Organizational Change

From Goals to Meaningful Change

In spite of best thinking on change management, most efforts to improve organizational results still fail to achieve the desired results.  What is the missing link between setting the goal and seeing meaningful results?

Long before I learned about change management, I studied the psychology of human behavior.  In my opinion, the missing link in our contemporary change models is failing to understand how patterns of predictable human behavior can either support or derail our efforts to improve organizational results.

Building effective change efforts does require a commitment from the top of the organization, a clear goal, excellent project leadership, etc.  However, three human behavior components are critical to achieving meaningful change.  We call it IAC. 

• I - Individual Performance Rules: Understand that individual performance determines organizational results. No amount of yelling or hours and hours of meetings will change organizational results. An organization’s results are an outcome of the collection of every individual’s performance. So, our goals have to be focused on improving each employee’s performance.

• A - Acknowledge Human Behavior: When employees are presented with a new goal, human behavior can be predicted. Stages will include: 
  • “What happened?
  • “Why?”
  • “What about me?”
  • “Who else should be involved?”
  • What about…..?”

Meaningful change only occurs when an employee comes into your office and says “What about adding Y to your X plan?  By doing so, I think we can improve upon the original idea.” At that point, they have fully embraced the change, they own it and they are productively supporting it.

The goal is to understand this human behavior process and get more of our employees to that point.  So, resist the temptation to yell “Shut up and go back to work” or “Just do it the way I said,” and help move them toward the “What about?” stage.  If you do so, their increased commitment, productivity and support for your goal will quickly result in meaningful change.

• C - Cement New Habits: So many of our well meaning efforts to drive meaningful change fail because they are not well implemented. New habits are not cemented into the fabric of the organization and the old habits choke off the new habits.

Part of the supporting the goal has to be a commitment to investing the resources necessary so that there is a return on investment.  If the new behaviors, skills and practices that will achieve results are not developed to the point that they become habit, we’ll end up with just one more flavor of the month program.

The process of managing change is simple and straightforward.  Implementing desired change successfully is the hard part.  Apply the IAC model and your success rate will improve. 

The Speed of Change

If we assume that all of the knowledge that mankind had accumulated by the year 1 AD equaled 1 unit of information, how long does it take to double that knowledge?  Keep in mind, this original 1 unit of knowledge includes Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Homer, etc.

According to Dr. Daniel Johnston, a Clinical Psychologist practicing in Macon, Georgia:

• The original 1 unit of knowledge took 1500 years to double
• The next doubling (2 units to 4 units) took only 250 years (1750 AD)
• The next doubling took 150 years (1900 AD)
• The doubling speed has now reached 1 - 2 years

We wonder why we have difficulty keeping up.

Average Effort Will Never Yield Great Results

Would you pay for the premium cable package each month and settle for access only to the basic channels?  Would you buy a new sports car, but agree to accept a used compact car in it’s place?  So, why do we settle for mediocre results in our companies?  As Jim Collins said, “Good is the enemy of great.”

• If your sales people understood the psychology of the sales process, could they sell more?  Could you sell more with fewer sales people?
• If your managers learned more effective leadership skills, could they lead more effectively?  Could managers manage more employees?
• If your senior leadership team viewed the organizational change process as a human behavior process and not a list of tasks to be accomplished, would your changes be implemented more fully and more quickly?  Could change become a normal part of your organization’s culture?
• If you dealt with the top 3 troubling people issues now, would productivity, morale, departmental performance and organizational results improve?
• If you understood that organizational structure, by its very existence creates dysfunction, would you stop creating new processes to fix the dysfunctional old processes?  Isn’t there a better way?
• If you acknowledged that the management model we are all using is more than 100 years old, would you consider some management innovation concepts to reduce costs and build competitive advantage? 

I know what you’re thinking.  You’re already so busy.  “How can I find the time to address these challenging issues?”  The problem is that if you don’t do anything, you’ll continue to get the results you’ve gotten in the past.

However, if you’re committed to addressing these issues, find experts and resources with the advanced skills and experience to help you with these issues.  If done right, the cost of getting the expertise will be offset many times over by the on-going organizational and financial benefits.  In fact, if you ask us to help, we guarantee your results.

All of our free blog articles are posted here in 12 categories.  Our Web site with testimonials from clients in a variety of industries is here.  Finally, for a free, no-obligation consultation with our Founder and President, Jim Connolly, contact Jim here.

To your success!

Organizational Change - An Everyday Occurrence

If you thought all the talk about “organizational change” was a fad that would pass by like many of the other tired fads (quality circles, ropes courses, personal coaches, managing up, etc.), the “Great Recession” has changed that.

I just got off the phone with yet another CEO who wondered out loud when the pace of constant change brought about by the “Great Recession” was going to end.  I told him what I tell all of my clients.  Organizational change will be a constant presence and to pretend any differently will negatively affect employee performance and organizational results. 

We, and our employees, all want the merry-go-round to stop so we could get off and rest.  But it’s not going to stop.  At least not for a while (until we get near the peak of the next economic expansion).  So how do we cope?

Three Organizational Strategies

1. Treat the organizational change process as a human behavior process, not an organizational structure project.  These are people, not boxes and lines on a chart.
2. Set the expectation that your leaders will guide their people through the process instead of telling them to “sink or swim.”  You need those who can swim to step up.
3. Find a way to embrace on-going organizational change as a key component in your company culture.  Make change normal.

If you do these things, employees will perform, leaders will lead at a higher level and the organization will deliver improved results.  In doing so, you’ll build proactive competitive advantage that can’t be matched by sale prices, staff cuts, search engine optimization or the status quo.

For more insights on building organizational performance and breakthrough results, check out our other blog resources at www.orgresults.net/newsblog.  To find out how we have delivered results for organizations like yours, visit www.orgresults.net or contact our Founder and President, Jim Connolly here or call him at (309) 828-9060.

Change is a Double-Edged Sword

Change is the buzzword these days, especially in this new economic reality.  The economy is forcing us to make organizational changes to adjust to the “new normal.”  As you make changes in your organization, beware that change is a double-edged sword.

Organizational change, when done well, brings improved employee performance and organizational results.  Companies become more focused on the customer.  Processes are streamlined as redundancies are eliminated.  Employees are more engaged in achieving organizational goals.

On the flip side, change can bring confusion, miscommunication, resistance and failure.  Here are five reasons not to take change efforts lightly:

• First, the status quo, the current situation today, is less disruptive than any change, even a good one.  As human beings, we prefer a stable situation to a changing situation.
• Second, as bad as the current situation is, the current results could be better than the results achieved with the new way of doing things.  If the change effort is poorly implemented, the new process could, in fact, generate poorer results than you achieve currently.
• Third, changes have unintended consequences.  Every decision has consequences.
  For example, you restructure your customer service process and organize customer service people by industry instead of by sales person.  It will result in better service because they are more knowledgeable about the customer’s industry.  That’s great, except that your customers still prefer to deal with their “favorite” customer service rep. 
• Fourth, the chances of success are low.  The reality is that the data on the results of change efforts tells us that the chances of successfully implementing any change initiative are low.  The fact is that the pull of the status quo is very strong and very resistant to change.
• Finally, employees will only give you so many chances before they tune you out.  Employees will say “Here they come with another flavor of the month,” as they learn to tune you out because they have “real work” to do.

Lead your organization boldly and make the changes necessary to move your organization forward.  In the process, be aware of the pitfalls of change efforts and work to minimize their impact on your progress.  Lead on!