Changing your change

I have often blogged about the need for being planful when it comes to change. Of course those that know my approach to plans’ also know that I look upon a culture change plan as a guide rather than a set of hard and fast rules.
This is because I know that when it comes to culture change you are constantly testing the mood of the organisation, seeking feedback, and generally working with what you have in front of you. In the case of culture change your plan will be constantly updated as you learn what worked, what the organisation responded to and of course as the culture begins to change, that in itself will mean that the way you work with the organisation begins to change.


Lets play that last part through again and expand on it. When you begin to engage with your organisation about a change in culture you will inevitably engage in a way that works at that time. If you don’t engage in a culturally appropriate way then it is likely that your people will not grasp the message that you are trying to convey. So for example if you have a very formal organisation with a lot of top down and you want to change to a more flexible organisation with less hierarchy it may seem appropriate to engage with them in a style that matches that flexible ideal doesn’t it?
But that wont work for a couple of reasons. Firstly, if your people are used to formal announcements and you decide to wander round and have casual chats they will see that you are having casual chats and wont see that you are announcing change: because thats not the way that ‘things are done around here’ (which is the simple definition of culture). Secondly, you don’t truly know what a ‘flexible’ culture will mean yet. You may have some ideas and you may think you know what you want, but once you start to engage your organisation in a new idea of culture you cannot be 100% sure what shape that ideal will take in reality. This means that if you say ‘this is how it is going to be from now on’ and you find a couple of months later that its not working then you aren’t going to look good.
This means that you start by engaging in a way that works at the time, but make it clear that this is not what you are looking for in the future ( a perfect way to initiate a change in culture is to hold up the now and say this is not what you want). You engage people in the idea of the culture before the reality of the culture (Unless you are a dictator and we’ve explored that theme before).


As your culture change programme roles out you will then begin to engage in more and more ‘flexible’ ways if flexibility is the theme of your culture change. You will be learning what flexibility means for your business and re-defining it on a day to day basis. You will be engaging with ideas from your people, many of whom will have some great insights into what they need from you in a ‘flexible culture’.If you aren’t then you are not being flexible!


One of the tests that I suggest to my clients is to constantly ask themselves if the new process, new approach, new system, communication etc is in line with their proposed ‘vision’ and ‘culture’. By constantly testing how you do things, you keep your culture change intentions top of mind, but also you are ensuring that the current reality doesn’t stay that way by accident and habit.


Culture change is best seen as a journey, so treat your plan as a road map that is changing and learning as you and your people are.

Lost your mojo?

I've written before about the need to engage your people early in the change programme. The need to create momentum through involvement and engagement is also a well established practice. This simple rule of 'engage and involve early' works particularly well if the organisation knows it needs change and has an energetic and engaged population. But what if they aren't. What if your people have had such a long period of stagnation that they think their current reality is normal. What if people are short on ideas and energy. 
What if your organisation has lost it's mojo?

Many organisations become skeptical of change and their leader needs to re-build trust ensuring that this time the change will happen and will deliver what it promises. Teams in this environment will often participate in the debate about what needs to change and have ideas about how to improve the organisation but will do so with a large degree of skepticism. In this case the leader can engage in debate and involve the organisation in the 'how' if they have a determination to follow through and make the outcomes happen. In effect they are tapping in to ideas and energy that the last leader didn't tap in to.

But an organisation that has been doing things the same way for so long that the majority aren't able to see the need for change and can't see past the existing way of doing things, requires a different approach. The question is 'what approach?' 

• Does the leader not only flesh out the vision but bring to the table how it is accomplished? With all the risks that a 'one man crusade' has?
• Do you 'have a clear out' and bring in fresh blood? An approach favoured by many but with inherent risks. (lost knowledge, commitment of those remaining, mood of the organisation etc)
• Do you seek out the few who do aspire to something better and create your guiding coalition from those voices? The risk if they are not current managers, the potential for alienation by their colleagues, their managers and the pressure to conform is obvious here. 

So what's the answer? Well as always in change there is no one route. Everything is contextual to the situation you find yourself in as a leader. The answer will likely rest in a combination of all three, at least:

• The new leader will certainly have to signal change, and be ready for that to be met with resounding silence at best and outright rejection at worst. Be ready to be on your own here!
• Assessment of the key post-holders in leadership positions, how invested they are in the current reality versus their willingness to come on a different journey, along with their capability of operating within the new vision, will mean that new blood may be required in key areas that are the drivers of change.
• Involve those with potential in the redesign and give them roles where they have an opportunity to influence and explain to others. It doesn't matter where they sit in the organisations hierarchy, if they influence those around them then they are gradually going to build a tipping point with you. 
• Of course you will have to give those who are dead set against the change a chance to get off the bus, whatever level they sit at. Some may self select by request and some by action. If this is managed well by the new leader with empathy and respect then the rest of the organisation, those who want to come along, will appreciate your actions. 

Most importantly prepare for this being a long haul journey, with a lot of hard decisions and lonely days before you start to see results.

Seven questions about your culture change

Why not ask yourself these questions if you are CEO/GM and have a change programme under-way.
A. How is the change progressing?

1. We started out with good intentions but everyone is really busy you know.
2. We all said 'we need to do that' but nobody took an action.
3. When we defined the plan nobody asked 'what can we drop?' (meaning the answer became 'the change actions')
4. It is something I only ask about at the end of the month. The rest of the time I focus on results ( replace results with $s, sales, volume, turnover as appropriate)
5. We are hitting every change target, with a fully resourced plan regularly supported by expert help.

B. How engaged are your people in the change?

1. We will tell you when we've told them what we've decided
2. They loved the fancy launch but think that was it
3. They are jaded by all the initiatives we start but don't finish
4. Those that are involved love it but the rest don't know whats happening
5. Everyone is on board and has personal actions to make local changes to meet our cultural aspirations

C. If asked, how many people could explain the culture change initiatives?

1. 100% of those standing beside our vision statement at the time you asked
2. 100% of those who could find the handout we gave on day 1
3. 100% of those that can find where we've hidden it on the intranet
4. Isn't it okay that we all express it our own way as free thinking people?
5. Most of them, as we regularly refer to in in our routine communication and link our day to day activities to it, but i know its a journey

D. Talking about comms, how often do you update everyone on the progress of change?

1. What do you mean by update?
2. We gave them the initial handout, surely they will just go do it?
3. Every time the big boss is in town as he/she likes that sort of thing.
4. Quarterly. There is a paragraph in amongst our four page reporting of results ( replace results with $'s, sales, volume, turnover etc)
5. We have an interesting and varied comms plan that includes videos, email and magazines to show what our people have achieved, supported by our weekly note that shows progress against the plan

E. How are you measuring the change?

1. Measuring?
2. We will know we have got there when we get there
3. The ultimate measures will tell us all we need to know ($s, sales, volume, turnover)
4. The culture change is supposed to develop a culture of measuring success so we haven't done it yet
5. We have a comprehensive system that tracks input measures designed to prove we are doing what we said would take us there along with staged success measures showing improvements in key results along the way

F. Who is responsible for your culture change?

1. HR
2. Me
3. Everyone is responsible
4. The management team
5. Everyone is held responsible for their action, with the senior team knowing that they are there as a cohesive, guiding coalition. My role as CEO/GM is to always carry the torch whenever I talk to anyone.

G.How seriously are you taking this culture change

1. Who? Me?
2. Well its really about the results first (replace results with $'s, sales, volume, turnover etc)
3. Its all fluffy stuff really so I let HR take it seriously
4. At the end if the year I will take it very seriously (when the other results are in)
5. As CEO/GM i know that if I don't take it seriously nobody else will. I see this change as vital to keeping ahead of the competition

The Legal Minimum?

There are few businesses out there that have not had to restructure at some time or another. Sometimes its because their market has gone downhill and they need to ‘retrench’ and at other times its because they need to grow and re-invest in technology. Either way jobs change and some jobs are removed or ‘dis-established’.

When these situations occur good companies have always worked things through with their employees and managed the change with integrity and with respect for those whose lives will change. Of course, not everyone does it well and in my ‘leading through transition’ workshops I give a few examples that I have seen where distinct lack of empathy was shown.
Its because of those businesses who don't see the benefit of managing change well (and there are many), that laws are put in place. Whatever country you are reading this from I know that you will be subject to some laws that are meant to protect employees from poor management practice. In New Zealand we are no different and have laws that require us to consult with our employees on the proposed changes that an employer wants to put in place. I can see the good intentions behind that idea. A good employer should want to engage with their workforce to work the changes through and would want their ideas in how best to implement the change. In the past, before such legislation, I have tried that approach and honestly explained the problem and opened up discussions with the workforce. Unfortunately it doesn’t really work and that is the first of the two problems with the legislative approach to managing restructuring.
The first thing that crosses anyones mind when you say that you have to bring about change in the business and that means some jobs have to go or change is that people are immediately concerned about ‘me’. What do you think would happen if you tried engaging in a decent wide ranging conversation to explore all ideas and options when you are thinking ‘this could mean I lose my job’ or ‘this could be a nice tidy sum and early retirement’? Natural human instincts of self preservation come in and you don’t have an honest conversation at all. The only person that you have such a conversation with is someone who is not affected. What happens when engage with the workforce in this way is that they soon say ‘You are management! Its your job to sort these things, why haven’t you done it?’
And soon you are back to the original approach of management coming up with a proposal and then talking it through with the workforce.

And then the second problem with the legislative approach comes in. The thing about the law is that it is open to interpretation. In fact there are people whose whole livelihood depends on their ability to interpret it differently and win. That means the law is never truly fixed and you are always looking at the last case and the last interpretation. This means that every time you start a consult you are spending a lot of your time trying to avoid being the next test case because going to court costs a lot of money with those guys who enjoy debating the law that you didn’t intend to break in the first place.
And how do you avoid being another case? By managing your proposal and process as tightly as possible. In fact in many cases the employer choses to follow a line of doing the legal minimum. Its often easier, as the less you say the less likely you are to get in to trouble. In addition you minimise risk by working the possible restructuring down to the tightest option. That means there is not a lot to discuss with the workforce as there are no real options. In fact I have sat with employers who have moved away from the smartest decision for the business, and in the long run their people, because that choice could result in a challenge in court.

Simplistically the less you say and the tighter the options you offer, the less likely you are to be really consulting and that defeats the higher intent of the reason for the legislation in the first place.

Why has this happened? Well, the courts have got wary of people who use restructuring as a way of managing performance and that means many of the actions in court and the decisions being made are to make it tougher on employers who may be trying this. Of course it is another story to consider why it could be easier to manage a restructuring than to manage poor performance but lets leave that aside. The point is that some employers try this route and the more they do so, the tougher the courts will make their testing of cases to see if it was a true consult.
Can we change it? I’m not sure whether we can unless the legislation is overhauled, but it may help if employers restructure when they need to restructure and manage performance when that is required!

New Broom, Soft Bristles?

Everyone knows the concept of a ‘new broom’ going in to an organisation and making sweeping changes to how things are done.
For some this starts with a refreshed vision/mission and roles on to new company values, some rebranding, followed by changes to the way the business operates (systems and I.T etc). For other’s it can just be that the new boss does things differently and people get used to the changes over time; the vision, mission and values are still on the walls but gradually fade, gather dust and fall off, while the new boss introduces methods, approaches and systems that they prefer and have delivered for them in the past.

Whether you’ve been part of the ‘Industrial Strength Hoover’ approach or the ‘Urban Decay’ methods of bringing changes to a business (and if you have definitions somewhere in between please share) then you will know that the arrival of a new boss or the leaving of a new boss can be an interesting time for employees.

In recent years I have noted that it is almost impossible for a new CEO/GM/MD to do anything other than adopt a new broom philosophy. In addition it is noticeable that there is an expectation that the sweeping starts very soon after their arrival. This creates some interesting changes scenarios for the business.
Firstly the business often goes in to hiatus when it is clear that a new boss is arriving. This hiatus continues until the new boss announces what they intend to do. The hiatus seems to occur because people ‘just know’ that changes will happen with a new boss, so initiatives that take a lot of effort are ‘delayed’ and changes that were part way through are put on hold. People hunker down and do the basics.
As a change agent this is an interesting time to observe the culture as it is an indication of what is culturally embedded but it is often a ‘lowest common denominator’ impression. At this point the new boss comes in and sees that lowest common denominator and rapidly comes to the conclusion that old vision/mission and values are not working (rapidly because that is the expectation these days) and low and behold they see that a new broom is needed.
If the new manager then acts soon after their arrival and takes the ‘industrial strength hoover’ approach then many good things are swept away and lost. This is sometimes because the manager had not seen them in action because of the hiatus and sometimes because thats what happens with an industrial strength hoover. When this happens people at least know where they stand (big announcements are part of the industrial strength hoover) but often those that have been there a while suffer the ‘we’ve done this before’ feeling as similar things come out in the new vision/ mission values.
If the new manager adopts an urban decay approach people have to be light on their feet and swift to learn what is acceptable and expected. Hiatus is swapped for confusion and concern as people try to work out what bits of the old are acceptable and which aren’t.

There are many other impacts on an organisation as a result of management change, but the real question is ‘how do you reduce the negative and maximise the positive?’

I believe that new leaders need time to observe and learn about their organisation. There are many conversations required before people stop treating them like a new boss and really speak their mind. The new manager has a lot of testing (and often indirect) questions to ask over a number of weeks to find out what parts of the vision are working, whether the organisation is functioning in line with that vision and whether departments/ divisions and teams are aligned, playing their part , etc. They need to stand outside and observe the culture in action and see what is positive about it and what isn’t. They need to assess the capability and fit of their people, the systems, processes and ways of working. They need to signal to the organisation that they are looking and learning and that they want everything to continue as it was before they arrived and that includes initiatives and change programmes.
They need to manage the tension between the board’s desire for swift and immediate action and the need to find out what the right actions are. They cannot take forever to decide but nor can they decide in their first few weeks.

They need to be a new broom with soft bristles.

Caught, Taught, Mandate or Free-will?

The challenge of culture change and how to bring it about is a topic most CEO’s and GM’s will have to grapple with at some point in their career, if not for all of it. These days, your ability to change an organisations culture is a factor in rising through the ranks of ‘C’ level and GM roles.
It is no surprise that there are therefore many perspectives on the topic of culture change. One of the common ones is whether culture is caught or taught and another is whether you should mandate culture across the business or allow each division, department, team and individual to choose their culture. In this two part blog we will look at both of those perspectives, starting with caught versus taught.

Caught Versus Taught
Ultimately culture is caught. New employees are told ‘how things are around here’ by their colleagues and their team-leaders. But we are talking about culture change. If you are looking to change your culture it means that there is something unwanted about the current culture and that's the culture people are catching.
In culture change there is a phase where both cultures exist. One will be in reality and the other will be a concept. As a leader your job is to guide people to the culture you are looking for. Yes you can be an icon of the new culture and hope that people will catch it, but if you are in an organisation of hundreds or more you will find that a difficult prospect.
Some CEO’s subscribe to the ‘Build and they shall come’ approach to culture. This approach assumes that if the vision is so compelling and the values so motivating that people will adopt them. The problem with this view is that your existing culture has a life of its own and like all life-forms it doesn't want to die. It also exists in habits people don’t know they have, expectations that leaders won’t even realise are counter-cultural until they have to explore them, and practices and policies that have been around so long that they aren't in the manual any more.
I call this the culture buffer. Unless you are building a culture for a new business start-up you will be facing this, and the older and more established the business the tougher the buffer is.
So do I say taught over caught for culture change? Well it depends on what you mean by taught. I have seen programmes that seem more like indoctrination because the delivery has gone so far as to define the 24 expected behaviours and 32 competencies that every role is expected to adhere to in order to live the culture. This approach makes it impossible to be the unique person that your were actually employed to be so it is soon ignored as it just too hard.

In my view the amount of catching and the amount of teaching is a balancing act that depends on your existing culture (how entrenched it is, how far removed from the culture you need etc), the degree of change that is required to make it happen and then the stage that you are going through e.g. you will do more teaching in the early stages of rolling out a culture, but less when it is clear that influential people have caught the virus and are out there passing it round.
The teaching should be done in a way that allows people to align the best of themselves, guides them when choices are to be made and encourages them to strive on your behalf. Involvement is everything in the teaching phase. One session on one day will not be enough. You need multiple involvement activities, strong communication channels, managers that change processes to align them to the culture (so that culture truly becomes ‘how we do things around here’) and leaders that live it, integrate it in to every vision, business plan and strategic objective.
Teach it, involve in it, align to it and then you can rely on it being caught.

Do you have a hidden agenda?

How many times have you heard that you or your organisation has a hidden agenda? If you are in any form of leadership position I would be surprised if you’d not heard this before. If you are not at the top of your companies tree I am sure you've heard conversations about what 'management' are doing behind the scenes.

It can be really frustrating as a leader when you hear this if you think you don't. Many managers just ignore it when they hear it and dismiss it as the ‘normal scepticism that employees have for management’.

When I hear it I treat it as a clue to the culture of the organisation.

So before you ignore that ‘scepticism’ let me ask you whether it is possible that you actually do have a hidden agenda…….unintentionally?

Many organisations have active yet unofficial ‘information networks’. These networks aren't communication networks, they are more akin to the skin mounted monitors used in hospitals. They don't tell the doctor what the patient thinks but whether the patient’s heart rate has risen or when their breathing changes for example. They let the doctor know how the patient is feeling.
The information networks in your company are extremely sensitive to changes in management activity, just like the hospital monitors. When regular meeting patterns exist and there are no unusual comings and goings they tell the people in your organisation that 'everything is the same'.
But when extra or unusual meetings begin happen, consultants start to arrive, or senior team 'awaydays' take place, they are noted by the networks and the signal that 'something different is happening' goes out.
Especially if you have not said what they are happening for.

Riding on the back of those signals is that most human of conditions; speculation.
In the void of an unintentional hidden agenda people will naturally fill the gap based on past experience e.g. what happened last time the management team disappeared for days and had many closed door meeting (was that a structure change by any chance?).

From your perspective as a manager you are doing management work. You are 'planning' or 'reviewing' or even 'thinking about things', 'haven't decided anything yet' or 'have nothing to declare at this stage'.
What that means to the information network is that activity has increased without a similar increase in communication. If you haven’t said what is going on then what you are doing is, in the truest meaning of the word, ‘hidden’

Be aware that a 'hidden agenda' is often a sign that your people are filling a communication void with speculation. It can therefore be a clue to the health of your routine information channels; it may mean that they are blocked, or too loose with information, not delivering consistently or uninformative, used sporadically when you do have an agenda or a one way transfer of information. You may find that it is a combination of these in different streams of the business.

But don’t ignore the clue or the next time you stand up and say something in all honesty you will still be accused of having a hidden agenda.