Forster N. - Maximum performance (2005)(en)

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good reasons why they should embark on this journey, a clearly defined road, way or path to follow, what the end goals are and some incentives for changing what they currently do.

‘Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here?’ asked Alice. ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to go to,’ said the cat.

‘I don’t much care where . . . ,’ said Alice.

‘Then it doesn’t much matter where you go,’ said the cat.

‘. . . so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.

‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the cat, ‘if only you walk long enough.’ (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1871)

‘If you chase ten rabbits, you probably won’t catch one.’ (Old Japanese saying)

Our reviews of successful and unsuccessful change management programmes in dozens of organizations over an eight-year period revealed that those visions that grabbed the attention of employees, and motivated them to action, had a number of common characteristics.

1They were attractive, inclusive, memorable and compelling, and were grounded in marketplace requirements. Ineffective visions were lengthy, unfocused, bland, difficult to remember and did not act as a guide to action in employees’ daily working lives.

2They were trimultaneously broad-brush (the overall strategic objectives, goals or stretch targets), narrow-focus (what does this change mean to me and the job I do?) and also addressed the disparate needs and concerns of the groups who would be affected by the change.

3They acted as guiding stars or beacons, providing these organizations and their employees with a distinctive purpose, as well as shortand long-term goals. They captured and symbolized longterm dreams about what the organization hoped to become. They stretched and motivated employees, by providing them with objectives to strive towards and, in some cases, a cause to believe in.

4They appealed to employees at all levels and to the organization’s stakeholders, customers and clients. They reached both heads and hearts. They raised ambitions and were catalysts for action. They were concerned with the feelings, hopes and aspirations of those to whom they were directed.

The leaders of these organizations embodied their visions in their day- to-day working practices and communicated them frequently and in person. They knew that, if they had just stuck their visions/missions on notice boards, or in emails, newsletters and videos, they would have died very quickly.

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Visions were regarded as being quite different from mission statements because, while statements of intent and specific plans and policies are important, they can also place restrictions on flexible, evolutionary change. The visions of companies that have successfully managed change were not regarded as a ‘plan’ as such, but as a device to motivate people to change. They understood that their visions could not be allowed to become dead documents, as mission statements so often do. They regarded their visions as living, evolutionary statements of intent, while their mission statements became out-of-date the moment they were committed to paper. To cite one example of this, 3m updates its ‘values and visions’ on its website at regular intervals as the strategic focus of the company shifts and changes.

Their visions were built into and reinforced by the day-to-day strategic and cultural changes that employees saw going on around them (as described in the Continental Airlines case study later in this chapter). If employees cannot see this connection fairly early on in the change management process, distrust and cynicism will soon set in. A vision/mission that is not matched on a day-to-day basis by what employees experience will soon wither on the vine and lose its motivational impact.

Here’s one example of a vision statement that fails to meet any of these basic requirements:

In the 21st century, Blob University will be recognized as an internationally excellent, research-intensive university and a leading intellectual and creative resource to the community it serves. It will provide a broad and balanced coverage of disciplines in the arts, sciences and the professions at internationally recognized standards. It will be characterized by a strong research and postgraduate emphasis across the full range of its disciplines and it will be noted for concentrations of particular research excellence in selected areas of strength, opportunity and importance. Blob University’s research and postgraduate strength will be linked to and sustained by a high quality undergraduate program in which teaching and learning takes place in an atmosphere of research and scholarship. The university will foster an international focus for all its activities and standards as an integral part of its overriding commitment to excellence and high quality. It will be valued above all for its enduring commitment to improving society through learning and discovery.

This quotation has been read several times to groups of MBAs, who were asked for their reactions. Apart from observations about the dodgy punctuation, strangled syntax and the repetitions it contains, other comments have included the following:

•‘Completely vacuous. Why isn’t the university doing these things now? It’s been in existence for a hundred years.’

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•‘Why isn’t it already recognized ‘internationally’ for its teaching and research? This is the same empty rhetoric we used to hear when I was an undergraduate here ten years ago.’

•‘Why is there no mention of the university’s employees? Don’t they matter?’

•‘Nice rhetoric. A pity it’s not matched by the reality of this university’s relatively poor standing in international terms.’

•‘Does nothing for me. Totally off-putting, because it’s nothing more than a series of stale, repetitive clichés that we’ve all heard before.’

•‘The part about serving the community is a joke. I doubt if this university has any impact on 95 per cent of the people who live in this city.’

•‘Leaves me cold. Sounds like it was put together on a post-it after a few lunchtime drinks.’

•‘My understanding of a vision statement is that it is about the future. This is about the things this university should already be doing.’

By way of contrast, what about this vision statement from a wellknown and successful Australian resource and mining company?

Our vision is to maximise shareholder value through the use of the talents of all our company employees. We will maintain a diversified portfolio of commodities and exercise prudential financial management. We will search for new business opportunities and find, acquire, develop and operate new mineral resource projects throughout the world. Our immediate tasks are to capitalise on the best of the past, address current issues and – most importantly – challenge ourselves for the future and maintain our shared commitment to continuous improvement. [The company] is committed to achieving compatibility between economic development and the maintenance of the environment. It is also committed to developing relationships of mutual understanding and respect with the indigenous peoples of the areas in which we operate or propose to operate. To achieve these goals, we will develop and retain top quality people. We will be at the cutting edge of management practice and make best use of new technologies. We will develop agreed values, behaviours and expectations that unite and represent the commitment of all our staff. Our objective is to create an even better company, maximising shareholder value through the use of the talents of our valued employees across the whole corporation.

This is better because it satisfies most of the requirements of an attractive and compelling vision statement. It uses inclusive language (‘we’), refers to the major stakeholders in the company, makes some reference to its social responsibilities and, unlike Blob University’s mish-mash, is concerned with the future. But it is still too long and probably needs to be shortened by 20–30 per cent. Many of the best organizational visions that we have come across were often surprisingly simple and, as a result, became captured in ‘rallying cries’ that were understood and embraced by employees. Examples of these include the following: ‘Ask the passenger in seat C-9’ (Continental Airlines); ‘We don’t sell flowers – we sell beauty’ (Podesta Baldochi); ‘The only limitation is your imagination’

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(Industrial Light and Magic); ‘To make people happy’ and ‘Dream, believe, dare and do’ (Disney); ‘Cars for the world to love’ and ‘To beat Porsche’ (Toyota); ‘No limits’ (Nokia); ‘Putting Perth’s homes on the map’ (aussiehome.com); ‘Bringing computer power to the people’ (Apple); ‘First to market – first to profit’ (Hewlett-Packard); ‘From anywhere to anywhere in 24 hours’ (TNT); ‘The appliance of science’ (Zanussi); ‘Quality is job number one’ (Ford); ‘Strength, speed, simplicity, synergy, superb quality and satisfied customers’ (General Electric), ‘The world on time’ (Federal Express), ‘Buy into Moore’s Law’ (Intel); and, most notably, ‘A computer on every desk and in every home’ (Microsoft in 1978).

Even so, as we will see later, vision/mission statements can be little more than useless pieces of paper, and rallying cries little more than useless slogans, unless they become operationalized in concrete change management strategies and employees’ daily working practices.

Exercise 8.1

In Chapter 1, you were asked to develop a compelling vision that would challenge the way people in your department or organization operate now and in the future. Are you now in a better position to develop and articulate a new direction for your followers? This doesn’t have to be revolutionary, just a statement of a better future state for your people to move towards. It should also be short enough to take no longer than one minute to explain to a colleague at work.

What is the end goal of this vision?

What are the principal components of this vision?

Can these be encapsulated in motivational ‘rallying cries’?

If you are still having some difficulties with this exercise, there will be another opportunity to try this in Chapter 9.

Understanding why resistance to change is inevitable

Reform a university? You may as well try to reform a cheese. There is a certain flavour about a university as there is about a cheese, springing from its antiquity.

(The English Peer Lord Cecil, during a debate on the reform of British universities in the House of Lords, 1923)

Why is changing a university like moving a graveyard? Because it is difficult, complex and time-consuming, and you won’t get any help from the occupants.

(Internet joke, 2001)

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Resistance is futile. (The Borg, in Star Trek)

With a team of change leaders in place, and a clear and articulate vision to act as a guiding star, the third issue to get to grips with is why people resist change. It was suggested earlier that ‘leading organizational and cultural change’ should be reframed as ‘changing people’s behaviours and attitudes’. Changing behaviours is possible; changing attitudes can be very difficult and time-consuming. We know from a century of psychological research that behavioural change always precedes attitudinal change, in all circumstances. This is one reason why simply telling people to change is usually a completely fruitless exercise. Hence one way of reframing our understanding of organizational change is to think about the way individual change happens. The most dramatic changes in our personal development occur when we are young and primed to learn and unlearn rapidly. This is the reason why young children ask lots of ‘why’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ questions and, as we’ll see in Chapter 9, this child-like curiosity is also one of the primary sources of creative thinking. As we mature, we tend to become slower at learning and more resistant to upheavals and dislocations in our lives, unless we have embraced a mind-set that accepts perpetual change and unlearning as the natural and normal way to live and grow. Broadly speaking, the same is true of organizations. When they have just been born, or are growing rapidly, they have an inbuilt, organic capacity for change. In fact, they relish change and thrive on it. As they mature and get older, they can become more set in their ways and increasingly resistant to change, unless they too have embraced perpetual change and unlearning as ‘the way we do things around here’. With these thoughts in mind, please complete Exercise 8.2.

Exercise 8.2

Leading organizational change

Before reading through the next section of this chapter, please complete this survey. There are a series of statements relating to learning and change management. Indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with each one where:

6 = Strongly agree, 5 = Agree, 4 = Slightly agree, 3 = Slightly disagree, 2 = Disagree, 1 = Strongly disagree.

1I understand why perpetual organizational change is inevitable

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2I have a positive attitude towards change

3I am skilled in lateral thinking, scenario mapping and mental modelling

4I am innovative and able to see beyond ‘common sense’ boundaries

5I am always open to learning new skills and developing my personal knowledge base

6I am aware of the learning styles of different individuals

7I understand how adults ‘learn’ and ‘unlearn’

8When managing change, I focus on the needs and concerns of the people who will be most affected by this process

9I am aware that leading change takes a great deal of time, energy, resources, effort and persistence

10I am aware of the differences between vision, mission and strategy

11I understand why employees may actively resist change initiatives and how to overcome their resistance

12I understand why empowered change is usually more successful than imposed change

13I understand the importance of establishing support systems during times of rapid change

14I understand the importance of personal, face-to-face communication when leading change

15I understand the importance of using a variety of communication strategies during times of change

16I understand why the 11 components of change management described earlier must be considered when planning organizational and cultural change

Now, please add up your total score for the 16 items:

Interpreting your score

80–96: an excellent understanding of personal change and change management. According to expert commentators like Drucker, Kotter, Handy, Senge, Peters and others you possess a well-balanced portfolio of personal attributes, strategic competencies and people management skills that will enable you to cope with the uncertainties and challenges of perpetual change in the future.

48–79: quite a good understanding of change management, but you may need to continue to work on your personal adaptability to change, and develop a greater awareness of the human dimension of leading and managing change.

16–47: some understanding of the dynamics of leading and managing change, but you will need to learn more about your own attitudes to change and leading/managing change in the future.

This questionnaire highlights a number of aspects of our attitudes to change. An awareness of these can be important because they will shape the way that we lead and manage other people through change.

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intellectual know-how (experience) and develop beliefs about ourselves (self-perception), other people (attributions) and the world we live in (attitudes). These then manifest themselves in our behaviour, the way we solve problems at work, in our leadership and management practices and in the way we think about change. When we find something that works for us, as individuals or organizations, we naturally choose to persist with it. Most people and businesses find comfort and meaning in familiar patterns, routines and behaviours and, in turn, these then become part of our personalities or, in the case of organizations, their cultures.

This model of human and organizational learning also highlights four other significant outcomes of experiential learning. First, the more times we move through these single-loop cycles, the more our beliefs about the world and how it works are reinforced, or more accurately, reiterated. Second, these beliefs become ingrained at both the conscious and, more significantly, the unconscious levels of our minds. This means that we will unconsciously exclude any information that does not correspond with the belief systems that we have built up. Third, we are all exposed to a unique and limited selection of learning cycles that inevitably restrict our understanding of ‘the real world’ or other alternative ‘real worlds’ (discussed further in Chapter 9). Fourth, as a result of these interlinked processes, there will always be a smorgasbord of ‘resistant characters’ during change, regardless of the organizational context. Here are a few examples of these:

The egotist: ‘I know more than the idiots running this place. Why should I listen to them?’

The old-timer: ‘I’ve worked here for 30 years. I’m an experienced manager. How dare you tell me that I need to change?’

The practical manager: ‘Let’s face it, all this vision and change stuff is just window dressing. You’ve just got to kick some butts to get better results. You don’t lead change by brainstorming and filling up flip-charts.’

The office politician: ‘How can I use this time of change and uncertainty to my personal advantage?’

The action-driver: ‘It’s activity we need, not group discussions about changing things. You’ve got to get out of the circle-of-chairs syndrome, meet the customers and “do the business”.’

The sceptic: ‘These ideas and theories about change are all very well for academics in their ivory towers. I’ve got to deal with real people and real deadlines in the real world.’

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The pragmatist or wallflower: ‘Well, really I’m just happy to go along with the changes that the majority thinks are for the best.’

The opportunist: ‘I’m talented and in demand. Why should I stay here? What’s in all this change and upheaval for me?’

The frustrated innovator: ‘This place is a shambles. We need to transform the whole company but my bosses just won’t listen to my ideas.’

The bureaucrat: ‘How do I preserve my status and authority? What will happen to my car parking space and my executive canteen discount?’

The dismissive: ‘We’ve had days of meetings and all we’ve got to show for it is a piece of paper, called a mission statement. So what’s new?’

The cynic: ‘What this mission statement is really about is getting more work out of us for less. When was the last time you saw a mission statement that gave you more for doing less?’

The stick-in-the-mud: ‘I’ve always done it this way and I don’t see why I should change now.’

What we learn from these experiential cycles becomes inextricably intertwined with our identities and our deepest sense of who we are. As the Greek philosopher Aristotle once observed, ‘That which has become habitual becomes, as it were, part of our nature.’ And, once they are part of our nature, habitual behaviours and attitudes become deeply ingrained and very hard to change. The English writer Samuel Johnson described this eloquently in the 1760s when he observed, ‘The chains of habit are too weak to be felt – until they are too strong to be broken.’ Therefore all transformational leaders need to have some understanding of the power of ‘double-loop’ learning. The single-loop learning we described above is fine for individuals whose jobs never change and for organizations working in stable and slow-moving environments. However, when flexibility, fast change and innovation are paramount, double-loop learning must be built into the working mindsets of all employees. In essence, this means that employees have to be encouraged (and rewarded for doing so) to constantly move forward in their individual and collective learning endeavours, by having them move from ‘observe–decide–do’ cycles to ‘observe–reflect–think– decide–do’ cycles. Hence, for double loop learning to work well, employees must be encouraged to question what they do on a regular basis, be constantly moving forward and learning new things while simultaneously discarding knowledge and working practices that are

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out of date or redundant. We will return to look at the way this can be operationalized within the context of the learning organization in Chapter 9.

Learning theory also provides us with some other useful insights. First, learning is not the main problem for human adults. The real problem is unlearning; that is, giving up knowledge, or ways of working, they may have been using for years and have become very comfortable with. In this context, the old saying ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ contains some truth – unless they’ve been learning new tricks throughout their lives. Second, rapid change can cause a break in learning cycles and this can be extremely disruptive to the unlearning process unless handled carefully. Third, adults will only unlearn if they feel that this is going to be a useful thing to do, or if they believe that there will be positive and tangible benefits at some point in the near future. This is why organizational change must always be treated as a practical, intellectual and emotional issue, and why change management programmes must appeal to both the minds and the hearts of those employees who are affected by change.

Fourth, the way we learn is conditioned by our particular learning styles: ‘The Imitator’, who prefers to learn by watching the actions of others, ‘The Thinker’, who prefers to reflect on, intellectualize and analyse issues, and ‘The Doer’, who prefers practical action and finding quick solutions to problems to thought and reflection. While adults use all three learning styles to some extent, they usually have a preference for one of them. This is important because, if we want people to unlearn, we have to be able to tap into their preferred learning styles, and ensure that, when we are communicating the need for change, we make allowances for these preferences. This means using evocative language that can tap into their dominant learning styles, as described in the section on formal presentation skills in Chapter 3. Fifth, change can be very stressful. As we saw in Chapter 2, stressed human beings are not good at learning/unlearning, because during stressful episodes their higher-order cognitive functions are always impaired and, under extreme duress, can shut down completely.

Sixth, if these reactions persist over time, there is an increasing risk that ‘change fatigue’ will set in, where employees simply lose motivation and commitment because they can see no positive outcomes or benefits from waves of change. Constant unlearning, without benefits, will sooner or later lead to frustration and distrust. People need to see that their unlearning will lead to better personal outcomes. If this doesn’t happen, resistance will build up inexorably. People will begin to switch off and become ‘me’ focused and only do what’s necessary to