It is everywhere. . .
. . . Political leaders promoting changing policies.
. . . Organizational leadership touting new products or strategies.
. . . Team leaders outlining a process improvement.
Leaders everywhere think their job is to create change across their team, organization or industry.
And they are wrong.
You can create broad change across people and distance, but you can’t do it by changing the organization.
You can only achieve by helping individuals make the choice to change.
In other words, organizations don’t change, people do.
In the political arena, you’ve heard the phrase, “all politics is local.” For our purposes today let me modify it to say “All change is individual.”
So, if you agree with my assertion, how can you use that insight to get to your desired end goal of new processes, projects, products and behaviors?
Here are five things you can do.
Five Ways to Influence Change
Start with yourself. How easily are you influenced to change by someone who isn’t changing themselves? An Android user isn’t likely to convince you to buy an iPhone and a couch potato won’t be a compelling advocate for reading more. If you want to influence others to change, you must begin with yourself — your level of belief is critical to your success.
Open conversation. Too many changes are introduced with PowerPoint and polished, practiced presentations. Stop that approach! Introduce the situation and the need for change as you see it and have a conversation with people about their concerns, fears and ideas. Recognize their initial resistance not as threat but as energy to be used. Telling won’t work. Selling is limited in application. But a conversation that allows people to understand and express themselves moves people more quickly towards a change.
Pick the easy fruit first. If you have ever needed to pick the apples off of a tree, you probably started with the fruit closest to the ground. Picking all the apples doesn’t mean you have to start at the top of the tree! In order to influence the entire group, start with individuals most likely to be open to the change. Notice those who seem most receptive. Think about who has been open to similar changes in the past. Going to these people first will help you build your confidence, and build a cadre of people to help influence others.
Engage their help. Politicians do this well. Once they begin to build support they enlist the help of early supporters to help the influence others. They know they can’t do it alone and they understand the power of momentum. You don’t have to, and if you are trying to change a group of any size, you can’t, do it yourself. Engage those who are excited about the change. Support them with the same approaches you are using; encourage them to influence change on person at a time. The power of the extra help, plus the emotion of the momentum, will move you closer to your goal quicker.
Be patient. Have you been influenced to change quickly in every past situation? Have you ever seen an entire group of people all ready to change at the same moment? Change isn’t always easy. Just because you have some early adopters on board today doesn’t mean everyone else will jump on the bandwagon tomorrow. When you realize that all change is individual, you see that it will take some time. Remember that if your change is important, your patience will be rewarded.
There is lots more to creating change for individuals (and certainly how that ripples to organizational change) than can be shared in one brief article. But if you combine these five strategies with what you already know, and let all of your change leadership be guided by the premise that all change is individual, you will be on a path to more successful and more lasting change.
For even more change management resources, check out the Remarkable Learning teleseminar, Change Without Migraines: Management strategies to build support for and eliminate resistance to change. Learn more here.
photo credit love2dreamfish
A neat post and a provocative reminder that we cannot change organisations.
As I read it though I was struck by the 3rd tip you give, that old favourite of picking the easy, or low lying fruit first.
This feels like a sacred cow but I am not sure that is what we do is it?
Or rather, it assumes that all of the fruit has reached ripeness, readiness, at the same time.
I am blesed with a couple of very abundant cherry trees in my back garden. When it comes to May/June I do not pick the lowest fruit. I those which are most ripe.
Why?
Because they are the ones with the most pressing need to be picked. If I do not pick them, they will spoil.
Also, they are the ones which give me the greatest reward at that time. Believe me, these are juicy sweet cherries. To pluck them off and eat them right away, still warm from the sun, is a delight I look forward to every spring.
And what of the other fruit? Do we ignore them?
No we do not. Instead we keep an eye on them. We watch how they are getting on. And we wait for them to be ready before we then pick them.
There’s something in that isn’t there?
Neil – Thanks for your comments. You make an excellent point, and while it is completely aligned with the low hanging fruit idea, it is an important distinction. In any change there are people more read, more aware, and “ready to be picked” related to the change. Influencing those people is the low hanging fruit, because they are ready to be influenced – regardless of where they are on the tree.
Thanks so much for your insights!
Kevin 🙂
Kecin, loved the whole piece but especially appreciate your including patience as a factor. I grew up in management with “sense of urgency” as the mantra. Experience showed, however, this chant often translated to impatience. Experience has shown superior results will come often when good things are put in place accompanied with the forebearence simply to let things unfold.
Allan – I have as much a bias for action as anyone I know (ask my team) and there is definitely a place for/need for patience too. So much of life is in balance, isn’t it?
Kevin 🙂
Kevin, sorry I misspelled your name. Must have been impatient!
I like your point, Kevin, and I think your “five ways” are spot on.
What I’d add, though, is that when people can’t or won’t change, the organization can choose to change people. And sometimes that is exactly what it should do.
Some leaders jump to this option too soon. In my experience, even more wait too long.
Love this post. One of the hardest things seems to be for leaders to start with themselves and it is the reason I choose to focus my coaching on the skill (and often the art) of behaviour change. The ability to adopt and adapt. Because as you say, if we cannot demonstrate swiftness and competence in our own adoption, how can we expect it of others? I’ll be sharing this post with a couple of clients.
I love this post. I worked for many years in a company that preached ‘adult-to-adult conversation’ but never defined it or taught people how to do it, so it fell on deaf ears and eventually led to a lot of cynicism. Now I teach a series of workshops to improve employees’/leaders’ interpersonal communications skills and have seen how the whole team or corporate culture can change when individual people learn new ways to relate to each other.
Thanks for sharing your experiences Kristen.
Kevin 🙂
I,m not sure that I agree with the principle that you can’t change an organization, but only people. Research has shown that it is actually the design of an organization that directly influences behavior and ultimately performance and culture.
The Star model defines the aspects of an organization to include strategy, structure, processes, rewards & people (see http://www.jaygalbraith.com/pdfs/StarModel.pdf)
I think making changes at an organizational level can help align and enable people to execute against a specific strategy. In making these organizational changes, I think your 5 points could apply to the leaders heading up the needed improvements.
I agree with your point about the role of organizational culture. Certainly organization plays a role in the choices and behaviors of individuals – when they choose to change or not. And, in the end, individuals still make those decisions.
Thanks for the great comments!
Kevin 🙂
Kevin,
Are the 5 points you make, based on your experience or are they based on some research?
If they are based on some research, I would appreciate if you could let us know the source(s).
Thanks.
James – they are based on my personal and professional experience and could all be backed up with research, I am quite confident, though not necessarily all in one neat tidy study. I hope that helps.
Kevin 🙂
There is no such thing as organizational change is a bit like saying there is no such thing as evolution. I like your post Kevin, and the provocation within it, because it brings the discussion down to the key ingredients behind real change. Evolution does not happen because we choose it; it is a chemical and molecular reaction to our environment. Organizational change does not happen, because CEO’s wish it to. It happens because there is a marked shift in focus, behaviours and interactions at individual and team level across the organization. And like you say – this takes time, patient and the willingness to take a few risks – which can’t be achieved by hiding behind a well-polished powerpoint presentation.
Thanks for your comments Mary. Perhaps you should have written the post instead of me. Your points are mine, stated at least as well!
Thanks!
Kevin 🙂
I understand the point of facilitating personal change to get people to work better within the organization. This is a noble goal and needs to be done in every organization.
What this article fails to recognize is that there may be procedural hurdles, or something like job descriptions migrating away from what they traditionally were, or were just plain wrong from the get go, that makes the organization unsustainable. In other word there are cases where the organization needs to change to survive.
Mentoring people to work better is easy compared to recognizing when an organization really needs to change, identifying what needs to change and then getting your people to buy into the change. This article deals with the easy stuff.
Thanks for your comments Bernie – they are appreciated. Certainly in a post of a few hundred words one can’t cover anything close to all the ground related to a complex topic. My intention was to get people to think about the important building block of individual change.
Given the type of scenario you describe, there is no doubt there are times with structures and processes and reporting relationships (and much more!) may need to change. Even when those initiatives are undertaken, it is still, in the end, about individual choosing to change (including those at the top perhaps blind for that need for change in the first place).
Thanks for your thoughts and insight in this conversation.
Kevin 🙂