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.