Chapter 16: Change is good

Change is Good

About three and a half months ago, I began this series of articles with the simple assertion that change is a verb. It can, of course, be a noun, but that’s when it’s happening to you. When you’re taking the reins of change – when you’re leading progressive improvements and evolution in your company, in your relationships and in your life – it is most definitely a verb.

Throughout this series, we’ve defined change in lots of ways – always hard, a process, terrifically slow, painful, powerful, stressful, difficult, taxing, necessary.

But we didn’t come around to the ultimate, potent truth of the matter, and that is that change is good.

That’s right. Change is good. If it weren’t for change, we wouldn’t have things like democracy, safe drinking water or chocolate chip cookies.

This series has talked about models for change, tools for change and making change last. Refer back to it whenever you’re going through – or leading – a significant change, whether it’s at work, at home or in your community. And in the end, there are two key things you must remember:
1. You can lead the change, if only for yourself
2. Most change efforts are for the better

The first point – that you can lead change – is absolutely critical. Whether you’re the CEO or the lowest individual contributor on the totem pole, you hold the keys to successful change. By taking your own innate wisdom – along with what you’ve learned from this series of articles – and the belief that, at a minimum, you’re totally in charge of your own experience, you can also take the lead. Help folks create a shared need, shape a vision, mobilize commitment, change systems and structures, and make change last and you’ll be a leader.

The second point – that change is usually for the better – is the mindset you need to succeed. If, like most of your peers, you see the status quo as safety and the status quo futurus as a threat, you’ll have a sad, scary existence – especially in this industry. It’s not a good success strategy – or even a survival strategy. Preserving that status quo will squelch innovation, lower the ceiling of achievement and ensure stagnation. Realize and embrace the fact that most change is for the better and you’re headed toward a happier and less fearful career.

All good things come from change. The key is to adapt quickly, lead the change (even when it feels like it’s leading you) and master it. Bend it to your will.

Change is good.

Eryc Eyl
Freelance Writer and Business Consultant

Chapter 15: Looking back on leading change

Looking back on leading change
By Eryc Eyl

Well, dear friends and readers, the time has come to begin winding down our weekly conversations about change leadership. If you take even one tiny morsel of a new idea away from this series of articles – something that makes you more effective, more resilient and happier – than our time together has been well spent. If you’re not sure what that morsel might be, let’s take a quick look back.

Our journey began with a choice. We could see change as a noun that victimizes us and leaves us powerless, or we could see it as a verb, an action that we do. To help us see it that way, we looked to General Electric’s seven-part Change Acceleration Process, John Kotter’s eight-step change model and John M. Fisher’s Kübler-Ross-inspired view of the eight emotional stages of transition to guide us. We were reminded that there are always two primary sides to any change – technical and human – and the latter is the crux of everything. Pay attention to it and our change is likely to be the kind of success that people write epic poems about. Neglect it and we might as well arrange for our own Viking funeral.

We faced the fact that – despite the fact that our change is the most awesome idea ever – we must be able to articulate a compelling need for change – something strong enough to overcome our natural human desire for things to always stay the same – before we do anything else. We were reminded, repeatedly that Q times A equals E, i.e. the Quality of our change multiplied by its Acceptance yields its Effectiveness. Using tools like “more of/less of” and the 15-word flip chart, we can shape a banner-worthy vision that our team is willing to march behind, and then march that banner around to the people we need to support, embrace, enact or submit to our change effort. We let data, demonstration and demands help shore up the Acceptance part of the effective change equation.

Of course, real, lasting change doesn’t happen with the flip of a switch. That’s actually the point at which many change efforts fail. After our change goes live, we still need the discipline to make it last. We have to work that change into our culture. We have to change the systems and structures – the behaviors we measure and reward, the training we give our staff, the technology they use – to support the new world and hold our ground against the powerful pull of “the way we used to do it.”

When all is said and done, though, our most powerful ally, our best friend and our secret weapon in leading change is communication. We must put as much energy into planning the communication approach that supports our change effort as we put into planning the technical change itself. By making sure the right message is truly received by the right people in the right format at the right time, with a clear indication of what those people should do with that message, we have the power to transform change from something scary to something safe, something sane, and possibly even something sexy.

Chapter 14: Talk to me, listen to me

Talk to Me, Listen to Me

The critical role of communication in successful change

If you’ve started to notice that leading and managing change is kind of like managing a relationship, you’re on to something. Creating and maintaining a satisfying relationship requires foresight, planning, shared goals, a supportive community, commitment and changing some pretty fundamental systems and structures.

Above all else, though, a good relationship requires good communication, and so does a successful change initiative. And though there’s more to successful change than just communication (otherwise, we wouldn’t have had the 13 other articles in this series), all things being equal, the most effective change leader is an effective communicator.

To make change happen and make it last, you have to make sure the right people have the right information in the right format at the right time so that they can do the right things. In fact, those are the five pillars of effective communication to support healthy change: audience, message, medium, timing and purpose.

Before we go any further, though, let’s get really clear on what we mean by “communication.” It might help to say what it isn’t.

Communication isn’t an email you send. It isn’t an article in the company newsletter. It isn’t a one-hour lunch meeting you have with the CEO. Communication might happen as a result of any of these things, but these things, in themselves, are not communication.

So what is communication? It is a message received. It makes no difference what’s said in that email, that article or that meeting if that isn’t what is heard and understood by the listener or recipient. The effective communicator’s job – and therefore, the effective change leader’s job – is to make sure the intended message is received. This means listening, checking for understanding and reiterating the message. If you wonder why people don’t seem to know what you’ve already told them, and you catch yourself saying, “But I communicated that,” you’re wrong. You haven’t communicated until the message is received. Like the FedEx delivery driver, your job isn’t just to ensure delivery, but to ensure receipt as well.

Effective communication begins, like all effective behaviors, with a plan. If you want to make sure you hit all the bases (audience, message, medium, timing, purpose), you can’t do better than a simple communication plan like the one below.

As you can see, the change initiative in question has to do with replacing all the junk food in our company’s vending machine with fresh fruits and vegetables. We’ve gone back to the stakeholder analysis we did ages ago to make sure we’ve capture everyone (the illustration is abridged), and then we’ve worked with our project team to determine what each person needs to know, who should tell them, how we should tell them, when we should tell them and what we’d like them to do after we tell them.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be painful. It just has to be intentional. In that way, it’s a lot like creating and maintaining a relationship. If you want your change initiative to be that romance you’ve always dreamed of, you’ve got to communicate.

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant