Tag Archive for: Articles by David Irvine

Is It Time To Change Your Change Management Plan?

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he problem with most change management plans in organizations is that they are doing just that: they are managing the change, not leading people through the change. To illustrate the limitations of most change management plans, think about the last time you relocated with a new job. What was your change management plan? Your plan may have been: 1) Call a realtor, find a new place to live; 2) Sell your house; 3) Purchase a new house or finalize a new rental agreement; 4) Schedule your movers; 5) Schedule cleaners for after the move.

Your unique plan could be quite different, but if your list looks anything like this one, there is one key point missing: leadership. Creating and implementing a plan like this is all about management: Defining, prioritizing, and executing. Leadership, on the other hand, is very different. Authentic leadership is about connecting with people: supporting and guiding them through the change. Change occurs outside of a person and requires management, while transition occurs inside of a person and requires leadership. Transitions are the reorientation that people go through as they come to terms with change. Organizations make a huge error when the two are confused or if they neglect attending to the leadership.

Leading people through the transition gets to the impact of the change on people and relationships. For example, what are you letting go of in the move? What’s going on inside you as you make this transition? How are you handling resistance, which always accompanies change to some degree? How is the change affecting your relationships?

“It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change and uncertainty or so in love with the old ways,” wrote the late Marilyn Ferguson, American author and philosopher, “but it’s that place in between that we fear… It’s like being in between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”

We’ve all heard that when “one door closes, another one opens.” What they don’t tell you is that it’s hell in the corridor. Here are a few pointers to get you through the corridor. In leading change, you have an accountability as a leader to ensure that every change management plan incorporates the following:

  1. Give people a clear rationale for the change.
    Why are we changing? How will we be better off because of the change?  While change is necessary, not all change is good. If you have no solid reason for changing, you have no business initiating change.
  2. Give people a vision.
    Asking people to step into the corridor of uncertainty is a part of leading people through the transition to a new reality. If you are always certain, you aren’t changing. Uncertainty is an essential ingredient to growth. But in responsible leadership, uncertainty should not be about where you are headed. Change always starts with an inspiring vision of the future.
  3. Give people dignity and respect.
    In order to build a strong and civil high performance culture, every right must be accompanied by a subsequent responsibility. You have a right to make changes, as leaders. You have an accompanying responsibility to inititiate change in a respectful, honest way. For example, if you are going to move, don’t dump the move onto people. Give people the dignity and respect they deserve to understand and come to terms with the change.
  4. Give people compassion.
    It takes time to adjust to change. People usually bitch before they build. Get out of your office. Be connected. Listen to people’s concerns. Allow people to grieve. Give them time to let go. While the corridor of change may not be a time of productivity, it’s a great time to build community. Leadership through transitions is about caring for people, not manipulating them. While you may be able to control things, you can’t control people.
  5. Give people information.
    Tell people what you know. Tell them what you don’t know. Be honest. Be transparent. Be real.
  6. Give people boundaries.
    People need some structure to get through the corridor of change. They need to know that there are both accountable and unaccountable ways to handle emotions. It’s okay to grieve, to vent, to express resistance in constructive, contained places and respectful ways. It’s not okay to complain incessently, tear down others, and undermine the change initiatives. There’s a difference between constructive venting and destructive bitching.
  7. Give people a decision point.
    Similar to boundaries, people need to know when it it’s time to move on. They need to know that while venting, grieving, and expressing concerns are all valid emotional responses to change, eventually you have to build a bridge and get over it. Eventually you have to get through the corridor to the other side. And if you stay in the corridor too long, you’ll start to rot. If you seeing indicators of low morale, resentment, cynicism, resignation, bitterness, or indifference, it means you’ve been in the corridor too long.
  8. Give people a compass.
    If you’ve ever been lost in the wilderness you know that road maps don’t always work. What you need when you are lost is a compass, a set of values and guiding principles that remain constant and reliable during uncertainty and upheaval. A compass with a clear calibration pointing toward your destination will keep you on track in the transition.
  9. Give people your trust.
    Change creates all kinds of opportunities. The most important of these is the opportunity to extend trust: trust that people will come to terms with change in their own way and in their own time. Trust that with a clear vision you will get there together. While you care about people, you don’t have to carry people.
  10. Give people your courage.
    With every change you develop new resources. After all, this is one of the primary the purposes of the human experience: to grow and learn. Courage will naturally emerge when you have the courage to face and come to grips with change in your own life. Change is the courage to step off the cliff and grow wings on the way down.

Are some of these strategies for leadership in transitions missing in your change management plan? What can you do to improve on your current approach to change management? How can you bring a more human quality to your change management approach? Is it time to change your change management plan?

Bridges Of Trust: Making Accountability Authentic

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Everyone’s saying it: organizations needs to be accountable. Leaders need to be accountable. Employees need to be accountable. So why do most accountability programs fail?

The concept and experience of accountability needs rejuvenation. You have to get to the deep meaning of accountability. You have to be clear about who you are accountable to, “for what specific results,” and “for what matters most.” If you aren’t, accountability becomes just another organizational buzzword, or worse, a hammer to punish people,

Accountability, when understood and applied effectively, will transform the your organization, your work, and your life. Accountability is the keystone of trust, the foundation of labour and life.

In it’s simplist form, accountability is the ability to be counted on. Real accountability is rooted in the behaviour of people. It is not, as some think, a character trait or something embedded in an organization. Accountability is determined by how you act.

When people accept real accountability, life in an organization or in a relationship is straightforward and productive. No one needs a pack of dogs eating their homework or a fresh pile of excuses to explain incomplete tasks. People do what they say they are going to do—and paradoxically when this happens real accountability creates enormous freedom and the opportunity for creativity.

Real accountability leads us back to our roots as people with integrity, unleashing the human potential that can so easily be suppressed. In our complex organizations, our busy families and our fast paced society, accountability can be diffused or completely lost—and when accountability is lost, we lose touch with our core. When we grasp real accountability we get a grip on results.

Accountable Behaviours

Real accountability requires you to do four things consistently:

  1. Take Ownership.
    No one but you cares about the reason you let someone down. Deciding, once and for all, that all blame is a waste of time, will change your life forever. Decide to give to others what you expect from others. Be the change that you wish to see around you. Deciding that you have helped create the world around you – and therefore you are the one to step into healing it – is the ultimate act of accountability. Ownership means choosing service over self-interest, contribution over consumerism, and gratitude andgenerosity over entitlement. Ownership makes you a force in the world that changes the world. George Bernard Shaw knew this when he said, “This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
  2. Carry through to completion the responsibilities entrusted to you.
    Henry Ford once said, “you can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” Real accountability means only making promises you know you can – and will – deliver. Real accountability also requires you to search for and clarify accountabilities that are assumed in your roles, to judge which accountabilities you accept, and to carry those accountabilities through to completion. When you make a promise to someone you now have a creditor, where a debt is owed. Once you have made the promise, accountability means that you then deliver on your promise. When circumstances prohibit you from fulfilling your promise, let the creditor know as soon as you know, that the commitment is jeopardized. Negotiate, at this point, to minimize damages and re-commit to a new course of action.
  3. Stand up for your actions.
    Real accountability depends upon transparency. Others need to know who did what, and who is accountable for doing something. Standing up for your actions in public is very relaxing when you are confident that you have acted ethically and with your best efforts. Standing up for your actions is another aspect of ownership, in that it means owning up to mistakes. Though owning up publically for the mistakes you make may not be comfortable, it takes less effort and results in more respect than hiding or running from the truth. No one ever thought less of a person who stood up and said, “I’m accountable for that.”
  4. Stand behind your results.
    The effects of your actions—your results—matter more than the actions themselves. Yes, you sent the memo, but did the memo produce the desired effect? You explained to your child how much a pencil hurts when jabbed into an uncle, but has her behaviour improved? People are accountable for producing a result, not just for taking an action. Real accountability encompasses the unintended results as well as the ones you mean to produce. When you act to stop a child’s unsocial behaviour, you are also accountable for the effect your actions have on the child’s sense of safety and love. Or when you produce a high quality running shoe, you are accountable for the effect your plant’s effluent has on the local water supply. Real accountability requires an acceptance of responsibility for all the results your actions (or inactions) produce

The Secrets To Performance Management: Lessons From A Swan

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Why is it that so many bosses dread performance management discussions with their employees? Why are performance conversations often so tough? Why doesn’t everybody get inspired about performance?

The secret to turning those tough performance conversations into inspired action, into discussions that you genuinely look forward to, is one word: passion. If people aren’t passionate about their work, they will never achieve their performance potential. If you can’t get to people’s passion, you won’t get the results you need – you’ll always be trying to motivate them, and you will always fall short.

It’s pretty obvious that passion precedes performance. So how do you get to it? And how do you sustain it? Over a hundred years ago, the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a poem that sheds some clues. Here are some lessons from a swan.

This clumsy living that moves lumbering as if in ropes… reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is the letting go of the ground we stand and cling to every day, is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down into the water, which receives him gaily and which flows joyfully under and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm, is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown, more like a king, further and further on.

The swan in this poem doesn’t cure his awkwardness on the land by moving faster, working harder, beating himself up, being evaluated in a performance review, or by developing a better performance plan. He frees himself from the stress of his environment simply by moving toward the element where he belongs: water. Simple contact with the water breathes life into his tired body.

Touching the essential waters in your own life — discovering your authentic self — will change everything. As simple as this is, letting yourself down into the water from the familiarity of the ground you stand on can be difficult, especially if you think you might drown.

Employee engagement is really nothing more than this — creating safe places where people can connect with where they belong. Here are five lessons from the swan to start building passion into performance management:

  1. Make passion a priority.
    Before you talk about “performance,” spend time with each of your employees defining their “essential element.” Make it clear that passion must precede performance and when you connect with your “essential element,” passion will arise. Before you talk about organizational goals and expectations, invite a discussion about personal goals, unique abilities, and passion. Identify strengths and talents. In one-on-one sessions, ask some of the following questions: “What do you do that comes easy to you?” “What do you do, that when you do it, you loose all track of time?” “What are you passionate about?” What are your unique strengths and talents?” “What do you do well that you don’t remember learning?”
  2. Get clear – before you get accountable.
    Clarity about the answers to the questions above takes time. Most people have never taken much time to answer these questions for themselves. Getting to your essential nature is not a muscle that is well developed. Like getting into the gym for the first time, you have to start small. You have to make it easy. And you must be persistent. Start with some clarity about when, in their work, they are in their “element,” and when they aren’t and the percentage of time in both. There’s no right or wrong answers. Bringing your own clarity into the discussions can help lead the process.
  3. Fit people; Don’t fix people.
    Having complete alignment between your “essential self” and your job is unrealistic. Unfulfilling chores and the necessary slogging through them is a part of all employment. What’s important, if you want an inspired performance management process, is to take the time to seek greater alignment between organizational goals and personal passion. Where can your employees bring more of their passion and strengths to their work? Are there projects they could let go of to allow space to bring their unique strengths to work? Look at your job description and ask if there is a way to increase the percentage of work time spent doing work that is aligned with your essential nature.
  4. Seek alignment through win-win solutions.
    You still have to achieve organizational goals and expectations. But if you help your employees win by getting to their passion, their essential nature, and their goals, then you are far more likely to get a commitment from them to work with you to achieve organizational goals. Loyalty breeds loyalty. Loyalty from your employees starts with loyalty to your employees.
  5. Make expectations clear.
    Like all effective performance management systems, you need a clear understanding of what you expect and how you can support each other to achieve these expectations. Don’t be afraid to set high standards; just be sure to include in those standards a high expectation of support. But when expectations are cushioned in passion, when employees are engaged in the process, when passion precedes performance, then high standards and achievement of results – through sustained commitment – are the standard. This kind of dialogue and commitment will turn tough conversations into inspired action.

 

How To Make Sense of Organizational Leadership

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We’ve all seen cases of sending employees to a leadership training program with no understanding of what skills or attitudes they are accountable to come out with. There is no measurement for whether or not the program makes any difference. Indiscriminately bringing in leadership “trainers” or aimlessly sending your leaders to a course because it “sounds interesting,” is the worst mistake you can make when it comes to organizational leadership.

It’s no wonder that organizations cut their leadership training budgets. If you still work in an organization that randomly sends people on leadership courses with no strategy or accountability or ways to measure the R.O.I. for the program, then you are working in an organization whose approach to leadership has reached its shelf life.

Smart – and healthy – organizations counter this mistake with a simple process:

  1. Clarify exactly what you expect from your leaders.
    Leadership expectations come from clarity of your values and clarity of your strategy. Once you are clear about where you are going and the kind of culture you need to get you there, then you can define the kind of leader it takes to make this happen. No one is promoted unless they meet the identified, expected standards.
  2. Rigorously measure – and assess – the leadership gaps.
    Once you are clear about what you expect from your leaders, you need to know where the gaps are. Your leaders need to know where they stand: both from in terms of attitudes and in terms of skills. Where are they meeting their organization’s need for good leadership? Where are they falling short? Your organization needs to know where the gaps are in their leaders. Who is a good leader? Who is not measuring up?
  3. Develop an accountability plan to close the gap.
    Once the gaps are identified (both personally and organizationally), the next step is to hold yourself and your leaders accountable to develop a plan close the gap. There are a myriad ways to close the gap, but how you close the gap depends on what exactly the gap is. Mentoring is a way to close a gap. Coaching is another way. Job sharing or cross-training, where you work in another area in the organization are also alternatives. Specific online training programs can be a very effective way to close the gap. Leadership training is an obvious way to close the gap, but now you have a goal and expected outcomes that you are accountable for in the leadership training. You may identify that many of your leaders have a similar gap in their abulities. This may present an opportunity to bring in an external consultant (or even internal person if you have the resources), to design and deliver a customized program that would fill the collective gap.

In order for leadership programs to produce long-term results they must have both clarity – about the specific skills and attitudes that are needed from the leaders, as well as a strategy to address and fill the gaps. Its so much more enjoyable, enriching, and effective, when you are working with a purpose, rather than merely working with a package.

Security, Identity, and Your Leadership Impact

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Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”- Helen Keller.

The Calgary Stampeders lost the Grey Cup recently, and I woke up the next morning feeling a little less secure. Upon reflection, the correlation is fascinating. I don’t even live in Calgary, and most of the players are Americans. But the Grey Cup for me was not just a game. And the Calgary Stampeders are not just a team. They are part of my identity. They are, I hate to admit, in my blood. I grew up watching my heros: Jerry Keeling, Terry Evanshen, Wayne Harris, John Helton, Don Luzzi, Herm Harrison, Larry Robinson. This crazy team has somehow become part of my DNA.

It makes no rational sense. I’ve never met any of the team members. I didn’t even get to one Stampeder game this season. Logically I can tell you they are just another team, but they actually feel like they are part of who I am. I won’t suffer long from the loss. I’ll get on with my very full day and it all will be forgotten within hours. But just as when they beat BC and my worth was bolstered, I am affected too.

If you ask my wife how long she was affected by the Calgary loss, she’ll tell you she wasn’t affected at all. She was interested in knowing who won, but she had zero attachment to the outcome. She has no identity with this team. Now if something  happened to one of our daughters, that would be a different story. Val’s identity is with her family, not with a football team.

The human experience is such that we all identify with certain things along this journey. Your identity is where you get your worth. Where do you get your source of security? Where do you get restored? As I get older, and hopefully more mature, I identify far less with sports teams and more with things that are much more sustainable and important in the world. But I still identify with external attributes.

In my leadership development programs, I ask people to take a careful inventory of where their identity and worth comes from. Given that many of the leaders in the room are very successful, many of them have their identity in their achievements. They define themselves by the success in their respective roles. Many have their identity in their family, their relationships. Others, if they are honest, have their identity and security in their possessions, their titles, the kind of homes they live in and the cars they drive. Many of us have our identity in the letters behind our name or our capacity to solve problems, fix things, and be smart.

There’s a dark side to this phenomenon of identifying with external roles, relationships, and surface characteristics. Soccer fans can get so attached to their respective teams that they kill each other. Executives who over-identify with their roles die early when they retire or they never retire or change careers. Parents can get depressed when their children leave home, and sometimes to prevent this, their kids never leave home! Bosses can become tyrants. People can go bankrupt. Individuals can get obsessed and become addicts.

The fact is, Helen Keller is right. There is no security in the external world. What she doesn’t tell us is where our security ultimately lies: within. While we can recognize our natural, human attachments to surface characteristics, the goal is to take time to look within and find a deeper core to anchor one’s self image.

As I age, I begin recognizing that all external identification will eventually dissolve. Your team will eventually lose, and even when they win, you will ask, “Now what?”  People we love die. We will eventually retire or at minimum our work will change. That beautiful car we bought will deteriorate. Our bodies will age and our health diminish. And when we begin suffering we have the opportunity to look inside. At this point we begin the spiritual journey.

Leaders who have their worth from within are more secure. They don’t need to prove themselves. They are not driven by their egos. They are more likeable. They are more impactful in their work. And they are better leaders.

What are you doing to let go of your attachments to the external world and find your security and worth from within? What are you doing to make life a “daring adventure?”