizations change in the same way that our societies do. Methods, frameworks, and models are useful to help us understand what we see, and we can build on that by changing our stance as change managers to one of coaching and facilitating and relying on organizational feedback as input into our planning.

I’ll leave you with some questions I like to ask of myself when I don’t see change happening the way I think it should:

1. What have I done to invoke the reaction I see?
2. Do those affected see the change the same way I do? Why? Why not?
3. Who are the key influencers, and what do they think?
4. Is this the right time for this change?
5. Is this the right change? How would I know?

We live in a world of creation. Google has made acquisition of knowledge easy and our desire for certainty sometimes moves us in a direction of over-complicating our approach to change with more plans, documents, diagrams, and processes. 

Sometimes we simply need to stop and look around once in a while, the answer sometimes becomes quite obvious.