Leading Change: Don’t Just Focus on the Solution

I recently took a Change Leadership course along with my fellow CHS leaders. As a company, we’ve been investing in this leadership capability because it’s a fundamental skill for us to successfully navigate the future.

Intuitively, most of us accept that the world is changing, the pace of change is accelerating, and as leaders, we hold a central role in enabling that change. It’s one thing to hold this intellectual assent. It’s quite another to learn and practice the skill of Organizational Change Management.

I learned plenty in the course, and I won’t use this article to summarize it. Instead, I will pick just a few concepts that challenged my thinking and will share them with you.

Q x A = E

30 years ago, GE developed their Change Acceleration Process. One element of that process was the Change Effectiveness Equation: QxA=E. This equation means the Effectiveness (E) of a change is equal to the product of the Quality (Q) of the change and the Acceptance (A) of that change.

I spent many years working as an engineer. Today, I lead a large team of engineers, so thinking like an engineer still comes naturally to me. Even though I consider myself an effective change leader, I’m not certain my mindset was right.

The engineer inside me tells me that Q=E. In other words, if I do a good enough job designing and implementing a Quality solution, then it will be Effective. And inversely, if my solution isn’t Effective, then I probably didn’t do a good enough job on a Quality design and implementation.

I instinctively know that Acceptance is important, but being honest with myself, it wasn’t as important as Quality. The power of the QxA=E equation is that Acceptance is just as important as Quality in determining overall Effectiveness. If I am willing to put enough attention on Acceptance, then it can have a dramatic multiplying effect on the Effectiveness.

The recipient of change

As a leader in my organization, I’m often the one defining a change and rolling it out to the masses, but I’m also a recipient of change. We all know how that feels. I’ve spent more of my life and career on the receiving end than the other way around.

It’s a special kind of feeling when someone else defines a change, then mandates that change upon me. My natural instinct may be just like yours: I buck hard.

If I don’t understand why, or wasn’t part of defining the solution, then I have a hard time accepting change just because I’m supposed to. It’s the way I’m wired. I didn’t like “because I said so” when I was a kid, and I don’t like it now.

Usually, I think that the change-maker did a poor job on the quality of the change, or at a minimum, they underinvested in the Organizational Change Management activities necessary to earn my acceptance of their change.

A new role

What if you aren’t the change-maker, nor are the recipient of the change? You are just in the middle. Have you ever been asked to help make a change successful, even though you weren’t empowered to alter the solution or reverse the decision to make the change? I have. You probably have too.

In my Change Leadership class, we learned to play the role of a neutral facilitator. It was an interesting position for me to be in. It forced me and my classmates to steer clear of solutioning and stay focused on the pure activities of Organizational Change Management that lead to change acceptance.

As awkward as it was to distance myself from working on improving or addressing the change solution quality, it was also liberating and empowering. It was powerful to see and demonstrate to myself that I have the power to determine the effectiveness of a change by solely focusing on change acceptance. I don’t need positional authority. I don’t need to originate the change. I simply need to know how leverage the tools and skills of Organizational Change Management.

In conclusion

I’ve known the importance of Organizational Change Management for some time. Those who skimp on change acceptance and put all of their energy into a quality solution alone are destined to face a lot of resistance.

I’ve learned a set of skills and tools that I can apply to make changes successful whether they were my idea or not. Investing in these skills makes me a better leader overall. Leadership is all about influence. There are many ways to influence change, and it’s always helpful to have a broad and comprehensive approach.

I’m always developing myself to be a better leader. I’ve been chronicling my lessons learned on this blog for several years now. Those of my readers who follow in my footsteps should take heed. Go learn Change Leadership. You’ll be a better leader if you do.

Read this article on my blog site or listen to it on my podcast???

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