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TOM DEVANE
High-Leverage Ideas and Actions You Can Use to Shape the Future
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
—Winston Churchill
An organization or community that constantly scans the external environment and subsequently reacts to changes in it is exercising passive adaptation. For example, an electronics firm introduces a new product in reaction to a competitor’s recent launch, or an inner-city group organizes protests in response to funding cuts for local city parks.
The concept of active adaptation, however, is quite different. It espouses that not only should an organization or community react to changes in its surroundings, but it should also be proactive in exerting influence on its external environment. For instance, a software company that seeks to increase the accessibility of computers to all people on the planet, or a town that hosts a planning session to accommodate the incoming biotechnology boom while simultaneously keeping traditional community values. In other words, don’t just focus on making local changes; strive to make industry and global changes based on your actions.
This isn’t just a chapter about my thoughts on what’s coming up in the world so that you can react to it. This chapter provides some practical nuggets that you can use to shape it. Change agents who read the first edition lamented that since they never had the time to research practical change principles, they wanted some pragmatic takeaways. In response to reader feedback, here they are, summarizing key advice in a series of Top 10 lists. This chapter reflects my own personal experiences, and therefore my personal experiential biases on what works and doesn’t. It is by no means intended to be a complete treatment of the subject of change management. And since it’s based on my experiences, it goes without saying that this does not necessarily reflect the views of my coeditors. I make some high-leverage recommendations that I have found on my change journey across a variety of industries and communities spanning five continents over 29 years of industry, community, and consulting experience.
Once you grasp some of the key principles and methods for effective change, two huge parts of your success will be attitude and persistence. Let’s start with attitude. Think you can have a positive impact on how your organization or community interacts with its external environment? You likely can, if you follow some fundamental change principles. Think you’ll need some friends and colleagues to support your change ideas? Probably. Think that just a few concerned people can never make a dent in the status quo? Think again. Anthropologist Margaret Mead, who has studied centuries-old civilizations across the globe, stated, “Never believe that a small group of caring people can’t change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
However, a great attitude, wonderful idea, essential change principles, and knowledge of some proven large group methods will only get you so far. Persistence is necessary to drive your idea forward, and to convince others of its value. It can keep you going when others are saying you should give up. It can bring your idea back onto other people’s radar screens after it has been wrongly dismissed. And persistence can help you, your company, your community, and perhaps even mankind by successfully bringing an idea to the fore that others had previously rejected, or not even dared to imagine.
One final note on your perceived ability to implement the changes you desire: Don’t assume you need to have immense amounts of resources behind you. How many people and how large a budget did Gandhi have behind him before successfully freeing India from the 90-year rule of the British Empire? In 1976, when Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen van and Steve Wozniak sold his programmable calculator to finance building the first ready-made personal computer in Jobs’s garage, was it conceivable that they might change the way people store information, communicate, and calculate? Great things can and do start with a handful of people who have strong intentions—and often limited resources—to initiate a major change and the persistence to see it through.
This chapter is organized into five sections:
• Where People Are Missing the Boat Regarding Large-Scale Change
• High-Leverage Principles for Dramatic, Sustainable Change in the Future
• A Framework for a Multifront Approach to Effective Change
• Simple Quick-Hit Actions
• Moving Forward
Where People Are Missing the Boat Regarding Large-Scale Change
There are some common missteps that I’ve encountered when people are trying to achieve successful, sustainable change. While all these steps are well-intentioned, in my experience, they have caused serious problems because they’ve missed critical aspects of the bigger change puzzle. Table 1 lists ten common missteps I’ve encountered, their implications, and alternative recommendations.
Observation Causing Problems |
Implication(s) |
Consider … |
1. Focusing on events as the sole mechanism of large-scale change |
Not all change can be accomplished through large group methods. If day-to-day actions and policy changes don’t support the effort, then it’s unlikely significant, sustainable change will happen. |
Pulling a combination of levers to achieve sustainable change in addition to large group methods, such as traditional organizational development practices like coaching, active two-way communications, and aligning formal appraisals and rewards with the change. |
2. Getting everyone together in one room and calling it effective large-scale change |
People’s time may be wasted, consensus is difficult to reach, and people leave the session with a bad taste in their mouths for change. |
Inviting only the people that really need to be there. Sometimes this means having representative members of the relevant system of interest that is changing (as with the Search Conference method). Other times, 100 percent participation may be required (as for restructuring events such as Participative Design Workshop). |
3. Keeping the existing deep hierarchy |
Long-lasting dramatic change will be difficult if the organization does not directly address collapsing a steep hierarchy. Otherwise, problems like slow decision making, turf protection, and entitlement mind-sets tend to persist. |
Collapsing the hierarchy into semiautonomous high-performing teams and designing new ways for career advancement, such as job rotations, lateral skill-building assignments, and pay-for-skill compensation schemes. |
4. Having a singular focus (hard or soft) on a method or set of methods used |
Nonsustainability will ensue if only a “hard focus” (e.g., implementing quality tools) or a “soft focus” (e.g., Dialogue) is pursued. |
Combining predominantly hard methods (such as Six Sigma) and soft methods (such as Dialogue) to result in dramatic, sustainable change. |
Just focusing on one area of a problematic organization or community, such as customer feedback, will produce suboptimal results. |
Launching a change program on multiple fronts, including processes, culture change, Human Resource practices, organizational structure, and technology use. |
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6. Avoiding vs. courting conflict |
Opportunities to improve dramatically are foregone, often internal resentment builds, and people feel stifled, fearful of taking improvement steps. |
Actively surfacing conflicting viewpoints for discussion in an environment of candor, as espoused by methods such as Action Review Cycle and Dialogue. |
7. Summarily silencing dissenters |
Ideas from outcast dissenters that may work in the future never make it to the discussion phase. Powerful grassroots leaders don’t emerge. |
Providing a forum for dissidents to have a voice (not necessarily one that must be followed). |
8. Confusing alignment with agreement |
If everyone on a team or large group believes they must agree 100 percent on an issue before moving on, the pace of change and resultant improvements will be agonizingly slow. |
Explaining, at the start of a group activity, that alignment does not necessarily mean agreement, and that members who are aligned and committed to common goals will support each other moving the group forward on various issues, even if there may not be 100 percent agreement on a decision. |
9. Failing to consider the power of internal collective experience brought to bear in planning and problem-solving sessions |
Outside experts are brought in, who may or may not add value to the specific local issues faced. This can result in unnecessary delays, sapping of organizational initiative, and excessive reliance on outside resources. |
Numerous studies and personal experience have shown that a collection of informed internal people, working collaboratively, often develop higher-quality strategies and solutions than outside experts. |
10. Pushing through all large-scale organizational changes solely under the banner of leadership development |
Though developing leaders is extremely important, I have seen far too many organizations assume that training many people in skills such as feedback, clear communication, and charismatic projection is sufficient to accomplish successful large-scale change. |
Effective large-scale change has a body of knowledge, proven principles, and large group methods that can increase the likelihood of sustainable success. Learn them and use them to supplement leadership development training in intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. |
Table 1. Ten Common Missteps in Achieving Change
High-Leverage Principles for Dramatic, Sustainable Change in the Future
With today’s scarcity of time at work and home, leverage is the name of the game. This section contains principles I have seen that are extremely high-leverage—that is, a moderate amount of effort nets you a substantial benefit. My Top 10 list for what I’ve seen work across a wide variety of organizations, communities, and geographies is as follows:
PRINCIPLE 1: CHANGE THE OLD LEADERSHIP PARADIGM
Contemporary high-leverage leadership is not so much about having a powerful vision and disseminating it to others so that they can execute it. It’s more like having people confront their own problems and then fostering the mobilization of resources to help them achieve their group-defined directions and goals. This is a critical perspective for implementing large-scale, complex changes. Be aware that changing old leadership paradigms is often easier said than done, requiring new training, mind-sets, behaviors, peer support groups, and job rotations to be as successful as possible.
PRINCIPLE 2: ENLIST SOME ALLIES IN ACHIEVING YOUR VISION
After becoming well versed in large-scale change principles and methods, there’s a natural tendency to want to apply them immediately. Having witnessed them work just once or twice and seeing the sparks they ignite in people’s motivation provides a compelling reason for you to move forward quickly in your organization or community. Just be sure you enlist a coalition of people who understand the theoretical base, and who share your ideas on how traditional approaches to change and leadership need to evolve. The Village People’s warning of “No man does it all by himself” is applicable here for men as well as women leaders in the throes of implementing a new vision of effective large-scale change.
PRINCIPLE 3: ESTABLISH A CLEAR RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM
Organizations ranging from command-and-control to self-managed teams (and all along the continuum between) all benefit from clear definition of responsibilities and a system that shows poor performance in time to correct it. Having crystal clear answers to questions like “Who needs to be involved in this decision?” and “Specifically, what would that involvement look like?” contribute mightily to organizations and communities achieving even their most aggressive stretch goals.
PRINCIPLE 4: HAVE A GREAT STRATEGY, AND DESIGN A STRONG STRATEGY STRUCTURE CONNECTION TO IMPLEMENT IT
Get the right diversity of experience involved in planning the future. Ensure they address key areas such as product/service offerings, consumer needs, market segments addressed, external sourcing, and distribution channels. Keep in mind that more CEOs are fired for the poor execution of a strategy than for the inability to develop a good strategy. Once a strategy is well formulated using the appropriate diversity of experience, the odds of it being successfully implemented dramatically increase when there is a specific structure designed to support it (not just an adaptation of the current structure to implement the new strategy bullet points). For example, if the organization’s new strategy calls for increased closeness to the customer, it would likely make sense to structure the organization into customer service teams instead of keeping a deep hierarchy that is functionally siloed.
PRINCIPLE 5: BUILD A HIGH-PERFORMANCE STRUCTURE
Organizational structures consisting of semiautonomous teams that set and monitor their own goals can create cultures of high commitment and extraordinary performance. Unfortunately, though many top leaders extol the virtues of teamwork in their organization, very few commit to having a formal organizational structure comprised of teams. Many organizations do a good job of resolving the dual nature of work (cross-functional process outcomes for customers and maintenance of functional expertise) through a matrix structure, though often managing a matrix structure is challenging and remains more art than science.
PRINCIPLE 6: CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR MIDDLE INTEGRATION
In the course of a large-scale change, or even the subsequent execution stage, middle managers can make or break the success of the change and its sustainability. It’s important that the middle managers have an opportunity to gather—without their managers or direct reports—and discuss issues such as boss-subordinate relationships, cross-functional improvement opportunities, communication, interdepartmental handoffs, and people development issues.
PRINCIPLE 7: PRACTICE INTELLIGENT EMPOWERMENT
Identify which decisions might be pushed downward in an organization and accompany those with appropriate information, skills training, and rewards.
PRINCIPLE 8: INSTITUTE COLLECTIVE, GROUP ACCOUNTABILITY (NOT JUST INDIVIDUAL)
When a group of people is accountable for setting and achieving a goal, they have a cadre of built-in coaches, supporters, and coercers that increase the likelihood of achieving a goal. Yes, there is that old adage about “when everyone’s responsible no one’s responsible,” but that argument doesn’t hold true in an organization where groups set and monitor goals, and are collectively rewarded or punished based on outcomes.
PRINCIPLE 9: PAY FORMAL ATTENTION TO CULTURE
Culture is something that can and should be managed. This is true in organizations, communities, and nongovernmental organizations alike. Start by assessing culture, either with a formal tool or informal conversations. Then identify the major “from-to” areas, and methods to change ways of thinking and acting required to support the desired state. Take special note of any long-standing policies or practices that are ingrained in the organization and in people’s minds.
PRINCIPLE 10: IMPLEMENT FORMAL AND INFORMAL PRACTICES TO COMPENSATE FOR THE NATURAL WEAKNESS OF A SELECTED ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
As mentioned earlier, the structure of an organization is critical to implementing a change and operating within the new parameters. Because design trade-offs must be made for any implemented structure, every organizational structure will have weaknesses that need to be addressed. For example, structures organized along functional expertise will have some cross-functional blind spots. Alternatively, structures organized by process will have people in teams whose technical skills may begin to atrophy as they focus more on process outputs than on maintaining their technical expertise. Well-planned structures acknowledge inherent weakness and design to strengthen the overall organizational framework. For example, in an organization structured along process lines, there would be “centers of excellence” that periodically meet to maintain skill sets and discuss important matters specific to those members who possess similar skills.
A Framework for a Multifront Approach to Effective Change
Research and personal experience have shown that approaching a large-scale change on multiple fronts drastically increases the likelihood of effective, sustainable change. The Performance Framework model (figure 1) has been used in organizations to plan, monitor, and adjust large-scale change activities for more than 15 years. This model helps leaders plan specific actions for key factors that accelerate sustainable change and impact organizational performance. While there is some applicability for communities, most of the model’s historical use has been with organizations.
There are three major sections of the Performance Framework:
• External Environment: depicts what’s happening outside the organization,
• Six Performance Bases: represent key performance factors that leaders can influence, and
• The Energizing Core: provides fuel for the desired changes.
Figure 1. Performance Framework
Each of these segments is influenced by the others. Here are explanations of each performance factor “base”:
Performance Factor |
Brief Description |
Strategy |
The organization’s direction, which delineates its offerings of products and services, markets served, and the channels they use to serve them. |
Process |
A collection of activities and decisions that produces an output for an internal or external customer. Processes often span departmental or group boundaries. Examples include new product development and order fulfillment. |
Information and Learning |
Information flow is critical to any improvement effort. It may be transactional information, such as the number of cars going through a toll booth, or it may be tacit knowledge, such as lessons learned from the last new product development launch. |
Human Resources (HR) Practices |
Policies and activities of the Human Resources function enable certain behaviors, and limit others. Examples include compensation, rewards, recognition, performance appraisals, training, retention, hiring, and firing. |
The shared beliefs and assumptions that determine behavior. Though typically acknowledged as important, culture is usually not actively managed in large-scale changes. |
|
Structure and Relationships |
The formal pattern of how people interact within an organization. Structure is shown by lines and boxes; relationships denote the informal behavior patterns such as degree of collaboration, nature of supervision, and role clarity. |
Change leaders can use the Performance Framework as an upfront planning tool to develop action plans for each performance factor, as a statusing tool throughout the project, and as a communication tool to inform the organization about upcoming changes. Organizational performance assessments are often done as a group activity, usually by a cross-functional, multilevel group responsible for initiating the change. More information on using the Performance Framework and accompanying free organizational diagnostics can be found at www.LeanSixSigmaHPO.com.
Simple Quick-Hit Actions
Let’s face it, the world often throws you a curve ball. Sometimes you may just step into a mess that another leader has created and you won’t have the ability to start a large-scale change effort correctly from scratch. Or you might have a great idea on what needs to be done, but others aren’t quite so sure, and these people have the authority to block your efforts. While taking all the steps necessary for successful large-scale change effort from scratch is always the best way to go, this may not be your only option. In the absence of having a perfect plan from the start, here are ten actions that change leaders—at any level—can do:
• Jump-start a change effort and peak interest in the minds and hearts of others who may not have considered a formal approach to change
• Demonstrate early benefits of paying attention to engaging people in change
• Revive a failing large-scale change effort, and then follow up with a larger-scale, more comprehensive approach to change
Even if an organization or community does not move beyond the simple suggestions listed below to a larger, more formal change approach, the following actions can yield significant short-term benefits. Of course, given a choice, to address large gaps, I usually would opt for a well-planned, large-scale approach to change that included large group methods, changes to the performance appraisal process, role modeling by key influencers, and measurement systems that draw attention to desired and achieved results. However, in life, you can’t always get what you want, though, in the words of that important English philosopher, immortalized in song, “If you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”1 Many of the tips in table 2 are used as a component within larger large-group-method events, but can also be helpful as stand-alone techniques for increased participation or better decisions.
The Concept in Brief |
Example |
|
1. Collective assessments |
When groups perform simple assessments—such as process mapping sessions or culture assessments—they can gain useful insights and also generate energy for closing the identified gaps between what they aspire to and what they currently are. |
An investment bank mapped one of its major cross-functional processes and conducted (1) a culture assessment and (2) a customer satisfaction survey as part of a new focus on the customer effort. Gaps between what was needed and what they had were huge, and they mobilized teams to address the gaps. |
2. Simple, visible accountability system |
In a group setting, participants identify key interdepartmental handoffs, people publicly make personal performance commitments, establish metrics to assess future performance, and publicly monitor and improve. |
Four departments involved in clinical trials at a pharmaceutical company developed a simple accountability system and reduced the time required for clinical trials by 42 percent. Clear definitions of who was to do what and when were instrumental in achieving and sustaining the gains. |
3. Conduct a two–flip chart brainstorm and analysis of old behaviors and desired new behaviors |
Most often, large-scale change requires specific behavior changes, but unfortunately no one clearly articulates the “from and to” behaviors in one place. Set up two flip charts (“Old Behaviors” and “New Behaviors”) and convene a group of people to do just that. |
A Midwestern manufacturer of control devices realized that to sustain the quality improvement gains, top management would need to change its behaviors. A cross-functional group from all four layers of the organization convened and brainstormed old and desired behaviors. |
4. Build high-performance teams |
Form and charter high-performance cross-functional teams to seize opportunities or solve thorny, long-standing problems. |
A 200-person high-tech electronics assembly manufacturer chartered two high-performance teams using a Participative Design Workshop approach (chapter 43) to implement a Six Sigma quality improvement approach (chapter 47). |
5. Conduct group-based (1) design, and (2) learning sessions |
Getting groups of 15–50 people together to design or learn can yield significant technical benefits, as well as fuel emotional commitment for additional changes. Consider a simple method template, such as Open Space Technology (chapter 9) for quick-hit design and learning sessions. |
The venue was a 2-day Open Space session of 120 users and implementation team members of a new enterprise-wide computing system called SAP. The priming question was, “What can SAP do to improve our business and our work lives?” In the session, participants explored system capabilities, user concerns, rapidly achievable benefits, and business process redesign requirements. In addition to addressing technical issues, this generated energy for the implementation. |
6. Keep, drop, and create brainstorm |
Set up three flip charts and have participants brainstorm what they want to keep, drop, or create when moving forward to address a particular issue. |
Three Colorado mountain communities brainstormed and evaluated options to rebuild a shared teen community center that would be constructed the following year. |
7. Get middle managers together |
Since middle managers face common problems and can often influence the quality of interdepartmental handoffs, periodically convene them to discuss issues and suggestions (without their bosses or direct reports). |
Managers at a disk storage assembly company met monthly to discuss issues they were facing regarding: their direct reports, their management, department interfaces, and people development. |
8. Gather a concerned group and ask some simple, high-leverage questions that focus on expanding common ground, not differences |
Pose questions to the collective group intelligence such as: What’s our common ground, and how can we expand it? Can we agree to disagree on this point and move on without it affecting our outcome? What’s missing? |
During a planning conference for a community of New Age people and ex-military personnel, the issue of “all life is sacred” came up. There was quite a heated debate until the facilitator asked both parties if the issue could be placed on a “Disagree” list and they could move on. They did, and never returned to the issue because it did not impact the plans the community was making. |
9. Conduct simple collective analysis, solution development, and implementation sessions |
Conduct simple collective assessments using a process map and classification of activities as value-added or non–value-added. Also, analyze root cause, which may be as simple as asking Why? five times to get at a problem’s underlying issues. |
A consumer electronics company conducted several simple improvement projects. Their success and enthusiasm spread to other areas and started a process improvement wildfire resulting in plant operating cost reductions of 34 percent and cycle time improvements of 68 percent. The plant manager had to “control” enthusiasm with a prioritization team to ensure people weren’t simultaneously on too many improvement teams. |
10. Convene a Dialogue session, with no immediate decisions required |
Get people together to discuss a topic of interest—often a “hot topic” politically—and agree that no decisions will be made in the meeting, only assumptions and interests will be explored, and action planning sessions will be conducted later. |
Senior managers at a service company conducted a Dialogue session (chapter 7) to surface each other’s assumptions, options, and objections to a planned upcoming benchmarking study. |
Table 2. Tips for Increased Participation or Better Decisions
Where to Now?
Below are some starter questions to help your organization or community get going or keep going on a successful, sustainable change effort. As we used to say in a Big 6 consulting firm where I worked many years ago, “Good answers cost 25 cents, good questions cost 25 dollars.” Inflation has, of course, taken the cost of consulting advice far beyond that figure, but Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke likewise echoes that sentiment and asserts, “It is not the answers that show us the way, but the questions.” Therefore, this chapter closes with a set of questions for you to consider in your change journey. I suggest you pose them to a group of people who have, or who intend to seize authority to make things better in your organization or community. Have deep discussions about these questions in groups of concerned people. Sometimes such discussion sessions might result in decisions, sometimes they may not; either way, it’s okay, as long as progress is made. Ultimately, implementation decisions will need to be made, but up front it can be best to surface assumptions, then establish common ground, gain general agreement, and codevelop action plans for moving forward. It may seem that there are simple yes/no answers to some of these questions, but honest dialogue will likely reveal varying degrees of agreement within your potential change group. It will be important to discuss these because your group’s agreement on an answer will determine your specific path forward. The questions are:
1. Do we trust the skills of people who are not in the top organization or community ranks enough to involve them?
2. Do we trust people’s intentions enough to give them a say in matters that affect them?
3. Do we trust that in many cases a diverse group of internal people can come up with exceptional recommendations?
4. Where might teams be used to enhance performance, and how do we ensure they’ll be high-performance teams once they are formed?
5. Do we need to change the current culture to support the improvements we’re seeking?
6. If top management distributes some decisions and “empowers” people, what organizational and process designs are needed to ensure things don’t totally get out of control and go in the wrong direction for the long term?
7. What assistance criteria do we need to think about before we interview potential consultants to help us?
8. What’s the appropriate line between accountability and freedom?
9. How do we ensure follow-up after a large group method?
10. What are strategic points where organizations and communities can advance their causes by organizing, conducting, and integrating various large-scale interventions like the ones presented in this book?
1. Mick Jagger.