Bring on Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister.

The female in me wants Julia to be  great success. I want her to succeed where Kevin wasn’t able to:

• by collaborating with Cabinet and colleagues
• by balancing the varying needs of the many stakeholders she has
• by finding a strong message, and delivering on it
• and by being herself, not a media-trained copy of a perfect politician

Time will tell. By all accounts Kevin was only able to do a part of one of these things.

He had a strong message, although he failed to deliver on the early promises that got him elected. He did not engage people, in fact he disenfranchised his colleagues.  And he had a tendency to announce policy that disturbed key players, including his own party. Worse still, he failed to recognise the consequences that his actions would bring.

 It wasn’t enough for Kevin to “say the right things” to the public when so many of his actions announced a different agenda. And that’s how it is with change and change implementation.

• When the “party rhetoric” doesn’t match other messages that people get, the change initiative will not be successful.
• When there’s not enough collaboration and engagement, or it is perfunctory and superfiical, the change initiative will not be successful
• If too many people are disenfranchised and there’s no apparent rationale about why the change should go ahead (Mining Super Profits tax and Emissions Trading Scheme backflip anyone??), then the change initiative will not be successful.

Change implementations are never successful because one thing gets done well. They are sucessful because many things get done well. As change leaders we need to be able to read the play a lot better than Kevin Rudd did. In fact if we haven’t thought all this through in the planning stages then it’s likely we wouldn’t be successful in our endeavours either.

You only know what you know.

In other words, you can identify all the impacts that cross your sphere of knowledge and understanding. What you need to  find out is whether there are other impacts that you don’t know about.

For example, you may be completely across how changing the sales entry process will affect your sales force and customers.  What you may not know is:

• that it will require changes to the back end systems that feed the database or the proposed functionality will not work
• and that these changes can’t be made before year end or the year to date totals can’t be reported on
• and that there’s been a freeze on IT changes because the company needs to bed down the new operating system for 3 months….
• and so on.

There’s only one solution to knowing what you know. And that is getting people from multiple functions at multiple levels to have a  conversation about the change and it’s potential flow on effects. Many a change program has  had ordinary results because the change impacts were not properly identified, leaving people scrambling to fight fires and create last minute workarounds.

Recognising that you only know what you know will make you a better change leader. Not only wt will force you to enquire broadly about how the change could affect all other parts of the organisation, it’s also a great engagement strategy.

No surprise right? Haven’t we been reading about these numbers for years now? We keep getting feedback that we are “crap” at managing change. And yet not much changes.

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Doing more of what we are already doing will not help us to turn the corner. We still rush to solution, don’t talk to our people enough, don’t connect change with strategy, often underestimate people’s reactions and time-frames to get “comfortable” and so on.

My fundamental belief is that we need to rethink our approach to change and start building awareness of change processes, frameworks and tools at all levels. If change is the big constant, why aren’t we equipping all our people to work in this environment?

When computers changed our world, didn’t everyone have to learn enough to use them?

Here we are in a world where everyone experiences change, some welcome and some not, and yet we provide no context about how change gets implemented, what gets considered as part of a change program, how people respond to change, and how companies “manage” it. We are asking people to operate in a vacuum of knowledge.

Imagine if everyone had a base level of knowledge about these things. Then they could recognise aspects of the change program as  they happened. They could provide feedback if they felt engagement was insufficient. They could contribute to the process from a place of knowledge rather than a place of forced ignorance.

We need to change the game and give our people the information and tools they need to thrive in this ever-changing world.

What do you think?

We have all experienced the boost you get from simply contemplating something new.  From this point our thoughts can take us in two directions (both familiar to me…)

Direction 1 – We can talk ourselves out of it, thinking things like

“that sounds great but would be really hard”,

I wouldn’t know where to start

if I did that then xxx might happen, so I’d better not

Sound familiar?

Direction 2. We continue to drive forwards with our ideas

That will be a challenge but I’m up for it

Nothing ventured nothing gained

I’m scared as hell so I’d better just do it

It’s my future and I choose to give it a go

Depending on what else is going on in our lives, we might take Direction 1 or 2.  Often we hover in the grey area, trying to make up our minds if the risk is worth it.

Changing our thought patterns and underlying beliefs is hard work.  Often too hard.  This shouldn’t deter us from behaving differently. Often changing our actions or behaviour can lead to the changes in thought patterns we seek.

Taking the action and having it turn out well when we don’t expect it to is a wonderful validator and self-esteem builder.

Feeling fear over a career change doesn’t mean we have to do nothing. We can take the action to explore other careers, and see where that leads us. Forwards motion is rarely a negative experience.

The point is (and it’s a long-winded one today, sorry) that the very act of acting increases motivation.  ACTION trumps APATHY as it were.

That’s why getting people involved in change programs is such a good idea. Just being involved can help people to get across the change more quickly, help them see the benefits and increase their engagement with the process. Hoorah.

There’s so much that interests me in this field. So much so that I’m heading off to the Annual Summit later this year in Boston.

The gem that stuck with me yesterday was the role of humour and fun in adult learning. I’ve always tried to make my client interactions fun and lighthearted. It reflects my own approach to life. If I’m not having fun, well then why am I doing it?

And it turns out that when people are having fun, it actually opens neural pathways in the brain that facilitate learning and take-up of information.  Conversely, it turns out that lectures where words are spoken sombrely, or the dreaded powerpoint presentation with slides full of bullets,  actually turn off our ability to learn.

So if you thought it was impossible for you to get a lot out of those kinds of interaction, there’s a physical reason why.

Meetings where people laugh and have fun will help people to listen and learn and lead to better outcomes with less effort.

Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

Published by Stanford Business Books,  2008

This book goes beyond the steps required to implement change and asks us to think more wholistically about the context for change as well. The authors propose a change framework that encompasses several additional elements:

1. Our personal agendas – recognising that our experiences and motivations might cause us to adopt one change path over another
2. Examining who should lead – who is the right person for the job, nder what circumstances should there be more than one person
3. Who is expected to follow – what are the charactersitcs , skill level, motivations, leadership and interest of this group in the proposed change
4. What is the internal context of the change – what BAU activities are going on, what other changes are planned, or have ovccurred, what has been the success of prioir change efforts, are resources available etc
5. And finally, what is the external context for the change – economic, social and regulatory environment, state of labour market and impact on retention and recruitment, state of third party organisations who will need to be involved (eg suppliers, vendors)

I found this book an excellent read, both in terms of the content – which was highly valuable – and readability. Sometimes change books can be on the academic side, but not this one.

If you are in the change field I highly recommend this one.

What we  can learn from the airlines as they try to adapt their daily operations to an unforeseeable, significant event, is the value of strong contingency planning.

We have seen Qantas contingency plans unfold over the last few days.

• Provisional rescheduling followed by no rescheduling once it was realised that the situation would not resolve quickly.
• Hotels were booked for stranded passengers to wait it out wherever they were “trapped”.
• The biggest challenge will be managing the backlog once flights resume. We have seen the airlines firstly asking people to delay any planned travel for the next few months.
• And yesterday, a statement to the effect that no new bookings were going to be taken. To help people feel more ok about that, the papers published proposed airfares for an economy ticket to the UK, estimated to be around AUD $12,000. Now that’s an incentive to stay home.

I imagine plenty more contingencies have been discussed behind the boardroom doors that outsiders aren’t privy to.

Contingency planning forces you to decide what you’ll do in a worst case scenario. It’s familiar territory in change planning as well.

In my experience things rarely go exactly as planned. They are usually more complex and less succcesful. Not always, but often. Effective change  planning includes planning for alternate outcomes to ones you expect. 

Benefits:

• The time you spend up front is time saved later when you need to implement your contingency plan
• It forces you to question your assumptions about the expected results
• contingency planning gives other people comfort that you are thinking through all possibilities

If you never need to pull  your contingency plans out of the drawer, all well and good. But if you do, then you’re ready with a process and approach to deal with most outcomes.

contingency plan is to

1. Inconsistencies in manager ratings

Although purported to be based on objective data, performance ratings are subjective. Because of this manager differences will always be present. One manager may rate “harder” than another, for the same level of output, behaviour and or effort. Conversely, some managers don’t like to cause waves and so will rate everyone the same, or not distinguish poorer performers from their better performing colleagues.

2. Ratings can be adjusted based on the size of the bonus pool.

Much to management’s chagrin, it’s no secret that ratings are influenced by the money available in that year’s bonus pool. This influence can be conscious: “We can only have 12% of the population achieve an outstanding rating this year”, or unconscious: the messages about cost consciousness come through loud and clear to managers who respond by limiting the numbers of people rated  highly

3. Managers aren’t good at honest conversations

In most cases the appraisal conversation is an opportunity for your manager to help you understand where you have under-achieved (thanks, really….). The reality is that most managers aren’t good at having frank and honest conversations that help to improve performance. They either

• don’t tell you the truth, for fear of facing a challenging personal reaction, or an actual debate, or
• hit you like a ton of bricks with their explanation of your failures.

None of these methods has been shown to improve individual performance, and does in fact, decrease engagement and satisfaction.

4. The power is all one way

No matter which way you look at it, the performance appraisal always consists of a subordinate being assessed by their superior. This relationship power is never openly stated or discussed, but it always true. So it’s not an even playing field where two adults can equally debate issues. It’s a loaded one where the subordinate wants to say and do the right things to support their career, and the manager has the final say about what the performance was like. We can try and soften the edges of this in all sorts of ways – getting feedback from customers, encouraging disagreements to go up the line etc – but at the end of the day, those in power will always have the final say. It’s been that way since the dawn of time.

5 .Performance Appraisals focus on the wrong things

Numerous studies show that telling people what they did wrong is much less effective in lifting their future performance than recognising their strengths and acknowledging good outcomes. So the basic premise for the performance appraisal leads to poor outcomes. Typically an appraisal or review considers why people didn’t achieve 100% for each objective, and a discussion about what they didn’t do enough of, should have done differently and so on. If there is a conversation about what went well, it’s usually short and done upfront, then overwhelmed by all the improvement suggestions.

6. Managers don’t take accountability for performance ratings of their team.

If the individual hasn’t performed well, then it’s on them.

• Why is it the manager has no stake in this outcome?
• Where were they during the year supporting people to achieve their objectives?
• If the planning was poor, why didn’t they notice and help?
• If there were obstacles, why didn’t they remove them? If people were being blocked why didn’t they help improve relationships so things could be achieved?

A manager is successful when her team is successful, so surely we should expect there to be some joint accountability for outcomes? No, with the accountability all resting with the individual, and the power all resting with the manager, the performance appraisal can never be an equal affair.

7. People don’t trust the System.

For all the reasons above, employees are overwhelmingly cynical about the value of performance management systems, and rightly so. They don’t see them as adding value, instead they view them as unfair, something that managers “tick the box” on because they have to.

Is there a better way?

Of course it’s easy to diss performance management and talk about how it doesn’t work. What else could we be doing to drive better outcomes and enthusiasm for the process?

• Stop thinking about performance reviews as a 1 way street – think of them as a set of goals both parties need to deliver on
• With that mindset, set joint goals between leader and employee that both are accountable for delivering on
• Agree up front what the leader will do to faciliate the achievement of the objectives
• Jointly agree how often the you will monitor/review/discuss progress towards the goals, so issues can  be resolved on an ongoing basis
• Review sessions change to becoming progress conversations, and are held as frequently as the two parties agree is required.

This shift changes the nature of the conversation from one person assessing anothers performance, to two people assessing their joint progress.

You can read more about this philosophy at: Wall Street Journal

There’s also a great book called “Get Rid of the Performance Review” which I highly recommend.

Sadly, the people implementing the system were not very computer literate. They didn’t realise, and failed to consider, that our hardware was not powerful enough to run the reports (I was using Wordstar at the time, which will give you an indication of how long ago it was-if you’re even old enough to remember!). I spent literally hours attempting to run these reports for my boss. The system with its 16 kb of RAM just kept on crashing.

This is an example of the people leading the change failing to consider the organisational context of their clients. Failing to realise they couldn’t run the software adequately. Failing to ask the simple question about what kinds of PC’s they had.

It’s always these simple questions we forget.

The context for change is just as important as the process used to implement the change.  Change leaders need to understand what’s going on for the receivers.

• Are they already aware of the need for change?
• Will they buy in to your story or will they shrug their shoulders and say “here we go again”.
• Who are the influential followers that you should engage early?
• What is the organistional context forthe “receivers” – what else do they have on their plates?
• What is the quality of leadership within the group – will this help or hinder the change initiative?
• What are their current skills? Will skills need upgrading?
• How much support are they likely to need, and what should it look like?

These are just a few of the questions you could ask. Getting your head around their motivations, drivers, skills and current context will help you design a better implementation approach.

Never forget to ask what kinds of PC’s they have.

According to the Harvard Business Review (Feb, 2007), self-awareness has been recognized as the most important capability for leaders to develop. As part of their study, researchers interviewed hundreds of managers looking for common traits that drive success.

What they did find was that leaders who understood themselves, and could use their experience to reflect and grow, were most successful.

When the 75 members of Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Advisory Council were asked to recommend the most important capability for leaders to develop, their answer was nearly unanimous: self-awareness.

Our perception of ourselves is often coloured by our experiences, attitudes and self-esteem. Looking at yourself through others’ eyes provides information often missing in the self-development process. What do others see as your strengths – and how does that compare to your own view.

How do we go about getting a realistic picture of our capability? There’s really only 1 way:

Feedback, feedback, feedback. There are many ways we can get feedback from others – here are 5.

5 ways to get feedback

1. Informally ask peers and trusted others
2. Ask  your manager and/or team
3. Self observation and reflection (on past and current experiences, look for themes)
4. Complete a leadership assessment on yourself
5. Complete a leadership  assessment that gets confidential feedback from 5-7 others, so you can compare your views to theirs

You may not always agree with feedback – but that’s really the point. If you don’t agree, the questions to ask include:

• Why does that person have such a different view from me?
• What have I done that may have caused that view?
• How would I like that person to think of me?
• What do I need to do to make that change happen?