#155: Getting people ready, willing and able to change
I took advantage of last week’s writing break to enjoy Cape Town’s continued clinging to summer. Although the mornings are now dark and some days are rain-drenched, others are temperate and clear-skyed. After February’s intense heat and dramatic wind, the city’s March and April are fresh-faced, warm, and welcoming.
We made the most of it. Early morning coffees at Bree Street’s Rosetta Roastery, lunches at acclaimed chef Peter Tempelhoff’s celebration of umami, Ramenhead, and Kloof Street’s uber-cool, Blondie.
If you love the idea of Ottolenghi but are too lazy to follow the recipes, Blondie is for you. The char-grilled lettuce is delicious, trust me 😉
At the end of last year, I asked for feedback on this letter. The views on introductions like the one that you’ve just read were mixed. While it wasn’t completely why you’re here it still added something. Last year, I would’ve written a lot more. This year it’s been more like the first two paragraphs. For those that want more, once a quarter I will write a longer piece on Cape Town life. You’ll find it here, this one is about wine (and a snake). Let me know what you think.
If this is your first time reading this letter, you can subscribe here and find the archive here.
/ strategy
I have a few ‘go-to books’, articles, and podcasts that I return to regularly. I find that each ‘visit’ generates new insights and possibilities. Sometimes re-reading is more powerful than reading the latest books.
Fit For Growth: A Guide to Strategic Cost Cutting, Restructuring, and Renewal is one of those.
Although most of the book focuses on the analysis required to be ‘fit for growth’, the authors remind us that unless people are ready, willing, and able to change, analysis will be wasted, and strategy will fail.
They caution, “Large-scale change does not happen overnight, or even over months. The key is to stay focused on outcomes and on helping your organization— and to keep nudging in the right direction.”
Chapter Sixteen, which focuses on implementation, is not entitled ‘Getting People Who are Ready to Change’ its title is ‘Getting People Ready, Willing and Able to Change’.
A successful strategy, individual or organisational, requires creating the conditions in which it can be implemented.
They write “for large-scale change to succeed, the leadership team needs to work with and within their company’s culture to motivate and mobilize the employees”, emphasising that in initiating change, we must take cognisance of the “emotional and informal aspects of the organization” and the “self-sustaining patterns of behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that determine ‘how we do things around here’”. They caution that a plan that only focuses on the formal, rational and visible parts of the organisation is likely to fail.
But that doesn’t mean that you need to change the culture. Transformation efforts often falter and fail precisely because they’re premised on ‘changing the culture’. Culture does not change quickly, shifting it can take years, even decades, to achieve.
They suggest something far more pragmatic, writing “Culture cannot change swiftly and on demand to perfectly align with the aims of your transformation program. The key is to focus instead on a critical few behaviors – behaviors that some people demonstrate regularly now; that would make the transformation smoother, speedier, and more successful; and that would lead to tangible business results if everyone adopted them”.
By reinforcing the positive behaviours that are already there, you find entry points into the organisation’s culture.
By amplifying those behaviours that make a difference, you are able to ensure that people act their way into a new way of operating that it is reinforced by visible results.
By picking just a few, you concentrate energy.
In short, if you want people ready, willing and able to change, find where they are already ready, willing and able and use that.
Culture is created through action, not declaration.
// self
In January, University of California Berkley psychology professor, Dacher Keltner, published his latest book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
Keltner tells us that experiencing awe quietens our inner critic and increases our sense of joy and calm – all things that make us more willing to contemplate and able to manage change.
Awe also humbles us, making us aware that we are in fact connected and part of a universe that transcends us, in turn fostering prosocial behaviour.
He explains awe as “being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world”.
That might sound impossible to find in everyday life, but “In our daily lives, we most frequently feel awe in encounters with moral beauty, and secondarily in nature and in experiences with music, art, and film”. So, with a little attention and awareness, we can cultivate our sense of awe
Intentionally exposing ourselves to stories of generosity and kindness, taking ourselves into nature, experiencing great art all make us happier and kinder.
In a recent article, Awe Sparks Prosociality in Children, Keltner, and his co-authors found that showing children awe-inspiring art caused them to pause, ponder and act more generously to others – all useful things in today’s world.
The atrium of Cape Town’s Museum of Contemporary Africa Art always leaves me feeling awed.
Standing at the reception desk, your body intuits that there is something bigger beyond.
Step into the atrium and your head instinctually tilts back in awe at the space that is the building’s heart.
Once a grain silo, the architects responsible for its reinvention mimicked a wheat grain’s shape to carve ellipses from the concrete membranes that are the building’s skeleton.
Ten stories of atrium and its concrete pores pull you into the building’s skin. It does what all great cathedrals do, it reminds you of the majesty of the universe and that you too are a part of the eternal flow of life. You are both awed and enveloped.
A building that once fed bodies now feeds souls.
/// soul
The 4th of April would have been legendary jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela’s 84th birthday.
His son, Selema, paid tribute to him by sharing this anecdote of the day his father helped him be willing to change.
In his late teens, Selema fell in love with surfing. Now in his early 20s, he was taking whatever jobs he could that would free him to surf.
Around that time, he had a meal with his father who said, “You’re on the road to becoming a broke surfer…actually you are a broke surfer and that’s not cool… no-one’s going to really respect you and you don’t want to be that guy”.
His advice was if Selema loved surfing so much, he needed to find a way to ‘get close to it’ so that he could make a living in it. “Don’t be a freeloader”, was his caution.
Selema reflects that it hurt to hear his dad’s assessment, but he knew that he was right.
A few months later, he landed a job as a receptionist for a skateboarding mag.
He phoned his dad to tell him and reflects that he could easily have said “That’s it? You’re just answering the phone?” Instead, he congratulated him and said, “Now stay close and figure out how to make moves, how to work your way up.”
Selema went on to host the X Games and became a respected commentator in surfing, snowboarding, and skateboarding.
His father knew what was needed for him to be ready, willing, and able to change.
Take five minutes to listen to the tribute. It is filled with moral beauty; you will be awed, and your week will be better.
(Thank you to ALI Fellow and Sanlam Foundation Head, Nozizwe Vundla for sharing Selema’s tribute with me.)
Best wishes
Karl
PS: If you’d like to work with me, I have a few places available for new clients from June. You can learn more about my coaching here.