Leading Change (Part 1)

Leadership is all about change. It’s about initiating and executing on activities that bring about positive change. From an organizational perspective positive change is change that delivers value to the organization and its customers, through innovation or through increased efficiency.

It’s been a challenge to try to summarize many of these concepts on leading change, because each and every section below could have pages or books written on it.  Not only will we be writing more to fill in those gaps, but your feedback and requests in the Facebook group will help us choose what to expand on next. Your questions and comments also help determine what kinds of tools and resources we publish! 

Back to the discussion on change leadership.

There are two parts to Leading Change: the first part is about developing the change initiative, and the second part is about implementing the change.

The kinds of things you do, as a leader, and the kinds of conversations you have are different in each of these phases.

Initiation phase

Initiating change includes all the activities that are required to get the approval to go ahead and start your change initiative. The steps are:

• Identify the symptom
• Uncover the root cause or problem
• Validate the problem and impact to the organization
• Vision and Intent
• Course of Action (Options)
• Objectives and Tasks (The Plan)
• Stakeholder Support and Overcoming Resistance
• Permission and Resourcing to Proceed

Identify the symptom

In the first stage you are concerned with identifying the problem, preferably a recurring problem, because there is no point in solve a one-off. Solving problems that aren’t going to happen again has no business value because the odds of them happening again is near-zero.

Sometimes you’ll see things that need to change in your organization, in your department or in your team. Other times you team or your peers will bring up issues that impact their ability to complete work effectively. Keep your ears and eyes open as a leader. Remember, as a leader, your goal is to enable your team to achieve their objectives effectively and efficiently. If you don’t act when they highlight problems, they’ll eventually stop bringing you their problems…

Uncover the root cause or problem

Once you've identified an issue, you will have to identify the underlying problem or root cause. If you don’t identify the root cause, you’re just treating the symptom. This can make things worse (the law of unintended consequences).

When you are looking at problems or root causes, you need to be looking objectively at events, procedures and occurrences. It is important not to base your analysis on hearsay or assumptions, especially about peoples’ motivations for action. By definition that is subjective and usually involves you ascribing some kind of motivation or other narrative that you don't have full knowledge of. Instead base your analysis on the actions. Stick to facts, cause-and-effect or chronological events.

There are several tools designed to help individuals and groups work through root cause analysis which range from simple to complex. From simple perspective, there are 3 avenues to explore when trying to identify root causes:

• Trace the steps backward (from onset of the symptom)
• Identify the timeline (when do the symptoms appear, what lead up to it)
• Why (sometimes referred to as the 5 Whys in different disciplines)

The question of ‘Why?’ is a powerful one, with many positive and negative possibilities. That single word will be the focus of an upcoming blog entry.

On the more complex side of formal root cause analysis, one of the commonly used tools is the Ishikawa (or fishbone) diagram. There are a number of good (free) articles that describe how you create and use the Ishikawa diagram to help identify the root cause of your current problem. When using the tool, be aware that for smaller problems you might be able to identify various factors and the root cause by yourself. For larger problems, especially those that cross teams or departments, you may need to get a team together to brainstorm. It will be the diverse experiences, job functions and expertise that help shed light on the root cause.

One thing to remember when you use these or any other tools, vocabulary matters. Most of these tools have you start by defining a Problem Statement; that’s your Symptom. Once you’ve identified the root cause, then you can move on to validating whether and how big a problem it is to your organization.

Validate the problem and impact to the organization

Once you understand what the root of the problem is, then you will need to go and solicit different opinions and different perspectives from different parts of your organization in order to validate your understanding. Just because you think something is a problem doesn’t make it so. What you considered to be a problem might be exactly as the system is intended to operate from a different perspective. We won't get into the whole scenario (in this article) where your organization has opposing systems set up as a way of maintaining balance.

Once you understand what the root cause is and have determined that it is a problem then you can get on to understanding how much that problem impacts the business. If it doesn't impact the business, then it’s not likely to be worth solving as a problem. That would be a case where the cure does more harm than the problem you’re proposing to solve. It’s important to draw the distinction between no impact to the organization and impact that’s hard to measure. You can have significant impacts to the business that are not easy to measure and quantify.

One way to gauge the impact to the business is as easy as answering the question “So what happens if we do nothing?” Remember your first response is just a starting point. You will probably have to go through several iterations to really dig into the impact on your organization.

Look at problem and impact from multiple angles in order to develop a case that will appeal to all stakeholders. Different stakeholders will be focused on different things and will be motivated differently.

• Financial impact
• Client satisfaction
• Employee satisfaction
• Employee productivity
• Legal or regulatory impact

Here’s your checkpoint. You are ready to move on to developing a solution when you understand:

• The symptoms of the problem
• The root cause
• The impact on the organization
• The differing perspectives on the situation

Vision and Intent

Your vision is one of the most powerful tools in your inventory. It is often overlooked, and more often misunderstood. Your vision sets the context for all of the plans and details, and makes it possible for people to quickly and easily understand what you’re trying to accomplish and why that is important.

Vision answers the question “How will things look once the problem has been resolved?” or “What is the new reality once the problem has been resolved?”  You can help develop your vision of the future by answering some guiding questions:

• How will people’s work flow or procedures be different?
• How will people interact differently?
• What will your customers be able to do differently or have to do differently?

Intent puts some structure around the Vision, making it less of a dream and more of a reality. These include time-frames and measurable outcomes.

As with all the steps in the change initiation phase, you may find yourself updating assumptions, impacts and clarifying your vision as you progress through the steps. That’s expected and encouraged!

Course of Action (Options)

Once you have your vision and intent, you can start looking at courses of action to solve the problem. Each course of action, or option open to you, will have a cost that needs to be weighed against the potential benefits. This includes costs of additional goods or services required as well as the cost impacts on current operations. For example:

• Will it take time to implement a new process? How much of a productivity hit will there be until the organization has adopted the new process?
• Will teams be reorganized, or tasks re-assigned? These will have a short-term impact on productivity and employee motivation

You will often have to come up with several courses of action, at least for yourself, to make sure you’re giving your logical self the tools and time required to make more rational decisions. There may be several courses of action that you have to develop and cost, in order to weigh them against one another.

At the end of the process, you must choose a course of action that you recommend and are willing to implement. Don’t go to your stakeholders without a defensible recommendation. By the same token, don’t go to your stakeholders with multiple options; it will make you look indecisive.

You goal is to be able to demonstrate that you’ve considered the competing options, and if asked, explain why each of the other options was discarded. That will show your stakeholders why your recommended solution is the right one to go forward with.  

Don’t jump too far ahead! It’s not time to go to your stakeholders yet even though you have them in mind as you develop your Courses of Action. Your goal at this point is to have a single, defensible recommendation that you believe to be the best choice based on your due diligence. You need to build out the details of this course of action before you can present it to your stakeholders.

Objectives and Tasks (The Plan)

You won’t develop a fully detailed plan at this point in time. Your goal is two-fold: start your due diligence to generate or support your credibility in the eyes of your stakeholders, and to develop or refine your rough order of magnitude costing.

Develop the key objectives and the supporting tasks required to achieve those objectives:

• What major projects (in terms of time, effort required, or number of people required) need to happen in order to achieve your vision?
• What resources will you need that are outside of your control?
• All tasks should complete goals and completion of goals will achieve your vision

Your goal here is to be able to give your stakeholders the feeling of confidence that you’ve done your due diligence and that you’ve considered all of the angles. They want to know that your plan is sound, without having to wade into the details of your plan.

As you dig into all of this planning and preparation, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Remember you’re not going to achieve big changes on your own. There will be a team working towards the vision with you. Sometimes the stress of it can still get to you. There are a few practical things you can do:

• Go back to your vision and clarify it; actually visualize what a day in your future state (when your current problem has been solved) will look like.
  • What will you be doing differently?
  • How will things be better?
  • What new opportunities will there be?
  • How will it feel to you?
• What is one small step or task that can be made today to move this project forward?

Stakeholder Support and Overcoming Resistance

Your stakeholders support or opposition will determine whether you can go forward with your change initiative. There are several steps you can follow to improve your odds.

The first step in getting stakeholder support is understanding who your stakeholders are. The second step is understanding how much of an impact they might have, and the third step is determining whether they are likely to support or resist your proposed change.

How do you explore who your stakeholders are?

• Understand who is affected by your proposed change (outside of your team)
  • Changing process or procedures
  • Changing responsibilities or duties
  • Changing staff counts or resourcing
• Understand who has a high degree of influence or impact on your work
  • Your boss
  • Teams or departments within your organization who rely on your output to achieve their objectives
  • Your customers (external)
  • Your suppliers

Once you have your list of stakeholders, you can start to evaluate their degree of impact. The traditional approach to managing stakeholders (below) is useful for determining how to prioritize engagement after you’ve started an initiative.

More valuable at this point, however, is how you prioritize your energy and time to get the stakeholder support you need to start your initiative. The chart below can help you categorize your stakeholders, so you maintain focus on who you need to influence most.

When you talk to your Resistors and Supporters, talk to them about what is important to them based on your business impact analysis.

Performing a more detailed stakeholder analysis can help you identify what matters most to your stakeholders, how they are likely to view your proposed change initiative and how you should approach communication with them. There are several ways to tackle stakeholder analysis, so take a minute and subscribe to this blog because you can count on more helpful articles coming up soon!

Getting stakeholder buy-in is all about getting the authority and the resources to start your change initiative. Your goal is to make sure you maintain the support of your Supporters while converting enough of your Resistors in order to get permission to go ahead with your initiative. Your Supporters should not only agree with what you want to do and how you plan to do it, but should lobby for your change initiative, using their networks and contacts to support your efforts.

Like your supporters, your resistors are all unique individuals. What motivates them, what interests them and what they value differ from person to person. This is again where your stakeholder analysis efforts will yield results.   

In order to get the support you need to start your change initiative, your focus will be on your high impact supporters and resistors. You must demonstrate your understanding of their position and communicating the personal and individual benefits, tied to their motivators.

In a nutshell the focus of the initiation phase is to get to the point where your stakeholders say, ‘okay, start’.

Permission and Resourcing to Proceed

‘Okay, start’ is important, but it’s not enough. In addition to the permission to proceed, you will need the resources committed to your change initiative. This includes people, equipment, and outside support. It may also include the ability to shift some of your existing responsibilities so you can focus on leading the change.

You probably haven’t captured enough detailed information (yet) in order to have accurate estimates for your project resources, so one of your next steps will be to start the detailed planning process.

That detailed planning process acts as the gateway between the Initiation Phase and the Execution Phase. It also acts as the end of part one of this series. Click on the subscribe button so you don’t miss the upcoming continuation of this article!

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