The idiots’ guide to…Change Management small-talk and More

Kanter’s Ten Commandments for Executing Change, Nine Steps to Success, Kotter’s Eight Steps, Luecke’s Seven Steps, Six Sigma, Five Ws of Communication, Four Ps of Marketing, Three Laws of the Iceberg, Two Step Flow Model, One Stop Shop, Zero Defect… Recipes for success or small-talk ingredients?

In an era where books and libraries are gradually replaced by Google and Wikipedia, a new breed of “experts” jam our corridors and influence the most credulous of us through name dropping, pretense of simplicity and, I must admit, sometimes our unwillingness to challenge their opinionated views. Change management is no exception and I shall share with you a few tips to challenge and shine in management society.

Next time you are with a group of colleagues or friends, try the following experiment. Making sure that you sound genuinely interested, ask them what change management is. Within five minutes, you will have awaken passion in the group and one will very proudly try to nail the last word by mentioning “He-Who-Must-Be-Named” or “You-Know-Who”. Ladies and gentlemen, tonight I give you Kotter’s Eight Steps!

Another five minutes and all your “experts” will start violently agreeing on the fact that change management is all about common sense. In fact when you don’t have a clue, common sense quickly become a justification for the absence of structured approach, the lack of analysis, and poor preparation. What is the percentage of change initiatives failing through common sense?

Hang on a minute. I hear that organizations can only change through their people. What sort of witchcraft does it take? Where is the princess who will kiss the toad? Do you have to pick needles into dolls to deal with resistance to change? No Sir, just change the mindset! That sounds rather expensive? Not at all. Save money on change experts, trainers, sociologists or psychologists and instead buy an Apple device for each of your employees; they will all “Think Different”! Remember, change needs positive reinforcement mechanisms…and a vision framed in a Golden Circle!

At that stage, don’t be fooled and instead enquire on what the eight steps are and how you implement them. It won’t be long before one dismisses your questions by stating that anyway 70% of all change initiative fail – to deliver expected benefits, according to Kotter International and McKinsey (2006). In fact this was initially reported in 2004 by Balogun and Hope Hailey.  Some suggest that it this poor success rate indicates a lack of valid framework.  Others, in particular behaviorists, argue that it is down to poor leadership, managers with ill-adapted behaviors who are neither trained to manage change nor to motivate and support their staff through change.

Who to believe? With a few exceptions, practices and theories published by academics are mostly supported by unchallenged assumptions on the validity of frameworks, the nature and the pace of change in organizations. There is no doubt that the pace of change has massively increased since the early nineties. In fact it has never been greater in all organization and all industries since 2004, and the reviews of successful or failed changes remain fairly empirical. Senior proposed in 2002 to look at changes under three categories characterized by the triggers of change, the scale of change and the rate of occurrence.

For years it was argued that employees needed routines to be efficient and be able to improve their performance.  The last ten years have seen a growing call to recognize that change must be continuous and in fact become a routine in its own right, a natural response to internal and external conditions. It is official Heraclitus can now rest in peace: no man ever steps in the same river twice.

Keep digging! Why do managers seem to prefer Kotter? Is it because Kotter has two steps less than Kanter or because Luecke’s work came twenty years later and hasn’t had the time to reach the level of fame of Kotter? There is no doubt that Kotter’s linear view on change must be quite pleasing for those who would like to believe that change has a start and an end. Behaviorists are pretty content with this as it still allows them to train skills at organizational, team and individual level in environments they often compare to machines, political systems, and organisms… Now you are going to hear that Cameron adapted Kotter’s steps in a closed cyclical loop. Cycles and systems are fashionably complex and allow the business-led reconciliation between behaviorists, psychodynamic and cognitive models. In difficult times, zebras and lions share water with crocs!

Oops! What shall we do with Senge? Well, Senge is allegedly better adapted to complex changes and systemic transformation, transitions and flux… If you want to transform a bunch of experienced MBA fellows into a network or constellation of independent entrepreneurial consultants, here is the recipe. Take Senge, add a pinch of cognitive salt, a zest of psychodynamics and the juice of a humanistic change.

Apart maybe from Richard Luecke and his Seven Steps to Change, most of the above may date a little. As the generation still reeling on good old Californian days, flower power and Lauri Anderson’s Superman will soon retire, what is fashionable nowadays might not be tomorrow. Remember Heraclitus? So who are the rising stars and what do you need to know to sound like an assistant researcher in organizational science and change management?

There is no doubt that the rate of occurrence of change is accelerating and there are growing evidences of companies and their employees reaching saturation with the number of change initiative being undertaken and often abandoned. A report by PWC (2009) states that 90% of key barriers to successful change are people related. The exhaustion generated by successive waves of change initiative are gradually tiring employees’ ability to cope with stress and uncertainty. Change requires energy and constant change therefore can easily lead to burn-out. When organizations fall in that acceleration trap, it impacts negatively on performance, individual productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, sustainability of change, employee well-being and the ability for organizations to grow and retain talents.

Bruch and Menges (2010) identified three ways in which organization fall in the trap. The first way is when employees are drowned under too many activities with little time to complete anything. The second is when employees are “multi-loaded” too many different and misaligned activities and work. The third way is in the permanence of “loading” employees with new change activities.  The resulting retrenchment is the result of not giving them the time to recharge their batteries. Over the last six years, I observed in numerous projects, and only too late, what Bruch and Menges described.

In theory Kübler-Ross (1969) two-dimensional change process and adjustment is still valid on a single self-contained change and over a limited period of time. Employees are now faced with multiple concurrent changes and our good old “mourning” curve certainly requires a three-dimensional refresh. How do multiple change attractors interact and how can organization avoid the almost certainty of the law of diminishing returns? If change requires learning and we are all subject to learning dips, how are numerous concurrent learnings affected by asynchronous or synchronous dips?  More importantly, if we accept the hypothesis that the rate of occurrence of change cannot be decelerated, what can organizations, leaders and managers do?

In my humble opinion, there is no good or bad theory related to change management.  The question is given the situation you have assessed which “best-of-breed” elements would ensure efficiency and effectiveness for your change initiative? There are already many theories and change management framework around.  There is actually no point in reinventing the wheel.  Once you have chosen a toolbox, make sure that it is fully implemented throughout your organization and all – leaders, managers and employees, are adequately trained to successfully use your framework with the right behaviors and attitudes.