Change Takes More Than a Great Idea

Have you seen the movie Salmon Fishing in the Yemen? It’s a British romantic comedy based on a book written by Paul Torday.

I recently rented the movie having heard very little about it. Imagine my delight when, in the end, the movie reveals itself as a leadership training video, disguised as a comedy. Who would have expected a lesson for leaders on organization development and the process of successful change? Organization Development (OD), as you know if you’ve been reading this forum for any length of time, includes methodologies for working with planned change at the individual, team and organization level. Organization has a broad definition and includes individuals, teams, businesses, and social/economic communities of people (i.e., Yemen).

So without giving away too much of the plot and the ending, let me share the overview of the story from a leadership perspective. We all know that leaders are responsible for bringing about change. The change can be specifically focused on improving profits, streamlining processes, introducing new technologies, and building teams. It can be as intense as improving economic conditions or creating opportunities for dialogues about world peace.

Often leaders with a vision - an aha moment - see solutions and possibilities and get so excited about these newly discovered opportunities that they totally forget to think about what steps are necessary to ensure a successful change. Can you see where I’m going with this?

It doesn’t matter if your vision is to bring salmon fishing to the desert or to modernize your manufacturing plant with robots. And, it doesn’t matter if you have all the money required to pull off a wild new idea. What does matter is understanding that visionary decisions involving change require appropriate planning and ownership by more than just the leader.

Transition and Communication Plans

It doesn’t automatically happen that a leader has a brilliant idea and all the stakeholders required for success immediately jump on board. In fact, human nature is more likely to cause stakeholders to resist change more often than to embrace it. That’s an important point to keep in mind. Stakeholders need to understand, participate, and own the change.

As a result of this need, the participation of an OD consultant on the change leadership team is invaluable to the change leader, as the consultant (internal or external) will assist the leader in understanding and clarifying the current "As Is" opinions, perceptions and expectations of stakeholders. Armed with an appreciation of where stakeholders currently are in their thinking, the leader is better positioned to design the planning and communications strategies for how to navigate the organization and all its stakeholders from the "As Is" state to the desired new state of "To Be."

A typical Transition Plan will include activities such as:

• Interviews and surveys to gather appropriate data from stakeholders
• Invitations to stakeholders to participate in facilitated events to share information and brainstorm about what is required to support successful change
• Identification of short and long-term risks and techniques for mitigating each situation
• Development of a reasonable change pace, including schedules for data collection and analysis, identification of themes and recommendations for strategic interventions
• Ideas on mitigating risk
• Clarification of goals including responsibilities, accountabilities, tasks and metrics for recognizing success

One note about the pace of change – if the organization goes too fast, stakeholders may have a problem catching up. If the change is occurring too slowly, momentum may be difficult to establish and sustain. Gauging the right pace is an important element of understanding the "As Is" environment.

A Communications Plan is a second critical tool to ensure that the right stakeholders are receiving the right information through the right medium, at the right frequency. Not everyone needs to know, or wants to know, all the details of the change. Not everyone wants to participate at the same level. It’s the leader’s responsibility to clearly understand stakeholder needs and to accommodate them in a respectful, inclusive partnership for change.

You’ve heard it before: communicate, communicate, communicate. You can’t communicate too often. Individuals translate messages differently. Utilizing a variety of methods for getting the word out, opening up the two-way dialogues, and keeping everyone informed is not a small task. Plan for and utilize the skills of a good change communicator to provide stakeholders with up-to-date information. Without these avenues, human nature will have stakeholders guessing at how to fill in the blanks, and usually the results are not with upbeat, positive messages, but more than likely rumors grounded in doomsday, negative, doubtful messages.

So What’s Next?

I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, so let’s just end with a formula for positive, successful change:

Planning

Participation

Communications

Proper Project Speed

Economists continue to stress that US businesses are sitting on a lot of money, waiting to see what will happen with employment regulations and of course, the election in November. I caution business leaders about the dangers of leaping to invest and update business strategies too quickly before having a Plan of Action. Change can be an exciting journey if you’ve been involved in the planning and decision making. On the other hand, without appropriate information and participation, change can result in extreme behaviors grounded in fear and mistrust, blocking progress and innovation. And as we’ve seen in some situations, fears can go so far as to invite behaviors that sabotage any future change efforts by the leader.

So what’s next? If you’re a business leader and think that change is in the future of your organization, don’t wait until you’re ready to roll out the initiatives to realize you need to plan. If you’re not in a leadership position, encourage your leaders to take the time now to get the right people involved in understanding the vision, as well as helping to chart the course for a successful business shift. The first element to good project management is planning.

As always, I welcome your comments to my posting. Please share your thoughts below. If you found this article helpful, I’m very happy for you to pass it along to others. Have a great week.

This article was written by Deborah A King, SPHR, CEO and Organizational Effectiveness Consultant with Evolution Management, Inc. Debbie and her team are energized about changing individual and workplace practices and can help you navigate a plan for successful change. Contact Debbie for more information: Debbie@evolutionmgt.com or 770.587.9032.

EMI is a certified woman-owned, small business and recently receive SBA certification into the 8(a) Business Development program.

Roberta Katz



To Be Successful, Manage Your Morning

Breakfast Crepes with Berries Recipe

I don’t know about you, but when the calendar turned to July 1st, I was asking, "What happened to May and June?" And does anyone else feel like you just get your day started and the next thing you know it’s time for dinner? What’s happening to make our days spin by so quickly?

Obviously it has nothing to do with the changes in nature. The earth is still spinning at the same speed – 24 hours. The problem seems to be with how well or poorly we are managing our time. Our expectations for a 9-to-5 work life, with weekends spent relaxing with family or a good book seem to have all but vanished. Instead, our expectations have morphed into an addictive world of 24/7/365 information and connectivity and an illusion that with all this information and technology we can do more. I refer to an illusion because even with all the gadgets we can surround ourselves with, the clock still ticks 60 times for every minute. Other things may be changing, but the human capacity element of this equation is still the same.

Is it Time to Reassess Your Time Management Practices?

Since I offer time management workshops to my clients, I’m very careful to not be a hypocrite; on one hand espousing great techniques for managing balance and order in your schedule, while on the other spinning out of control trying to catch up with my own commitments and projects. But every now and then even the doctor has to take a step back and check on healthy habits.

Recently Fast Company.com published an article by Laura Vanderkam, a nationally recognized journalist and author of the book, What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. I’m sure all of us have attended a time management workshop at some point, and have tried to develop and incorporate new habits into our lives based on the techniques shared. Changing habits can be a difficult task. Like with any behavioral change, it’s easy, especially when stressed, to fall back into old routines. So as Laura suggests, periodically monitoring how you’re doing is a good practice to maintain in order to sustain the changes you are interested in.

When I saw Laura’s article I was intrigued, because clearly I needed to take time to assess what I’ve got going on if I’m missing entire months! And she’s right: For most people the early morning hours are a great time to get things done. Mornings usually offer the best window of opportunity for time with minimum interruptions – which we know is a major derailer of our efforts to manage our time.

Personally, in an ideal world, I like to get my 4-mile walk started about 6:30 a.m. This works for me because it allows me time to get in my exercise before some ‘emergency’ wakes up, it provides me a guilt-free schedule that doesn’t cut into my work time, and I get the added benefits of ‘quiet time' - being with nature, renewed energy, and an opportunity to think about how I will organize my day when I do get to my desk. But as we all experience, the world doesn’t always offer the ideal.

In the past I’ve written about time management and suggested techniques such as:

• Turn off your email pop-up feature when you’re working on your computer so you aren’t inviting interruptions.
• Put an ‘away message’ on your phone and computer to help others manage their expectations of when you’ll get back to them.
• Schedule ‘out of the office’ time to work on major projects or chunks of work where you need to be totally focused due to content or schedule.
• Be mindful that more hours worked does not equate to better productivity; in fact, at some point overtime hours transform into less productive time.
• Multi-tasking doesn’t make us more efficient; in fact, studies are confirming what we intuitively experience, all those tasks are really interrupters for each other. Best to do one thing at a time.

Here are a few additional points from Laura to help you, if you are interested in reassessing how you start and manage your day:

• Track your time – To improve how you’re spending your time you have to know what you’re doing with it right now. Be aware of the decisions you are making and the reasons behind what you think you have to do.
• Picture the perfect morning – As you are visioning how to spend possibly the best hours of the day, consider what you would enjoy doing, as well as utilizing some of this time for personal and professional growth.
• Think through the logistics – Create the plan and assemble what you need for success.
• Build the habit – Laura’s 5-step process to optimize a behavioral change: start slow, monitor your energy, attempt one habit at a time, and reward yourself.
• Tune up as necessary – This is an important step, not to be overlooked. As you step back and reflect on what’s working and not working with your time management practices, be willing to let go of the rituals that no longer work and replace them with others that fit your current life.

So What’s Next?

Change is continuously happening and that change is impacting the way we work and play. We can’t assume the routine that worked for us last year or last week for that matter, is the optimal routine of what we should be doing tomorrow.

In organizational planning, we conduct assessments of the current requirements, consider the needs for the future, and work on plans to close the gaps between the points in time. The same process works for personal change. Consider what you’re doing now, what’s working and not, and how you vision using your time in the future. Once you’ve got a handle on what needs to change, the appropriate actions will become apparent.

If you’d like to read more specifics about Laura’s tips, check out her Fast Company article. Healthy living requires a balance of time for work, play, spirituality, family, friends, ourselves and community - not in any particular order. It’s a constant tug-of-war to find the ‘time.’ However, initiating and monitoring good habits can make it possible.

As always, I welcome your comments to my posting. Please share your thoughts below. If you found this article helpful, I’m very happy for you to pass it along to others. Have a great week.



This article was written by Deborah A King, SPHR, CEO and Organizational Effectiveness Consultant with Evolution Management, Inc. Debbie and her team are energized about changing individual and workplace practices and can help you navigate a plan for successful change. Contact Debbie for more information: Debbie@evolutionmgt.com or 770.587.9032.

Larry Lewis
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