Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time.
Teach a man to make a fishing rod, and he starts a business…
employs others, donates to the community, and on and on.
When consulting to clients leading substantive organization change, I employ this adage, working with them on two levels simultaneously.
- Planning and implementing the current change, while
- Learning underlying principles about how people and organizations change, as well as why they don’t, to lead change more effectively in the future
Recently, I promised to send some clients a set of principles for leading change and am tickled pink to do the two bird shuffle by delivering on the promise through a series of posts.
You are welcome to contribute.
Here’s how.
Add your well-tested principles for leading change in the comment section. Include a link to a related post if you’d like. Your principle and the link may appear in a successive post of Leading Change: The Playbook. If you’d rather contribute a guest post, let me know.
Principle 1 – Empathize
Consider the change from “their” perspective. Frame your communications accordingly. Shift and match the perspective as well as the frame for each constituency – employees, managers, customers, vendors.
Principle 2 – Involve
People are more resistant, slower to move, and less likely to give it their all, if the change is forced upon versus chosen by them. Involve those affected by the change in decisions about the change. Give people as much say as possible in what happens, the way it happens or when it happens.
Vignette – A Fork in The Road
A VP of field service engineering is leading a change that calls for engineers to work at the system versus the chip level.
Empathize
From their perspective he is suggesting they STOP doing what they know and what accounts for their success. He is asking them to learn a new way, to trust that he will provide them with resources to learn, and allow them to make mistakes and still succeed.
Does he expect them to jump all over that offer?
No.
So he communicates the strategic shift by inviting the engineers into a story that brings them to a fork in the road. He describes where each of the two forks will lead.
1. Stay on the Chip Level Road, and
- the company becomes less competitive
- sales fall off
- bonuses decrease
- stock prices drop
- layoffs ensue
OR
2. Take System Level Drive , and
- the company lowers the cost of doing business
- product costs beat the competition
- customers are thrilled
- we sell more products
- stock prices rise
- bonuses increase, and
- you have increased your repertoire of skills
Involve
The engineers break into small groups to discuss what they see for themselves on each road. They have the opportunity to anonymously cast a vote for or against the change. The votes are tallied. The group proceeds down System Level Drive, having decided to do so on their own.
You might also want to take a peek at the next installment – The Pace of Change: Not a Speeding Bullet