This post is part of a 5 Part Series sharing the powerful reasons to Let Go of Change Management. If you missed the first post - go there first. We welcome your comments, feedback and insights as we explore the topic of transforming culture and business.
Here are this week's Two Reasons to Let Go...
Why Let Go of Change Management - Top 10 - #3: Change management formulas miss the key variable
When studying change management, the formula is deceptively simple: akin to assembling IKEA furniture, complete with iconographs and pre-packaged tools. The glitches are those pesky pieces that don’t conform to the plan. They’re called people, and they come pre-assembled in the form of your staff.
For some strange reason staff don’t behave like objects. Many employees, particularly beyond the first layer of leadership, don’t buy your burning platform and your compelling case for change. They experience constant “messaging” as propaganda. They hear flavor-of-the-month. They stick with the devil they know; no matter how far you infiltrate their ranks with “champions” at each level.
Conversely, most executives and management already see themselves as “being the change” they desire for the organization. With that view firmly in place, why would they ever look in the mirror to see if that is actually true?
The formula is NOT designed to deal with actual people. It’s designed as an academic, logical exercise in changing THINGS with an offhand nod at the most current and compelling scientific evidence on human behavior. In other words, the only problem with change management is those pesky humans who keep getting in the way!
As Keller and Aiken identified in their landmark McKinsey & Company study involving 1546 business executives: “In the same way that the field of economics has been transformed by an improved understanding of how uniquely human social, cognitive and emotional biases lead to seemingly irrational decisions, so too the practice of change management is in need of a transformation through an improved understanding of the irrational (often unconscious) way in which humans interpret their environment and choose to act.”
Without an equally powerful examination of the human factor, and a robust approach that INCLUDES the human condition, change management is dead in the water. The result of that being ignored is a model of change management that says to employees: “You are something to be processed. You’ll eventually get it if we tell you enough times... you dummy. And if you don’t get it, that’s your fault.”
It’s time to consider all the variables in the equation before we pour any more energy and money into a practice that has failed for 50 years to deliver on its promises.
Why Let Go of Change Management - Top 10 - #4: Death by rumor: Only after we figure it all out will we bother to let you know
Carefully craft a tidy plan and work it out COMPLETELY before giving employees answers to their questions. Don’t share information unless it’s perfect, on pain of looking like bad leaders and staff losing confidence. Don’t reveal anything about org chart design, budget priorities, or possible risks in the process, lest you incite panic amongst the “unwashed masses.”
These are the instructions, the words of wisdom, of change management.
Meanwhile, back in reality, employees are pulling their hair out trying to guess at job security, their place in the organization, and the future of their team. It’s the death of a thousand paper cuts.
In the absence of any substantial data, the rumor mill will absolutely begin to fill in the gaps. And with each day that goes by, new and more cynical interpretations flood into the mix.
Do you ever wonder why people act like children during major change initiatives? Consider that they act this way precisely because they are treated like children: “sit down and shut up”; “speak when spoken to”; “if we wanted your ideas we would have asked for them”; “you’re not ready for the truth”; “no we’re not there yet”; “stop asking so many questions.”
Why this old school mantra of change management is so painful, so devastating, is because it leaves employees to somehow make sense of what’s happening in an environment void of information. What staff eventually “come up with” to make sense of what’s happening, in almost all cases, does not match the executive’s real reasons or motives for the change. According to Bordia (1994), 30% of all communication after a change is “leaked” is sense-making, wherein staff search for a likely “contender” for why this is all happening. And soon after a “contender” rises to the top, one employee will spread the rumor to 30 others within a week (Fritz, 1998).
When the real reasons, along with the “perfected” plan, are shared with employees much later in the process, well-worn employee interpretations collide violently with executive realities. This collision delivers a knockout blow to the change initiative from which it can’t make a comeback.
By Vik Maraj and Kevin Gangel - Co-founders of Unstoppable Conversations
Share your thoughts - we welcome all: nay, yay or hmmmm.
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Unstoppable Conversations and the team of Vik Maraj and Kevin Gangel, are a unique consulting firm which produces radical shifts in the capacity of an organization’s leaders to realize extra-ordinary results within a surprisingly short time. Their work demystifies the world of change and simplifies everything to ONE key driver. Leaders discover that their organization’s culture shapes and limits all of their well laid plans and they discover how to practically address their culture with real-time actions that produce immediately obvious benefits.
