Chapter 10: "Prove it!"

"Prove it!"

Much like death, taxes and election rhetoric over both, resistance to change is inevitable. No matter how good your idea is or how clear to you the need is, someone (and probably several someones) is going to see it differently.

However, there is good news. Whether the resistance you encounter to your change effort is technical (“I can’t”), political (“I won’t”) or cultural (“I shouldn’t”), there are tactics for overcoming – or at least mitigating – it. In fact, looking once again to GE’s CAP model, there are three: data, demonstration and demand (no extra charge for the alliteration).

You know that woman who works in the cubicle in the corner whose nose is always buried in Excel spreadsheets? How about the CFO who can’t have a conversation without drawing a bar chart? These are people who live and breathe data. They can’t get enough of it. If you want to bring these folks over to your side, you have to be able to produce numbers, graphs and statistics that support your change effort.

Do you have benchmark or competitive data? How about financials? Maybe you’ve found some industry trend data in your research. Whatever it is, it’s data, and it’s often the key to overcoming resistance, especially for your more analytical stakeholders. Spend some time with your core project team to figure out what data you have that might sway resisters.

For some folks, though, data isn’t enough. They have to be able to see the success of the change before they can support it. I call these people Missourians because they practically scream, “Show me!” They need a demonstration.

For your Missourians, you’re going to need examples of similar change efforts that were successful, perhaps in admired organizations. Industry best practices can be powerful demonstrations, as can small pilots of the change or even testimonials from impressive figures or organizations. Your change team might have to do some homework to be able to demonstrate the value of your initiative, but it’ll be worth it when you encounter a “Show me!” among your key stakeholders.

However, even with all the demonstrable benefits and data proving the value of your change effort, you’re still going to encounter some resistant holdouts. For those folks, sometimes the most compelling influencer of all is a demand to change.

That’s right. In spite of our independent natures and freethinking tendencies, sometimes we just need to be told what to do. The demand might come from a respected leader. It might come from a customer. It might even come from the competition. Regardless of its source, a clear and compelling call that supports the change can really get results when data and demonstration fall short. In effect, it’s the influencing equivalent of a parent or teacher telling a child, “Because I said so.” And sometimes – especially where physical safety or financial solvency is in question – that’s the necessary and expedient approach.

The person who’s resisting on technical grounds is more likely to be convinced by data, but if that person also happens to have an aversion to pivot tables, you might need someone he respects to say, “Because I said so.” On the other hand, the cultural resister who won’t support your change simply because, “That’s not how we do things around here,” might be more moved by a case study of a competitor who tried something new and then left your company in the dust.

Unfortunately, you can’t just pick one of these three approaches to winning over your constituents. Different personalities and different types of resistance are going to require different tactics, so your project team needs to be prepared with all three.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 9: "I can't, I won't and I shouldn't"

"I can't, I won't and I shouldn't"

Resistance and influence in successful change

If you’ve ever been part of an unsuccessful change effort, it should come as no surprise to you that mobilizing commitment is one of the keys that actually drives successful change.

But, as we discussed last time, it’s pretty unrealistic to expect everyone to be your change initiative’s biggest fan. Some folks aren’t going to be as supportive as you need them to be, and some are going to be actively opposed to it. To get their commitment and support, you’re going to have to get smart.

Fortunately, that’s not as hard as it sounds. First, it helps to figure out what kind of resistance you’re dealing with. The GE change acceleration process (CAP) breaks it down into just three different kinds of resistance: technical, political and cultural.

Technical resistance usually has to do with concrete and tangible reasons why the change is a bad idea or won’t work. The person who resists your change effort on technical grounds will likely be concerned with the cost of the project, the abilities of people to deal with it or insufficient resources to do it right.

The person who resists on political grounds is concerned with issues of power and authority. Perhaps she’s worried that the new, post-change world will take away her control of the sales process. Maybe he thinks the change will make his group less powerful in the company. Whatever the specifics, the political resister needs to know that his or her position won’t be threatened by your initiative.

Cultural resistance arises out of concern for the prevailing mindsets, norms or habits of behavior and interaction in the organization. The familiar refrains of, “That’s not how we do things around here,” or “That’s just not our culture,” are warning signs of cultural resistance.

The bad news about all these kinds of resistance is that you can never hope to overcome them 100% with logic and reason. There’s a lot of emotion and irrationality tied up in change resistance, and some of it runs pretty deep.

The good news, though, is that successful change doesn’t require overcoming 100% of the resistance. You simply have to ease the concerns enough that the resister moves to where you need him or her to be on your stakeholder analysis matrix. Next time we chat, we’ll talk more specifically about three techniques to do just that.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 8: Don't be afraid of commitment

Don't Be Afraid of Commitment

How stakeholder analysis ensures success

You don’t have to wait until you’ve created a clear vision of your change to start mobilizing commitment for it, but it certainly helps. A shared vision for why the change is important and what it will accomplish (created with help from the tools we spoke about last week and the week before) will make it much easier to win friends and influence people.

However, if your business is like most businesses, you know that faster is better, and if you can accomplish things in parallel, so much the better. While you’re shaping a vision, there’s no reason not to pull your team together for a little stakeholder analysis.

If that phrase – stakeholder analysis – smacks of corporatespeak to you, feel free to ignore it. It’s really just a fancy term for figuring out where important or relevant people stand with respect to the change you’re leading, and it’s a good thing to do.

Sure, you can plow ahead with your initiative without paying attention to how other people feel about it, but it’ll probably bite you in the asparagus sooner or later. Every change involves and impacts people with titular or situational power in your organization, and if those folks aren’t as supportive as you need them to be, they’re likely to undermine the effort, either through active sabotage or through passive non-compliance. Either way, you’ll be stuck.

As a change leader, it’s your job to bring your key stakeholders along to where you need them to be, and in order to do that, you first have to know where they are. The table below is an example of a quick and dirty stakeholder analysis for a company rolling out a new product. Here’s how the project team used it.

First, the team got together with the blank matrix drawn on a flip chart. Only the column headings were filled in. The team then brainstormed all the key stakeholders, i.e. the people who were mostly directly impacted by or had the greatest ability to influence the success of the new product introduction, and tried to figure out how much support the effort needed from each of those stakeholders.

As you can see from the O’s on the chart, the new product intro doesn’t need the same level of support from everyone. While the team needs strong support from Martha and John in marketing and sales, it only needs moderate support from the CEO and CTO. Mere indifference is about all that is needed from the legal department. As long as Larry isn’t opposed, the project should succeed.

Once the team figured out where it needed folks to be, it had to figure out where those same folks stand today, in order to know whether they had work to do. This is the step where it’s tempting – but potentially fatal (project-wise) – to take shortcuts. Lots of project teams will simply give their best guesses here, but I wouldn’t recommend that. It might be OK as a first step, but to truly know your stakeholders opinions, you’re going to have to ask them. This is where it might be handy to have your vision shaped into an elevator pitch. Of course, our imaginary team did just that. They pitched the key elements of their change initiative (what it is, why it’s important now, how success will look and what’s needed from the stakeholder) and captured stakeholder responses.

After the stakeholder interviews were complete, the team reconvened and put X’s in the matrix to signify the stakeholders’ current positions. Where the team found the biggest gaps between current position and desired level of support, they documented the reasons why that person was resistant and then came up with influencing strategies to move each one along.

Next week, we’ll talk about three different influencing strategies, when to use them and how they work.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 7: Another tool for shaping a vision

Another Tool for Shaping a Vision

Last time, we talked about the power of the “more of/less of” brainstorming exercise to shape a vision of your changed world. Once you’ve got an extensive list of actions and behaviors that the group wants to see more of or less of in post-change paradise, you’re ready to pull the next tool out of the box. This one is called the "15-word flip chart," and it’s incredibly powerful.

For this exercise, give everyone present (probably the key stakeholders who are going to help make the change happen) his or her very own piece of flip chart paper and a nice fat-tipped marker. With your “more of/less of” brainstorm posted prominently, ask everyone in the room to write a vision statement of 15 words or less. To make it a little easier, you can assume that every statement starts with the words, "We will," and not count those as part of the 15.

Why 15 words? Well, it’s admittedly an arbitrary number, and the reason for it is to provide some constraints. Out of limitations, I like to think, comes creativity. If you don’t have some parameters, some folks won’t know what to write and will be overwhelmed by the blank page. Others will write treatises and manifestos. You don’t want either. Give folks some quiet time to do this, without discussing. The point is for each person to come up with his or her own vision statement. Discussion comes later.

Once everyone has a 15-word flip chart completed, it’s time to turn them all into one statement that everyone can agree on and understand. Post the various papers on the wall so everyone can see. With a nice bright color, circle every word that occurs more than once. You can probably ignore articles (words like “a,” “an” and “the”), as well as conjunctions (like “and” and “but”), but circle everything else.

Your goal here is consensus. By starting with the words that occur more than once, you’re focusing on things on which at least two people in the room agree. From that point of concord, it’s easier to build agreement around the room. Put all those words on their own flip chart for the group to see and start working with those words to create a 15-word vision statement that everyone likes.

Once you’ve led your group through the 15-word flip chart and the more of/less of exercises, you’ll find you have a much sharper vision of your finish line, which will make it a lot easier to mobilize commitment throughout your organization to the change initiative. Leading people toward a finish line they can actually see is way easier than leading them through a dark, foggy night.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 6: If you want to shape a vision, get out your tools

If You Want to Shape a Vision, Get Out Your Tools

In our last conversation, we talked about the absolute need to shape a vision for the future that everyone can agree upon and understand. We talked about needing to be able to truly see that future state so that we’re all sure we’re headed toward the same grassy knoll of successful change.

But that isn’t easy, is it? After all, words like, “We will be a world-class customer service organization” just sound so impressive and inspirational and business-y. Who’d want to muddy them up with more words?

Well, while slogans like that one are fine to put on posters or business cards, they just aren’t specific enough to allow us to chart a course to make them real, and they definitely aren’t specific enough for us to know when they have truly become reality.

So the bad news is you’ve got to get specific. The good news is I’ve got some really simple tools to help you get there.

The first tool is a simple brainstorming framework that helps key stakeholders envision the actions and behaviors that will turn the vision into reality. For simplicity’s sake, I just call it “more of/less of.”

Draw a line down the middle of a flip chart from top to bottom to create two columns. At the top of one column write: “More of.” At the top of the other, write (you guessed it, didn’t you?): “Less of.” Now gather the folks who are going to help you make your change happen and start brainstorming actions and behaviors that you’ll see or hear when the change is successfully completed.

Now, that sounds deceptively easy, but the fact is that we’re all so used to thinking conceptually that it’s sometimes hard to boil our grandiose visions down to mundane, quotidian actions and behaviors. Mark my words: you’ll gather everyone together and ask what actions or behaviors they expect to see more of or less of in the changed world, and they’ll say things like, “Going the extra mile,” or “Accountability,” or “Can-do attitudes.” The trouble is you can’t really see those things very clearly, can you?

To help with this challenge, here’s a good test. If you couldn’t capture the action or behavior with a video camera or a tape recorder (does anyone even have those anymore?), then it doesn’t count, and it doesn’t go on the flip chart. Don’t reject it out of hand, however. Simply ask, “What would that look (or sound) like?” You’ll get there. Allow the group at least 30 minutes for this.

The “more of/less of” brainstorming exercise will take you a long way toward being able to visualize what the world will look like when your change is implemented. When you can picture folks running around your office, acting and behaving in accordance with that big list, you’ll have a great yardstick against which to measure the success of your change effort. But you’ll still need to boil this down into some simple words that everyone can easily communicate and understand. Next time, I’ll give you another simple tool that will get you there.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant