5 tips to make change stick in your organization

Emily, the CEO of a fast-growing technology company, had noticed a troubling pattern in her organization. Employees were reluctant to speak up or provide constructive feedback. Without the ability to voice concerns or help others improve, she worried about the effects on innovation and learning.

So, Emily called a leading expert on feedback and invited him to speak at her company’s monthly town hall. If everyone heard the same message at the same time they would start to act accordingly, she figured.?

Later that month at the virtual town hall, the expert was greeted by a sea of hundreds of smiling Zoom faces and generous applause. Over the course of 75 minutes, he shared his story and slides and engaged in an extended Q&A. Emily watched hopeful and excited about the impact this event would have.?

In the days that followed, employees chatted about the town hall in messaging systems and meetings as copies of the expert’s book adorned every desk and Zoom background. Additional book orders were even placed to keep up with demand.?

“Success”, Emily thought.

But not even three months later, Emily had changed her tune. No one seemed to mention the talk or reference the model much anymore. Books still adorned desks but they sat like fossils, admired but not touched. She privately shared her disappointment with her executive team. Why had the problems she identified still existed, she wondered? “Our employees seemed to enjoy the event but they aren’t changing - what’s missing?”. The apathetic response affected her that much more. It was personal. Why hadn’t her idea taken hold or been taken up by her own company??

Emily’s story isn’t unique. To facilitate change or spark movement in others, we often rely on what seems to be the most efficient means to reach a large number of people at once -- a gathering.?

I define gatherings as bringing people together to match a message with a moment.

Whether it’s a town hall, workshop, retreat, team-building session, meeting, training class, or off-site, each of these is a tool for change in our organizations. They can be the most powerful form of not only communication but connection. But when we gather in a room, whether virtual or in-person, we don’t always maximize this. We pull people together only to have our efforts fall flat. We invest money and then wonder why the change didn’t stick. Subsequently, very few of these gatherings go beyond the short-term impact to create real change or commitment.

What would take gatherings like these from simply ticking the box to truly transformational??

To evaluate the success of our change efforts, we can start by looking at how we gather.?It begins with our gathering strategy. I created this model, to define, diagnose, and adjust our gatherings for the effect we want.

When we think about the gatherings that we have all been a part of, they tend to fall on a spectrum, from pull to push (control), and from one size fits all to personalized (uniqueness).

For example, the town hall where the new talent assessment model is rolled out (push) to all employees (one size fits all) feels very different than the interactive workshop (pull) that helps leaders build career paths for their team members (personalized).

What do we need from the people we’re trying to affect? We can make different choices within the same gathering to produce dramatically different outcomes.

You can apply the model in two ways. First, to design a gathering. And second, to assess how participants perceive it.?

That’s because the way change is communicated determines people’s level of ownership and commitment. Often what seems ‘pull’ and ‘personalized’ to those leading the change is ‘push’ and ‘one size fits all’ to others. This is why many organizational change efforts, like Emily’s, often feel as though something is being done to us instead of with us. That’s where they fall short.?

Pull and personalized gatherings are additive and multiplicative. They engage people not just in one moment in time but often, beyond. They do so by focusing less on the content they share and more on the conditions they create. Instead of insisting someone comply, these five conditions establish an atmosphere in which people can grow into wanting to.

See and recognize your audience?

High on a stage in a dark theater, Emily’s gathering seemed too physically and figuratively removed from the needs of those she was addressing. Erase the distance by connecting the dots between what is at stake for Emily and what others are invested in.?

Unless we understand others’ needs and motivations and can describe them in their own words, gatherings stall at the rational-only level. The difference between entertained and engaged outcomes is emotional involvement. This is the equivalent of a burning platform. With that emotion comes the increased ability to recall the gathering and store it in long-term memory.?

Make it just for them?

“So, we could have just emailed about this?”?

Part of what makes change efforts successful is feeling as though it was made just for us, even if someone has done the same rehearsed talk hundreds of times. When we outsource a gathering, we typically seek to customize it with facts about our organization or culture, and a Q&A at the end. But more so, people want to feel that the experience they are taking part in is unique in time and place and that they have a special and necessary role to play in its success. We do this by listening to who is in the room, and, like a good comedian, matching the audience’s reaction. One size fits all gives the same to everyone. Personalized gatherings create a strong in-group through shared experience and vocabulary.?

Give the audience ownership?

Typical gatherings put the audience in the passenger seat, passively listening to content that was pre-determined without their input.?

People will own what they help to create. This involvement leads to commitment. Leave space in the gathering to invite people to digest what they heard and share it back in their own words. This can be done with a simple question or prompt - especially after a content-heavy section. This small change relinquishes control to those being gathered and shifts them from passive consumers to active co-creators.?

Connect to a universal concept?

What is the universal truth that everyone in the room can nod their heads about?

Though one could assume we’ve gathered to hear them, master gatherers don’t start with their experience. They begin with our experience, so the audience can see themselves in the material. Here you’ll hear the words “you” or “we” and reliance on the Socratic method as a way to figuratively reach into the audience.?

Allow agency and choice

Emily’s town hall was mandatory. But even in a required setting, we can treat our employees like adults by giving them agency and choice, and increasing their status.?

Typical gatherings highlight the power and status differences between leadership and its employees. But, it doesn’t need to be this way. Rather than asking employees to engage in new behavior, Emily could have discussed her own leadership team’s commitment first. By then showing her company how much she needed their help, employees would have understood their important role in this process, thus elevating their status and desire to participate.?

When we are a part of a gathering that transforms us, it’s rarely because of the content alone. It’s how we connect to it.??

The role of Emily and leaders like her is not simply to create the content but the conditions for the change they seek to stick and extend beyond them. The combination of choices we make has the ability to fuel motivation, draw people in, and pull on their desire to take up a change as their own. Success is not necessarily measured in an immediate reaction, but in their ongoing commitment to join you in the change you seek. If we gather well, this is only the start.

Lindsey Caplan is a screenwriter turned organizational psychologist who helps leaders enhance their communication impact so that change sticks. Her forthcoming book, The Gathering Effect, is based on her research and consulting practice teaching organizations how to enhance the way they gather for the effect they want. Find more strategies for making change stick at gatheringeffect.com.