#196: Leading Change

Good morning friends

PWC’s 2024 Global CEO Survey notes that forty-five per cent of the CEOs surveyed believe their company will not be viable in ten years if they don’t change.

Given the importance of leading change, I asked Constance Hadley, founder of the Institute for Life at Work for some reading recommendations.

She graciously steered me to A Survival Guide for Leaders, Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail, and Six Habits of Merely Effective Negotiators and that’s where we’re going today (you can read about Connie’s work here).

/strategy

In Leading Change, John Kotter, identifies eight errors that cause transformation effort to fail – Not Establishing a Great Enough Sense of Urgency, Not Creating a Powerful Enough Guiding Coalition. Lacking a Vision, Undercommunicating the Vision by a Factor of Ten, Not Removing Obstacles to the New Vision, Not Systematically Planning for, and Creating, Short-Term Wins, Declaring Victory Too Soon and Not Anchoring Changes in the Corporation’s Culture.

Kotter’s work is consistent with Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky’s Survival Guide.

Both articles emphasise the importance of building coalitions. Heifetz and Linsky go so far as to advise having a weekly coffee with the person most dedicated to seeing you fail.

Should you decide to have that coffee, read Sebenius’s Six Habits.

He advises that weak negotiators try too hard to find common ground.

Good negotiators create ‘differences inventories’ and use the creative tension to unlock even more interesting path forward.

Use the coffee chat to understand what your ‘opponent’ wants or fears, not to persuade them. It is far more powerful than telling them why you’re right.

Heifetz and Linsky emphasize the need to ‘court the uncommitted’, saying “while relationships with allies and opponents are essential, the people who will determine your success are often those in the middle, the uncommitted who nonetheless are wary of your plans. They have no substantive stake in your initiative, but they do have a stake in the comfort, stability, and security of the status quo”.

That last sentence is crucial. No matter how carefully thought through, how much it is needed, how ‘obvious’ it is, change creates insecurity that must be understood and managed.

Kottler advises building support from multiple levels in the organisation, including your board, and says that is unlikely to include every senior executive, at least not initially.

He cautions that, although necessary, such a coalition is tricky to manage, “Because the guiding coalition includes members who are not part of senior management, it tends to operate outside of the normal hierarchy by definition. This can be awkward, but it is clearly necessary. If the existing hierarchy were working well, there would be no need for a major transformation. But since the current system is not working, reform generally demands activity outside of formal boundaries, expectations, and protocol”.

It is best not to pretend that it will be ‘business as usual’, instead acknowledge that it will be uncomfortable and create processes to manage the unease.

Heifetz and Linsky point us to two important subtleties.

One, “by too readily pointing your finger at others, you risk making yourself a target. Remember, you are asking people to move to a place where they are frightened to go. If at the same time, you’re blaming them for having to go there, they will undoubtedly turn against you”. Keep the language about the ‘as is’ neutral and factual and the language about the future, optimistic. If people feel blamed, it will only deepen their insecurity and their resistance.

Two, “place the work where it belongs”. The temptation as the executive leading change is to provide all the answers, that can make you a target, far better for you and everyone else to get the teams most affected by the issue to generate a solution.

Kottler reminds us that the most effective communication is woven into the fabric of the workday by actively looking for great moments that fit the strategy,  congratulating the person responsible, and reminding them and everyone else how that action advances specific strategic objectives.

Strategy communication happens every day.

//self

When you’re the person leading change you will be attacked. You might get lucky and just be rigorously questioned, which is not something most of us take easily to, but it’s more probable you’ll be attacked.

Heifetz and Linsky remind us that whilst it will feel personal – and quite probably also be expressed in those ways – it is primarily a function of people feeling insecure about the change and you’re getting the heat because you’re the person leading it.

It’s wise to remember this when we’re not the leader of change, but are in a team or an organisation that is experiencing change.

Sebenius says, “Extensive research has documented an unconscious mechanism that enhances one’s own side, ‘portraying it as more talented, honest, and morally upright,’ while simultaneously vilifying the opposition. This often leads to exaggerated perceptions of the other side’s position and overestimates of the actual substantive conflict”.

Observe yourself. How much of your indignation is rooted in the discomfort of change?

Undoubtedly, there will be things that can be done better. There always are, but those can be clearly communicated with actionable alternatives presented without the emotional charge.

/// soul

Walter Mosley is the creator of crime fiction’s most memorable characters. After reading this NYT interview I devoured his Leonid McGill series.

It is filled with observations like “Dreams are like oceans and sometimes they pull the dreamer down”, “trouble sticks to him like white on rice”, “His suit and tie were machine washable, not the only indication that he was unmarried” and one for the romantics among you, “I watched her walk away, thinking that I had missed an entire life somehow and wondering was it my fault or just fate”.

In a line that fits today’s theme, he says “You can’t win if you don’t throw punches, but when you go on the offensive you have to accept the reality that you will most likely get hit”.

In the NYT piece he speaks about viewing writing as a vehicle to helping people understand their world, “What are the problems that we face when you start dealing with capitalism, existentialism, when you start living with sexism? How do we deal with these things? With identity politics? You have to tell stories about real people experiencing it and not real people with a Ph.D”.

His books do that with sentences like, “I got up, went down to the number 1 train, and rode in a car full to brimming over with commuters going from the jobs that they didn’t want back to the lives they hadn’t bargained for”.

They help us understand our experiences stripped of jargon.

It seems to me that is the same requirement of managing change, communicating in a way that that helps people understand what it means for them and the world they’re building.

If it’s drenched in management jargon, it won’t connect, and they will resist.  

Okay, I know I am stretching… read Mosley anyway. He’s great.
 
Happy Sunday!
 
Karl

PS: If you are leading change, you might also like Getting people ready, willing and able to change and Preach to Your Choir.