January/February 2009 · Volume 91 · Number 1

Leading Change Isn’t a Spectator Sport!

by Patrick Ibarra

In today’s ever-changing, unfolding world, the forces for change are rooted in the continuation of past issues gathering momentum—declining revenues, contentious political pressures, and increasing demands for service as well as other issues arriving on the scene that include shifting workforce demographics and expanding technologies.

In public sector organizations large and small, change is ubiquitous and often overwhelming, especially to those who perceive themselves as being on the receiving end. For leaders, the struggles reside in both corralling the forces for change and shepherding their organizations and members of those groups though a successful change process.

Government organizations are encouraged to institutionalize best practices, freeze them into place, concentrate on execution, increase predictability, and get processes under control. These ideas establish stability as the key to performance.

Consequently, public sector organizations are built to support enduring values, stable strategies, and bureaucratic structures—not to change. In today’s chaotic unpredictable world, however, organizations should be built around practices that encourage change, not hinder it. Playing it safe is no longer playing it smart.

It has been said that not everyone is for progress. Many leaders are under the assumption that change can be accomplished with a mandate. Actually, the merit of an idea or change initiative has little to do with its successful implementation. Every organization has its own unique “cemetery,” and that’s often where good ideas go.

Why? Because leaders either try to strong-arm people into compliance or believe that, over time, employees will simply accept the change. Rarely does either of these occur. Instead, people often wait out the change with a this-too-shall-pass mind-set or act as though they support it long enough to impress decision makers and until attention is diverted to something else and they can return to work as normal.

The best example I have found to demonstrate the struggles people and organizations encounter with change, especially with regard to implementation, is one many of us can relate to: getting in better physical shape. We are extraordinarily gifted at talking about getting in shape (the chatter about change), and even go so far as to join a local health club (we buy the solution).

The problem surfaces when it comes down to actually visiting the health club and, while there, participating in some type of workout that will generate our desired outcome. Sound familiar? Organizations and their members duplicate this same practice: employees and leaders chat about change and buy solutions, but when it comes to actual implementation it seems something always comes up and derails good intentions.

Organizational development is the practice of managing change through design and application. Its approach is to manage change through a series of planned events. For too long, however, change has been managed as a process as though people function in lockstep, waiting for the next pronouncement from on high before they move on with their beliefs and thoughts.

Quite the contrary, according to some from the organizational development field who recognize the people side of the change equation and realize that people are complicated, ambivalent, and downright messy. They also believe that employees, heavily influenced by their work environment, routinely zigzag in their expectation about the results from a change initiative.

The balance of this article will (1) Describe the most common change scenarios organizational leaders find themselves in so as to raise awareness and lessen the likelihood the situations will be replicated and (2) outline an effective approach for designing and implementing meaningful and sustainable change initiatives.

Typical Change Scenarios

The barriers that hinder, derail, and often prevent well-intentioned change initiatives from accomplishing the desired outcome are numerous and often fairly predictable. Crucial to implementing a successful change initiative is to be fully aware of the common mistakes even seasoned professionals can sometimes make. As you read these scenarios, identify those that you have experienced:

“Change is a solution looking for a problem.” An executive or manager returns from a conference all fired up, wanting staff members to read about the latest management fad that will, like taking a pill, solve their problems. The solution is a series of simple, easy-to-use steps that, upon implementation and often in isolation, will cure the current ills.

Unfortunately, this practice does not account for the organization’s own history, unique culture, and current state of affairs that together often work to resist change. It is the equivalent of a person’s initial consultation with a personal trainer—a session that can lead some to expect to become an Olympic-caliber athlete when, in fact, the original goal was to merely get in shape for an upcoming high school reunion.

“More communication is all we need to make this change successful.” The notion here is that a bigger dose of communication will persuade all involved that the change under consideration is worth their extended effort. I strongly encourage leaders who reduce everything to a communication gap and who often "fall on their swords" to prove their point to strongly reconsider their approach.

Why? Because leaders often approach communication as a one-way street and focus more on telling instead of listening. In reality, leaders and managers mistakenly believe they are the intended audience for their own message. As a result, they begin with their point of view about the change and assume that everyone will get on board and see the situation as they do.

In reality, however, most employees are not at the same level of understanding about the situation and need more opportunity to examine all the factors. Leaders often become frustrated and wonder what’s wrong with all those folks who don’t “get it,” forgetting that employees have not been engaged in all the discussions that have brought leaders to their conclusions.

“We need to brainstorm our way out of this situation.” This activity often reflects the quotation from Albert Einstein shown at the beginning of this article. Thought processes are sometimes flawed, and doing more of a flawed process only gets you more flawed, or worse faster. Moreover, managers who do little to cultivate the imagination of employees every day are mistaken when they expect that convening those same employees in a stale room with day-old doughnuts and bad coffee will result in leading-edge ideas that simply appear.

Most employees are pretty savvy when they are invited to participate. They realize early on that there will be lots of talk—even earnest efforts afterward about instituting something generated at the brainstorm session—but little to no significant improvements made. Consequently, their participation wanes, and there is a direct correlation between this energy drain and any change initiative actually succeeding.

For too long, members in organizations have heard too much of the same thing and seen too much of the same thing, and now feel totally comfortable being spectators to the events unfolding in their own organization. Leaders become frustrated with this type of employee mind-set, but it is often the result of the organization’s collective history as it relates to change initiatives. Employees have very long memories, and they often have seen change initiatives simply repackaged. Ultimately they become disillusioned. Quite frankly, there’s nothing worse than a dispirited employee.

“Let’s reorganize.” Change is often designed to ease some level of pain, and reorganizations tend be the most popular technique to remedy that pain. If organizational members are not aware of what’s supposed to happen once the situation has been remedied and the pain is gone, then that uncertainty plays a significant role in their inability to transition to the new way of doing business.

Many agencies undertake a reorganization that is intended to deliver different and better outcomes but often generate few, if any, positive dividends. The changes expected were not those delivered. Leaders often pull the "let’s reorganize" lever, which is perceived by many employees as another in a series of misguided attempts at resolving often an isolated but troubling issue.

There also is a tendency to believe that simply reorganizing a function and moving boxes around on an organization chart translates to substantive differences in how work is executed.

In summary, every organization is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets. In other words, designing a reorganization when insufficient attention was devoted to identifying significant changes in outcomes will amount to practically no positive results and may unexpectedly exacerbate other pressing issues.

The point here is that organizational change is much more than just a change in a process, procedure, or program. Organizational change is any type of transition that requires a change in human performance. The problem with ignoring the human aspect of organizational change is that you could be leaving out a whole range of initiatives that require a change management focus in order to be successful.

Change must focus on content, people, and process. Content refers to what about the organization needs to be changed: strategy, structure, systems, processes, technology, or work practices. People refer to the behaviors, emotions, minds, and spirits of the people who are being impacted by the change.

Process refers to how the content and people changes will be planned, designed, and implemented. All three aspects must be woven together into one unified change effort. Often, there is an overreliance on the content aspect of the equation and much less attention paid to the people side, with the assumption that people know intuitively what to do once the change has been announced.

Simply put, content is the what; people, the who; and process, the how. All three must be synchronized for the change initiative to succeed.

How to Implement Change Initiatives Successfully

Traditional organizations like those in the public sector are built to resist change. Their numerous rules, regulations, and policies limit experimentation, program in traditional behaviors, and reward consistent performance. They have many checks and balances in place to ensure that the organization operates in the prescribed manner.

This approach is consistent with the objective of achieving success under current business conditions, but it is entirely inconsistent with achieving continuing success when change is needed. Change must become the new norm; it should be contagious among members of the organization. Organizations should always be changing, both adapting to new circumstances as well as driving strategic change in anticipation of what’s on the horizon.

Essential to successful change initiatives is the designation of the type of change being undertaken. In other words, not all change is created equal. Planned change efforts can be characterized as falling along a continuum ranging from incremental changes that involve fine-tuning the organization (referred to as change with a lower case c) to quantum changes that entail fundamentally altering how the organization operates (referred to as Change with a capital C).

Vehicle maintenance is an apt metaphor. It’s crucial to distinguish the type of change in an organization. Is it the equivalent of a routine oil change or a major engine overhaul? Too often, executives overdramatize the change even for slight modifications, so employees may view change with a healthy dose of skepticism. Therefore, distinguishing where on the continuum the change initiative is that you are driving should be one of the first steps you take.

Fundamental to motivating change in an organization is having some dissatisfaction with how things are. In that pursuit, leaders and managers need to foster a work environment that enlists the involvement of employees in the performance and future of the organization; creating and sustaining a learning-oriented, feedback-seeking climate is strongly encouraged. By doing so, leaders develop their organization’s capability by building up their people.

Their focus should be on creating a high-commitment culture on the part of employees as the main lever to institute change. This can happen through a variety of means, providing feedback organizationwide about the agency’s performance and engaging employees in random discussions about the impact of trends on the agency, to name just two. In the spirit of the idea that “what gets talked about gets done,” substantive discussions should be regularly held at all levels about the forces for change and how respective organizations intend to respond.

Penetrating the cocoon that can insulate public sector agencies should not be left to the annual budgeting process or the occasional staff meeting but, instead, needs to be part of the fabric that comprises the organization’s collective mind-set. If we want employees at all levels to exercise initiative and act as leaders, then it is imperative that they are not only advocates of change but also active participants in its development and implementation.

Organizational change can be viewed as two distinct phases: determining the change needed and implementing the change.

Phase 1: Determining the Change Needed

As was described earlier under the topic of typical change scenarios, many change initiatives are misguided from the beginning. The common theme shared by those scenarios can be attributed to the desire for immediate improvement, with leaders and managers doing the proverbial “gut check” to know what needs fixing.

There is sometimes a tendency to accelerate through the assessment phase so one can arrive at the more provocative segment of the equation—the actual solution. At its core, though, change management is a problem-solving process, so if insufficient time and effort are applied to actually determining current conditions, the likelihood that a change initiative will succeed is marginal.

An alternative to the gut check is an analytical process that focuses on evaluating current practices and conditions as well as anticipating potentially impacting trends. A process that can be held up to scrutiny and is consistent with the due-diligence expression so common in organizations today is precisely what is needed. More than simply a popular notion, due diligence is designed to evaluate all the factors that are prompting the current situation.

Unfortunately, during this phase inexperience and a “we’ve always done it that way” approach can strangle the process. The challenge in this phase is to remove the psychic prisons that prevent people from seeing old problems in a new light. Analysis suffers and effectiveness deteriorates when managers and leaders cannot reframe the issue. When they don’t know what to do, they do more of what they know.

Unfortunately, rarely is government described as being proactive. Instead it is accused of the opposite: being too reactive. Reactive measures tend to create crises and changes that can occur and may be viewed as punitive.

Although most public sector agencies do not have the equivalent of a research and development (R&D) department, that should not preclude them from using an R&D process. The R&D process is well-suited for this phase of the change process.

Essentially, R&D is focused on evaluating current and future conditions, assessing their impacts on organizational performance, and developing alternatives to address those impacts. To simplify, R&D is akin to engaging in a continuous SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) process so the organization is constantly feeling the necessity for change.

An effective R&D process will be able to distinguish the magnitude of the changes needed, the incremental from the quantum, their level of interdependence, and, most important, what the change needed actually is. This is consistent with the maxim that “problems drive solutions,” not the other way around.

Important during the analysis are two aspects often overlooked:

1. Occasionally the change solution should focus on what the organizations should stop doing. Yes, that’s right, stop doing. Public sector organizations excel at performing more of the same but suffer from a straitjacket approach when deciding what to cease. In many organizations, for example, there are dedicated, earnest, hard-working employees who prepare reports no one reads.
   
   It’s time to evaluate what each and every employee is contributing to support your agency’s mission, and those activities that are not valued-added should be stopped. Sometimes the most important thing anyone can do to institute change is to refrain from doing what seems normal (that is, the way we’ve always done it).
2. Overreliance on best practices and benchmarking. Benchmarks are about input and output measures and can assist with forecasting workload requirements, but often they have little positive correlation with positive outcomes. Government is in the business of creating positive outcomes, not merely producing more outputs.
   
   Best practices are often self-proclaimed by agencies without any outside review assessing their validity, and they do not take into account the unique culture and circumstances of the organization into which they are transplanted. Furthermore, using best practices for every service and program an agency provides is not only unrealistic, it’s unnecessary.
   
   Once the analysis has been completed, the situation ascertained, and a change solution identified, the second phase is the actual implementation of the change solution.

Phase 2: Implementation

Fundamentally, change is about improving employee performance and organizational effectiveness. Strong, focused, and sustained commitment is required to implement any change initiative successfully. With many change initiatives, there is an inclination to simply do that which is easiest or least controversial. While that may be the most politically expedient course of action, it may prove to have fleeting results.

Executives must be visible advocates of the outcomes being generated by the change initiative. In that respect, employees invariably have expectations about the results of organizational change. These expectations can play an important role in generating motivation for change.

The expectations can serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading members to invest energy in change programs that they expect will succeed. When members expect success, they are likely to develop greater commitment to the change process and direct more energy into the positive behaviors needed to implement it. The key to achieving these positive effects is to visibly communicate realistic, positive expectations about the organizational changes early and often.

A variety of approaches exist to implement change effectively in organizations. The crux of each is that support from top management is necessary from the beginning and throughout the entire change process. Beyond that, the following 10 steps (tactics) are recommended:

1. Define change as a compelling element of organization strategy. Unless the proposed change finds its way into a grander set of organizational priorities, it is unlikely that the change will be sustainable over time. The reality in most organizations today is that organizational priorities are driven by the annual budget cycle. It will be difficult to sustain the change effort unless there is a clear and unambiguous reason for it. Linking the change to organizational strategy creates such a purpose.
   
   Often change is designed as though once in place it is permanent. On the contrary, many changes should be temporary—but temporary may be several years. The notion that anything put in place is permanent and needs no attention is incorrect.
2. Put an infrastructure in place, a change management coalition. Get the right people involved in the change effort and define the roles and responsibilities for these people. The coalition, to be effective, must include people in the organization who are influential and can affect employee opinion; they must be people of high integrity and credibility.
   
   Nothing dooms a change initiative faster than for those people overseeing it to have tarnished reputations. As has been stated, the merit of the change has little to do with its success, especially when it’s compromised at the start by people whose credibility is questionable.
   
   Depending on the scope of the change initiative, the coalition should pursue bold actions that are highly visible moves and demonstrate that things are now “very different around here.” These moves are to be understood as emphatic signals that send unequivocal messages about the new direction. Bold actions should not indict the past, but rather honor it without prolonging it. They must attend to both content and people changes.
   
   As an organizational effectiveness practitioner, my role is to serve as a change adviser, and within this arrangement there are definite limits on my ability to influence change. Consultants can play a pivotal role but cannot be seen as the face of change. Instead, a strong partnership must be established between the consultant and those overseeing the change initiative.
3. Work from an implementation plan. Implement the recommendations resulting from Phase 1 and be sure they are rigorously managed.
4. Recognize the investment and commit to the long haul. Ensure that the change project doesn’t become some flavor-of-the-day effort. Help people understand that change takes time to implement if it is to be successful.
5. Think small. Break the change effort into elements that are small enough to ensure quick wins and build momentum. The coalition should divide the change initiative into several phases, each phase with its own dividends.
6. Build alliances in support of the change. Learn to play the politics of change. Find champions for the change effort. Successful implementation will be decided by customers, both internal and external, who are affected directly or indirectly by the change.
7. Align recognition to support implementation. Employees will generally achieve what they are rewarded for or measured against, not just what they are expected to do. Provide positive recognition when expectations are met and negative consequences when expectations are not met.
8. Translate the change into job-level details. In the end, the people whose jobs are affected by the change will be the determining factor in whether the change effort proves successful. Unless the change can be translated into specific actions or activities for these individuals, there will be too many opportunities for misunderstanding, and unnecessary time will be spent tracking down glitches in the implemented solution. Make the change meaningful to the people who will be responsible for implementing the change.
9. Integrate the change into management systems. Incorporate the change into such systems as the agency’s strategic plan, budget, performance measurements, structure, compensation, succession planning, and employee orientation and training. Integrating the change into these systems will help prevent the change from dissipating over time and can serve as an early warning system if the change effort jumps off track.
10. Follow up relentlessly. The need for short-term results drives most organizations, and change requires time to become sustainable. People must be held accountable for their commitments. Establish regular opportunities to review progress through status reports, project review meetings, and meetings with key stakeholders.

The idea behind the 10-step approach is that executing a change initiative cannot be left to chance and must be done according to a coherent plan of steps, at least the technical aspects of the change. It is crucial to recognize that employees may not transition smoothly through the steps. This will serve as a reminder that when an organization does not actively engage its employees in the change debate, it lessens the likelihood of continued success.

Sustaining Change

The initial excitement and activity of changing often dissipate in the face of the practical problems of trying to learn new ways of doing business. A strong tendency exists among many members in organizations to return to what they already know. Just as diets should lead to changed eating habits and working out must become part of one’s lifestyle for both activities to generate the desired results, change must take hold and become part of the fabric of how an organization conducts its business.

Two maxims about change management essential to remember throughout the change journey are:

• “Changing is what organizations do, not what you do to them.”
• “Organizations don’t change people, people change organizations.”

And, finally, remember that conversations are the oxygen of priorities. So begin the dialogue about change and enjoy the ride!

Patrick Ibarra (patrick@gettingbetterallthetime.com) is cofounder and partner, The Mejorando Group, Phoenix, Arizona (www.gettingbetterallthetime.com). He is a former city manager and human resources director.

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