It is from this need that we developed this newsletter – our observations on what it takes to be really successful in driving change in your organization.

Change is a Process

A study of change projects concluded that 100% of successful change initiatives had good technical solutions. Not surprising. But it also found that 98% of unsuccessful change initiatives had good technical solutions!  So successful change is not about whether we have a good idea for change, but rather: Can we get the people who work here to support this good idea?

Because it is about influencing people as well as changing procedures, change is not a one-time event. When we work with clients, we focus on leading change as a four-step process:

• Initiate change by  grounding it in a solid purpose and a shared need.
• Mobilize commitment by engaging people in shaping the outcomes and understanding what the change will do for them.
• Transition to the new systems and processes in a transitioning period, and
• Make change last by monitoring results and having the change become a way of doing business.

Change Acceleration works in tandem with project management to assure that your change is delivered on time, on budget, and with support in the organization!

A savvy change leader* understands the complex interplay of these four elements, and realizes that the success of any change depends on the support of those affected.
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*Note: If you – or someone in your organization – would like to master the change leadership part of influencing people to accept change, The Wunderlin Company is offering its most popular workshop: Facilitating for Results on December 14-16. For more information or to register, click here.
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Switch!

A new book by brothers Chip and Dan Heath provides a compelling metaphor for creating effective change. In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, the Heaths argue that implementing change is like getting a rider to control an elephant along a path. Lots of things have to go right to get the elephant where you want it to go!

Imagine you want to make a change. Every person – or team – has an emotional side, “the Elephant,” and a rational side, “the Rider.” To accomplish change, you have to reach both. And, of course, you have to clear the way for them to advance.  Using example after example, the Heaths focus on ways to “direct the rider, motivate the elephant, and shape the path.”

For example, two researchers in West Virginia wanted to try to find ways to persuade people to eat a healthier diet. Milk was identified as a pivotal part of the problem. Almost everyone drinks it, and whole milk is the single largest source of saturated fat in Americans’ diets. If people who drank whole milk switched to 1% or skim milk, they would reach the recommended levels of saturated fat in their diets.

First they appealed to the elephant – emotions – by showing grocery shoppers a tube of fat equivalent to the fat in a half gallon of milk and by explaining that one glass of whole milk contained saturated fat equal to 5 slices of bacon! Everyone’s reaction, of course, was that the fat was gross. Having monitored milk sales before the reduced-fat milk campaign began, the researchers knew that the market share of low-fat milk in the area was only 18%; during the campaign it rose to 41%, then leveled out at 35%.

The experiment covered all three bases: It clearly and simply directed the Rider to buy 1% or skim milk, it motivated the Elephant with images of tubes of fat, and it made the path easier by allowing people to make one simple change that started them along the road to better life-long health.

Direct the Rider

A few years ago The Wunderlin Company worked with a major airline, identifying 40 changes that needed to be made in the reservations division in the post 9/11 environment. As Laura Butcher, a Wunderlin Company associate, explains the challenge:

“Making 40 changes in one year – with many having impacts on the skills, compensation, and efficiency metrics – required substantial planning. We worked with a cross-functional team to put together plans to integrate the most significant initiatives first so that the airline minimized disruptions, overcame resistance, and realized efficiency and cost savings more quickly.

We helped the team complete a gap analysis for each of the initiatives to describe the current and future states, and we helped them identify the specific gaps that needed to be addressed.

We also guided the team in completing analysis of the stakeholders – what their needs, concerns and influencers were on each of the change projects. In dealing with these issues, we helped to construct adoption strategies, communication plans and action task lists to ensure that the initiatives and teams remained on message, integrated and aligned in purpose. Finally, we facilitated the group in identifying risks to successful execution and action plans to mitigate them.”

Clearly, managing change is not all about the change itself; in fact, most of our work deals with the more emotional, less rational side of the ‘change ride’: motivating the elephant!

Motivate the Elephant

A couple of years ago in a newsletter written at the depth of the recession, I discussed Ram Charan’s “Six Essential Leadership Traits for Hard Times.” The same skills needed to weather the changes brought about by a downturn are valuable in leading a company into better times. But as a change leader, you might also want to evaluate your team’s skills in dealing with the emotional aspects of change:

• How are my team’s influencing skills?
• What about their communication skills?
• Can they address the right questions? Like…
  • Where are we meeting resistance?
  • What do our employees need to effect this change?
  • How can we influence them to support the change?
  • What is the next milestone?

Failure to bring the organization along with you can ensure individual and collective resistance, along with reactions to the change ranging from apathy to downright sabotage, so inspiring a buy-in is absolutely essential.  So how do you handle the inevitable resistance?

In recent months, we have been working with a global company whose senior team wants to achieve some dramatic culture change  AND give leadership development opportunities to a number of “next generation” leaders. The executive team elected to launched a number of change initiatives, simultaneously! Senior team leaders had spent a good amount of time hand-picking the team members for each initiative, and providing resources for their work, but issues and resistance still arose.

For example, teams  feared disagreeing with senior management.  The first time such an issue came up,  the team took the risk, presented their case, and let management decide whether to accept what ended up being a very modest change (and they did!). Another team made a recommendation that actually wasvery significant – involving a change in the company’s logo and tagline – and after robust conversations, senior management supported them. All these issues were more about the elephant than the rider.  As senior leaders proved they were serious about letting the teams do their work, commitment has increased.

The early experiences with change management helped senior management and the change acceleration teams understand how to really “bake in” a culture difference across the globe. TWC’s “Equation for Success” had turned into the company’s mantra for change: the Quality of a solution times its Acceptance in the organization determines the Success of your result.

Sometimes, getting that all-important buy-in from your employees is as simple as maintaining your sense of humor–

A Fortune 500 company was changing its time sheets from paper to electronic. This was a major change, involving staff reduction, job assignment changes, and major alterations in methodology. The head of payroll  knew the change was going to have an emotional impact on over 15,000 employees.  So those most involved were invited to a funeral for the paper time sheet! Eulogies extolling the virtues of the old system acknowledged the pain of its passing. When the new system came online, birth announcements were sent out. The transition was much smoother because the stress brought about by change was anticipated and addressed with respect and humor.

Shape the Path

Once changes are formulated, and individuals and departments have bought into the changes, leaders have to shape the path to make the changes last.

The Switch authors suggest that you tweak the environment to make right behaviors a little bit easier and the wrong behaviors a little bit harder. Think about Amazon’s 1-click ordering. With one-tenth the effort of dialing a phone number, you can buy a new book or DVD. Talk about instant gratification. Amazon’s site designers have simply made a desired behavior – you spending money on their site – a little bit easier.

Here’s how Wunderlin Company associate Carol Schifman explains our approach to helping leaders shape the path for change: “Change is never easy, but the process and likelihood of success improves measurably when leaders understand how to initiate change, mobilize commitment for it, make the transition, and make the change last. We help get them to this level of understanding.”

Final words of advice from Switch authors Chip and Dan Heath: “For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team. Picture the person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side. You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way for them to succeed.”

Direct the Rider • Motivate the Elephant • Shape the Path

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Some Great Reads on Change

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. Chip and Dan Heath. Broadway Books, 2010.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. Penguin Books, 2008, 2009.

Harvard Business Review on Change. A Harvard Business Review Paperback. 1998.

Change the Way You Lead Change: Leadership Strategies That Really Work. David M. Herold and Donald B. Fedor. Stanford Business Books, 2008.

Radical Change, the Quiet Way.Debra E. Meyerson. Harvard Business Review. October 2001.

Leading Change: An Action Plan from the World’s Foremost Expert on Business Leadership, John P. Kotter. Harvard Business School Press.

All too often meetings are called without clear purpose, last way too long, get sidetracked, and don’t involve follow-up. The good news is: they don’t have to be that way! Anyone can plan and conduct effective meetings.

There is an increasing need for effective, efficient and even enjoyable meetings. Leadership increasingly means using our interpersonal skills to get things done. That often involves helping teams work together, which leads to meetings.

Whether your group is gathering for its weekly staff meeting, teleconferencing from different corners of the world, or coming together for an annual off-site planning session, employ the same basic components and scale up or down accordingly.

Why Meet at All?

Meetings should be held for two reasons. One is to forward a group’s work. Participants share information and collaborate to problem-solve and make decisions with each other. The second reason people meet is to solidify the group as a team – to attend to the need to belong; the need to achieve and make an impact; and a desire to communicate and build a common reality. To be productive, groups need to focus on both dimensions. For the task to get done, the group’s team process must be in place. For the group’s team process to be in place, the work has to get done. It is possible to satisfy both if you plan both your content and meeting process.

Planning and Running Effective Meetings

Consider these ten tips the next time you conduct a meeting.

1. Determine if the meeting is really necessary. Before calling a meeting, think about whether or not it is necessary. Ask yourself: What do I need accomplished? Will an e-mail, voice mail, note, or posting on a website suffice? Should I just walk down the hall to visit with someone or pick up the phone? You need a meeting if:

• Decisions have to be made which need the expertise and agreement of different people
• Teams need to apply themselves collectively to solve problems
• Individuals whose interests conflict must resolve them for the greater good of the organization

2. Create and use a detailed agenda. Each meeting should have a detailed agenda that is shared with meeting participants ahead of time, along with any necessary supporting information. If an agenda cannot be developed prior to the meeting, spend the first few minutes of the meeting defining one. The most effective agendas include:

• Purpose of the meeting
• Topics to be addressed (perhaps a sentence or two that defines each item and why it is being addressed)
• The lead person for each topic
• Time allotted

3. Ensure room arrangements are made. You need a space that is conducive to the meeting’s work and is large enough for the group. Make sure everyone can be seated comfortably, and that the room has the right tools for group problem solving — white boards, flip charts and markers. Consider whether it would be helpful to take your group to an offsite environment. Plan refreshments and meals that are appropriate to the time of day and to the group’s needs.

4. Always have a facilitator, timekeeper, and scribe. For a meeting to work well, it should have the following roles (some can be filled by the same person):

• Meeting leader or facilitator: responsible for keeping the meeting focused and running smoothly.
• Timekeeper: helps the group keep track of time during the meeting
• Scribe: records key topics, main points raised during discussions, decisions made, action items and items to be discussed at future meetings; posts ideas on flipcharts or whiteboards as the discussion unfolds so that everyone can see them.

Many ongoing groups we work with rotate these roles among members from meeting to meeting.

5. Set clear guidelines. All groups need guidelines to ensure a productive, cooperative climate. If the same group meets regularly, the guidelines can be developed early on and then reviewed each time they meet. Guidelines should be written by the participants themselves in response to the question: “What ground rules do we need to work effectively together?” The guidelines should cover how to encourage participation, manage conflict and stay on track. Visit our website to learn more about setting ground rules.

6. Manage participation. In productive meetings, everyone is part of the discussion and no one person dominates. If you are familiar with the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, this means those who prefer to extrovert (organize their thoughts by talking) need to reign themselves in enough to make room for others’ contributions. For those who prefer to introvert (organize their thoughts internally), this frequently means an explicit commitment to speaking up in each meeting.

7. Make periodic process checks. Periodically shift the group’s focus to checking how things are being done and what changes are needed to improve the pace and flow of the meeting. These checks can be as simple as asking the participants “What is working?” and “What do we need to do differently?” The most important thing is that the group act on their suggestions.

8. Take and distribute action minutes. These do not have to be Robert’s Rules of Order minutes that capture everything that is said. Rather, your teams need action minutes that briefly recount the decisions made, and most importantly, detail the action items with who is responsible for each item and a completion date. Distribute the minutes to all participants as soon as possible. Visit our website to download a template for this type of minutes: http://www.wunderlin.com/minutes.pdf

9. Plan next steps. If your group’s work is an ongoing process, you can usually develop the agenda for the next meeting from the decisions and actions of the current session. Setting up the next meeting date and time and defining roles for that session will also prove very helpful.

10. Begin and end on time. People’s primary beef with meetings is that they waste their time. Demonstrate your respect for that precious commodity by religiously starting and stopping on time. And every once in awhile, find a way to end your meeting early!

Invoke the 100-Mile Rule

In The Team Handbook, the authors propose a way to ensure that participants give you their full attention. They explain the rule this way:

“Once a meeting begins, everyone is expected to give it his/her full attention. No one should be called from the meeting unless it is so important that the disruption would occur even if the meeting was 100 miles away from the workplace. The 100-mile rule will need to be communicated to those who take phone messages or who would interrupt the team’s work for other reasons.”

More Help is Just a Click Away

Resources abound for improving your meetings. There are a number of good books, videos and websites that can help you brush up on your meeting skills. Among The Wunderlin Company favorites are:

• The Team Handbook, by Peter R. Scholtes, Brian L. Joiner and Barbara J. Streibel.
• Facilitating with Ease, by Ingrid Bens.
• Meetings, Bloody Meetings, a video training course produced by Video Arts and staring John Cleese (of Monty Python acclaim). We own a copy of this video program and supporting materials and would be delighted to rent it to you. Just email Karen Wunderlin with your request: kw@wunderlin.com.
• The 3m Company has an extensive website loaded with tips for improving your meetings. For example, in their reading room they have articles covering everything from meeting activities and exercises to brainstorming techniques and running a video conference.
• Two other sites that we recommend for planning effective meetings: http://www.effectivemeetings.com/ and http://www.meetingwizard.org.
• The Wunderlin Company makes regular use of teleconferencing to stay connected to our team of experts. It’s an easy and cost-effective way to stay in touch.