Earning the Attention of a Prehistoric Brain

One of my colleagues recently created a blog posting with this title.  You can see Terri's article here.  Her point, from a trainer's perspective, is that brains are wired to ignore the repetitive and regular and pay attention to the unexpected and irregular. 

Psychologists call ignoring the background sensations habituation, and paying attention to what is new and different vigilance.  Our brains are quite primitive this way…they work much the way a dinosaur's brain worked.

How does knowing this help a principled leader?

I'm currently working with a client where we are half way through an 18 month culture change project across their organization.  One of the ways we are making the culture change stick is to use habituation and vigilance to our advantage.

When we first introduced the change we used as many different communication channels as we could.  We also had as many different customizations as possible for each of the audiences.  Each time the managers and staff saw the themes from the change process pop up in a memo, staff meeting or handout they thought "Ah, here's that thing again."  With every twist in the communication they looked at the changes and thought about what it meant for them.

Once the change was successfully introduced we started finding a common language and reinforcing a common mindset among the staff by repeating the same materials.  Over time the managers and staff no longer thought of what we were doing as "change", it just became "the way we do things around here".

We got the staff and managers to be vigilant about the changes coming their way, and habituated to the idea that change is natural.

Terri's article is a great look at the concept for improving training outcomes.  I also use the concept with my clients as one of the ways to help them make meaningful changes stick.

(You can also make people hyper-vigilant.  That's when the changes and novelty are coming so quickly, and the anxiety level is raised so high that people pay too much attention to paying attention, and become frozen into inaction).

There are principles that underlie each of the states of vigilance, habituation and hyper-vigilance.
 

When we work with someone responsible for making a change initiative work we help them answer the question:  "When do I need to be novel and different with this message, when do I need to make sure it's more of the same, and when is enough, enough?"

The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization

Peter Drucker, King of management gurus, has five essential questions for every organization. This book includes content from five of today’s thought leaders, to supplement Drucker's questions and bring them up to date.

You can use this book as a tool for self-assessment. In the words of one reviewer "...answering these five questions will fundamentally change the way you work, helping you lead your organization to an exceptional level of performance."

Peter Drucker’s five questions are:  

 

What is our Mission? with Jim Collins 

Who is our Customer? with Phil Kotler

What does the Customer Value? with Jim Kouzes 

What are our Results? with Judith Rodin

What is our Plan? with V.Kasturi Rangan

 

I have recently worked with a couple of organizations who have looked at themselves closely in terms of the five questions and who are entering the new decade with a completely reshaped vision of themselves.  

One large non-profit had to ask the hard question:  Who are we here to serve?  Their customers were not only the members of society served by their community impact delivery, but also the donors, volunteers and others who had to be engaged by the organization's mission.  In these difficult times this non-profit is providing real leadership on the new "business as usual" and managing to maintain their donor and volunteer base.

 

Another client is a project team leading a significant ERP implementation across a 3,000 employee organization.  Over the last six months or so they have been looking very carefully at what their (internal) customers value, and the results they are really there to deliver.  As a result their "go-lives" are customer focused and the departments they work with are partners in ensuring everything goes smoothly.

 

The five questions could be obvious, (see my Monty Python article), but the depth of analysis enables this book to be a real breakthrough framework for many.

Feign Some Fear

Here's a quick fun follow up to last week's "Flight or Fight" post.

Some animals have learned the right thing to do is to "Feign Some Fear".

Five tips for better team building events

I do not like team building events. It’s not because I don’t like building teams, it’s just that so many of the so-called “team building” strategies I see are divorced from the everyday realities of the team’s life. As a result, the team feels more demotivated by the non-related event than if they had been left alone to get their work done.

People form into teams naturally under situations of group opportunity or stress. A team is a group of people who function cooperatively as a group toward a common goal. Under the wrong conditions teams can form that don’t have the same goals as the organizations they work in. Conditions such as resistance to change, coping with stress and punishing people they see as outside their group. Managers and leaders want to promote teams where the cooperative work is aligned to the organization’s purpose, and the teams productivity is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Here are five steps for planning a positive team building event.

1. Make sure that the team is a team. Too often, the team is really a group of people who happen to work in the same department or in the same function. They don’t have common goals, they don’t share rewards or work on projects together. They just sit together, report to the same manager, or work on the same project. Pulling a “team" like this together for team building that is separate from the group’s normal way of doing business just builds cynicism. Send people to a team building event when all the rewards in the group are based on individual goals will have no lasting impact.

2. Let the team plan the event. I know this sounds dangerous! The success of the team building event begins a long time before the event occurs. Wouldn’t it be a little ironic to try to build team behaviors without letting the team exhibit those behaviors? Let the team model the behaviors you are trying to instill, and coach and guide them along the way. Delegate the task properly and the team building event will give the team the sense of empowerment and collaboration you want them demonstrate.

3. Plan the event around a meaningful business purpose. I won’t lead events that are out of context for the team or divorced from their regular work. Perhaps the meaningful business purpose is celebrating a recent success, or working as a group to set team norms. It doesn’t matter in a big sense if the business purpose might otherwise be a downer for the team…I have seen successful events built around the theme of recovering from losing a major account or building bridges with a client after a serious project misstep. Don’t have a team event just to build an overall sense of teamwork. I once worked with a VP who took her team out to Paint A Plate for a day. It was a waste of time because the event was just a fun day with no link to anything the team did back in their cubicles. If someone had linked painting plates with good team behaviors it might have worked. (My example was probably made worse by the fact that she didn't attend the second half of the event at the local theme park: what message did that send to her people?) We might just as well have been throwing balloons around or going boating. Try selling those to a team that’s going through a work slump.

4. Follow up with meaningful activities back at the work place. Probably as part of the event the team will learn something about each other’s strengths and development opportunities, or someone will come up with a new strategy for cross-functional co-operation. Make sure that there is a visible process that everyone contributes to that brings the team building event back to work. Make it an agenda item at a coming management meeting to debrief the event for What Went Well, What Opportunities Were Uncovered, and What Commitments Were Made.

5. Finally, if you want the event to build good team behavior you had better know what good team behavior looks like. If you don’t already know what good team behavior looks like you need to get a list together so you monitor, recognize and reward the right behavior when it occurs at the event, and back at the work place. If you want a quick checklist you could do a lot worse than use Patrick Lencioni’s model. He describes Five Dysfunctions of a Team, but to make it easier to see the positive side of his model I will rephrase it to make Five Functional Behaviors of a High Performing Team. Simply put they are: Trust Each Other; Embrace Conflict Positively; Commit To The Team’s Goals; Ensure and Accept Accountability, and Focus on the Team’s Stakeholders’ Results.

Using what’s above you can plan an event that will build your staff into a positive team. First, make sure they really are a team with common goals, work processes and rewards. Let them plan some team building together. Make sure they build the event around a meaningful business purpose. Make sure they follow up by bringing the learnings of the event back to the workplace. And finally, make sure you have set clear expectations with them for what good team behavior is.

Now, do you trust them enough to let them loose with your team building objective and a budget?

Change Management Milestones

"We are embarking on a major change management project. Our implementation consultants are helping us with all the technical aspects of getting this done. We have project milestones for each of the major decision points. Are there some specific change management milestones we should build into our project plan?"

Yes! Many times the implementation team will focus on Go/No Go decisions that give special emphasis to executing the change in a way as technically efficiently as possible, without necessarily considering the effects on the people involved.

We know that people generally follow a predictable path when dealing with change and transitions. You can see the path in the diagram here, (click on the picture for a larger version). The stages are Denial, Anger, Self-Concern, Search For Meaning, Testing and Internalization. With small variations depending on methodology and circumstances we see these same stages in studies of people dealing with death and dying, dealing with workplace change, and dealing with divorce and marriage.

From corporate mergers to IT software implementations, it is often quoted that around 70% of change initiatives fail to meet their stated objectives. The top three reasons: Resistance to Change; Inadequate Sponsorship; and Unrealistic Expectations. A good change management or project implementation plan builds in milestones that specifically address the stages of change and reasons for failure.

Here are six milestones that help the Change Management team ensure that people make the transitions that will make the change easier and more likely to succeed.

1. We have adequately communicated the reasons for the project so that everyone is AWARE of the need for change.
2. We have created and communicated an engaging vision of the future so that people DESIRE the change.
3. We have identified legitimate concerns from everyone involved, and provided everyone with the KNOWLEDGE to address their concerns and contribute to project.
4. We have given people the ABILITY to participate, test and explore the options in the project and maximize its potential.
5. We have provided REINFORCEMENT and rewards so that people can own, internalize and celebrate the success of the project.

Think of these as Go/No Go statements where the team should only move on to the next step in the project if they can comfortably agree with the milestone statement.

The model known as ADKAR, (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement), is well researched and has been around for a long time. You can see from the diagram how the milestones fit in with the different stages of peoples’ reactions to change.

The vast majority of projects inadequately deal with resistance, lack of support and poor expectations. I worked on an HR project where we successfully changed the way 22,000 employees worldwide were given performance appraisals, and another where an Enterprise Requirements Planning system was implemented so successfully it became a case study at the vendors’ customer council. The milestones are practical, and provide structure to the planning team. Planning for the people side of change enables the technical side of change to occur effectively.

(Incidentally, the Return On Investment for engaging a change management expert and putting these milestones into place is enormous. Apart from minimizing the risk that the project will go wrong, you will maximize the speed and success of the project far in excess of the cost of any reasonable person you bring in to help.)

Feel free to download a copy to keep or distribute here. You can email me here with comments or leave a question or reaction below.

Communicating Difficult News In Tough Times

"We’re going through tough times in our organization and I need to be able to communicate with our employees and stakeholders some of the difficult decisions and changes we are going to make. What’s the best practice in how this should be done?"

First, we know that nothing will get you very far unless you are a principled leader of your business. By that I mean that you have to be able to balance people issues and task issues, and get both done with integrity. Being too task focused during a change only means you end up coercing people, being too people focused means you end up as a cheerleader. Doing both with integrity is what counts.

Provided you have established yourself as a principled leader you can leverage your position to communicate difficult issues with integrity. Think of the communication as something locked away in a vault. Trust is the key you use to unlock the vault and begin the process of sharing the knowledge.

Here are five best practices supported by research and experience. You can think of them as the labels on your keyring, helping you unlock the vault:

1: Understand that people generally follow a predictable path when dealing with change and transitions. Whether the news is good or bad, (but especially if it’s bad), most people go through six responses we can describe as Denial, Anger, Self-Concern, (sometimes accompanied by anxiety, depression and bargaining), Search for Meaning and Options, Testing Alternatives and finally Ownership/Acceptance. Accept the likelihood of each response and prepare for it.

2: Understand what people need to hear at each stage. Tailor the communications to the needs of audience as they move through the typical reactions. At first, they need Awareness of the issues, delivered with dignity and respect. Once they have absorbed the first news, people generally need to have four other messages delivered that raise their Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Rewards during the change. For example, if you are delivering news of restructuring the beginning is to raise the awareness of the need to change, followed by information that starts to deal with people’s denial and anger by raising their desire for a better future.

3: Understand that different stakeholders have different needs. It’s likely that individuals in a business going through a staff reduction will probably need different information to raise their awareness of the need to change. It might depend on whether they are senior executives, employees or customers used to dealing with their favorite staff person. The worst organizations make blanket statements that are subject to misinterpretation. The best organizations carefully craft messages to address what is important for their different stakeholders.

4: Understand that people want to hear the news from their most direct contact. Sure, it’s important that the CEO is seen to be on board and leading the change. In fact it’s very important that they are a model for how people will be treated, (with dignity and respect), and a communicator of the vision of the better future. However, staff want to hear news from their direct supervisor; customers want to hear news from their customer service representative or account manager. It’s the people who are closest to them who will be able to discuss how the news affects them, and it’s these people they will turn to when they need help or resources in the future.

5: Understand that the best practice is to craft the complete plan before taking any action. One of the difficulties in communicating tough messages is that once you have made a decision you feel obliged to act as quickly as practical. Too often this can mean that the messages aren’t as well thought through as they should be and not as tailored as they should be. We’ve all had one of those emails that come down from on high telling us about some major change and leaving us with more questions than they answered. A good plan includes contingencies, and briefing notes that help prepare each person for the key talking points of their message. Good plans include different talking notes for different levels of people, and different audiences, as well as answers to questions that are likely to come up. The best plans include an outline of the entire process that can be adapted as circumstances develop.

Finally, remember that trust is the key. If you are delivering bad news, or even if it’s good news that is going to disrupt the regular order of things, people need to be able to trust that you will see them through the change. Getting things done with people happens more easily, more profitably and more quickly if there is trust. Trust is the essential ingredient: Trust that you are capable; Trust that you are reliable; Trust that you are open, and Trust that your motivations are good.

You can contact me or email me here if you would like more information on building a communication plan that keeps your employees and clients engaged...or click on COMMENTS below to leave a response for others to view.

"Implementing ITIL Change and Release Management", by Larry Klosterboer

Larry Klosterboer, author of "Implementing ITIL Change and Release Management" has written the comprehensive overview of managing ITIL based change strategies for IT Operations Managers and Directors.

So why is a psychologist reviewing an IT change management book?

For starters, many of my clients are IT and information systems specialists. Most are going through pain, change and challenges related to keeping up with the rapidly shifting demands of their customers, the adoption of new technology, and of course, the economy.

What makes this book different is it specifically speaks to the change and release methodologies you need to manage these three technology pressures. In particular, this book focuses on issues of Content, (Structure, Strategy, Process, Product) and Roadmap, (Project management, Governance, Implementation, Contingencies). This is both its strength and weakness.

In a recent interview Klosterboer offered these critical words of advice from his book:

5 must-dos

• Engage the organization-- implementing change and release management cannot be done in a corner.
• Establish strong policies so process documents never need to be interpreted on the fly.
• Use tools to automate the process rather than defining a process which fits the tools.
• Train each person for the role they will fill rather than creating generic process training.
• Build reports that people will use.

5 don'ts

• Don't forget to gather and agree on solid requirements before moving on to implementation.
• Don't believe implementation of a tool is the hardest part.
• Don't think you can implement release management without appropriate staffing.
• Don't underestimate the importance of a definitive media library.
• Don't settle for a general, high-level process that nobody really follows.

It’s the very first of these, engaging the organization, that is truly critical, and often overlooked or given not enough attention. Engaging people means getting them to devote their time, talent and trust to supporting your goals.

It's also true that the book deals largely with the Organization level of analysis. To be truly comprehensive change managers need to have a strategy to deal with the Group and Individual dynamics that get stirred up by organizational change.

The various chapters in this book work through the content and roadmap you need to lay out for your organization to get on top of change and release management, using the ITIL structures, but don't provide much detail on how to engage the staff and customers. Add in expertise on the People issues, (Mindsets, Reactions, Engagement, Acceptance, Commitment) or supplement it from elsewhere and the book would be perfect.