How Not To Screw Up Driving Important Changes in Your Company
As an OKR coach, I see a lot of companies failing with driving changes such as implementing a new goal-setting framework or changing how management leads improvements. It might feel that making changes can’t be that hard and complicated. You just decide what you want to change and inform others and everything suddenly falls into place. Yeah, well, unfortunately, we people are creatures of habits and driving changes needs a bit more thinking through. And I would assume, as you reading this you might have had a failed attempt as well.
Different habits, processes, beliefs, and behaviors in an organization form an organizational culture. These values and norms might be decided and written down, or more commonly they just form over time and people adopt them. In most cases, leaders in an organization form them with their behavior and reactions without even realizing it. The rest of the company just accepts the leader’s behavior as a norm of how everyone and everything in the company should be.
Have you seen the social behavior experiment in an elevator? People in the elevator stand unusually — facing the mirror. Those people are placed there this way. Now a person, unaware of the test, enters the elevator. You can see them clearly being confused and uncomfortable. Even though they first stand as every person usually does, facing the elevator doors, then after some seconds almost every person in this video turns around to stand as others do. It’s not their normal behavior but people are more comfortable if they fit in and follow the norms around us.
This elevator story is a simple and perfect example showing that the majority wins when it comes to social behavior. This means when you want changes to take place, you need to get the majority to follow you. This needs strategy and consistency. Sending out just some emails won’t work.
I am a big believer in proven theories and best practices. If hundreds of companies have succeeded this way before, you will too. One of my favorite and in my experience also one of the most successful methodologies to change organizational culture is this 8 step model created by Kotter (1998). I think this model can actually teach us much more than how to drive cultural changes. Knowing this model has come in handy in many situations in my life.
1. Establish a sense of urgency
First, make sure that everyone really wants to go through this change. Especially people on higher levels. They are the leaders and they make important decisions daily which affect how well the change is going through.
Establishing a sense of urgency can mean analyzing the market, identifying crises or challenges, and mapping major opportunities. It’s like a list of business-related reasons which clearly prove and help people understand why this change is needed. If they understand the WHY, they will become more motivated to act.
2. Form a powerful guiding coalition
Once there’s motivation to get started you need to find some charismatic leaders. Those people will be the ones leading the change, keeping eye on everything that needs to get done, and motivating people when it’s needed. It will be their job to make sure everyone knows what they need to do to make this change happen.
A leader can be anyone who has the right personal traits and capability to lead people. It doesn’t have to be a manager, it can be someone who is passionate about this change and someone who others would also listen to. It’s best if the coalition group consists of people from management who have decision-making power and people who are passionate about the change topic and want to learn more.
They should take into account the time and dedication needed to drive this change and they need to be comfortable giving out different tasks and responsibilities. It’s crucial that this coalition is a group of innovative and open-minded people who are ready to think outside the box. If you pick the wrong people with the wrong motivation you will get bad results and change won’t happen. Or at least not the change you want.
3. Create a vision
To know where you want to go you need a shared vision. Try to picture the change that has taken place, what is better now? Where you are and who you are as a company? What kind of shared beliefs and values do you represent?
Once you know what you want, you need to think about how to get it. The strategy should be something really concrete, giving people good directions. If it’s too vague, people won’t know what to do and it’s easy to think “oh, that doesn’t include me”. You need to think a bit bigger than just here’s point A and here’s point B. But what’s in between? Are there any crossroads you need to regulate to even be able to reach point B?
Here’s a simple example to illustrate the point. You wish to have Friday fun meetings for the team to feel more united. But on Fridays, most of the teams have a retrospective. People need to prepare for the retrospective. This is your crossroad. If you set the fun meeting just before the retrospective, the participation rate might be low and there’s a high chance people are more busy preparing at the last minute than having fun with the team.
4. Communicating the vision
A powerful plan won’t work if people don’t know about it. And I repeat, good communication isn’t sending just one email. The best way to go is to have an announcement event where details and expectations are communicated and explained. Changes are always a bit confusing and there will be many questions. If not now, then later. Make sure you encourage people to ask questions and discuss their concerns and worries to find solutions.
Once everyone is aware, you need to build consistency. That means you need to communicate the vision and steps of the strategy again and again until it’s achieved. That’s where the guiding coalition comes into play. It’s their sworn duty to make sure people don’t forget the change they are trying to pursue.
5. Empower others to act on the vision
Remember the elevator experiment? People will follow the majority which means you need the majority onboard to eventually get everyone onboard.
People need guidance and explanation now and then. Don’t just boss people around but co-create the best ways to move towards the vision. Empowering means making your people feel confident and giving them authority or power to do what’s needed. If something doesn’t work for people, try to understand what is wrong and what you could do differently. Don’t forget to recognize and award people who are making a difference and helping the vision to come true.
6. Plan and create short-term wins
Bigger changes take time and even though it’s really tempting to write highly ambitious goals, you need smaller goals to keep up the motivation. Having small wins regularly motivates more than anything else. If the steps in the strategy are too big and too vague, people might not see the progress soon enough before they run out of motivation. Make sure you make steps achievable and noticeable, the best is if you can make them measurable!
7. Consolidate improvements and produce more change
You won’t learn if you won’t dedicate some time to it. After every battle that you win (or lose), take time to analyze what went well and what you could do better. Share the learning across the company so others can learn from your mistakes and use the approaches that brought success. Use the learnings to keep achieving the goals set!
Oh, don’t forget to promote and acknowledge the employees who are successful in fulfilling the vision. Who doesn’t love a little pat on the shoulder after hard work? A new vision might mean that there are now new roles that need to be filled ;)
A new way of working also means new opportunities. Use the change to create projects and themes that match how your organization now functions. This helps to assure that the change is rather permanent and you really leverage the benefits.
8. Institutionalize new approaches
You have made it! Now you have to make sure you won’t fall back to old habits.
What motivates everyone in the organization to stick to new ways is showing them the success the changes bring. If the change has been successful it means company performance in different areas should improve along with it. Use different metrics or KPIs to show that this change really matters and brings benefits for everyone. For example, there might be an increase in the popularity of the brand, revenue numbers, employees, or customer happiness, fewer people might be leaving or your company is more attractive to potential employees.
Don’t forget to celebrate, you did great.
Driving the change isn’t an easy task and can take from months to literally years. While celebrating, make sure the guiding coalition keeps still leading the change so people would fall back to the old ways after so much effort. Oh yes, it’s very possible to still go back to old habits. I have seen it happen even after a year of hard work…
By now you have probably realized that organizational change isn’t easy, and isn’t something that happens overnight. It will take time and that’s okay. But if you stick to it, eventually you will see the large ship (your company) start to turn in the direction you want to go.
Changes are uncomfortable both in business and in personal life. But they are also necessary in order to grow and achieve things we couldn’t achieve before.
Originally published at https://blog.weekdone.com on April 20, 2021.
