Chapter 3: Picturing change

Picturing Change

Let’s be honest with each other, shall we? No matter how much it happens to us or we make it happen, change is never easy. Leaving the known and marching into the unknown can be stressful, difficult and taxing.

But you’re a leader, right? At the bare minimum, you’re a survivor. And to survive, you’ve got to be able to picture the change. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a visual person, visualizing how the change is going to work makes it a little less scary and puts you a little more in charge.

One of the easiest ways to visualize change is to use a model. Fortunately for you, some very smart people have already created some models that apply to almost any change initiative and will help you whether you’re leading or merely hoping to survive the change.

Back in the early 90s, the General Electric Company – a master of organizational change and transformation – found itself at a crossroads. It had successfully implemented a quick model for coming up with solutions to complex problems faced in the business and was on the verge of adopting further discipline and rigor in its business processes in the form of Six Sigma.

However, the company also realized the importance of the Q x A = E equation we discussed way back when and knew they had to improve the acceptance of its brilliant solutions if they were going to be effective.

GE then commissioned a team of consultants to figure out how successful change works, and then codify it for the company’s employees to learn and apply. The result of their work was the Change Acceleration Process (or CAP), a seven-element, not-strictly-linear view into the move from current state to future state:
• Create a shared need
• Shape a vision
• Mobilize commitment
• Make change last
• Monitor progress
• Lead change
• Change systems and structures

A few years later, in 1996, Harvard business professor John Kotter published his seminal work on the topic,Leading Change. Kotter’s eight-step change model echoed CAP’s approach to putting shape to the previously amorphous idea of change:
1. Create urgency
2. Form a powerful coalition
3. Create a vision for change
4. Communicate the vision
5. Remove obstacles
6. Create short-term wins
7. Build on the change
8. Anchor the changes in corporate culture

Even without knowing the details, I’m sure you can see that using these two powerful lenses will allow us to see change a whole lot more clearly. Notice that change doesn’t involve 31 flavors or a 12-step program. Picturing change – putting it into a model that allows us to make sense out of chaos and lemonade out of potato peels – just requires wrapping our brains around seven or eight clear concepts.

The next time we chat, we’ll dig into the details on creating a shared need or urgency for a verb change. This is the first thing you have to do if you want to get your change initiative out of the boardroom and onto the floor.

Until then, do me a favor. Take five minutes to think about the worst change you were ever part of. What went wrong? What could have been done differently to make the change successful?

Eryc Eyl / Freelance Writer and Business Consultant