How To Change Your Spots: Guiding Effective Organizational Change

The Only Constant is Change

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing rapid organizational change, and laying bare the inadequacies of existing systems, change management has become even more important for companies and their leaders.?

However, most existing processes and tools are inadequate for managing the multifaceted, and interdependent nature of effective change. Less of a process and more of an approach, change management is neither linear nor done in isolation.?

In this piece, we aim to understand change management, look at what is broken in current approaches to it, and outline an effective framework for managers who want to lead effective change within their organizations.?

Done correctly, change management:

1. Harnesses both hard tools and soft skills
2. Calls for dedicated and ongoing involvement
3. Touches all levels of an organization
4. Is flexible, responsive, and conversational

Finding Your North Star

Though not a fixed series of actions leading to a particular result, there must still be a goal. As Gervase Bushe says, “Transformational change cannot be planned toward some predetermined future state. Rather, transformation requires holding an intention while moving into the unknown. Disrupting current patterns in a way that engages people in uncovering collective intentions and shared motivations is required. As a result, change processes are more opportunistic and heterarchical, where change can and does come from anywhere in the organization, more than planned, hierarchical and top-down.” What this means is that you, as a leader, have to ensure that there is a clear “intention” to move towards. At Microsoft, Satya Nadella refers to this as their North Star.?

The North Star is not a warm and fuzzy goal which merely sounds good when presented on a PowerPoint slide. It is a clear intention that all people in the organization have to find their way towards, learning from each other as they go.?

Utilizing Your North Star

Sailors used the actual North Star as a marker, a fixed point that allowed them to determine direction and orient themselves correctly no matter where they were or what conditions existed. For an organization, a North Star serves a similar function: a goal, a mission, a purpose that every person, team, department, etc should be looking towards. This isn’t something (table stakes) like “be profitable” or “grow the business” but a lens in service of the organization’s purpose, a lens through which every decision can be viewed. For example, at Microsoft, their mission is “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”?

This isn’t a departure from the company’s goal of growing the business or being profitable but a different path towards achieving these goals. This rephrases the question “are we profiting and growing the business?” to “are we helping our customers to achieve more?”, a goal which when realized helps to create profit and grow the business.?

This distinction is important as the impact we aim for must be framed in the terms of the outcomes needed for that impact to be realized. Being clear on value (real, tacit values, not just stated ones) is a great place to get some help in creating that clarity. And if those values don’t lead to choices that advance the outcome and impact being sought, then the North Star loses its value as a lens and directional aide. And, though transformation cannot be planned towards a predetermined state, a plan without direction or intention is not only primed for failure, but also no plan at all.?

Microsoft is not the only company who does this, or does it well. In fact, this approach works for organizations of all shapes and sizes. Cambia Health Solutions is an example. Their North Star is “To serve as a catalyst to transform health care, creating a person-focused and economically sustainable health care system.” And, if you know anything about healthcare payers and provider networks, person-focused is far from the norm. The norm is clear--policyholder focused. Put simply, if you are a current policyholder, you exist. If not, you don’t or have ceased to and your health and life are no problem of theirs. Through reorienting around this North Star, Cambia has undergone true change and continues to do so, as they attempt to rewrite the book on what healthcare can be.

Without this clear and uncompromising goal, Cambia would or could never have made the transformation they did: a transformation that positively affected people, processes, technology, business model, and the organization as a whole.

A Proper Foundation For Change?

Across our many professional incarnations -- professor, coach, executive, author, founder, consultant -- we’ve seen what works and a lot of what doesn’t. Be it lack of a North Star, disconnection from reality, focus on operations vs. culture and vice versa, unwillingness to cede control, or what have you, many existing approaches to fostering organizational change come up lacking. For this reason, we agree that in its current incarnation and from popular tool sets lacking the multidimensionality needed, change management is broken. However, we also see hope and a path forward.?

With our combined 75 plus years of leadership experience and 35 plus years of studying and promoting effective approaches to change management, we’ve acquired unique viewpoints on, and solutions for, successful change. And it is our belief that it all starts with understanding that you’re dealing with actual people and everything that comes part and parcel with that reality.?

Unlike some multi-step models or approaches, the change management process is iterative, an idea running counter to the usual project-based approaches of organizations. True, not all models are linear; in fact popular models such as Kotter’s have evolved. However, the key areas remain the same and many neither practice nor teach the modified approach. And as it deals with actual people, you have to get into the sticky stuff: emotions, relationships, communication.?

Without this humanity, flexibility, and continuously collaborative process that changes both operations and culture, change simply doesn’t work.?

A New Way To Lead Change?

Though management-led, real change engages everyone, fosters dialogue and responds to reality. And, as a leader, you need to be comfortable with relinquishing a degree of control, embracing both the emotional and logistical aspects while looking towards the long term.?

Not only must you understand your role in change, you need to be comfortable leading by example as a part of the change you hope to create. Otherwise, you’re doomed to experience one of the two major pitfalls of change efforts: 1) taking too long; and 2) having too few employees bought in.

Change management leadership requires embracing the three principles below when bringing along others in your organization:

Associate?

• Be aware of the interconnected, continuously evolving nature of everything.?
• Actions don’t happen in a vacuum, departments aren’t independent of each other, and both operations and culture need to be considered and addressed simultaneously.

Communicate?

• Simplify change-related messaging, making it understandable for all, and then understand that you have only given them a jumping-off point to determine what that message really means, how it will manifest itself, and that this is up to them, not someone else. You can provide the North Star, not the path to follow it home; that is up to them.
• Understand others’ priorities, motivations, and fears and respond to them appropriately. When the day comes that these things are a part of acceptable and normal discussions in the workplace, change will happen with far less friction.

Empower

• Bring employees along for the journey, let them participate in defining, decision making, and planning and recognize them for it by rewarding and learning from it.?

We understand, this reimagining of change management isn’t without its risks. But, great reward, or even just continued existence, often requires risk. An organization and its leaders must be willing and able to embrace the three principles above and many are ill-equipped to do so. Without openness and dialogue, real collaboration can’t take place. Discomfort with relinquishing control leads to employee resistance, and potential misalignment. And, without understanding how things connect and correlate, it’s impossible to select impactful actions and address issues holistically.

One of the authors approaches this through the use of specific questions as new behaviors to uncover assumptions and challenge previously unchallenged ways of working. They use semi-structured dialogue, happening in bright spots or with a coalition of the willing, to create a viral push towards a “transform-able?” organization.?

Another author works to build a habit of continuous reflection and change within existing teams — more clearly defining teams within the current framework where needed — before attempting more sweeping changes. What’s important early on is not what change is made but that the organization gets in the habit of small, evolutionary changes. Once existing teams get in the habit of small changes (kaizen in lean parlance) then it is more likely that radical changes (kaikaku) will be successful.?

Codifying Change?

These approaches aren’t sexy, don’t involve a huge consulting firm, or require specialized, proprietary tools. However, they work. You look inside your organization, understand its purpose and mission, acknowledge the organic nature of this endeavor, and set flexible goals while remaining true to company values.?

Through a departure from standard hierarchical organizational structure and a move towards something flatter, more open, and people-led, you help to foster collaboration and create a culture of change. Then, by codifying these changes into company operations, you engender the growth of a natural system with a reinforcing loop or virtuous cycle. This system allows an effective response to the vast number of unknowns through flexibility, responsiveness, and a continuously evolving approach to change.?

While inherently complex, as most organic systems are, there are simple ways to check the sufficiency of your plan before undertaking transformational change.

?Ask yourself, as you work towards creating effective change in your own organizations are you:

1. Building change as a capability instead of running it as a project?
2. Having leaders both learn to change first and role modeling that for their teams?
3. Finding those coalitions of the willing as a place to start building and testing change capacity?
4. Coming up with a way to communicate the North Star and then get feedback and guidance on the best way(s) to journey there? Much like sailing a ship, this is a collaborative effort requiring cooperation and communication between both captain and crew.?

If you can’t answer in the affirmative for all of the above, you’d be well served by reexamining your plan, revisiting your goals, and reimagining what change looks like within your own organization.?

For help creating transformational change in your own organization, or more information on courses, consultations, or other educational opportunities by the authors, please email [email protected] to be kept in the loop.

And, to find out more about the authors of this paper and their own approaches to change management please visit: (Nabeel Ahmad, Michael Leckie, and George Swisher)