By Ana Lucia Jardim Evans
In a recent newsletter, an OD professional association led the announcement of its new membership renewal process with the following quote: “Change is good. You go first.”
As BOLD goes through its own process of strategic change –working on its vision and mission for the future- we also open the dialogue with our members on strategic change management in the industry at the upcoming June 16 workshop entitled “What… More Change? How HR Can Take a Leading Role in Organizational Change”
Strategic change management is a critical success factor in the industry today. And it comes in many shapes and sizes: deploying a new strategy, organization restructuring or downsizing, mergers and acquisitions, technology changes, new processes and even new cultures. However, few companies execute strategic change successfully. ConnerPartners – a strategic change management consultancy- believes that only 33% of all initiatives succeed. And looking at the vast number of books and consultants professing to have the key to doing it right, one is left wondering whether strategic change management is more of an elusive art than a science.
To learn more about the frontline challenges and secrets of realizing change, BOLD met with Kate Helber, a Bay Area change management consultant who for the past 10 years has advised and partnered with senior leadership on strategic change execution in various industries, including biopharma. Her portfolio counts companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Roche.
“In my experience, there are 3 common pitfalls that derail the successful execution of strategic change:
• lack of senior leadership alignment and clear accountability,
• poor knowledge of how human beings respond to change
• lack of leadership’s own capacity to adapt to change”
We asked Kate to expand on each of these obstacles and share with us what can be done to overcome them.
Alignment and clear accountability: one single “chef in the kitchen”
With the intention of being inclusive and casting a wide net to ensure future adoption, organizations often assign ownership of the change initiative to a large group of executives. At one client, Kate recalls, “65 senior leaders were brought together to create an intent and strategy for the change. Several months later, we still had no strategy, no alignment.” When too many people are involved, there is no clear owner for the change and accountability is diluted. Organizations can become paralyzed, losing momentum and credibility because too many voices are awarded an equal right to be heard. “When I accept an engagement, I prefer that my clients give me one person- and one only- to work with to approve and green-light the strategic direction. That person is the single accountable leader and the face of the change. Obviously we still work with other key executives for alignment on intent and strategy, but this way we have focus and clear accountability for decisions.”
The way to adoption is through – not around- the initial pain
A core competency to be an effective change agent is to understand how humans process change and how to effectively support them through each of those stages on the way to adoption.
“I see a lot of resources and time invested into the mechanics of change -the plans, the process, the metrics... These are obviously important, but they are also the easiest to do. What can truly make or break the change are the people who need to adopt it. Change efforts typically fail because we simply forget that we are dealing with humans who are both logical and emotional beings. We still approach change with a strong “left brain” way of doing things, and spend minimal time or effort in anticipating and understanding the human response to change”.
First and foremost, organizations and their leaders must accept that the initial stages of change are painful (shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression). Often times leadership sees these initial phases as bad news to avoid at all cost, and goes through a lot of effort to buffer it or even deny it exists.
“But there is no way around it”, Kate explains, ”the only way to adoption is through this “negative energy” phase. The best we can do is to go through these phases as quickly as possible. For example, by developing customized and thoughtful communications, transparency, proper education and coaching, then people have the support needed to process the change and move forward. It’s important to give the space to express the anger and depression, and at the same time offer the tools and support needed to progress onto the next phases. Human emotions are very valid and to move back to passion, commitment and acceptance, they need to process the not so pleasant ones first”.
Apart from the well-known “shock-denial-anger-bargaining-depression-testing-adoption” model, Kate recommends looking into the emerging field of neuroscience to design human-centered change management processes. For instance, she is embedding elements of David Rock’s SCARF framework on the drivers of social behavior (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness) into her work. “Neuroscience opens the door to inserting the human component into the change management process without the risk of sounding “touchy-feely””.
Building senior leadership’s capacity for change
The third obstacle is more fundamental in nature. “One of the reasons that some leaders do not acknowledge or embrace the initial pain of change is due to their own lack of capacity to adapt to change. If leaders themselves lack self-awareness, are uncomfortable with feelings of shock or anger or do not have past experience going through change themselves- then it is very difficult for them to approve a strategy or a change management approach that addresses the human aspect”.
A way to mitigate this risk is to continuously build learning agility and capacity for change across the organization, regardless of whether there is any specific initiative being rolled out. Ensuring leadership has the emotional skills as well as the business expertise is necessary for an organization to become resilient in the long run.
HR as the change agent of choice
We asked Kate about her experience working with HR in strategic change initiatives. “Honestly, HR is not always seen as a strategic change management partner. HR typically comes in to manage tactics such as training and compensation. This is a lost opportunity, because the OD function - and Learning and Development in particular- are the only ones in the organization who have expertise on how adults learn new ways of thinking, feeling and doing.”
Herein lies the opportunity for HR to position itself as the key change agent of choice, at two levels: developing capacity to change as an organizational core competency, and designing and managing human-centered processes to execute strategic change initiatives.
To dive deeper into this topic:
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, a book by Chip and Dan Heath
Book summary available to the public on http://ezinearticles.com/?Switch-How-to-Change-Things-When-Change-is-Hard-by-Chip-Heath-and-Dan-Heath-Business-Book-Review&id=3854076
Immunity to Change, a book by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey
Book summary available to the public on http://vortex-integral.com/immunity.pdf
Managing at the speed of change, a book by Daryl Conner. Book summary available to the public on http://kwgateway.com/library/audio-change/matsoc.pdf
SCARF: a brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others, by David Rock
Corporate Executive Board: Change Management End-to-End Process Guide, Sep 2010
Available to members at https://clc.executiveboard.com
McKinsey Quarterly: 3 interviews on leading organizational change
Articles available on https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com when you sign-up for a free membership.
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