"The Secret to Leading Organizational Change Is Empathy," Harvard Business Review. December 20, 2018
Dean Ornish, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, decided to reframe the underlying mind-set beneath the patients’ narratives. He wanted to change it from “If I behave this way, I won’t die” (fear driven) to “If I behave this way, my life will be filled with joy” (hope driven). In his words, “Telling people who are lonely and depressed that they’re going to live longer if they quit smoking or change their diet and lifestyle is not that motivating. Who wants to live longer when you’re in chronic emotional pain?” How much better would they feel, he thought, if they could enjoy the pleasures of daily life without suffering any pain or discomfort? In his experiment, 77 percent of his patients managed to make permanent changes in their lifestyles, compared with a normal success rate of 10 percent.
Once a year, all Navy ships undergo a thorough assessment, in which outside inspectors validate the ship's readiness. The ship as a whole and the crew's abilities and proficiencies are rated in twenty-four categories, on a scale ranging from basic Level One to advanced Level Four.
The purpose is to determine who much additional training the crew needs to be ready for combat. But if you assume that the higher a ship's level, the less time it would spend training at sea, you would be wrong. In fact, regardless of its readiness rating, every ship spends the next six months training at sea.
Thus there was no incentive to reach Level Four, and in fact, no ship ever did. Level One was the required minimum, and that was usually considered good enough.
Then Benfold came along.
Originally, my goal was to reach an overall rating of Level Two, but when I recognized the enormous potential of my crew, I raised the bar to Level Three, much to the chagrin of those who saw it as a quantum leap in their labor and my hubris.
I must also admit that, in addition to my noble motive of making the ship as good as it could be, I wanted to blow my archrival out of the water. Their assessment was scheduled to begin the basic Level One. The CO had no idea that we were laying the groundwork to shake things up a little. In fact, we were about to rock his world.
Our first challenge was finding enough senior people to supervise the twenty-four areas of testing. My combat systems officer hit me with the unexpected news that we had only twenty qualified people who were not involved in other critical operations.
Thinking fast, I said, "Fine - pick supervisors from the next group down. You don't always need a senior person in charge. It could be a young, third-class petty officer."
"That's never been done before," he said.
"See what they can do," I said. "The alternative is to do nothing, right? Let's assign senior people to the most demanding areas and work our way down to the junior ones. If we don't get Level Three in some categories, so what? We will get Level One or Two. We have nothing to lose."
As it turns out, the third- and second-class petty officers were so honored to be chosen that they worked hard enough for several of their teams to outshine those supervised by senior people. The search-and-seizure team was particularly impressive. We assigned it to one of the ship's most junior sailors because we suspected he had the ability to honcho it. The outside inspectors protested, saying they could not validate the work of an important team that wasn't headed by a commissioned officer. But I insisted, and the young sailor did such a fantastic job that the inspectors ate their words and placed us at Level Four in that category.
Breaking out of our stratified systems to trust the people who work for us, especially those at or near the low end of the hierarchy, was a useful, progressive change. It let us unleash people with talent and let them rise to levels that no one had expected, simply by challenging them: Make Benfold the readiest ship afloat. In that context, how could we not have done well?
It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by D. Michael Abrashoff. Grand Central Publishing. 2007. p.146-148
We must understand the need for change. An unexamined life is not worth living... The recognition of the need to change has to be a greater force than the luxury of staying the same.
I think it's about time that organizations and their senior leadership really start taking accountability for their culture. There has been a war for talent for years now, but it’s only getting worse. It’s easy for the finger to be pointed towards recruiting or human resources, or towards broken processes or compensation and benefits not being correct, but overall, for many organizations the culture of leadership needs to seriously be addressed. Research has shown for years that money is not what motivates most people. It definitely contributes to attraction and retention of course, but one of the biggest drivers of retention is leadership and accountability within a culture. Until leaders start turning inwards and reflecting on their own behaviors, stop leading from a place of their own fears and insecurities, start setting expectations upfront with employees, have open, direct and honest conversations, address issues immediately, focus on removing roadblocks for employees to get their jobs done instead of creating more roadblocks, and ultimately be objective enough to support their development and career progression (including giving the tough feedback with their best interest at heart), then the revolving door of talent will continue to become an even larger problem for organizations.
Is Quiet Quitting and Quiet Firing really a new phenomenon? LinkedIn Article. September 10, 2022.
10 Tips From Psychology Every Change Leader Should Know by Al Lee-Bourke. Prosci Blog. Accessed on August 4, 2022.
10 Tips From Psychology Every Change Leader Should Know by Al Lee-Bourke. Prosci Blog. Accessed on August 4, 2022.
Leadership and Self-deception: Getting Out of the Box by Arbinger Institute. Berrett-Koehler. 2002. p.154
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek. Penguin Publishing Group. 2009. p.6
Attending too many [meetings] can be highly stressful and tiring, and both productivity and quality take a hit when employees tune out, become demotivated, and lose valuable heads-down work time. As such, it’s hardly a surprise that managers in one survey reported 83% of the meetings on their calendars were unproductive, or that US-based professionals rated meetings as the “number one office productivity killer.”
But despite what seems to be an overwhelming consensus, endless check-ins, debriefs, all-staffs, and Zoom calls continue to plague the corporate world. What will it take for us to break free from our collective addiction to meetings?
Ashley Whillans, Dave Feldman, and Damian Wisniewski
“The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload,” Harvard Business Review. November 12, 2021
Denial is the ultimate comfort zone.
Tell yourself the truth! That you’ve wasted enough time, and that you have other dreams that will take courage to realize, so you don’t die a @#!$% %$@!*&.
Pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance, and beautiful silence.
When you think that you are done, you're only 40% in to what your body's capable of doing. That's just the limits that we put on ourselves.
Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.
Be more than motivated, be more than driven, become literally obsessed to the point where people think you're !$#@% nuts.
Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability.
Desire represents the willingness to support and engage in a change. Desire is ultimately about personal choice, influenced by the nature of the change, by an individual's personal situation, as well as intrinsic motivators that are unique to each person.
Knowledge represents the information, training and education necessary to know how to change. Knowledge includes information about behaviors, processes, tools, systems, skills, job roles and techniques that are needed to implement a change.
Ability represents the realization or execution of the change. Ability is turning knowledge into action. Ability is achieved when a person or group has demonstrated capability to implement the change at the required performance levels.
Reinforcement represents those internal and external factors that sustain a change. External reinforcements could include recognition, rewards and celebrations that are tied to the realization of the change. Internal reinforcements could be a person's internal satisfaction with his or her achievement or other benefits derived from the change on a personal level.
ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and our Community. 2006. Prosci Research. p.2,3
Career is about work: having a job that provides autonomy, allows you to use your strengths, and promotes your learning and development. It’s at the heart of intrinsic motivation.
Community is about people: feeling respected, cared about, and recognized by others. It drives our sense of connection and belongingness.
Cause is about purpose: feeling that you make a meaningful impact, identifying with the organization’s mission, and believing that it does some good in the world. It’s a source of pride.
These three buckets make up what’s called the psychological contract — the unwritten expectations and obligations between employees and employers. When that contract is fulfilled, people bring their whole selves to work. But when it’s breached, people become less satisfied and committed. They contribute less. They perform worse.
In the past, organizations built entire cultures around just one aspect of the psychological contract. You could recruit, motivate, and retain people by promising a great career or a close-knit community or a meaningful cause. But we’ve found that many people want more. In our most recent survey, more than a quarter of Facebook employees rated all three buckets as important. They wanted a career and a community and a cause. And 90% of our people had a tie in importance between at least two of the three buckets... We’re all hoping to find a what, a who, and a why.
Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, Brynn Harrington, and Adam Grant
"The 3 Things Employees Really Want: Career, Community, Cause" Harvard Business Review. February 20, 2018
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles", Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3.
The famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to the inaugural address of Nelson Mandela. About the misattribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."
The rational expectation would be that there should be no difference. After all, a lottery is pure chance. Every number, whether chosen or assigned, should have the same value. An even more savvy answer would be that you should have to pay the people who write their own number ever so slightly less, because of the possibility that there will now be duplicate numbers that, if chosen, would mean the size of the price would be cut in half.
Neither of these turned out to be the right answer. Regardless of nationality or demographic group, people who wrote their own number always demanded at least five times more for their ticket. This reveals an important truth about human nature. When we’re personally involved in “authoring” an outcome, we are far more committed to it because we feel we own it. The underlying psychology relates to our need for control, which is a deep-rooted survival instinct.
…The lesson for change leaders? If you want to increase the motivation for (and therefore, speed of) the implementation of change, it pays to involve others in creating the aspiration, even when the answer may already be clear in the mind of the leader…. Change programs whose aspirations phase is characterized by an organization-wide, collaborative effort are 1.6 times more likely to succeed.
"Want to Be Seen as a True Leader? Acquire These 5 Habits" Inc. March 28, 2018
Health is how effectively an organization works together in pursuit of a common goal. It is evaluated in levels of accountability, motivation, innovation, coordination, external orientation, and so on. A more memorable way to think about health-related actions is that they are those that improve how an organization internally aligns itself, executes with excellence, and renews itself to sustainably achieve performance aspirations in its ever-changing external environment.
Make no mistake, leaders have a choice when it comes to where they put their time and energy in making change happen. The big idea in delivering successful change at scale is that leaders should put equal emphasis on performance and health-related efforts....
Short-term gains can be made without tending to health, but they are unlikely to last.
Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger
