There’s one thing that goes wrong with organizational change management. It starts with the very premise of change. Organizations logically assume that change is something done to people. People resist change. It’s true they do. However, this resistance isn’t universal. It’s externally induced change that people resist most.
In Ten Reasons People Resist Change spells it out. The number one item, loss of control. Resistance to change is one thing that people get wrong. People universally resist YOUR change. They are less resistant to the changes they want to make.
I’ve used several change management frameworks, and they have their merits. However, they all go wrong from the start, they are set up to change people and this induces change. It causes resistance. The thing change management frameworks are there to resolve is reinforced and introduced by this focus. It is this focus that is fundamentally wrong.
The one thing to reverse this and to virtually eliminate change resistance is to give people control over the changes. Many resistance points can be eliminated if people focus on transforming without changing. This is a different way to convert an organization. When the focus shifts from changing a person to transforming the system amazing things happen.
Instead, shift the focus to the system. There are several techniques work together for an engagement model for transformation. The focus is key. There are three things we can do to shift the focus from them to us.
You don’t know what needs to change
The first shift comes from acknowledging that you don’t know the future. The change management initiative might have a benefit identified. How this is achieved and what exactly happens is variable.
Trust people. Surprisingly, they know some things that can be changed to move towards the desired outcomes. Work with people to discover what they see as changing. Be open to the possibilities.
I have a friend who is fond of saying, “fall in love with the problem, not the solution”. It took me a while to process this. When we fall in love with the solution, we move towards this with the exclusion of other things. This limits our options. But, more importantly, this causes resistance to the needed changes.
Keeping an open mindset allows us to flex and to adapt. This is needed when changing. It lowers resistance by inviting others in on co-creating a solution. So, you might know what needs to change. You might even know what a successful solution looks like. However, if you think others can’t help, then you create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You create the resistance you are most trying to avoid.
On the individual level, change is internal and can’t be externally forced. At the collective level, change is systemic and doesn’t require individual change.
You can’t manage Organization change.
Transformation isn’t Manageable. In order to better understand this, it will help if we make a distinction between change and transformation. Change is about making something different, or to make using the use of something different. So, for example, we often think about changing how people do their jobs. That would be a primary agile directive. Let’s change the way they do their jobs. So, change management is that discipline that guides us in this way of changing the way we do our jobs. This is a discipline that changes individuals for adopting this change. This is to drive new outcomes.
Definition of Change: make or become different, take or use another instead. For example, change how people do their jobs.
Definition of Transform: a thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance Metamorphosis
It’s important to make the distinction, that transformation is very different from change. Transformation is a marked change. We are saying something significant when we say something is transformative. This phrase carries with it a certain connotation, of something vastly different than change. With the change, we can say, “I changed my clothes.” With transformation, we talk about a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. Transformation carries a deeper meaning. So, what we’re talking about is that transformative change and this fundamentally a different thing than change.
I don’t find that the transformative change occurs within people very often. So, this might be coming across this a little bit different for what we are changing. I found it over time this to be different than what I had learned about change management. Change Management is different than what had been working for me. It began to coalesce into something fundamentally different than thinking I I’m here to change people.
Transformation isn’t manageable. You don’t manage transformation on the individual level. When it occurs, personal transformation is an internal thing. If anyone’s going to transform; they’re going to do so of their own volition. So, and necessarily incredibly hard. It’s nearly impossible in many aspects. We are who we were born to be. We are who we are. When we look at something like a Myers Briggs personality test, we see that very few people will ever change such a thing.
We’re born a certain way. Moreover, that’s good. It’s not bad. Organizations try to make something that was shot. They bring that insanity. So, people find themselves asking why I am doing this crazy thing. It’s because of their crazy boss or because of a policy that the crazy organization makes them. There isn’t anyone in any workplace in the world who doesn’t do something they believe is, at least, a little crazy. This is a massive part of what makes work so stressful.
Transformation doesn’t occur at the individual level; it is happening at the collective level. Transformation is systemic. It’s about a system — a system that asks people to do crazy things. In real life, we neither change nor transform, but we can engage. So, when I got together with my wife, it wasn’t a change management process. That’s a silly idea. Because in real life, you would never even think about such a thing.
You can change the group without changing the individuals
I realized, over time, that transformation is more about helping people become who they are. It’s not about changing individuals. Nietzsche says that individuals are rarely insane, but groups are always insane. Also, there are shared insanity inside every corporation we’ve ever walked into that anyone’s ever been part of.
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