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Channeling Change: Changing the Seemingly Unchangeable
November 20, 2009
By Margery Weinstein
Training: What is the most common change management-related mistake companies make, and what is a better way of doing what they're doing wrong?
Joseph Grenny: There are five common mistakes leaders make when trying to entice change in their organization.
• Leaders think it's not their job. Most leaders put a great deal of time into crafting breakthrough strategies, selecting winning products, and engaging with analysts, shareholders, and major customers. But few realize the success or failure of their grand schemes lies in influencing the behavior of those who will have to execute on the big ideas—their employees. The most influential leaders spend 50 to 75 percent of their time thinking about and actively influencing the behaviors they know will lead to top performance. But the majority delegates these duties to others like HR leaders. The average leader spends less than 5 percent of his or her time on active efforts to create behavior change. Consequently, results fall far short of their potential and employee behavior falls into predictable patterns of turfism, blame, and politics.
• Leaders lack competence. Many leaders who previously stumbled into success at influencing behavior change couldn't articulate why their efforts succeeded. Even worse, our research shows that while most executives are frustrated with many behaviors in their organizations, only one in 20 has carefully developed a plan for influencing change. When we asked leaders to describe their approach to influencing rapid and sustainable behavior change, most had almost nothing to say.
• Leaders confuse talking with influencing. Many leaders think influence consists of little more than talking someone into doing something. But profound, persistent, and overwhelming problems demand more than verbal persuasion. Anyone who's ever tried to talk a smoker into quitting knows there's a lot more to behavior change than words. Leaders make the same mistake when they publish a bunch of platitudes in the form of a Mission and Values statement, give a few speeches on why these values are crucial, and then assume their job is done.
• Leaders believe in silver bullets. When leaders attempt to influence new behavior, they fall into the trap of thinking deeply ingrained habits can be changed with one simple technique. Every leader has his or her pet technique. Some host a star-studded retreat. Some believe it's about incentives, and they tinker with the performance management system or tie new behavior to executive bonuses. The research shows when leaders rely on just one simple source of influence to drive change, they almost always fail. Leaders who target four or more sources of influence are up to ten times more successful at securing change.
• Leaders try to influence everyone. There are a few leaders who understand influence is their job. They may even put a lot of time and energy into influencing behavior, but they squander limited time and energy by trying to influence everyone. The most influential leaders amass a wealth of social capital by investing time and energy with two influential groups—their chain of command and their opinion leaders. Influencers know they don't have to have personal relationships with everyone in the company—they just have to have relationships with those who do. If leaders spend time building trust with formal and informal opinion leaders, they will inherit social capital that extends their influence into every corner of the organization.
Training: What is the role of corporate trainers (as opposed to executives and line-of-business managers) in a change initiative?
JG: Corporate trainers often fail to grasp the full potential of their role in a change initiative. What they don't realize is there's a lot more to influencing change than just delivering high-quality learning experiences. Trainers need to re-frame their contribution in terms of influencing change rather than providing development. They need to learn to become Influencers.
Consider one example. When the CEO of Spectrum Healthcare wanted to become a global provider of choice for high quality coordinated health-care, he invited Kris White—Spectrum's equivalent of a chief learning officer—to be integrally involved in the strategy discussions. Kris understood the executives didn't need "training," they needed a robust way of thinking about how to influence the behavior of the 10,000 doctors and associates of Spectrum. So, she built an influence plan composed of six sources of influence to help Spectrum become a global provider of high quality health-care.
Source 1: Personal Motivation. To motivate every leader and employee, Kris went beyond intellectual learning events and created "connecting" experiences. Executives engaged in "rounding" activities where they made daily visits around the facility to understand what was working and what wasn't. They experienced first-hand the consequences of the policies and practices they had created. To motivate staff, Kris brought patients in to talk about their negative and positive experiences with Spectrum Health system.
Source 2: Personal Ability. Kris knew for training to lead to influence, it must involve deliberate practice—hands-on practice of skills in real-life situations. Kris trained intact teams in "Crucial Conversations" and spent much of the time practicing how to deal with real issues between doctors, nurses, and administrators.
Source 3: Social Motivation. Kris realized how people were treated when they made their first attempt to step up to a crucial conversation would make all the difference. So, she identified dozens of informal opinion leaders and engaged them to coach and encourage training graduates on using their new interpersonal skills to deal with difficult situations.
Source 4: Social Ability. Kris knew the toughest crucial conversation people would face would be with their boss. So the training was delivered by bosses. By engaging leaders as teachers, she ensured the "chain of command" was more likely to welcome attempts to use the new skills—thus providing social enabling to those who needed to attempt new behaviors.
Source 5: Structural Motivation. Early on, Kris challenged the CEO and his executives to put their money where their mouth was. She created a survey to measure behavior change and urged executives to tie 25 percent of their bonuses to achievement of an aggressive goal to improve the behaviors targeted by the training. They did. This one commitment sent an enormous symbolic message of commitment to the entire organization.
Source 6: Structural Ability. Kris did her best to enable people to enact new behavior by creating cues, reminders, and reports that kept the new behaviors on people's minds. Regular newsletter articles, a regular survey, posters, laminated cards, and lots of the traditional "wallpaper" helped set a mental agenda for behavior change across the organization.
Training: Is there a certain type of change initiative that is more difficult than others to roll out successfully (i.e. change in corporate culture versus change in business process)?
JG: Our position is every change effort is an influence effort. Whether you are hoping to influence corporate culture or change a business process, both efforts require to you to change the behavior of hundreds or maybe even thousands of employees. Underlying every change effort is the challenge of altering long-standing, entrenched human behaviors.
No matter your goal, your world is perfectly organized to create the behaviors and results you are currently experiencing. If the six sources of influence can get your people to behave in dysfunctional and ineffective ways, it also is true these same sources of influence can be marshaled to create positive change—no matter what that change may be.
When we face profound and persistent patterns of behavior, we've got to address all the reasons people are doing what they're doing—all six sources. If all six sources of influence are engaged, then change is inevitable.
Training: Is there such a thing as a corporate version of the grass roots initiative in which entry or mid-level employees push a company to make needed changes? Do you have any examples to share? How do you create a corporate culture that welcomes, rather than suppresses, those kinds of bottom-up, rather than top-down, change movements?
JG: Every successful influencer relies on the same six sources of influence as the others. It doesn't matter whether you're a front-line supervisor, a middle manager, or a senior executive. Even the most powerful CEO is incapable of legislating behavior change. I once talked with the CEO of a large hospital system who lamented that in spite of all his pleas to the contrary, he was only able to get 50 percent of his staff to get a flu vaccine!
Apparently, dictums do not equal influence. We've seen middle managers who were able to create remarkable change by influencing what gets measured. We found a front-line supervisor who brought peace to warring teams by moving them 10 feet closer to each other. We know a nurse manager who increased hand hygiene by gathering the emergency room team and practicing a couple of behaviors together. The six sources of influence operate independent of how high or low you are in an organization.
Training: How can you use Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, and internal social networks, to further change at your organization? Any novel case studies to share?
JG: There is huge potential to use Web 2.0 to bring more sources of influence to bear on leading change. The Web can magnify social influence, offer cues and reminders to forgetful humans, and can serve up training just in time.
It's not a cure-all—and most attempts to use it are pretty Neanderthal at this point—but the potential for increased leverage is substantial. Social science research demonstrating how e-mails, text messages, and Facebook accounts can improve change efforts already is proliferating.
Want to hear about the executive briefing Joseph Grenny gave in New York City's Times Square last week, which Training magazine Senior Writer Margery Weinstein attended? Click here
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