Change Management News

Last week I was working with all the senior leaders and middle managers for a large city government.  They were launching a number of challenging new programs for their city. They knew they needed an engaged staff if they wanted the changes to get up and running and to make a difference in their community. (Sustainability is the jargon term for that.)

I started my time with them by asking half the group of 400 to think about a job that they had loved. It could be their current job or a part-time job they had way back in college.  Then list what made it such a great job.

I asked the other half the room to think about a job that they hated. (To illustrate my point, I told them about a good friend who once described his job as, “an acid bath.”)  Then I asked them to list what made the job so bad. (more…)

My friend, Chip Bell, and John Patterson just released Wired and Dangerous (How your customers have changed and what to do about it). If customer service is important to you, I encourage you to read this book.

They do what most of the books fail to do — they look at the underlying reasons why customer service fails and succeeds. (Too often these books just focus on the poor schlub in the call center and miss the reasons why customer service is so bad.)

Recently I purchased a new horn. I play a valve trombone (an unusual instrument) and its hard to find one that plays like it should. (more…)

Reasons why so many changes fail #5:  Immunity to Change

Robery Kegan and Lisa Lahey found this immunity works against our best-efforts to follow through on plans.

Kegan and Lahey’s work dovetails nicely with Pfeffer and Sutton’s knowing-doing gap. In their book, Immunity to Change, they identify hidden commitments that get in the way of our ability to work on our goals. Weight loss is a good example of this. Tabloids give us new diets every week. We know that human physiology hasn’t changed since last Thursday, but we still hope that there might be some new finding that makes losing weight easy. (more…)

Reasons why so many changes fail #4 The Knowing-Doing Gap. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton found a severe knowing-doing gap in organizations.

Although they found organizations that did turn knowledge into action, more often they found that, “Other organizations composed of intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working, nice people, fail to translate their knowledge about organizational performance into action. It is almost as if there were some kind of brain vacuum in those firms that sucks the wisdom and insight out of their people.” The Knowing Doing Gap, page 6).

And they point out they in most cases it is not the people who are at fault.

Reasons why so many changes fail #3 We Know Too Much

I just did an Amazon search on “change management” and got 1344 hits. With all this knowledge, why don’t we do better?

We’ve got more theories and four-square consulting models than we need. Somewhere, there is a denuded forest with a placard that reads, “These trees died happily so that millions of pages of books, articles, assessment tools, and printouts of PowerPoint slides on change management could enter large organizations and rest comfortably as shelfware.”

Reasons why so many changes fail #2

In my own work with clients, many (maybe most) know what it takes to lead change well. And yet, something gets in the way.

It’s like there is a secret society of people who lead change and all members must agree to abide by The Big Book of Rules for Leading Change.  Here are a couple.

Never, but never, allow emotions into meetings. It is a sign of weakness. If people react emotionally to a change something must be wrong with them. As the comedian Emo Philips said, “real men don’t have souls.”

Whatever idea you come up with is good (because you are the leader after all and you grew up in a generation where your parents told you could do no wrong), therefore others better get with the program and find out where you hid that cheese today.

The Mad Hatter got it right when he said, “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date. No time to say hello, good-by, I’m late, I’m late.” Translation: no time to get people involved.

And this list could go on. Of course, most leaders would scoff at that list, but when you watch them (and us) in action, those rules sure look like they are alive and well, don’t they?

Wendy Mack and Deanna Banks have posted their new e-book on Wendy’s website. Leading After Layoffs: Best Practices for Re-Energizing Your Workforce is a fine and accessible short book. Did you know that a 1 percent reduction in force can have a huge negative ripple effect throughout the organization? If you are interested in this topic (and who isn’t?) I encourage you to read their book.

You can also access their free e-book at the Change Management Open Source Project as well.

If you’re going to the ODN (Organization Development Network) conference in Seattle (October 18-21), Id love to see you. I’ll be doing a couple of presentations and will be hanging out in the Exhibitor’s area at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland booth. The Institute is my home away from home. And getting to work there is a true labor of love. – Rick Maurer

I just posted a free 16-minute Podcast that provides an overview of my approach to leading change.  I hope you’ll listen and pass along the link if you like what you hear.  Change Podcast

NPR just ran a good segment on how Hyundai turned itself from the butt of jokes to a very successful company by continuous improvement and profound belief in the quality of its cars. NPR

When’s the last time you paid attention to the safety announcement on a flight? I can’t remember either.

Air New Zealand posted a safety video on YouTube and 3,305,548 people have viewed it so far.

This is the same safety announcement that all of us hear every week on flights. So why would so many people view this video? Simple: The airline employees giving the safety announcement are all naked. Their uniforms are painted onto their bodies. So, that information should be enough to get some of you to click on the video in anticipation, and others to click on with utter disgust. Either way, it gets you to watch.

Click here to view video

Their video got me thinking about corporate presentations. People file into a room as cramped as economy seats on a flight. And almost the instant that the lights dim and the first slide appears on the screen, the audience tunes out. Don’t believe me? Look around you at the next meeting you go to. (Or, perhaps you’re reading this during one of those deadly presentations right now.) (more…)

No, it wasn’t just greed. Michael Zhuang writes a short article How Madoff Did It in his investment newsletter titled . He draws on the work of social psychologist Robert Cialdini, author of Influence and Yes!) to show us why people fell for the Madoff Scheme. It’s worth reading.

I am a fan of Cialdini’s work on influence, and I his six categories can be helpful in making a case for a new idea.  Zhuang shows how those same powerful psychological forces can be used to manipulate us.

Here is a reply I received from Eric regarding my client’s question about rating values as part of a performance review process.

Given that the majority of inter-organizational “partnership” arrangements fail (over 60% in some citings), and that ‘interpersonal relationship problems” is often cited as a fundamental reason for leaving a job, then I’d really wonder at the notion what this particular supervisor is focusing on? True, the question as phrased, specifically cites Indicators. Indicators of what? Or, are these, or some of these, specific kinds of desirable behavior? If the supervisor feels OK at listing specific behaviors, then it might be matter of mis-communication. If the supervisor doesn’t want any of this ’stuff’ in the appraisal process, then it seems needful that someone take the supervisor aside for a friendly chat.  Something seems to be upside down in this limited description.

To read the first two posts on this, scroll down the page a bit.

My buddy, Jake Jacobs (Real Time Strategic Change) hosted a Podcast with me about my new free Change Management Open Source Project.  Thought you might enjoy hearing it.  Podcast