Tune in to hear why it is important to laugh our way through change. Learn how to introduce humor into your initiative and explore its limitations.

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You often find factors that help or hinder change in the same places. Consider the following examples of types of factors that might affect your change initiative both positively or negatively:

Culture

The culture of the organization is composed of the unspoken rules and patterns of behavior that make up “the way we do things around here.” Culture can create both roadblocks and shortcuts to change, depending on whether it clashes with or is aligned with the change.

Structure

The organization’s design can impact the change. Is power and work centralized or decentralized? Is the emphasis on processes or functions? How does the org chart or the groups that typically work together affect the change you want to implement?

Expected Reactions

Depending on what the change is, some groups will naturally tend to support it. Others will be more resistant. Based on your change initiative, who would want it happen and who would rather avoid it? What would be a natural reaction to the desired change?

Environment

External stakeholders can also exert positive or negative forces on change. Affected parties might include customers, the community, or stock holders. Other environmental factors such as governmental regulations, industry guidelines or union contracts might also impact your ability to change.

For each of the factors above, assess which aspects might hinder your change and which might help it. For those that hinder change, what might you do to diminish the affect it has? For those aspects that support change, how might you leverage them to build up more support or gain more energy for change?

Even though circumstances have changed and the current way is undesirable to the organization, the status quo sticks because it still brings about success for individuals. Success to individuals is more than the overt achievement of goals. Rather, success is marked by the favorable outcomes of our day-to-day work. The reinforcement of the status quo is subtle and often occurs invisibly. Consider the following factors that secretly define success.

Progress

People stick with what works. Over time, we learn the processes, behaviors, and interactions that get the job done. Since these were successful in making progress in the past, we assume they will continue to work in the future.

When you are implementing change, past progress can be a blind spot to the new circumstances. If people are able to achieve their personal goals without participating in the change, you have misalignment. If they are getting results, even while doing unwanted activities, then the status quo will continue to have a strong hold.

Rewards

We tend to think of rewards as incentives, raises, promotions and recognition, as these are powerful guide rails that maintain the status quo if not aligned with the change. However, perceived rewards go beyond official programs. Positive reactions such as agreement, acceptance, a bump in status, or an increase in autonomy make us want to repeat the performance. In the absence of feedback, getting away with an undesirable behavior means it’s okay to do it next time.

The positive feedback – or the lack of negative feedback – people perceive when they continue their same old behaviors gets in the way of change. When they are told to do one thing but are inadvertently rewarded for doing another, the mixed messages mean one thing: stick with what works.

Safety

At our core, people crave security, consistency, and control. Given a choice, we tend to prefer low risk. We stay away from making mistakes. We avoid uncertainty. Getting through the day without a fear being realized ticks a mark in the success column.

Unfortunately, change is inherently not safe. It is chock full of uncertainty, because it involves doing something new, which might not work immediately or turn out the way we planned. Without giving themselves the latitude to take risks and make mistakes, people remain where they are, doing what is familiar instead.

Harmony

As social creatures, we want to be liked by others. For the good of the group, we want everyone to get along. As a result, we maintain harmony and avoid conflict. Fitting in with the team is success; being shunned or ridiculed is not.

During change, we need conflict. Open conversations about concerns expose resistance so it can be understood and dealt with. Accountability is nonexistent when people are protecting harmony instead of asking difficult questions. Maintaining harmony results in lack of disagreement and withholding of ideas. Nodding heads agree with change, but they don’t necessarily implement it.

If your organization seems stuck in the status quo, chances are that people are still experiencing success by doing things the same old way. Find the perceived successes that maintain the status quo, and learn the patterns you can interrupt to break the cycle and enable change.

If there is a piece of trash on the floor in a regularly traveled hallway, what happens?

No Accountability:  Pretend you don’t see it. Comment about the sins of the litterer or the ineptitude of the cleaning staff. Keep on walking.

Accountability:  Keep on walking, then tell the cleaning staff they missed a spot. Or, chide the person in front of you for walking by it and point out how close the nearest trash can is.

Personal Accountability:  Pick up the trash, throw it out, and go on with your day.

What is the typical response in your organization to a piece of trash on the floor? Perhaps a simple experiment is in order.

For several months, we’ve noticed independent behavior changes in our 11 year old dog, Sadie.

She had become increasingly disobedient, especially not coming when she was called.

She had become a whiner. Whenever she wanted something, she would whine, but whenever we went through the list of options (“Are you hungry?” “Do you need to go outside?” “Do you want to play?”), she would just sit there and keep whining.

Either her reaction time was slowing or she wasn’t paying attention. She was constantly getting underfoot and tripped over.

She finally got smart and realized that she didn’t need to run and bark when the garage door opened any more, since it was always my husband.

She got lazy and stopped following me around the house during the day, and just kept on napping when I left the room.

Then, more than a week ago, she started to shake her head and scratch at her ear. The vet confirmed she had an ear infection. Over the course of treatment, I started looking for signs of hearing loss.

She didn’t come when called – she couldn’t hear me call her.

She whined – she couldn’t hear me respond.

She was constantly underfoot – she couldn’t hear our footsteps.

She didn’t bark at the garage door – she couldn’t hear it.

She kept napping when I left the room – she didn’t wake up when got up from my chair.

All the signs pointed to a single cause of her changes in behavior, but instead I had a different interpretation for each. The symptoms were there, but I could not see they were connected. I was somehow satisfied with the easy logic that in her old age, my sweet dog had become an ornery, lazy whiner.

Now that I know the truth, it’s much easier to communicate with her. I can get closer and speak louder. I can rely more on hand signals and make sure I am in her line of sight. Now that I understand, I don’t get frustrated with her.

We are all quick to assign an explanation to the behavior we see in others. Take a step back to check your own assumptions of the behaviors you see in your organization. When you see independent puzzling behaviors, consider they may be connected, and there may be a common cause. Once you understand the true reasons for others’ behaviors, you can effectively address them.

Tune in to hear why the way we conduct meetings is so bad, and learn a new format for meetings that will bring about results and use time, our most limited resource, more effectively.

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There are many things to consider before starting these conversations. Prepare in advance to boost your confidence and plan to get what you need. You may only get one chance to gain support, so you don’t want to wing it. The following elements provide a conversation road map to help you gain support.

Desired Outcome

Determining what you want to accomplish by the end of the conversation will go a long way toward making it happen. Decide on a realistic goal for the conversation. Know what you would like the other person to commit to during the encounter. You may want agreement, or buy-in, to move forward with the initiative. You may want them to make a decision. Or, you may need them to commit to taking action or changing their own behavior. Clarify the end result so you can ensure the conversation won’t end before you get what you need.

Their Role

The other person will want to know how they fit into the bigger picture. Clarify their role in the change and how it relates to others who are involved. Explain why you need their unique support for the initiative. Let them know their support is not something that can be delegated. You will both boost their ego and give their personal change activities context.

Urgency

People will need a reason to move from their current level of support, especially if they need to step out of their comfort zone to do so. They also need a reason to start now. Share what will happen, to the organization and to them, if they don’t support the initiative (or don’t support it enough).

Benefits

If urgency communicates why they should not withhold support for change, then the benefits provide the reason they would want to support it. Share how the benefits impact them directly and indirectly. Beyond “What’s in it for me,” benefits cover the positive impact on the company, colleagues, customers, family and others. Share how the leader and the organization will be better off when the initiative succeeds. Connect the project and their support of it to their values.

Expectations

Support means different things to different people. Without a definition, you leave it open to interpretation, which may lead to the person doing what is comfortable instead of doing what is needed. Be specific about the support you need. Determine the activities and behaviors you expect. Understand whether these are desired or required, and how much room there is to design together how they will support the change. Identify the immediate next steps they can take to get started in the right direction.

Your Attitude

Your personal attitude toward the change is couched in how you think the other person will react to your request for support. If you go into the conversation expecting it to be a hard sell, then they might perceive your strong persuasion tactics as a lack of confidence in the project. Manage your expectation of their response to match how you think they should feel about the initiative. Do you want them to see you as enthusiastic or apologetic? Confident or hesitant? Urgent or laid back? Inviting or coercing? Choose an attitude toward the conversation and an approach that communicates what you want them to experience.

To increase support, you will most likely need to start individual conversations with leaders and others in your organization. Before you speak with them, prepare yourself with these key elements so you can be ready to bring them up to strengthen your cause and gain commitment.

It was late – almost midnight. The kids were exhausted and needed to get to bed. For some reason, the batteries in smoke detectors are not easy to access or change. And they seem to be the only device in the house that requires a 9-volt battery, which explains why we had no spares anywhere in the house.

The last thing either of us wanted to do after 13 hours in the car was to drive to the store to buy a battery, and then climb up a ladder to change it. But, of course, we did.

The chirping smoke detector can teach us a few things about creating a sense of urgency that compels change:

• Urgency has a purpose. In the unlikely scenario that the battery dies, the power goes out, and there is a fire, we would have a potentially lethal scenario for my family. As annoying as it is, the chirping alarm is designed to ensure our safety.
• Urgency comes from the need or desire to stop experiencing the unpleasant. If the chirping was at all tolerable, we might just try to sleep through it.
• Urgency is continual. If the chirp was a one-time occurrence, either we might miss it, or we could just continue about our business when it’s done. Urgency needs to be unrelenting.
• Urgency is not the same as an emergency. It should not crowd out other important activities. You don’t have to drop everything to take care of it, but you’re not going to rest while it still needs to be addressed. If the alarm had actually been going off, that would have been an emergency.
• You have to feel it. The chirping could have been going on for a week and we wouldn’t know it. We didn’t hear it until we were in the house. Even if we had had a remote device that told us the alarm was chirping while we were out of the house, we wouldn’t have rushed home to change the battery. Since we weren’t there to be annoyed by it, it could wait.
• You also need to know what to do. The chirping is just maddening unless you know what it means and how to make it stop. Urgency without a clear direction to get away from the unpleasantness just makes you feel helpless. Corollary:  The change you make must alleviate the sense of urgency.
• Urgency requires boundaries for acceptable ways to alleviate it. Urgency is the need to get away from something bad. Besides changing the battery, to avoid the noise we could have chosen to stay in a hotel (an expensive choice) or to unplug the alarm entirely (a dangerous choice). If other alternatives are available to alleviate the sense of urgency, then they need to be less attractive than the desired behavior.

The battery has been changed, and we can forget about it until next time. Although now, we have five extra 9-Volt batteries ready.

The top 5 Enclaria blog posts from this year are:

1. Seven Roles of a Change Agent
2. My boss won’t listen to me – what do I do?
3. Three Signs You’ve Crossed the Line from Influence to Manipulation
4. The Five Challenges of Every Change Agent
5. Six Roles of a Leader During Change

These are a few more of my favorites:

1. The most misleading – and exploited – statistic about change
2. The Four Layers of Change
3. Three Conversations Change Agents Must Master

And if you have some time over the holidays to do some podcast listening, these were the top 5 episodes of The Change Agent’s Dilemma this year:

1. The Path to Business Excellence
2. Everyday Influence
3. Creating Positive Pull Towards an End State
4. Revolution of One:  Finding the Courage to Drive Change
5. Lessons Learned from a Change Derailed

Please share your favorites with your colleagues!

Best wishes for 2012,
Heather

Tune in to hear when and why it is necessary to create a safe space for change, and learn how to create the four layers of a change bubble in your organization.

Pardon the crackling – he was calling all the way from Wednesday.

Listen to the show here (30 minutes):

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