How to succeed in change management? 5 tips + the “Invite – Call out – Go” imperative for your success
Markus Leonhard Keiper
*GenAI Educator & Advisor & Entrepreneur * Marketing Professor * Future Level Executive Education * Serial-Entrepreneur * Advisor * Executive & Career Coach * Scaling Talents - Leaders - Teams * Speaker *CMO * Author
Following my previous newsletter, my friend Christoph Zohlen made a wonderful remark referring to Peter Senge (MIT Sloan School of Management): “People don’t resist change. They resist being changed!”. So true!
I had many questions and queries about this from you and in my coaching sessions and decided: Let’s decipher this for your success!
#KüblerRoss describes the typical experiences of change in her famous “Cycle of Grief”: Every employee, manager, stakeholder, friend and family member of ours goes through the following five stages when something changes in their job or life:
How do you deal with this in your project/initiative? Here are 5 tips from my experience, coaching and Edu+Visory (Education & Advisory) for you:
1.????Stay on top on the balcony:
What I mean by this is that when everyone in the meeting/office panics or gets lost, be the one staying on top on the balcony overlooking the situation of change. Another metaphor could be that you remain the “captain on the bridge” weathering the storms:
Observe, analyse, consider options – with a distance.???
2.???Detach yourself from the outcome:
Nothing helps you better to succeed than being detached from the eventual outcome. “What does this mean”, you may think? “Should I not be fully engaged when leading change in difficult times? How will people trust me?”
Yes, you should be fully engaged! However, the difference is not to connect your future career and self-value emotionally with the ultimate success of the change initiative.
Here is an example of a Golf-Pro on the tour (with my remarks), leading the field by one stroke before starting the final 9 holes of the championship:
“I was focused, I was in the zone and determined. But I didn’t think of winning at all. I knew that as long as I played every hole the best I could, I had a fair chance to win the trophy. Nothing deterred me: the gusts & rain (changing conditions), the screaming of people (boardroom), the abuse of non-supporters (resisters), the pressure (KPI’s), a missed shot (failed use case) and the final 18th hole as the last player (your final presentation: make/break)”. ?“I felt calm and was ready to live on with either result. It’s a learning experience for life.”
He won the tournament in Scotland by the very one shot! ?
3.???Never start change at the center of gravity of an organisation:
One experience I have learned the hard way is never to start change in the center of power, budgets, politics, policies & procedures – the infamous HQ and executive teams of any organisation. “Why not there, when all the decisions and budgets come from there”, you may wonder?
That’s exactly the reason! Any major change initiative across business units, silos, functions, markets, geographies get utmost attention at the center of gravity: all Alpha-leaders are eager to defend their kingdoms (e.g. BU’s/ markets) and will do everything to stop/delete/start anything in their favour.
How the center of gravity strikes back: They veto decisions, do not provide budgets, experts and teams, ridicule your leadership, question your expertise or delay (“we need more research on this”), weaken your authority (“you will report to 3 Executive Team members on this”), and numerous other creative ways I have seen (e.g the most disrespectful one was pretending to sleep through a presentation and then abstaining the vote of confidence). ??
So, where should you start?
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4.???Start your transformation or change journey at the edges:
Research shows that 8/10 change or transformation initiatives fail – one of the reasons is lack of CEO & CxO support throughout. Why? Because one of their ultimate goals is not to get fired for something they cannot control. Ask yourself: “Is your change initiative threatening the way we do business?” If so, start at the edges! ??
The edge of an organisation can be a business unit, function or market, with enough URGENCY & POWER to support your change initiative but away from HQ: they will love to support you with resources, provide use cases, make it a priority in their leadership team to succeed. The key to your success will be to keep it quiet until you can show proof of your concept. Only then you get out of the shadows and approach a wider “circle of influence” in your organisation: another function, market or Business Unit which also would like to gain the benefits from your proven change: they will be happy to jump on a successful roll out. But they might never have supported it from the outset!
5.???Address the haters, nay-sayers and opposition:
A rule of thumb of change management practitioners describe 10-20% of your stakeholders as the ones who will never support your initiative - they simply get stuck in the depression or denial of accepting change stages of the cycle. What should you do?
When it comes to the 10-20% of resisters, you only have one way: INVITE – CALL OUT – GO!
INVITE:
Always reach out to everyone and do your best to listen - inform – educate – consider all aspects. Invite them to the dialogue and raise their concerns constructively. But do this only 1 to maximum 3 times and then move on! ?? ??
CALL OUT:
Request from resisters to position themselves. Give them two choices: Offer them a role they either cannot refuse or ….??
GO:
…let them go. Do not waste your energy on them! Too many change initiatives fail because the leaders focus too much time and effort on convincing the resisters to join in. 10-20% of them are better off to leave the organisation or unit you are transforming. Imagine how much more positive change you can create with these 10-20% (often it is close to 60%) energy! ????
In order to succeed you must show unexpected value to others: your boss, peers, other parts of the organisations including silos. Only if your value equation is positive, you will win.
What would you like to be the topic of the next blog? Let me now and I will always try to answer your requests.
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The author practices professional Edu+Visory (Education & Advisory) as lecturer at leading Business Schools, as Interim CxO and as Executive Coach. Are you curious to find out more about accelerating your career and life? Reach out to him now on
People & Culture Leader | Regional HR Leader | Global Organization Development Leader | Global Culture Transformation Expert | Global Talent Management Leader | Change Management
2 年Good reminder to include naysayers/opposition - listen, inform, educate and consider all input. Often, change leaders exclude them thinking that it’s easier to bulldoze through. I have learnt my lesson - when it comes to people, fast is slow and slow is fast.
Chairman of the Board, at Dynamatic Technologies Limited
2 年Thanks Markus. Lots of wisdom in this small summary. Particularly the suggestion to start at the edges of the organisation, to provide positive examples of success, or perhaps limit the impact of eventual failure. However, the center of a large organisation has plenty of legitimate roles to perform, and there must be ??something for them?? in the change, so translating the particular experiment into an organisation-wide movement still requires getting buy-in at the center in a constructive way. No easy recipe for that, but it is a must.
Strategy & Transformation Consultant @ Radius 1 Consulting | Global Business Transformation Master | Leadership Coach | Founder | Managing Partner
2 年So true Markus, thanks for sharing. Regarding the crucial role of leading transformation and inspiring others to embrace change, I would add imperative behaviors such as empathy, humbleness, authenticity, demonstrating the curiosity and enthusiasm for continuous learning as well as the ability to role model the before said - inviting others to follow and role model themselves. As ongoing transformation (Changing the Business ) is the ?New Normal“ and becoming an ambidextrous skill paired with Optimizing the existing Business, a major focus should be on Changing Thinking (i.e., mindset, thinking and behaviors) as main invitation (!) and lever to accelerate and improve Changing “Things” (i.e., business models, strategies, operating models, technology)
Helping people do Something Bigger | I travel around the world, talking with the most inspiring and influential people | Linkedin Top Voice 2024
2 年Great article Markus