The Social Plan
If the technical plan addresses the technical parts of organizational change, the social plan addresses the social part. As a famous saying goes, the work is easy; it is working with and through people that is the hard part. Transformation leaders need a social plan because change is a heart conversation. While the scholars, consultants, and authors would want you to believe that change is an exact science, it is not. Yet it is so easy to fall victim to thinking that creating (and executing) the plan is all you need. The reality is that in order to successfully lead change, you need to get others involved. You need their commitment, their energy, and their buy-in. We are reminded of that great leader Charlie Brown (yes, the Charlie Brown of the Charles Schultz’s Peanuts cartoons). In one of the author’s favorite Christmas cartoons, Charlie Brown wants to understand the meaning of Christmas, a fairly clear goal. So Lucy suggests that he direct the local Christmas play as a strategy to get involved. After struggling to get the group to comply with his wishes, Charlie has the great inspiration to go out and get a Christmas tree. There is a wonderful scene where Charlie Brown starts walking out of the gymnasium because the other children laughed at the tree he brought back. However, after the group laughed at him and saw his resolve when he left, they followed him. They even dressed up the Christmas tree, decided Charlie didn’t pick such a bad tree, and sang a Christmas carol. In the end, it appears that Charlie Brown led the group to have the play, and he then understood the meaning of Christmas.1 So the question for us, and the motivation for this chapter, is “how did Charlie Brown get his friends to put on the play?” He didn’t command them; he didn’t increase their pay. He had to find a way to convince them that his ideas (particularly regarding the tree) were good ideas and better than others (i.e., just stay in the gymnasium and dance). What we are asking of Charlie Brown is what your transformation plan will require of you: a social plan.
Even if change is a heart conversation, why do you as a transformation leader need to convince people that your plan is the correct plan? The answer might be found in Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book Managing With Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations.2 Pfeffer suggests there are three reasons why a social plan is needed: resource scarcity, interdependence, and diversity. Resource scarcity tells us what we all have experienced working in organizations: There never is enough money to finance everything. Most organizations have too many projects and not enough money to complete them all. Because of that, you as the leader need to communicate to those around you that your plan is not only a good plan but also a better plan than others. Thus only those leaders who have developed a social plan to deal with how to get their project funded versus other projects will be successful. Interdependence tells us that everyone in an organization depends on everyone else. Even the president of the organization needs her followers to be successful. If the president kept telling her followers to “do it because I said so,” she will eventually find that she no longer has any followers. Due to interdependence, leaders of change need a plan to help influence key personnel inside their organization to adopt their ideas. Diversity tells us that not everyone in the organization thinks the same way. Thus while you might think your idea is the best idea in the world, chances are someone else in the organization might have a different opinion.
Because of these three issues, successful organizational change efforts require a social plan. A social plan involves three parts: a support and resistance plan, an involvement plan, and a communication plan.
Before we start, we want you to think of a potential project that you want to implement. The project itself is not that important. After thinking of the project, write down the names of eight people who you think are influential in getting your project accomplished. For example, if your project involves something at work, you might list the names of your boss, key peers, someone in human resources or finance, and maybe some key subordinates. If your project is a family project (e.g., buy a new car, go on a vacation to a specific location), you would list the names of your family members and, depending on the project, maybe some friends (e.g., if you are not planning on taking your children on the vacation, who will watch them? Who will you ask to water your plant or feed your cat?). If your project involves some charity work (e.g., new uniforms for your daughter’s soccer team, new robes for the choir, etc.), you should still be able to identify and list eight names. We will use that list of eight names to discuss our social plan.