Category Archives: Human Resource Challenges in Change

Preparing people for change and navigating during often turbulent times leads to specific HR Challenges.

Focusing to Win: Executive Seminar Series

Posted on by agincourtarcher

This seminar series features Nick’s new book Focusing Change to Win which he co-authored with Kelly Nwosu.

These sessions provides business leaders with insights into critical areas to help focus their businesses and align their people for competitive advantage.  Each seminar helps you answer a fundamental question:

Seminar 1: How Clear Are You On The Why & What Of Change?

Seminar 2: Why Do Your People Resist Change?

Seminar 3: Why Do You Bother to Measuring Change?

Seminar 4: How Can You Implement Change & Gain Competitive Advantage?

Seminar 5: Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?

Seminar 6: How Effectively Do You Really Communicate Change? 

We take a deep-dive into a change issue that you face. You will come away with an understanding of where your expectations with key employees are aligned and not aligned, and how critical that alignment is for successful change. You will learn how to clarify and specify your own expectations as to well how you can check if they are understood. Each session helps executives assess their performance in terms of:

  • How well have you communicated your expectations to your people?
  • How well do you understand what your people expect of you?
  • What are the likely gaps between expectations and assumptions?
  • What are our options for planning and implementing success change competitively?

What do you get?

  • A copy of our new book Focusing Change to Win
  • A tool, the Four Blocker Alignment Analysis, to identify misalignment
  • A method to help set the right expectations and get people on the same page
  • An understanding of how to align agreed expectations effectively
  • An example of an aligned expectation relevant to your situation
  • An improved chance for successful change in your organization

What preparation is needed?

For each participant organization we have preparation guides that ask people to consider issues related to the question being posed for each seminar.

Who should you bring?

Please select up to five key people to join you who are important to successful change in your organization, such as:

  • Which colleagues will help you answer the seminar question posed?
  • Whose opinion do you value to help look at the question posed from different perspectives?
  • Whose commitment will you need to make improvements in tackling change competitively?

What will be covered?

Each session focuses on real-life scenarios within the framework of the research findings and assessment tools developed. As we say:

“There is no role-play only real-play”

Seminar Format

Seminars are customized for clients and depending on their needs. They normally run from half-day to full-day. They can be run fact-to-face or web-based, although experience suggest face-to-face gets the best results

Maximum attendance is  20 participants!  Costs start at $150 per person per half day excluding agreed preparation time, travel and accommodation.

Why are these seminars important?

Failed change means lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, poor revenues, lost employees, increased cynicism and fear. Its residue is a hostile and toxic culture, where change resistance becomes the norm. The cost of a failed change can be staggering, from lowering morale to losing key customers due to poor quality.

Focusing to Win and the survey on which is based confirms other studies

Too many organizations are still trying to do things differently not do different things

Survey Contributors realize that working relationships are increasingly stressed in the drive for ever-faster responses to competitive threats and opportunities.

So, what are the meaningful differences between those that thrive on change and those that just survive?

Many contributors seem resigned to resistance being unavoidable yet recognize that trust in management is the only variable that significantly reduces change resistance. They seem to have little focus on improving organizational alignment to achieve change success.

For others, whatever the blend of top down and bottom up led change, it is clear – be intentional. This is invaluable to avoid being misinterpreted and mistrusted. These contributors are clear and details how to lay the groundwork for successful change.

Each seminar takes an aspect of the problem based on over 6,000 comments to give participants an assessment framework for their organizations. These   cover analyzing change impacts, setting-up the change Program with Metrics and on-going communication.

Executive Summary

Continue reading →

Rebuilding Trust – Productivity’s Cornerstone

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Globally there is a slow erosion of those binding forces for people to “go that extra mile” . The employee-employer psychological contract is  degrading.  The degree to which people identify with their job and consider job performance as important to their self-worth is slipping .In our recently published survey Focusing Change to Win identified the main culprits:

  • Poor Planning
  • Lack of Leadership
  • Inconsistent leadership
  • Poor Implementation
  • Lack of Adaptability
  • Lack of Communication
  • Lack of Control

More than ever, we need to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their employers.

In North America, our evidence from 8 expectation alignment projects ranging from Royal Bank of Canada through Nature Conservancy to Turner Construction shows a clear trend. Leaders consistently under-estimate the gap between what they expect of their managers and what people think is expected of them. In all studies, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware.

In the UK, managers need to do more if they want to earn employee trust , according to the latest survey into employee attitudes from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Trust in senior management is declining, particularly in the private sector, with

  • Only 25% employees willing to place a lot of trust in senior management to look after their interests and
  • Only 41% placing little or no trust in them to do so.

Essentially, new research suggests that many employees are losing faith in their  management  yet it seems leaders have don’t connect this condition with losing ground competitively.  Continue reading →

Realigning Schools for the New Normal – The Administrator’s Challenge

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Introduction

At school and district levels, managing scarce resources to sustain or improve results has never been more challenging. Striving for consistency and efficiency builds tensions between those who care most about equipping children for an uncertain future.

Increasingly critical eyes on the education system advocate blunt instruments like “stronger management”, more top-down management, tighter controls, and simple incentives. This is surprising since such methods are failing the private sector by dispiriting and limiting people’s contribution. So, why should we expect anything different in education?

This is aggravated by the economy. We simply don’t know what jobs will be there in twenty years. Today, apart from a few core skills we cannot know what knowledge or skills will be needed in the future.

The consequences are that teachers complain that their jobs, while rewarding, are getting harder because of too few resources, too much paperwork, crowded classrooms, students with emotional problems, low pay and high-stakes standardized tests.

Isn’t time to realign administrators, unions, teachers, parents and students? The realignment is from teaching a curriculum more efficiently, to one of inspiring lifelong learning to thrive in a rapidly shifting economy.

Here’s the case for realignment Continue reading →

The Fallacies of Change Management – Poll

Posted on by agincourtarcher

The continued high failure rates in implementing change owe much of their origins to the fallacies of change management and how people view research (based on Korzybski). See how many are true from your experience

1. Over-Simplification:  The belief that complex organizations mirror what their leadership views .

“I think we have a pretty good handle on what people think, we don’t need a survey to tell us what we already know”

2. Re-definition: A propensity to cast strong sub-cultures as sources of weakness when they may in fact contribute to the organization’s identity.

“It’s the field technicians that’s the problem. They are still resistant to the newer products ans systems”

3. Missionary zeal: The belief that a complex community can be converted to a single purpose that overrides its fractional – often factional – interests and perspectives.”

“I am sure when the see the case for this change they will come along”

4. Displacement:  the attribution to cultural causes of structural weakness.  It is not the values but the organisation or control system that is faulty.

“You know if we had a fully integrated reporting system I think we could overcome many of communication problems”

5. Scapegoating:  The attribution of group’s values to responsibility for failure.

“It’s sales responsibility to ensure good customer follow up but they just don’t seem to care and want to go on to the next deal”

6. False Attribution to one cause what is due to many causes. E.g.

“they didn’t adopt the new technology because they weren’t computer savvy”

7. Discounting: Concluding that because one factor plays a role, another does not; the fallacy of drawing negative conclusions from positive observations. E.g.

 “Our exit interviews show that people are leaving for higher pay and so it’s not anything that management can do differently”

8. Myopia:The idea that change management can divorce the individual from their working environment. E.g.

“People are change resistant because they don’t like the new curriculum”

9. Gut over Data: Drawing conclusions on implied assumptions that when explicitly stated are rejected. E.g

“Yes, I know that’s what your findings say but I think it’s really a recruitment issue”

“You can prove anything with statistics”

10. Politics: Many assumptions influencing reasoning are of the hidden, unconscious type. E.g.

 “When we presented our findings only Joe and Lisa said what they felt, the rest just looked uneasy”

11. Hereditary: Demonstrating that a characteristic is hereditary and not alterable by the environment E.g.

“We found that traditionally main land Chinese expect a “thirteenth month’s pay before Chinese New Year, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We wouldn’t have any of these problems if we could get more mid-westerners with their good work ethics”

12. Environment: Demonstrating that a characteristic is altered by the environment and claiming that it is not hereditary. E.g.

“We are getting more quality problems since we installed the new line. It’s the new displays they don’t understand”

Since all important human characteristics are environmental, therefore environment is all-important, hereditary unimportant, in human affairs E.g.

“It’s not so much their experience that matters it’s how they are led. We need our leaders to lead not shilly-shally around having more team meetings”

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Why do people resist change? Leadership Survey Findings (1072 managers, 510 CEOs, 80 countries)

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Here’s the first findings from research conducted jointly with New Catalyst.(http://changeisessential.com)

Click Video link to view Nick Anderson position the upcoming publication of the full research report – Stategies for Managing Change and Winning in Todays Competitive Environment

Since change management came into fashion, a litany of failure has left its mark and our respondent’s echo what many have gone through in the last 8 years. It seems through their eyes, resistance has to be viewed as a “brown field” site. Gone is the naiveté of “a job for life” and an enduring contract between leaders and other stakeholders. Now, change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, etc. For these respondents, they paint a picture of failed change, broken trust, fractured communication and poor leadership. We summarize their comments into the following:

  • Cultural Toxicity of Failed Change
  • “If people don’t trust you, what change do you stand?”
  • “People can’t be bothered”
  • “What’s in it for me?”
  •  “Not knowing the purpose of it all” – a litany of communication failure
  • Poor Leadership embeds and accelerates resistance

Continue reading →

Avoiding the Pitffalls of Strategic Planning

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Introduction

Getting people focused and committed on implementing a strategy has never been more difficult as von Moltke said:

strategic plans do not survive first contact with the enemy, and hence must be always open to revision.

In today’s competitive environment every action has many reactions that aren’t easily anticipated.  This is probably a major factor why 60% of change initiatives fail in North America and why something is going wrong with strategic planning.

One area that many executives either ignore or only pay lip service to are the cynicisms that previous initiatives strategic planning have accumulated in the organizations psyche. Here are some that you ignore at your peril

Crucial to understanding your people, as Peter Senge describes, is identifying  where people are on the apathy-commitment continuum. He identifies two areas of personal need that they want satisfied in their working lives:

  • personal benefit which comes from compensation, benefits, position, recognition, or other non-tangible benefits
  • personal sense of fulfillment of their life’s purpose, vision, or calling.

Leaders need to grasp how well each person’s attitude and their contribution is met directly by company goals or objectives. Then they can assess where people sit on the apathy/commitment continuum. Any misalignment between personal needs and your strategy will generate unproductive or  counterproductive behavior, if not actively managed

Continue reading →

Getting the Best out of the Matrix

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Introduction

For 40 Years few have challenged Matrix Management’s viability. Most writers remain convinced that a matrix approach is superior to a hierarchy, but why hasn’t it been more successful? This blog looks at pointing the reader to answer:

How do ensure we get the promised rewards of the Matrix?

First,  a definition for SHRM

In a matrix structure, an employee reports to two managers who are jointly responsible for the employee’s performance. Typically, one works in an administrative function, such as finance, HR, information technology, sales or marketing, and the other works in a business unit related to a product, service, customer or geography.

The matrix model is a network of interfaces between teams and the functional elements of an organization. As its simplest it is:

 think horizontal – think vertical – think interface.

Here are some of the challenges facing those thinking of improving or moving to a matrix based organization.

Continue reading →

Problem Defining & The Consulting/Intervention Process

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Problem Defining & The Consulting/Intervention Process

Calif Manage Rev. 1979 Spring;21(3):26-33.Kilmann R, Mitroff I.

Intervention theory1 and the consulting process2 have developed to provide more effective methods by which organizational change is conducted.  These methods have emerged in order to operationalize a theory of changing rather than a theory of change.  The latter is what Bennis3 found to be the focus of most discussions on organizational growth and change; yet a theory of changing is needed to create planned change in organizations and not just to explain natural change after the fact.4

Continue reading →

An Approach to Solving People Problems

Posted on by agincourtarcher

INTRODUCTION

People problems are very varied; they can also be complex.  There is no all-embracing theory for
understanding them and no magical formulas guaranteed to solve them.  The problem-solver, where people problems are  concerned, must be an experimenter.  There are, however, a few guidelines which, if observed, will help to  save the problem-solver from wasting time and effort on ultimately unprofitable activities.

Continue reading →

Vision: The Guidance System for Partnering

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Introduction

Developing successful partnerships can only be accomplished if there is a strong and shared sense of vision.  It is the cornerstone, and launching point for successful partnering efforts.

Visioning in a partnership if different form other uses of the word.  It is much more than a defined set of shared goals and aspirations.  It exists to offer a tangible guidance system  which provides direction to both parties and helps them carry out their larger goals.  Such a system enables partnerships to overcome obstacles and achieve results.  When they lack vision they tend to drift around, or fall apart.

Continue reading →

Managing Change for Competitive Success – Questionnaire

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Managing Change for Competitive Success – Questionnaire

This interview structure is designed to help interviewees talk about their principles and core values about leading which guide their behavior at work.  In each section, interviewees are asked about their proposals for change and how they should be implemented and then asking why they feel implementing such proposals are necessary.  It is this “why” question which is the most important.  It is the answers to these “why” questions that particularly should allow comparisons between each interviewee’s guiding principles and values of leading, in specific situations.  It should then help us decide how we are going to develop a coherent sales strategy by understanding what people mean by:

  •  “building a rich, engaging purpose”
  •  “creating more effective management processes”
  • “developing their capabilities and broadening the way they look at the world of work”

Continue reading →

Top-Down or Bottom-Up – Making Change Personal

Posted on by Terrance Merriman

By Contributing Blogger – Terry Merriman, PDS Group Ltd

Implementing successful and sustainable change is tough, strategic change initiatives fail two-thirds of the time in North American business (Kotter, 1996, and McKinsey, 2009).  How can your organization succeed?  You can succeed by making change personal!  Remember, performance is personal before it is organizational.

Isn’t this a truism, a matter of common business sense?

Since when was common sense common practice! It is common for many leaders to plan their change initiative, communicate it to their leadership team, tell the organization to watch for it, set some goals and measures, and incorporate the goals in their team and department objectives.  Then, the change dies and the leadership team wonders why.  The answer; the change was never translated into personal action!

If your people don’t embraced change and those in your value chain (including your customers and vendors) it will fail.  Why?  If your people do not understand the change initiative, buy into it, and integrate it into their daily activities, it will not work. Consequently, planned change and personal action don’t mesh as people are skeptical, don’t understand why, don’t see the need, and don’t know what’s in it for them.

So how do you make change personal?

Define, Communicate, Delegate and Track change related expectations. We usually get the organization’s side of change, define and communicate, pretty well.  Where we fail is in putting the personal side of change, communicate, delegate, and track, into play.

  • Define the change in terms of broad categories of activity to which everyone in the organization can relate, and specific results that benefit the organization and its people.
  • Communicate the change initiative, and include the message that leadership will be expecting everyone to participate by defining specific expectations of each other necessary to carry out the change.
  • Communicate More, by focusing on individual working relationships by:
    • Get each leadership team member identify specific expectations of each other as to what they must do to successfully implement the change.  Ensure the expectations are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time and budget bounded, Ethical and Recorded.
    • Have each leader discuss their expectations of the receiver expected to execute, and ensure each accepts accountability for each other’s expectation.  This helps to create a productive relationship and integrate the change into the business at the leadership level.
  • Delegate by cascading the above process to each leader’s direct reports, peers, and business partners to those teams that are considered key players in the change initiative.
    • Ensure people delegate not only the responsibility and accountability but also the authority to execute each expectation. In this way people can develop ownership of  those expectations other have of them.  This step integrates the change throughout the organization as it becomes a part of each person’s work responsibilities and commitments.
    • Ensure each expectation’s originator is held responsible for assessing the receiver’s ability to meet their expectations and coach them to develop their competence.
  • Track each expectation’s results.  This means each person holding accountable the person who agreed to meeting and reporting progress to an expectation’s completion.  So, the Accountability Culture is born.  The expectations approach challenges leaders and their direct reports to get personal first perspective and serves to foster improved communications between them.

The Expectations Approach makes change personal by casacading accountability for implementing change throughout the organization in a way that helps people understand the reasons for and expected results from the change, and buy into it.  We’ve found it one of the most effective ways of implementing successful and sustainable change in organizations.  The side benefits of this approach are that it improves accountability throughout the organization, and encourages creation and development of productive relationships between people, leading to improved organizational performance.

Where has this approach been used succesfully?

This approach has been successfully employed in Fortune 500 companies and family owned businesses, from new selling strategies to management transitions (See Project Summaries) It has been  shown to work in for-profit and non-profit organizations from large to small, and it also works in government organizations (it’s been used in the British Navy by its developer, John Machin).

“Change is Hard and Real Change is Real Hard!” If you want to be successful at change, you have to be prepared to tackle the hard part of change – making it personal.

Listen to The Radio Show



Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Getting Committed People on the Same Page – Disturb First, Enable Second?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Last month I looked at why so many changes initiatives fail. One thing that struck me after the program was the inability to gain others commitment lies at the heart of so many failures. This is often due to the lack of interest paid by those leading change for those who have to make the change.

Previously, one stat sticks out from our work in aligning companies for change is that over 70% of leaders expectations are not known or realized by those affected by a change. Their people are not on the same page!!

Now, add to that apparently unrelated data…

An estimated 247 billion emails are sent each day

“The number of worldwide email users is projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. In 2009, 74% of all email accounts will belong to consumers, and 24% to corporate users.
Worldwide email traffic will total 247 billion messages per day in 2009. By 2013, this figure will almost double to 507 billion messages per day.
In 2009, about 81% of all email traffic is spam Source: Press release from The Radicati Group, 6th May 2009 Quoted by Digital Stats.com

Stats vary but most people seem to say each person gets 5000 ads per day.

Now here’s my point in both your personal life and at work how much time do you have to spend listening to somebody drone on about:

The latest, greatest, best, more, more…Their solutions for you….

How often, in your personal and work lives, do you have to spend listening to somebody drone on about  the latest, greatest, best, more, more…their solutions for you….

So, How do you typically react? Why should it matter to Change Management?

It reminds me of a cartoon of a family sitting at a meal table (rare enough of itself) with heads bowed and the son texts mom to pass the fries! This would be funny if I had not enforced a “no device” rule at our family meals – me included!! So, my reflections as to why we get resistant to change are these:.

Firstly, People overall forget what it’s like to be in somebody else’s head, like the research I referenced two months ago. “There’s not enough time…they cry”

Second, instantaneous communication reduces people’s patience from more deliberate consideration – we drift into the white noise, the buzz of attention deficit….but Are we challenged to really think?

Third, access to the internet has produced the most mature and knowledgeable change audience in history.

Why should this matter?

In terms of influencing people to even consider buying into your change process, be careful you are not:

Doing what you’ve always done… not getting what you want …

Whether you are influencing people in your own organization or trying to sell your service or product you will need to be more skilled at understanding where people are in their heads about change than ever before.

Change in West Michigan has come in many forms….change leaders ignore at them at their per. For example, Gilder’s vision of the future of “Cathedrals of bandwidth” will affect how people see work and how they see change. trends of exponential growth in technology and application will continue as far as we can see into the future.

The Technology Horse has looong bolted and the “Control Door” is hanging off its hinges……

So let’s stand back and see if we can start being practical. As the snow melts, I am reminded of when it snows. Each snowflake has a similar structure, yet is infinitely complex, and as each falls leads to complex behavior. If each person is a snowflake we must treat them as similar yet unique. (This is Fractal Theory..if you’re interested.

When managing change I find it’s helpful to look at how people change in a rigorous yet flexible way. It can be used to locate where individuals, groups and you are in terms of seeing the world, state similarly. This snowflake or fractal is based on a series of questions which follow a sequence – often shown as a ‘U”. The “U” is one of the most fundamental concepts in the psychology of learning and change. Readerers may remember in the last program that  we consistently think we are better than we actually are – in psychology it’s called “self serving bias”. For Example: 94% of men rate themselves in the top half of male athletic ability

Change Management’s Foundation

So, I am going to make a claim that I have never done before:

If you use the following six questions in your life, it will change your perspective of others and most importantly yourself:

Now let’s use this “U” Map to can locate yourself and those you are trying to bring to your point of view and be committed to the change

1. What is the problem?

  • Do you have one and others don’t?

2. How is it a problem?

  • Do they see the same linkage as you? Structure, recurrence, competitively weak?

3. What are the consequences?

  • Can they see the ramifications that you do?

Now, let’s pause and ask: If you’re at 3. and those you want to influence can’t answer 1 – What is likely to happen?

If they are OK, but are they  disturbed to the degree they are willing to consider changing? If yes, we are at the bottom of the U at the Change Pivot when momentum or change energy starts to be

Now, let’s look at how people are enabled?:

1.  Why solve this problem?

a.  Do they see this change as a priority

b.  Or, Do they think we should do something differently?

2.  How to solve the problem?

a.  Are your technical people see a solution in the same frame from those in other functions

3.  What will be solved?

a.   Does cost of the present outweigh the cost of change?

So, Let’s say you are at 3. and I am at 6. Giving you an ROI ?….

What is your likely reaction?

Resistance; which I have created!

So, now you have the U – Ask yourself how many times has a sales person “Crossed the U” with you?  Ask yourself, How many times have we as change agents “Crossed the U”? with the leadership team? Only to find we left the group “not getting it!” “not on the same page” Yet it was us that left them behind

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.