"The Secret to Leading Organizational Change Is Empathy," Harvard Business Review. December 20, 2018
A recent Finnish study of 380 virtual work meetings showed that remote viewers reported feeling drowsy (and some nearly fell asleep) after just 10 minutes...
The study reinforces another experiment that University of Washington biology professor John Medina conducts with his students every year, which reaches the same conclusion.
Medina says, "After 9 minutes and 59 seconds, the audience's attention is getting ready to plummet to near zero."
Scientists Pinpoint the Exact Moment People Loose Interest in a Presentation: Three ways to keep your audience engaged beyond this cliff. Inc. Feb. 27, 2024
The personal connection is especially critical when a leader starts something new. The business world is full of failed initiatives. Good, important ideas get launched with much fanfare. but six months or a year later they're dead in the water and abandoned as unworkable. Why? Down in the organization, the managers feel that the last thing they need is one more time-consuming project of uncertain merit and outcome, so they blow it off. "This too will pass," they say. "just like the last bright idea of the month." Result: the company wastes time, money and energy, and the leader loses credibility, usually without realizing that the failure is a personal indictment.
The leader's personal involvement, understanding, and commitment are necessary to overcome this passive (or in many cases active) resistance. She not only has to announce the initiative, but to define it clearly and define its importance to the organization. She can't do this unless she understands how it will work and what it really means in terms of benefit. Then she has to follow through to make sure everyone takes it seriously. Again, she can't do this if she can't understand the problems that come with implementation, talk about them with the people doing the implementing, and make clear - again and again - that she expects them to execute it.
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 65
An organization can execute only if the leader's heart and soul are immersed in the company. Leading is more than thinking big, or schmoozing with investors and lawmakers, although those are part of the job. The leader has to be engaged personally and deeply in the business. Execution requires a comprehensive understanding of a business, its people, and its environment. The leader is the only person in a position to achieve that understanding. And only the leader can make execution happen, through his or her deep personal involvement in the substance and even the details of execution.
The leader must be in charge of getting things done by running the three core processes - picking other leaders, setting the strategic direction, and conducting operations. These actions are the substance of execution, and leaders cannot delegate them regardless of the size of the organization.
How good would a sports team be if the coach spent all of his time in his office making deals for new players, while delegating actual coaching to an assistant? A coach is effective because he's constantly observing players individually and collectively on the field and in the locker room. That's how he gets to know his players and their capabilities, and how they get firsthand the benefit of his experience, wisdom, and expert feedback.
It's no different for a business leader. Only a leader can ask the tough questions that everyone needs to answer, then manage the process of debating the information and making the right trade-offs. And only the leader who's intimately engaged in the business can know enough to have the comprehensive view and ask the tough incisive questions.
Only the leader can set the tone of the dialogue in the organization. Dialogue is the core of culture and the basic unit of work. How people talk to each other absolutely determines how well the organization will function. Is the dialogue stilted, politicized, fragmented, and butt-covering? Or is it candid and reality-based, raising the right questions, debating them, and finding realistic solutions? If it's the former - as it is in all too many companies - reality will never come to the surface. If it is to be the latter, the leader has to be on the playing field with his management team, practicing it consistently and forcefully.
Specifically, the leader has to run the three core processes and has to run them with intensity and rigor.
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 24, 25
Emily Cole believes being Fans First starts with just "being a good human." She highlights how coaching good behavior starts during the hiring process. "This gives us a chance to really work alongside someone and show them how things operate in Bananaland. If they can naturally mirror the way we treat people, that's the first requirement. We can coach the skills part.
For example, we send handwritten thank-you cards to people who interview for full-time positions. If we get a handwritten thank-you card back, it's a great indicator that they listen carefully and respond. It also means they can pick up our culture's language. "When great individuals join our team, they automatically become even more caring, different, enthusiastic, fun, growing, and hungry because that's the Fans First Way, and that's what we focus on daily," Emily emphasizes.
These little tests may sound like a lot to do just to be hired, but people love our interview process. It has three parts. First, applicants do a cover letter so we can see their personality. (Coach Gillum's was legendary, helping him to beat out a coach from MLB's Pittsburgh Pirates.) Second, they write a Fans First essay and explain how they fit our core beliefs. Third, they write a future resume because we're more interested in what they'd like to do in the future than what they've already done.
That last part leads to deeper engagement with our new team member. We ask our staff members what they want to do in the future so we can work toward those goals and better support them. We can have open conversations about their goals. We may hire them to work for the Bananas, but we also want what's best for them as opposed to what's best for us. We acknowledge that it's not all about us, that they are not living just for this company, and that they are still their own separate people, with their own hopes and dreams and creativity.
What should organizations launching multiple change programs do differently? First and foremost, they should take the holistic view. The top management team (TMT) orchestrating change management should draw up a map of all the initiatives, planned or ongoing, occurring within the organization. This map should incorporate all of the vantage points that matter: not only the perspectives of top management, but also those of middle management and front-line employees. Middle managers and employees may perceive inconsistencies among these change initiatives more clearly than TMTs can, and they may well offer practical ideas about how to address inconsistencies upfront.
Once the organization has mapped out all employees’ perceptions of inconsistency in various initiatives, it should consider how to address these inconsistencies from the start. TMTs can stay ahead of the game by preparing a clear, consistent communication narrative explaining the necessity for multiple initiatives as opposed to one, detailing exactly how they fit together. Such a narrative can preempt the perception of inconsistency on all three levels: content, procedure, and normative expectations.
The timing and pacing of each initiative are additional key considerations. TMTs should have a clear idea of which initiatives can be wrapped up quickly and which may take years — and when to launch or stop each one. With a clearer time frame, they can ward off inconsistency by ensuring, for example, that one team isn’t assigned two conflicting tasks at the same time or that teams aren’t saddled with a storm of changes that could overwhelm their capacity.
TMTs should also monitor whether each key initiative has been allocated adequate resources. Remember that strategic change is exhausting, and periods of high activity should be followed by intervals of rest or less-intense work. The alternative to careful timing may well be burnout, which is an even greater threat to change performance than inconsistency.
Ultimately, successful change managers shift their focus from single initiatives to the dynamics among multiple initiatives. A successful transformation typically does not rely on any single change initiative but emerges from the careful management of multiple, integrated initiatives that interact and reinforce one another over time. One key success factor is to be alert to emerging inconsistencies among various initiatives regarding content, procedures, and normative expectations. These emerging inconsistencies can cause initial supporters to resist change, ultimately undermining the initiatives. Instead, taking the deliberate, comprehensive approach described here can drive your success in leading change.
Quy Nguyen Huy, Rouven Kanitz, Julia Backmann, and Martin Hoegl
"How to Reduce the Risk of Colliding Change Initiatives," MITSloan Management Review. June 3, 2021
Open-source change management embraces employees as active participants in change planning and implementation. It requires three shifts in thinking:
Cian O Morain and Peter Aykens
"Employees Are Losing Patience with Change Initiatives," Harvard Business Review. May 9, 2023
Business transformation will remain at the forefront in 2023, as organizations continue to refine hybrid ways of working and respond to the urgent need to digitalize, while also contending with inflation, a continuing talent shortage, and supply-chain constraints. These circumstances, which require higher levels of productivity and performance, also mean a lot of change: In 2022, the average employee experienced 10 planned enterprise changes — such as a restructure to achieve efficiencies, a culture transformation to unlock new ways of working, or the replacement of a legacy tech system — up from two in 2016, according to Gartner research.
While more change is coming, the workforce has hit a wall: A Gartner survey revealed that employees’ willingness to support enterprise change collapsed to just 43% in 2022, compared to 74% in 2016.
We call the gap between the required change effort and employee change willingness the “transformation deficit.” Unless functional leaders steer swiftly and expertly, the transformation deficit will stymie organizations’ ambitions and undermine the employee experience, fueling decreased engagement and increased attrition.
Cian O Morain and Peter Aykens
"Employees Are Losing Patience with Change Initiatives," Harvard Business Review. May 9, 2023
Change is a process matching the speed that employees navigate the change process to the speed of the business change...
Effective change progresses along the two axes (phases of business change and phases of employee change) at the same time. We must manage the implementation of the technical solution and the people side of the change concurrently. If we fail to manage these two components together, then we can experience the failure points shown above.
Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey
Just having a solution that is technically "right" does not guarantee that employees will make the necessary changes to their behaviors and work processes. Employee commitment, buy-in, and adoption do not stem from the rightness of the solution, but rather from the employees moving through their own change process. It takes more than the right solution to move employees out of the current state that they know and into the future state they do not know (and sometimes fear).
Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey
We must, at some point, ask the question: How much resistance might we avoid if we would apply change management early and effectively? In the example with the ERP implementation case study, rather than simply designing a "great" solution to the manufacturing and inventory structure and beginning implementation, a proactive change management program could have been put in place to engage and support employees through the transition. Rather than waiting for resistance to happen, or being taken by surprise when key employees resisted the change, the leadership and project team could have assumed that resistance to change is normal and natural. If they had started with this as a basic presumption of change, then their actions and planning could have prevented the project failure and unfortunate consequence to the customer.
[James] Patterson spends a lot of time writing the first lines of every chapter. That’s the opportunity to hook the audience. For example, the first sentence of Kiss the Girls, the second in the Alex Cross series of novels, reads:
For three weeks, the young killer actually lived inside the walls of an extraordinary fifteen-room beach house.
A lot of thought (and rewriting) goes into crafting a sentence like that. The purpose is to entice the reader to lean in, so they’re quickly invested in the story.
First lines are also crucial for speeches and presentations. Avoid starting a presentation with a long, tedious agenda of what you plan to cover. Instead, hook your audience with one sentence that draws them in.
In 2007 Steve Jobs kicked off the 90-minute iPhone presentation with the line, “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” I was watching and I was hooked. I wanted the mystery to be solved: How was Apple going to reinvent it? What would it look like? What features will it have? How is it different than my Blackberry? How much will it cost, and when can I buy it?”
"James Patterson’s Storytelling Tips For Leaders," Forbes. August 10, 2022
The U.S. was the first country to put a person on the moon when Neil Armstrong bounded from the Apollo 11 staircase onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. I was drawn to this case after reading a book in which several NASA employees attested to feeling strongly connected to the organization's goals an aspirations - a perception many said they had never experienced outside of this period at NASA...
James McLane, chief of NASA Space Environment, said, "I can remember when no matter what came along, we used to say to each other, 'We've got to get that man on the Moon,' and mean it. We really meant it, you know..."
Flight director Gene Kranz exclaimed, "We are going to write the history books and we're going to be the team that takes an American to the moon..."
Lola Parker (a secretary) noted, "I don't know of anybody who was a clock puncher. No matter what role they played, that was in the back of their mind: we've got that man to get to the moon..."
Another telling example was that of Charlie Mars. As an electrical engineer, he was far removed from landing on the moon in an objective sense, yet he identified his actions as if he was going to the moon: "One of the things we had was a common goal; and we all realized that we were into something that was one of the few things in history that was going to stand out over the years. 'We're going to the Moon. We're putting a man on the moon!...'"
James Jaaz said that despite working in low-status roles long before the moon landing - including as a "data runner" and an "extra body" who ran errands - he felt a personal connection to NASA's core objective, and he spoke as if everyday actions represented the ongoing achievement of landing on the moon: "Being a 'data runner' was a great experience... I shared... the overwhelming sense of accomplishment felt by my co-workers. I believed that landing on the Moon was what NASA did and was proud to be a part of it..."
When astronaut Scott Carpenter was asked in an interview to discuss orbital flight and control systems, he responded in a way suggesting that he did not construe his work in terms of these everyday actions. Instead, echoing his belief that the moon was a "high purpose"..., he described his work in terms of the aspiration that the moon stood for: "We... continue to expand our knowledge of the universe, hopefully for the benefit of all mankind..."
Notably, the construal of day-to-day work as "going to the moon" was not limited to astronauts and engineers but extended to employees at all levels - including secretaries and interns. This reality echoes a legend in which Kennedy, touring NASA headquarters, encountered a custodian mopping the floors. Kennedy asked the employee, "Why are you working so late?" The custodian responded, "Because I'm not mopping the floors, I'm putting a man on the moon."
"I'm Not Mopping the Floors, I'm Putting a Man on the Moon": How NASA Leaders Enhanced the Meaningfulness of Work by Changing the Meaning of Work. by Andrew M. Carton. Administrative Science Quarterly. 2018. Vol. 63(2)323-369
The quest for meaningful work is a central and defining feature of organizational life. For decades, employees have reported that the meaningfulness of work - the perception that daily responsibilities have broader significance - is more important than any other occupational feature, including income, job security, and the opportunity for career advancement. When day-to-day activities are marked by a deep sense of significance, individuals are poised not only to thrive but to weather the most daunting elements of employment, including challenging tasks, low wages, and stigmatized work. Likewise, the absence of meaningfulness has powerful ramifications, as one of the primary reasons employees disengage from their work is because it lacks significance.
"I'm Not Mopping the Floors, I'm Putting a Man on the Moon": How NASA Leaders Enhanced the Meaningfulness of Work by Changing the Meaning of Work. by Andrew M. Carton. Administrative Science Quarterly. 2018. Vol. 63(2)323-369
10 Tips From Psychology Every Change Leader Should Know by Al Lee-Bourke. Prosci Blog. Accessed on August 4, 2022.
That's why executives are paid the big bucks. Part of their job is to realize a future that's not going to happen through managing what's already in place. And that's also why leadership is typically not an "I" thing. It requires enrolling others to see something possible for themselves and their team that wasn't there before...
An organization that remains rooted in doing the same things the same way will be left behind. It's inevitable. Everything changes--from technology to consumer demand and everything in between--and because of that, it's crucial to imagine what has never been imagined before (at least for that specific organization).
It's the leaders who stand on the precipice of impossible and show the world (their employees, team members, or close friends and confidants) where they want to go. Where they wish to lead.
"Where Does Management Stop and Leadership Start?" Inc.com. January 27, 2022
Leadership and Self-deception: Getting Out of the Box by Arbinger Institute. Berrett-Koehler. 2002. p.43
Make the first topic “review and modify agenda as needed.” Even if you and your team have jointly developed the agenda before the meeting, take a minute to see if anything needs to be changed due to late breaking events. I once had a meeting scheduled with a senior leadership team. As we reviewed the agenda, I asked if we needed to modify anything. The CEO stated that he had just told the board of directors that he planned to resign and that we probably needed to significantly change the agenda. Not all agenda modifications are this dramatic, but by checking at the beginning of the meeting, you increase the chance that the team will use its meeting time most effectively.
“How to Design an Agenda for an Effective Meeting,” Harvard Business Review. March 19, 2015 as quoted in HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter. Harvard Business Review Press. 2016.
