Embracing Organizational Change: Planning, Adopting, and Accelerating

We talk about teams “embracing change” and discuss how organizations can prepare for change big and small, so team members can process, prepare, and accelerate change adoption.

Transcript

Dr. D.  0:02  
Hello, and welcome to the realm. I'm Dr. D, I bring the strategy.

Dr. K  0:06  
And I'm Dr. Kay, I bring the psychology. We are business psychologists and your guides to the executive realm where we bring strategy and psychology together.

Dr. D.  0:15  
So you can bring your best to your C suite, your teams and your customers. Today, we're talking about teams embracing change everybody's favorite topic, and discussing how organizations can prepare for change big and small. So team members can process and prepare an accelerated rate and change adoption. So let's get to work. So embracing change. This is something organizations face all the time, team members and employees are often very overwhelmed by change. And leaders don't understand what all the hubbub is about. Sometimes we're doing it because we have to, and why can't people just get on board. As a leader changes necessary, I often recognize we have to adapt, or we will die in an organization change is a continuous evolution in business, it really never stops, you're always adapting or always adopting a new innovation. You're always preparing for the future. It's difficult. And I imagine from the employee perspective, it's easy to get overwhelmed.

Dr. K  1:20  
Absolutely. You know, as the employee, there are many different viewpoints that employees have. You know, there is the viewpoint of this is just my job, I come here to make the money to pay my bills. But I have other avenues in mind or other pathways that I want to go there coming in punching their ticket, doing their job, taking the breaks, taking a lunch break, and then punching out and going home. Of course, other people out there may notice that change needs to happen. But maybe they don't care. And they may not care for multiple reasons, maybe they've been in the same position and have been looked over for promotions or raises or what have you. So they may have a tendency to not care. They may just say whatever's going on. That's not my problem. I have my job, I have my paycheck, I'm good there. Now there are going to be employees who may recognize that change needs to happen. And they may have a little less animosity or a little less fear around the change. And there's a fourth one where there Yes, change. Finally, we're going to do these things that will improve the company. However, what they feel might be important for change may not be what the organization or the leadership or C suite team may be doing. Sometimes as employees, we look at what is best for us, and leadership management C suite level, look at what's good for the company.

Dr. D.  2:47  
Yeah, there's an interesting dichotomy in leadership. Because you really do want continuity and consistency. You want your product to come out consistent; you want your customers' experience to be consistent. You do want a lot of consistency in an organization. However, the dichotomy, the paradox is that you also want a lot of change, you want to continually adapt, you want your processes to improve. You want every person who is interacting within the ecosystem of your organization, to always be looking for improvement opportunities. One of the challenges of leadership is balancing, how aggressively do you change certain areas, while keeping other areas the same? As you mentioned, team members are on a spectrum of desire for change. Some people are very gung ho about change. And some people, frankly, a high number of people hate change, and want to come in and know exactly what they're going to do every day, and not change a darn thing. And then there are others that and I'm on the other side of the spectrum, I love change, I want to make things better and continually improve and drive new ideas into the organization. And there really does have to be a balance. But as a leader, you have to look across your organization and say Where is change really necessary? Where are the best ideas coming from and which ones are the right ones to implement now and which ones are really not going to bring the right bang for the buck so to speak. It really is a balancing act and it comes down to prioritization. With change. prioritization is critical.

Dr. K  4:32  
Absolutely. And something that we discuss as we were preparing for this week, was being as much as you can being very upfront with your employees being very open to discussing what is happening, why it's happening, and answering questions that employees might have the employees they are the forefront of the company. They are the ones that build the products. They are the ones that develop the products, they are the ones that market and advertise the products.

Dr. D.  5:06  
Awareness is an important component. And most leaders have developed a really strong and innate skill set to sell a change to other leaders and to the board. It's very, very common that a change is brought through the organizational leadership structure, justified and rationalized and picked apart by other executives by the board, you really want to have your ducks in a row around a change when you're getting buy-in from other leaders. What leaders don't do is build that awareness and get buy-in for change from the broader organization. Everyone focuses on getting it past the board or getting it through whatever governance hurdles that you have for spending money, but you never really take a change to the team and say, here's what we're thinking, employees who might be affected by this. We're not doing this, we're just talking about it at this point. is this important? Will this build value in your daily lives? Is this the right direction, not all change, you can do that if you're talking about a merger with a competitor, acquiring a company, you can't do that broadly. But the things that affect the day to day process flow, those types of changes could be crowdsourced from the employee base, bring your most ardent Devil's advocates, some people might call them pessimists, to try to pull those apart, bring your most optimistic people to the table so that they can help you shape the benefits and the opportunities of those change. And what really are the big wins out of that project. And by crowdsourcing your justification, you're bringing a broader set of voices into the conversation, you're making the change, there's

Dr. K  6:55  
Yeah, I'm talking to, as you said, Maybe they're more pessimistic or more nervous people about making the change, as well as talking to the ones that are a little bit more positive about the change. And maybe asking the people on the positive side, what do you think is holding others back? Whether it's that they don't like change in their workplace, they're nervous of change in any, you know, any aspect? Or they're thinking of it just interpersonally? What's going to happen to me if this change comes about? So I do believe that it would be beneficial to speak to the employees that are about the change, what can we provide. But it's also, you know, having an understanding as a leadership level as well, as an employee level, we're not going to make everybody happy.

Dr. D.  7:45  
You touched on this briefly earlier about being upfront about ambiguity and risks and uncertainty. As a leader, there is often a desire to not project any kind of ambiguity or uncertainty around something because uncertainty freaks people out. I mean, it does make people very, very nervous. And this has been proven in psychological studies and behavioral economics research over and over again, uncertainty and ambiguity, people will work really, really hard to avoid change, if there's going to be any kind of risk or ambiguity. Even if the benefit outweighs that risk, people will err towards the side of the status quo. If it's a well-known status quo, people don't like risk and uncertainty, but leaders try to project this mantle of certainty and confidence. And that can really work against the leader as soon as something goes wrong. But it's also just as important to say, we don't have all the details figured out, we think it's going to take X, Y, and Z to get there. Let's collaboratively make sure that we've got this bulletproof but also recognize that if we learn things new along the way, we may have to stop this initiative and go back, we may have to adapt the way that we're going to approach. Don't be afraid to come to me with new information that doesn't support where we're going. We want to have as much information as possible. And we may have to adapt along the way. And I certainly don't know everything.

Dr. K  9:13  
I think that's difficult for a leader to be able to say, Hey, we may not have all the answers, we may have to make changes,

Dr. D.  9:20  
you do have to be prepared. I think leaders have the tendency to project themselves as infallible in their approach and their knowledge, their understanding, and no leaders omniscient. Leaders are fallible. They don't know everything, walking into a room, walking into a room and saying I've got this all figured out this thing is well planned. We've put brought in consultants we've done X, Y, and Z to do that this is going to work. That is way too optimistic. You have to be transparent about what you don't know. And there is frankly, in any change a lot that a leader doesn't know.

Dr. K  9:56  
It would be important for leaders to have experts on hand, now those experts could be varied throughout the change process. Throughout the different steps. Maybe at the beginning, you bring in someone, if you're bringing in a new system, you bring in an expert in that system, maybe during the whole process, you have someone that is trained in change management, or you bring in the kind of like an executive coach, or someone that can come in and consult to help with the employees that are struggling with the change. So maybe different steps, you bring in different experts to check in to see hey, do you need me here, I'm here if anybody needs me, and maybe even after the change has happened, have someone on hand for a few months, or have someone that can come in and do a checkup, see where things are running smoothly and see where things are kind of having some hiccups.

Dr. D.  10:53  
Organizations, especially large organizations have a lot of expertise around project management, that tactical evolution is usually really well thought out. So when you think about implementing a new system, getting the system to go live is not easy. It's relatively well understood what boxes need to be ticked, what things need to happen in order for that to happen. What organizations tend to not do well is understand the capacity for change, manage the communication really well have expertise supporting the emotional side of the change the behavioral side of the change. Putting the system in place or executing a process change is frankly, the easy part. The difficult part is making sure that people who are along for the ride can get on and off the bus at the right time at the right stop and know what's coming in what's already happened. Having expertise on hand, making sure employees have access to the right resources or know where to get those right resources is critically important. You're always going to have some really vocal people that are not afraid to stand up and say I don't like this. And I'm separating, separating the things that they don't like because they don't like change in separating things that they don't like because they're valuable or difficult for a leader just as difficult is mining information from people who don't speak up, what is working, what is not working from those introverted folks that feel like they don't want to be a complainer, be a bother or fly in the ointment and

Dr. K  12:30  
perfect. One of the things that is important for leaders to pay attention to are the employees that are struggling with the change. You know, again, we've talked about how, you know, leaders have, you know, kind of a twofold job they have the leadership itself, but they also kind of have an employee perspective that they have to pay attention to with employees, with the changes, you know, they may struggle with the worry, the anxiety, the what-ifs the unknown, which creates some either attitude mindset or behavioral changes, you know, with anxiety and stuff like that. So signs for leaders to look out for would be you know, changes in the individual employee's work behaviors, are things starting to be turned in late, are they you know, the T's are being crossed, and the i's are being dotted. But normally, before, there was never a misspelled word, these are little signs to start looking for, you know, if you're noticing that a normally more talkative employee is now kind of being more quiet, or maybe looking a little bit more exhausted. Maybe having you know, maybe complaining about headaches or calling in sick, all these are signs of burnout of stress of anxiety. And that might be when the leader needs to come in and say, Hey, what's going on. Because if you have one person that is struggling, that could lead to a struggle within a small team or a big team, whether the negative attitude kind of spreads because that can spread like wildfire, or if the one person who is struggling, and this is nothing against a person struggling with the change. But if they are struggling with the change, it may put more pressure on the other team are the other team members to get everything together. So that's where it would be important for the leader again, to play that twofold part of paying, you know, having to kind of really pay attention to their employees.

Dr. D.  14:43  
I think leaders often don't think about an organization's capacity for change. capacity for change is not monolithic. It is very different from person to person. There are just some individual differences. In the way people approach change, and think about change, just not from a one-on-one basis, but from a team-to-team perspective, the capacity for change might be very different. A change that could benefit the broader organization might be a fairly low priority for one team in the organization, or for individual teams of the organization with month-end or yearly or quarterly close cycles, and trying to implement change. And it can be very, very difficult for teams to do both. There are lots of places in an organization where an individual team might be going through some pretty significant change in layering, another change in organizational change on top of that might just be the breaking point. Having expertise, look at the capacity for change in the willingness for change across your organization. And having a fairly well-understood measurement of how much change any individual team is going through at any given time is really important. And I don't think organizations do a great job of measuring an organization's capacity for change, they look at engagement, and they look at operational metrics, but they don't look at how much change within various parts of the organization. And what's the team's ability to absorb more

Dr. K  16:16  
before change even happens, start measuring the level of comfortability with change, or making it known that as times change, as we progress in this world, as we, you know, all of a sudden, are in a pandemic. And now, you know, we're slowly trying to get out of a pandemic, that change is going to happen, and make that known, you know, so it's not where, okay, here's what we do. And this is the only thing that we'll do for the next 100 years. Because that's, that's just not how it's going to be, things will have to change to some extent, even the little mom and pop cafes, where, you know, it used to be cash-only some of them had to change over, I'm sure there are areas where you know, cafes still only take cash only, oh, maybe they take checks, still. But a lot of people don't carry cash. So if you don't have the capability of allowing a credit card to be used, you may lose business. So little changes along the way, have had to be done. So it would be important to just, you know, be very honest, in an organization, hey, change will happen, when it will happen, why it will happen, how it's going to look, we don't know. But we want to be prepared, we want to let you know that changes will happen, to keep us all in business, to keep up with our competitors, to keep everyone employed. So I think that would be important as well. And something that I was thinking about when you were talking about you know how it might be a big change in one, one area of an organization and maybe a smaller change. It's also when this change is coming about, even if you are just changing the marketing strategy that can trickle into other areas. And you want to look ahead as the leader, or the change management team, okay, we're going to just change this marketing, how does that trickle to other things,

Dr. D.  18:20  
it's an honest thing for one part of an organization to change and not think that it's going to have an impact on the other part of the organization. But often it does good changes migrate, they have a broader impact than just the team that's changing them. So getting that buy-in, and that adoption from other parts of the organization is very important. And to your earlier point about recognizing that change is part of the organization, it is important for leaders to build the idea that change is part of our culture. This goes to what I was saying at the beginning of the conversation about balancing the status quo, and continuous change. An organization that has change built into their culture and sets an expectation that we are always looking for opportunities to improve: having a culture of change is foundational. The other is that there has to be a measurement of change capacity. If you're going to have change as part of your culture, you have to be able to measure that because that is an important part of leadership is being able to measure the things and change needs to be measured throughout the organization on a team by Team basis and across the organization so that you understand the capacity and where resistance to change might come up. The other and I think also equally important is having an approach and a methodology for change that is well understood across the organization. So everyone can speak about change in the same way. Yeah, it's important to build a culture measure and have a methodology

Dr. K  20:03  
on the employee side it's important to know that changes may come if you walk into a new organization and you're like yes this is it and this is the best it'll ever be nothing will ever change you're already setting yourself up for expectations that aren't going to be met which can lead to anxiety disappointment anger what have you so it's important to know that organizations are going to change whether they as we said at the beginning whether they are small or large and to be ready if you are looking to work somewhere where nothing ever changes you know you may have to think about working for yourself and being like this is my set way this is the culture this is what's happening this is the only way it will be done because if we walk in somewhere and have an idea that everything will remain just how it is we are definitely going to be let down which brings to mind that during change a portal of some sort or an outlet of some sort would be extremely helpful for organizations leaders what have you to allow employees to voice their concerns voice their worries voice their maybe even some anger you know in a safe maybe secretive way autonomous ways so that it's not where hey i'm kelly and i don't like this and then i can get into trouble for that or i get talked to or what have you so that they can put in these are my concerns because maybe if that portal is there that outlet is there they may see a common theme.

Dr. D.  21:44  
Having a way to collect feedback, both from known and from unknown folks, is really important. If you have an organization where it's really difficult for people to stand up and raise their hand, I would encourage our listeners to listen to our conversation about psychological safety. If you have an environment where there is a high level of psychological safety you'll you'll have an atmosphere where employees are comfortable speaking up, raising their hand, and sharing their concerns. It's important to listen to those concerns even if they're unfounded or based in fear or anger.  It's important to listen to those objectives early and peel apart what is driving those concerns because if it's fear of change and fear of ambiguity or risk, there are ways to mitigate those as a leader. And it's important to hear what those things are; to capture and quantify provides a really great ability to look back and learn from experience.

Dr. K  22:41  
Absolutely! So Dr. D how can leaders prepare?

Dr. D.  22:46  

1. It starts with building awareness. You have to make a case for and communicate the need for change across the organization, while also being upfront about the risks and ambiguity. 
2. Align change capacity. Understand and align various teams' capacity for change, willingness for change, and inherent capability for change.
3. For planning, engage stakeholders. Think through every possible scenario bring forward your most optimistic to find the best opportunities and your most ardent devil's advocates to find the flaws.
4. Develop knowledge in teams. Leverage experts both in the change process and in the technical parts of the change.  Set expectations that knowledge is not perfect;  it will continue to develop and will evolve over time.
5. Increase the team skill set.  Give time for people to develop and enhance their understanding of both the technical aspect and the adoption of the change. People need time to process, to engage, and to learn. 
6. Going live is not the finish line. You have to continue to follow up on change for quite some time. Look back, learn from experience, and capture the opportunities,  so that your next change initiative can be better than your previous change initiative.
7. And of course, change has to be part of your culture.

So, Dr. K... what's on tap for next week?

Dr. K  24:10  
So, next week we'll be talking about closing the gender gap. We're going to explore why this is such a sticky issue to capture; and, explore strategies to bring gender balance and equity to the organization.

Dr. D.  24:22  
All of you who are joining us in this journey to the realm, thank you so much! I'm Dr. D, 

Dr. K  24:28  
and I'm Dr. K,  and we are looking forward to your next visit to the Executive Realm.