Building Change Momentum

This is the final post in a three part series. Please like, share and comment. Please click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2.

Suppose you have a persistent group in your organization who has been completing its job the same way for a significant period of time. They refuse to change despite multiple suggestions on areas where the team could improve. Why will the team not accept the change?

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The group refuses to change because it does not see benefits of changing. Transforming an organization is a time consuming process and change agents will commonly go for the home run when implementing change. Spontaneously implementing a “large” scale change event every few years will lead to changes not supported by employees. Employees need to see the short-term wins, organizational improvement that can be implemented in 3 to 18 months. These short wins will create momentum and keep the organization engaged.

Organizational change is not a one-sized fits all solution. I size change into one of three sections:

• Small: Small scoped, operational changes that are not dramatic changes to the organization. The scope of the change is contained in one function, department or level. For example, removing waste from your current processes (See my blog post on Organizational Hoarding for more).
• Medium: Medium sized changes commonly span more than one function, department, or level within the organization. For example, ...re-defining a new workflow that spans across departments like release processes.
• Large: Large scope changes span across numerous functions, departments and/or levels, involving a large number of people. These are changes that are radically new or foreign to the organization’s current environment or culture. For example, introducing new performance review practices, huge organizational structure/team/people design, a Fail Fast, Fail Often methodology, or continuous delivery/integration.

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In my previous blog post titled “Is change ever over? Do we need middle management?”, I discuss how an organization must move from sporadic transformations to an environment setup to continually change if wants to succeed in today’s ever-evolving environment. Implementing major change takes time. Organizations cannot continually rollout “large” scale changes one after another. This will lead to chaos. Instead, the change agents should implement a few smaller, operational changes in between larger, strategic changes. Implementing these smaller changes will give the change efforts immediate visibility, manage the resisters of change, and provide all three layers (i.e. top, middle, and operational)) of the organization real feedback about the validity of the change.

The Change Team will learn how to work together

More importantly, the knowledge the ‘change team’ will gain from working together on small ‘quicker’ changes will help them evolve to a more cohesive, stronger team. The change team will go through phases that all teams do. Bruce Tuskman defined the five step process that most teams follow to achieve high performance. Many newly formed change teams never progress beyond the first stage: forming. In this stage, team members are cautious, positive and polite. Some might be anxious with the new team members. It is imperative that the change team moves past this stage and onto the next stages quickly. The team will need to deal with its own dysfunctions before it can tackle the organizations’. The longer the change team remains uncomfortable with each other, the longer implementing change will take. Team members must feel comfortable enough to giving and receiving feedback. Rolling out change cannot be done individually, the team must roll out the change as a unit together. Change teams are a microcosm of the organization. They need to update their membership regularly to provide new insights, perspectives, and  to adapt to the ever-changing environment.  

At the end of the day, the organization’s main goal is to continue delivering products or services, not implement changes. As change agents, your role is to make the implementation of changes as seamless as possible. Smaller sized chunks will prevent a large disruption in the workflow. The changes will allow the employees to grow accustomed to environment that is continually evolving, refocus the status quo and continue to make the organization deliver high value services.

David Dame

Are your HR Practices Lean Enough? - Scale Engagement Agility

In today's rapidly changing world of disruptive innovation organizations need to be nimble enough to support this.  We are asking our workforce to do this by becoming 'agile'.  We want the agility to quickly pivot and seize new opportunities.  We want to deliver to market sooner. We want our employees to innovate and deliver highly complex work more rapidly.  

Today's organizations are moving away from large transformational events and moving toward doing continuous change.  These organizations are flat.  How do we create a culture that inspire employee engagement to enable these organizations to thrive in this continuous change?

Agility is no longer just an IT or Engineering movement, it is something that the entire organization needs to embrace.  For this to be effective and long lived it needs the full involvement of human resources, organizational leaders, and change agents.  There is some thought leaders that are already forward thinking and creating events for all these disciplines to come together to align to this common purpose.  The Spark the Change event held in Toronto facilitated this movement.

"Individual commitment to a group effort--that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." --Vince Lombardi

In my last blog post - Scaling Engagement Agility, I voiced my concern Agilists (change agents) to think beyond scaling frameworks and tooling.  As Agilists, we need to rethink and adapt our beliefs.  For example, in the 1990s and early 2000's we took a strong stand on co-located teams.  We said this was a critical for an organization to adopt agile.  Although, co-location is the highest fidelity for interacting, it does not match trends in the workforce of home offices.  The technology tools available for collaboration has narrowed the gap of communication challenges with distributed teams.  This can help support the workforce trend of working from home or in coffee shops.

HR traditionally believed it's function is to put order and structure to the organization, yet Agile believes in rapid change by breaking down structure and order. - James Cleaver

Human resource practices need to adapt to this new fast-paced environment.  They need to become 'lean', they need to become 'flexible', they need to become 'agile'. There is no longer a guaranteed long relationship between employee and employer.  The balance of power used to be with the employer. The employer would be their only one for the duration of the employee's career.  In today's world there is more of a balance between employer and employee.   

Our workforce doesn't look at getting a job with you and staying there the rest of their lives unconditionally.  They see their job as a reflection of who they are, not merely what they do to earn money.  Our employees will always desire to grow and evolve because of this connection between what they do and who they are.  They have more opportunities available to them.  No longer are they restricted by the geographic location.  They have an ability to work for any organization around the world.  

The average worker today stays at each of his or her jobs for 4.4 years, according to the most recent available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but the expected tenure of the workforce’s youngest employees is about half that.

Ninety-one percent of Millennials (born between 1977-1997) expect to stay in a job for less than three years, according to the Future Workplace “Multiple Generations @ Work” survey of 1,189 employees and 150 managers. That means they would have 15 – 20 jobs over the course of their working lives!

In this new equilibrium of power we need to treat our employees like potential customers.  I always hear the phrase that we need to make it easy for customers to do business with us.  I also contend we need to make it very easy for employees to work for us.  So how do we create an employee centric atmosphere in this new workforce?  We need to take a holistic approach in creating this employee centric environment.

Dr. Philip A Foster stated, "It was predicted that by the year 2000 that less than 50% of the working population would be in full time employment. In 2011 the number was actually less than 45%. If we play that trend out, by the year 2040 it is anticipated that there will be less than 30% in full time employment."

What are some things we can look at to connect with employees quicker and continually?

Job models.  How do we adjust this for the new rapid workforce?  If we want our organizations to innovate and change, how can we lock down long term career paths?  We still need some sense of how an employee will fit and grow within an organization but it doesn't make sense to make them so long and rigid.  Instead of projecting their career for the next 5 to 10 years we should shorten the horizon to 2 to 3 years.  We keep these as lean and flexible as possible.  As your organization innovates and changes new roles and job models will arise. Keeping open and flexible models allows employees to see themselves in a continually changing organization.

Training.  How do we training budgets closer to the employees?  How do we allow for more autonomy to the person of what they can choose for training?  If the training can only be approved based on today's goals, how do we open our employees minds up to training that might help the organization pivot to new opportunities?  We need to make these resources closer to the employee so they have more direct access.

Performance reviews.  In today's environment of rapid and continual change, I believe we need to accelerate from twice a year to continual performance reviews.  Continual performance reviews are just continual feedback loops.  These feedback loops are no longer just between manager and employee, but all the people that this employee interfaces with so they get this 360 continual view.  This continual feedback allows for continual positive reinforcement, frequent course corrections, and initiatives as needed.

Building a relationship with your people.  Your regular touch points with your employees need to be frequent and about them. This is all about them, not their projects or tasks.  Where do they see themselves? What's on their minds?  What are they dealing with.  If you are not doing this regularly, I guarantee that a recruiter from another company is. In today's connected world outsiders have access to our people and they know it's about them to steal them away.

The whole organization needs to work together to retain their best talent and keep them engaged.  No longer can there be disconnected independent initiatives working in silos.  We all need to work together HR, Leaders, Agilists, change agents and others.  I would love to hear your thoughts and what your organization is doing.

"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." --Henry Ford

David Dame

Please join the LinkedIn Group to have discussions and share what your organization is doing on Engagement Agility

It's all about the results

On your journey towards organizational agility you will have to use many tools out of your toolkit.  You will use agile/lean models and practices, older models and practices, custom solutions, and common sense.  Organizational agility is about achieving the results not the means of getting those results.

Nobody is going to give you a gold star if you implement a purely agile solution.  There is no industry model that can be implemented out of the box to meet your organization's needs.  These models are a good start… But any transformation agent worth their weight does not stop there.  They involve this model in through numerous inspect and adapt cycles to constantly fit the context of your organization.

Authority vs. Influence in Leading Organizational Change

Authority – the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.

Influence – the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.

Authority is power.  If you want to rule the galaxy by power, then join the dark side of the force.  Influence is ability. If you want to lead the galaxy by working together with the citizens to solve the problems, then continue your training to become a Jedi Knight.

Early on in my career I would always say to myself… If only he had the authority to make these things happen. It would be easy. I had some misconceived notion that being able to say what needs to be done would equate to those things actually being done.  I would simply create a vision, tell the organization that they had to follow this vision and I can move on to the next challenge.

As I progressed through my career I moved into positions with authority.  My dream finally came true… I would not need to spend a long time campaigning to the mass number of people to get their buy in, I could simply give the marching orders.  Although this helped change move quicker, it was not long-lived.  The moment we achieved the goal or I redirected my focus to the next opportunity, the previous initiative would fall back to its previous state.

Authority gives you immediate change but it's not long-lived. You can tell somebody what to do.  They may do it for the moment.  Unless they understand what the problem is that you're trying to solve and why you're doing it, they will not continue doing so after the change.  

Authority causes people to act on orders/tasks.  Influence is working with people to understand and solve the problem collaboratively together.

In dealing with organizational change, I have learned a great deal of what is needed to help move the critical mass from their current state to the desired state, and to ensure sustainability.  I have had to develop a skill set to connect with people, build their trust, unleash their passion, grow their confidence, and move toward a shared vision.  Being able to influence takes a lot of work.  You don't get there overnight.  You need relentless pursuit. The ability to be open to refine the vision as you get insight from these people.  Give autonomy to those people affected by the change.  Lead by example.  Build long-lasting relationships.  Earn respect.

Influence is when others accept your ideas or direction. It means that people have internalized your message. They believe it. They might even be excited about it. 

Authority causes people to act on orders/tasks.  Influence is working together to understand and solve the problem.

For long-lived organizational change you need to put in hard work toward influencing the people.  People are very habitual.  To develop these habits it takes time.  We do not quit bad habits, rather replace them with good habits.  Make being a positive influence your habit.  Having influence with others does not only make you a fantastic change agent, it also makes you an fantastic colleague.

In future posts I will speak to this specifically in the context of Organizational Agility Transformations.

David Dame