August is Culture Month at Charthouse! Follow along on the change course podcast, and via our LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram for all our great content this month on culture change!
Have you ever head the saying “the more things change, the more they stay the same” It is one of my favorites! The original, in French is “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose” and was written by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the 1849 of his Paris journal, Les Guêpes, as a call to action against complacency in French culture and society. And at the same time, 170 years later, we can still define an essential French culture which is as timeless as the baguette itself. Culture is one of the most integral and constant forces within organizations. Even with staff changes, leadership changes, expansions, acquisitions and mergers, culture stays constant within organizations over years. Even though Heraclitus said: “change is the only constant in life” he had obviously not met company culture yet! When leaders seek to change culture, it is one of the hardest things they will endeavor to do. Nothing about culture change is easy. When we talk about change slippage, regression and failure, most often this happens in the context of culture. If change goes against the dominant culture, it will fail. The gravitational pull of culture is strong. These undercurrents in an organization are relentless and there is a compelling reason for the saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” anything that goes against culture will fail. There are several reasons why this happens. Organizational systems are built for sustainability and performance. Culture is part of the organizational system, and as we know, systems like to be in homeostasis, or steady state. Where the system defines what happens and how, culture keeps the system in line based on the behaviors, interactions and norms that define the boundaries of accepted and not accepted patterns that keep the system operating. Culture also defines how the organization works. What is valued and rewarded, what is unacceptable, reprimanded and tolerated. We humans are part of these systems, and our social nature and response to social hierarchies keeps this in place. Behaviors and interactions bring these beliefs and understandings to life. How we interact and respond to one another in the context of the organization is culture. Changing culture must be done within the context of the operating model of the organization. If culture change goes too far out of bounds of what the organization does, it won’t work. Culture that is aligned with purpose can change, as long as it does so within the context of purpose and function. Then, the culture must be defined by the essential interactions, behaviors and the reinforcements, rewards and systems that maintain and uphold the organization. When we look at culture change from this lens, it requires an in-depth understanding of these elements as well as a clear definition of what to change, and how to change. Then, there are structural elements that need to be changed as well. Culture change is a big endeavor! The last and most important point is that culture change is driven from the top-down. If you’re a leader who wants to change the culture, you need to start with your leadership team. And this part is difficult to do for some, but if there are people on your leadership team who do not embody the culture you are building and are not buying in, they can’t continue to lead in your organization. Culture will take the form of the worst behavior tolerated, not the best behavior demonstrated, and it goes without saying that your leadership team must be exemplars of the best behaviors. Leadership has the power through both structure and influence to demonstrate and enforce cultural norms. In culture change, this role become integral. Given the complicated and multifaceted nature of culture, changing culture takes a long time. If you’re planning to change and strengthen your culture, it is something that needs to be central to strategy, with the plan and execution with a longer delivery timeline. Cultural change doesn’t happen overnight. While it is difficult, changing culture can reap incredible rewards. I was recently working with a small organization that has built, over many years an incredible culture. There is a high degree of respect between colleagues, leadership is well respected and responsive and there is a collegiality and commitment to helping each other. This is within the context of the broader culture in their industry being cutthroat and toxic. The founders built an organization that they would want to work in, and over time, attracted like-minded individuals. Now, the team is robust and the leading organization in the city. They’re attracting more new recruits than their competitors in a market of staffing shortages and stiff competition. My advice to them was “don’t change a thing!” as they are positioned to reap the rewards of their outstanding culture for years to come.
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August is Culture Month at Charthouse! Follow along on the change course podcast, and via our LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram for all our great content this month on culture change!
Culture is a fascinating aspect of organizations. Have you ever asked why, even though the organization may see people change roles, leave and enter the organization, that the organization’s culture stays the same? I call this the essential dance between the purpose of the organization, the values, the structure and the vital interactions between people. Innovation and change within organizations is a great illustration of this. When a company’s purpose is to produce things fast, accurately, and consistently, the culture that the company has will align with the central purpose. You will likely find that individual contributors in the company have a high degree of specificity in their roles and little overlap. Decisions are made centrally. Management is recognized for keeping errors to a minimum and managing teams to perform consistently. Change in these environments looks like continuous improvement and ideas come forward with a specific need to increase efficiency, reduce errors or increase productivity. This describes the culture of 90% of the product driven companies I’ve worked with. Innovation in these companies does not happen in the day-to-day work. The way the company works is not conducive to innovation. So why is that? The purpose of the company drives the culture, and how the company is built, and functions will dictate the boundaries and norms of how work is done and how people operate within the company. Innovation must drive a different purpose. The companies that do this well, build innovation as a sub-culture or a separate function within the organization. At a large manufacturing company that I worked with; this was evident in how innovation was parceled out with respect to the large organization. As a manufacturer in a larger supply chain, the company’s purpose was to supply other businesses with precision-built products. At the same time, there is a part of the strategy that requires constant product innovation in order to stay ahead of competitors and maintain leadership in the marketplace. Innovation then, was developed within a specific subculture in the organization. The lab environment signaled immediately that you were in a different culture. The layout of the space was different, and it was within a larger plant, and not at head office. Everything about the physical space was different, and how people worked. Their interactions were different too. The lab environment was conducive to innovation and drove the essential purpose of the department within the larger company. This is also why successful companies will set up Research and Development (R&D) separately from product delivery. If you want a very innovative culture, R & D needs to be the centre of the purpose of the organization. Apple is a great example of prioritizing innovation while also maintaining robust product delivery. Their org structure and functional design give us a lens into how this manifests and how their essential culture has grown as a result of their function and structure. Read more in this article from HBR for more detail on Apple and how structure, function and organizational design drive innovation culture. In short: purpose will drive the culture of an organization so the culture that you desire to build must be closely linked to what the company does, and what structure is required to fulfill its purpose. August is Culture Month at Charthouse! Follow along on the change course podcast, and via our LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram for all our great content this month on culture change!
We all know that the companies with the best organizational cultures have amazing results, better productivity and retention and become a destination company for new recruits. But if developing a great organizational culture was so easy, wouldn’t we have all done it by now? Before you start on your culture journey, there are a few things you should know! Specifically, three huge pitfalls that you’ll want to avoid: 1. Your organization is not a family: If you say you want your organization to feel like a family, have you considered that not all families are like yours? Besides we choose who we work with, not our families! And families have negative sides to their cultures too. If leadership is under the mistaken belief that the organization is a “family” then it can lead to the acceptance of all sorts of toxic behaviors. After all, in most family structures, once you’re in, you’re in, no matter how poorly you behave at the summer BBQ. The issues are that poor behavior is tolerated at many levels of the organization, and the ability to manage toxic behaviors or poor performance is limited. There is often an over-reliance on central authority and that the company will take care of you. That is, until it doesn’t! Instead, focus on the types of interactions that you want to drive in the organization, define them, and help leadership put them into place. For example, you want to ensure that people feel connected to their colleagues and that colleagues care about each-other? Define the interactions that you want to see and get leadership to help by leading by example. After all, good culture is driven by connection and respect for one-another not by the mistaken belief that you’re a family. 2. Don’t seek to be like someone else The cultures that fail are the ones that try to be like someone else. In the previous post I wrote about how organizational culture is driven by the company’s purpose. If you try to adopt someone else’s culture to be “more like them” you will fail! Get to know your organization and figure out what aligns with your why. I remember a local burger chain that I used to frequent in the early ‘80s. The location was near the beach and had a winding line inside the restaurant before you got to the cash. The kitchen was open to the line, and the place was quite unique in that the people working in the kitchen would… sing! Cute jingles and little songs that were completely unlike any other place. Later, the company franchised, and I went to one of the franchisees. There was still singing but the magic was gone. The people working there looked miserable. Somehow in the process of trying to duplicate the model, the essential magic was lost. Something truly unique can’t be duplicated, so don’t try! Figure out what makes your organization unique and stick to that. Develop a culture that is unique to you. 3. Don’t put the people in charge Culture is driven from the top down. As mentioned, it aligns with the purpose of the organization and must also support the strategy. Therefore, culture is a leadership responsibility. Many of the failed culture initiatives that I’ve seen involved putting staff in charge of cultural change. But culture doesn’t bubble up. It is top down. This is why power is an essential element in Connected Change ™. Culture and power exist together. Culture in many ways plays out in the behaviors that exist between people in the organization, importantly between leaders and teams, and then is mirrored between team members. Leaders have an essential role in defining and demonstrating the cultural behaviors that are desired, and acceptable, and most importantly what is not acceptable. If you tolerate great performers behaving badly – that will define your culture. By defining the values that you seek and aligning with the purpose of the organization you can start on the path of creating a great culture. Thinking about what makes your organization unique and ensure that your leadership is leading in culture too. This will help ensure your success in developing a unique and positive organizational culture. Last month on the Change Course podcast I created a 4 part series on getting started in Change Management based on a question I received from a colleague interested in getting into the field. In the previous post, I talked about the basics, the theories, the must have change guides and the fundamentals that you need to get started.
Next I break down the four key things you need to do to be a successful change manager in your new role: 1) Understanding who is leading and who is following: In organizational change, there are two main groups we need to be thinking about. The Leaders in change, and those who are experiencing or receiving the change. Change leaders tend to be the decision-makers, who want the change to happen. They have to work with their colleagues and team members who are going to be experiencing and doing the change in their everyday lives. The difference is that the leaders tend to have a sense of control over the change, while those they are leading do not. If change is happening to you, it can be a difficult experience. Understanding who these groups are and how to work with both perspectives is going to be part of your success. Leaders often thing that their people will understand the change and its benefits immediately. This is often not the case, and your role as a change manager is to help leaders understand how to connect with their teams around the change. 2) The Change Management Plan The change management plan is a tool that is used in the planning stages of change to set the tone and communicate all of the essential information about the change. This plan can start to look a lot like a project management plan and may have components of that as you start to look at implementation, but at the same time, there is so much more to a change management plan. The key things to break down in the plan are: Activities – this will look a lot like a project management plan, but essentially this is a communication tool that will aid you in explaining and documenting all of the activities that you’re planning to do as part of the change. Stakeholders – who is changing, who is not, and what do you need to know about the various groups of stakeholders you need to work with. You’ll want to understand the benefits of change for each group, and the key messages for each group that will break down what needs to change and why. You’ll also want to provide detail to your sponsors, champions and stakeholders on their roles in change and what is expected of them. Change Definition – in as much detail as possible, define the change that is going to take place. Ensure that the change vision is clear and compelling, that the why of the change is understandable, and that the specifics of the change are noted. I outlined a framework that I use in part 1 of this series that is a helpful way to break down the definition of change you’ll need to be successful. Implementation Plans – Go lives, change cutovers and all of the exciting detail that gets you ready for and takes you through the implementation and adoption of change. This will include the training and communications plans that you’ll need to ensure that people are aware of the change in various phases, and ready to implement when the time comes. Measurement – How do you know if the change has been successful? This is where measurement comes in. You’ll need to ensure that you have a way to measure progress against the vision and can communicate if the change is successful or not. 3) Change leadership – leading by example: An essential role of the change manager is helping sponsors and leaders understand their important role in leading by example. So much of leadership relies on strong communication. But the most important thing in change is being able to demonstrate the change and be a visible adopter of the change for the people you’re leading. Sometimes leaders need help to understand how important leading by example is. If they are seen doing the change, their people are more likely to adopt and help make the change successful. 4) Taking care of yourself as a change manager: The work of change can be incredibly difficult and emotionally exhausting. Change is hard for the people that are experiencing it, and it can lead to the expression of many negative emotions. Some of the best projects I worked on still had challenges in this area. Without good stress management and self-care practices, change managers can easily burn out. I find that this happens in the “messy middle” of change projects when the goals and vision is clear, but the progress is still slow and hard. It is important for you, as the change manager to make sure that you’re acting as a leader and focusing on the end goals. At the same time, make sure that you’ve got a good understanding of what you need to do to keep a strong emotional state for yourself, and make sure you’re doing it! For more on this exciting topic, listen to the “For the Newbies” Series on the Change Course Podcast here: https://anchor.fm/change-course Last month on the Change Course podcast I created a 4 part series on getting started in Change Management based on a question I received from a colleague interested in getting into the field. The most exciting thing I find, is that the practice of change management is a fairly new one. I come from a background of implementing IT systems in healthcare, and quickly realized that a strong understanding of how people change was essential to my success and to the success of the projects I was working on. I started out by taking a course in change management that covered the basics and history of the field, learned a lot by reading and doing and eventually got certified in specific methodologies and by an international change association. Since I’ve started working in change there has been an explosion in the amount of great content and while you can go back to school and take a course, there are lots of ways to start working on your knowledge and skill set today, that will set you apart as a change leader. 1. The Basics: Change has been around forever, but only formally described in an organizational context since 1950. Lewin started it all with the Freeze, Change and Re-Freeze model and many other thinkers joined in from there. If you want to dive deeper into the models and the theories behind them, check out this episode of the Change Course Podcast, and the show notes where I link to all of the resources. This is a great way to understand the leading theories. When someone says “The Change Curve” you’ll know they’re talking about Kübler-Ross! Change Course Podcast – A Brief History of Change Management 2. The Practical Guides: I have a toolkit of must-have change guides that I refer to daily. What I love about these tools is that they consolidate many of the theories and practices from other authors and put it together with great tools, templates in an easy-to-understand format. My favorites are below: The Effective Change Manager’s Handbook: (Richard Smith, David King, Ranjit Sidhu) This is the official Change Management body of knowledge from the APMG. This is a how-to manual, condensed history, toolkit and guide for everything you need to know in change management. My copy of this book is dog-eared, with notes in the margins and a thousand bookmarks. Making Sense of Change Management – Esther Cameron, Mike Green This book breaks down the essential theories, tools, methodologies and techniques in encyclopedic format. This book helps you get started when you have a limited knowledge of the field and need to get up to speed fast. This is the book I’d recommend for someone who can’t take a course in change management but wants to learn as much as they can in a formal way. Links to these resources at our favorite retailers are included below. 3. The Fundamentals Working in change requires a planned approach. Change doesn’t happen on its own or overnight. It typically takes longer than we think it does! They key to success is understanding the change in as much detail as possible before getting to the essential stages of planning and execution and using great frameworks like Connected Change ™! When I’m coaching new team members, I focus on a few key questions that help us get started: What: What is the change that we are making? Define it in terms of overall goals, the change vision, and what the future state will look like. Define it in terms of minute processes and activities and how they will be different for end users. Use both big picture and small detail thinking to make this come alive. Who: Who is leading the change and who is affected by it? Break down the stakeholder groups into as much detail as possible, and detail how the change will be experienced by each group. You can also start to think about whether these stakeholders will be supportive or resistant to the change. Why/When: This is the essential details that the stakeholders are looking for! Why do we have to change, and what will they get out of it? When will the change be happening and what do the stakeholders need to know? Where: Where is the change happening? Can you describe all of the environments and instances that will be affected by change? Can you name the stakeholder groups that go along with all of the places where the change will be made? How: This is the essential question! HOW will the change happen! This is where you’ll need to think about what the change looks like and how it will happen in as much detail as possible. Understanding these key questions will set you up for success as you embark on the planning and execution of the change. Stay tuned for part 2 where we get into more detail about how to start on a change project and what you’ll need to know! Resources: Change Course Podcast – The Leading Edge If you're considering purchasing any of the resources we mention in the podcast, consider doing so through one of our affiliate links below! You can add to our virtual "tip jar" through a commission from your favorite retailer.
Since the spring of 2020, our lives have been changed, inside and out, and especially in the world of work. Change has taken a toll on all of us, and for leaders, this is an especially fraught time, as we navigate even more change. Returning to the office after yet another pandemic winter, the volatility of our teams, with high levels of turnover and change, it's no wonder that people are feeling burnt out and fatigued.
Change fatigue is a symptom we often see as change managers, when the project drags on, change is constant, and we are asking more and more of people. Other priorities start to creep in, we get tired of constantly having to think, do and operate differently, and become less responsive to the needs of the change we are implementing. For a long time, I would talk about change fatigue and try to explain it to leaders. Now that we’ve all experienced this rapid collective global change, we finally have something to point to and say: “This is how change fatigue feels” The experience we’ve had, and the global exhaustion we are now all feeling is an opportunity for empathy. We all finally understand on a personal level what change fatigue looks and feels like. The unfortunate truth is that change continues. Our lives demand more of us, even as we are stuck in exhaustion. So how do we move ourselves and our teams through change fatigue?
Every project hits a point of change fatigue, and we all need practical ways to move through fatigue to fully implement the change we are leading. Typically hitting a point of change fatigue indicates an inflection point in the project, where a break or recalibration is needed before the final push for success. I was recently speaking with a client and colleague about the nature of our work, and how most of the time, we get called in to help organizations who are struggling with a failed change. Many times, they’ve tried to implement the transformation themselves, and may not have had the right support. When change fails, organizations don’t always have the luxury of abandoning the initiative. If investments have been made, leaders will want to push through, despite having an unsuccessful project the first time. So what to do if you’re a change manager being called in to revitalize a failed change effort? Here is some practical advice
1. Engage, Engage, Engage. First, make a plan and speak to as many people as you can who were part of the change. Gather their perspectives by asking three simple questions: a. What happened? b. Why do you think it happened? c. Name one thing you would do differently next time This helps you to gain multiple perspectives on why the change failed and what the root causes were. It is important in this step to gather as many opinions as you can and see where there is alignment. This will help you build insight into what went wrong, the reasons why, and what people think can be done differently. 2. Tell a story From the insights you gather in the first phase, build a learning story about why the change failed, and what will be done next time to prevent failure. Create the narrative that links the past with the future, but highlights what has been learned in a positive way. Seek to make changes to strengthen the project to ensure that it has the support to be successful going forward. Revisit the benefits of the change and weave this into your narrative. Remind people why they wanted to do this in the first place! Make the story compelling and interesting, and with a focus on learning vs. failure. 3. Build Momentum People want to associate with projects and initiatives that are successful! It is difficult after a change failure to get people to want to participate. Failure is frustrating! To get momentum back into your change, engage leadership and people in positions of power within the organization, the ones who are accountable for the realization of the benefits. Get them to help you make the project exciting again and overcome points of resistance that you may find. Increase the prominence of the project and people will be drawn back to participate and contribute. Change failure is difficult situation to overcome, but with these three steps and a solid change plan, you’ll be back on track to successful change and transformation. My favourite news story of the last week has been the ship stuck in the Suez Canal.
What is so magical about the boat as a metaphor, is its power for meaning- the stuck ship, now famous, has become a collective experience. We have all been in that boat. We have worked at that organization, worked with that person. The ship has been change. We've been the lone excavator tasked with "turning the ship around" If the ship represents organizational change, resistance is the collective weight of the barge. The expectations, the results needed. The unrelenting pressure. And slowly resistance builds, the muddy bottom of the Suez Canal pulling and grinding against the hull, until the boat comes to a shuddering halt, run aground. That boat is not going to move. Resistance has brought this journey to a standstill. But what happens if we dont change? Pressure builds. We ask why aren't things changing. Thousands of ships await passage in the Red Sea and the Great Bitter Lake growing in number day by day. Our normal reaction is to throw as much effort and "push" as we can at the resistance. Deploy a fleet of excavators to dig it out. Rally tugboats to pull. Get cranes to lift off the cargo and raise the bottom. Drain the ballast. But progress is minimal. We feel like we are getting nowhere. The.boat.is.stuck. How we need to manage resistance is not to push and pull at it, try to engineer it with the force of all of our attention. Rather, keep a focus on the long term goal: we will traverse this canal. And sometimes, waiting for the right circumstance, a shift in the environment is what is needed to raise the boat off the murky bottom. In the end, the most powerful part of this story is that all of the contrived human effort to free the boat was at best, ineffective. What made the difference was the ancient science of gravity, our solar system and the tides. A supermoon brought about a spring tide that raised the boat just enough to clear the bottom and get underway. A few nudges by a tugboat and at last, after a riveting 6 day ordeal, the Ever Given was underway again. The most powerful lesson here for anyone in the business of change (and these days, that's everyone!) Is that it is often futile to fight resistance. Because it seems like something standing in our way, we seek to dismantle it, remove it, fight it. But the better way is to stop, listen, and take stock of the situation. Finding a way to move forward, collectively when the momentum of change and the environment provide the right circumstances, a rising tide that makes it possible for the resistance to dissolve. In the old seafarer's saying, a rising tide lifts all boats, even the most resistant ones. Traditional change management has a problem. I've seen this problem many times and it doesn't matter if the organization is big or small, old or new, change is difficult to sustain, when we're relying on authority to keep change in check. We're living in it now, in the pandemic world, when we talk about "going back to normal" it's a great illustration of how compelling the pull of comfort and nostalgia is. We know exactly what we're going to do the first day we're "allowed" to do it! Our current environment is an excellent illustration of how change that is required and controlled from the top, ends up being temporary. All this to say, that the problem with traditional change management models is that they are exclusively top-down. They rely on traditional power (position, title and authority) in organizations and how much control leadership has over units of people in the organization. Authority pushes change. But if you want a change effort to be successful, you need to create an effortless sense of momentum or "pull". To harness this effortless feeling, you need to tap into influence. When I'm assessing the pulse of the organization and figuring out how things work, I first look at the organization chart. Imagine that a CFO has just hired you to lead the implementation of a new finance IT system for a global organization. The example structure shows the CFO and three country directors. Authority and traditional power tell me that Director A (in blue) is the most important leader for the change plan. While the coaching, mentoring and preparation of leaders is a key part of successful change management, it assumes that each leader has the same aptitude, interest and natural ability to lead change. More importantly, it assumes that "pushing" change from the top down will get the job done. Operating under this assumption leads to change failure. To tap into the effortless feeling of "pull" you need to find who has influence in the organization. Charthouse has an approach to discern how power and influence are distributed. We harness this power for change success. We look to find natural "power nodes" which are a concentration of traditional power, but importantly, a concentration of influence. Power and influence are the most valuable currency in change success. The below power map turns the traditional org chart on it's head. You can now see that it's Finance Director C (in yellow) who has the highest degree of influence both on their team and their colleagues. Relationships are the determining factor in influence and when you illustrate a power map in this way, it brings those relationships into focus. Influence is the driver of the momentum and sustainability of change in organizations and is a powerful driver of change success.
Most importantly, influence can be used for or against the change effort, influence is a driving factor in change failure as much as it drives success. In fact, when I'm called in to revive stalled change efforts and help organizations move forward, I've found that power and influence is the top reason why change has failed. Nature gives us so many examples of rebirth after failure or destruction. One of the most dramatic is how quickly ecosystems recover after devastating forest fires. New growth can be seen springing from the fertile ashes of the fire, seed pods broken open by the heat will take root and spark the beginnings of the forests to come. In an organizational setting, it can be extremely difficult to sift through the ashes of a failed change and find the opportunities for renewal.
When working on change in an organizational setting, we often come up against change efforts that have failed or stalled. It is exceptionally difficult to ignite a desire for change when inertia has built up over time and has been reinforced because of successive failures to sustain change. This is what happens when an initiative fails to scale the change curve, cross the chasm or reach the tipping point. In a previous post I talked about how Change Strategy is about changing direction when something unexpected happens. It can also be about getting injecting momentum into a staid situation. When things don't feel like they are moving forward, how do we get out of the doldrums and get wind back in the sails? Targeted intervention can refocus a team and find new opportunities, while keeping sight of the political, social and power structures that may be benefiting from the status quo. The key thing to remember is that reviving a stalled or failed change often requires an abrupt change in direction. Trying to rally a team an organization and sponsors to surmount the same challenge again is very difficult. Psychologically, trying again after failure in a public environment is something that only the most resilient of us can do. In many organizations, failure is seen as an end point, and the "comeback storyline" has a specific narrative. A third way is to use the Change Strategy approach to create a sense of novelty in the initiative which will enable people to rally once again and help create momentum. Furthermore, the people who will resist the change can't use the previous state of failure to withhold their support for the new effort. A key first step in using the Change Strategy approach to revive a failed effort is to paint a very clear picture of why it failed. This will create a shared understanding of what needs to happen differently in the new effort, but importantly, rehashing failure doesn't become part of the storyline going forward. Engaging stakeholders and listening carefully to the feedback is the most important step in the process. Once stakeholders see their feedback reflected in the new effort, it makes it easier for them to lend their support and starts to create the momentum that makes change happen. |
Natalia LobachArticles, posts, thought pieces, emerging research, podcasts and videos from the founder and principal at Charthouse Advisory Services Archives
November 2022
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