Beyond Fear – Dealing with organisational change – Part 1

Over the past few years organisations have dealt with a vast catalogue of ‘hot’ topics.  Some are forced on them – when bullying comes to the fore through whistle blowers or through employee surveys or perhaps it’s when a global pandemic comes along. Such things force organisations to seek to adapt quickly to a ‘burning platform’.

The global pandemic did show the ability of people to make quick decisions and come up with innovative processes and make rapid changes to how things are done. 

What I think organisations often struggle with is the banality of normal times. How they deal (or fail to deal) with those organisational challenges and questions that have been around for years. For example – the old chestnut of leadership and effective management practice, outdated working practices and processes (it has always been done this way), tackling discrimination and bias and how to increase productivity. 

 There are regular attempts by organisations to make changes to deal with each of these be it via changes to structure and/or culture.  There is a tendency to come up with titles that seek to highlight the aspiration of the change - ‘Changing to Deliver’, ‘Shaping Up’ or Declaration on Reform’ - you get the idea.

Such initiatives often result in eye rolling amongst staff who work outside of the corporate centre. Subsequent decisions are made to sheep dip staff on ‘change management’ training.  The content will often misuse the Kubler-Ross grief curve concept as a model in which to seek to understand the impact of change. This content can be at the behest of senior staff who ‘like’ the model or for no other reason than it was found on the intranet and seems a decent fit.

Folks will roll up – fake it out and this will provide another Gantt chart tick on the list of those driving the change. For them the sense of urgency (as per John Kotter)1 is clear. Those unable or unwilling to ‘see’ the ‘why’ (thanks to Simon Sinek – how many change ‘experts’ can I get in this blog is a side bet) can be viewed through a lens of seeing such people as part of the resistance movement. They are often side-lined or ignored. It is well to consider notion that “to survive and succeed in exercising leadership you must work as closely with your opponents as you do with your supporters”2

Those that offer quick and easy results ‘guaranteed’ (via change workshops) seem to expect finality, definitiveness, and straight forward cause-and-effect relationships. When this fails this reinforces cynicism and a degree of ‘I told you so-ness’.  There is a lack of understanding that our capacity to handle change varies from person to person.  Each change in our life is different.  Where change involves some risk that is where we hesitate.  Will it bring more or less disruption?

The problem here is that too often there is insufficient thinking on what the changes are seeking to achieve and importantly clarity on measures that have meaning with corresponding linking responsibilities with accountabilities. Whilst many organisations have the former the latter is too often missing or weak. In fact, I am not convinced that there is a clear understanding of what accountability means in reality? Strategy documents will have words and phrases right out of the HR playbook and there will be ‘lessons learned’ trotted out as an excuse for failure and then the organisation moves on resulting in justified cynicism that the latest fad change initiative petered out, made no difference and another one will be around the corner duly re-branded.

I think that organisational culture has a problem with dealing with failure. We seem to fear it. We avoid using it and come up with new theories to explain “life the universe and everything’3

 There is a fear by those leading change of highlighting inconvenient truths that there may be losers and winners.  There will be losses. To avoid the difficult conversations the lowest common denominator is reached which is the enemy of radical solutions. 

In the next blog I will drill down on some of the above through the lens of leadership, management, and learning.

Feel free to comment.  

1         Kotter – ‘Leading Change’ (1996)

2         Heifetz & Linsky – Leadership on the line (2002)

3         Adams – ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ (1979)

WHIM LEADERSHIP

I have been thinking about negativity and cynicism - my own more than anything else. I wonder if this is to do with age (or is that experience?). As one gets older there can be recollection that an approach or action was tried on such and such a date and it did not work then why would it work now sort of thing. It was the latest announcement from UK Government on cutting civil service jobs that got me into this mind set. I recall the 1980s and Mrs Thatcher’s Efficiency Unit, the Financial Management Initiative and the Next Steps Agencies. I know I worked in one - and I wonder if there is a failure to learn from the past. This is rhetorical - I believe there is. I also think that it suits some to recycle old ideas. You can fool some of the people some of the time…..

As organisations embark on ‘transformational change’ there can be a temptation on those leading (or is that managing?) the change to perceive any negative responses as cynical and part of the ‘resistance movement’. On cue someone suggests the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief as a way to understand this type of resistance - a nice neat formula to deal with such thinking. I know I have done this myself in the past. The problem with this approach is that it is overly simplistic. Grief is not a straight line towards acceptance nor is organisational change. I have heard the rationale for using this model as ‘I like it and found it useful’ by a senior leader - so therefore it can be rolled out to everyone. Whim Leadership is a thing. Can I claim copyright on this?

There are plenty of models, theories and practices that are bought and sold as the panacea to deal with change in organisations. This is where my cynicism goes into overdrive. There can be a default towards the notion that training is the answer. The classic sheep dip approach. Organisations use this with ‘mandatory’ training. How much compliance takes place can be useful barometer on organisational culture. Organisations fail to properly assess the skills of the current workforce in a holistic and structured way and undertaken via a Training Needs Analysis. The problem here is the term suggests that training is the answer. Sometimes it is with the default being ‘the course’ or packing more content into a Learning Experience platform or Intranet. The diagnosis of the problem to be solved is often skimmed as is the collection of evidence on what intervention will be utilised and importantly how will impact be tracked. Learning is not a tick box happy sheet. Let me end with the civil service. The Civil Service run a staff survey every year. For over 10 years the question relating to how learning undertaken in past 12 months has helped performance (strongly agree/agree) has not gone above 55%. That indicates that something does need to change.