Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus, compelled for eternity to push a huge rock uphill only to watch it roll back down again.

“A couple of Power Point overviews, some manager talking points, and a few audience-focused launch messages and we should have what we need to complete this project,” the project director informed me.  ”We need to be really focused to get this project completed on time and within budget.  There’s no time or budget for stakeholder assessment or feedback, and besides, the technology is fairly intuitive.”

And the rock rolls back down . . .

I had been asked to join the implementation at the eleventh hour, one week before the kickoff meeting, and was listening to the project director clarify the scope of my assignment.  He had not planned to include a change resource until an executive wondered out loud during the previous week’s steering committee meeting whether someone was in charge of the “change management” for the implementation of the new travel and expense system.

A week later I was sitting with the project director wondering the best way to roll the rock back up the hill.

The project team was composed of highly skilled IT implementers who were effective people managers and driven to work Herculean hours to bring the project home under budget and in record time.  They had a laser sharp focus and the ability to ignore anything and everything that would prevent them from getting the job done.  Despite those factors, the warning signs were there:

• The budget and timeframe had no room for error,
• Change management was an afterthought for the project manager, but on the mind of an executive,
• Change management activities were added at the last minute to “check the box.”

Whenever a project leader minimizes the value of change management—especially when an executive expresses concern—there will be problems lurking.  It’s a variation of Murphy’s Law.

Initially, the problems may surface as technical glitches or insufficient system capabilities.  But the longer the problems persist, the more it becomes apparent the issues are something beyond the technical.  The requirements are incomplete or inaccurate.  The end-users are concerned about functionality or required changes to their work flow.  The tool doesn’t integrate with other technologies that support related work processes.  Managers or administrators feel threatened that the new tool will negatively impact their authority, expertise or job duties.

Even if there are no problems during the implementation, once a change is ready to “go live,” the organization usually needs more than superficial information about the changes they are about to experience.

Checking the box of change management means that the tail is wagging the dog.  Organizations initiate change to improve the business, not simply to complete a task.  This means that change always has a purpose.  But if the purpose is ignored in favor of the details of the task, then the risk—the likelihood—is that the purpose will not be achieved.

Change initiatives are understandably run as project management exercises.  It ensures that implementations are on time and within scope and budget.  The tools of project management provide a mechanism to manage the technical components of an initiative with comprehensive attention to detail.  But projects are about so much more than the technical.  Whether the project is a technology implementation, reorganization or merger, a new program or process, a change of strategy or a change of policy, change initiatives are by definition designed to change the way the business performs.

The discipline of change management provides the mechanism required to complete the business transformation.  Change management enables project leaders to identify how job roles will be impacted.   It defines the future skills and competencies required of employees.  It provides coaching, mentoring and communication strategies to support front-line supervisors.   It engages employees in the design process and it gathers feedback to make sure technicians create solutions that will work in reality.  And it also helps project leaders understand how to adapt the initial plans to increase the chance of delivering on time and within the budget.

Do project leaders need change management?  No.  Darwin was right.  People adapt.  But if you need to accelerate the pace of evolution and reduce the amount of turmoil along the way, then you must go beyond checking the change management box.

Dave Berzack loves his career.  Check out his website, www.daveberzack.com, and you will see more evidence of the passion, and talent, he has for his chosen profession.  (Shout out to Dan Schawbel for pointing me to this video.)

Droppin science (here’s the secret) for live (for a great) 9 to 5 (career):  It’s about finding your passion.

Said in geeky consultant language:  The key to high levels of performance and achievement is aligning your work with your sources of intrinsic motivation . . . It’s about finding your passion!

When you can get out of bed every morning with the same spirit and sense of fun that Dave shows, you have found your bliss.  And bliss leads to the biggest career reward of all:  satisfaction.  If your goal is to make millions of dollars, well, success will depend upon your career choice, your effort and a bit of luck.  But if your definition of success is to have a sense of purpose and meaning,  to thrive and to have a consistent source of satisfaction, then build your work around what you love.

A young student from my alma mater called me a few months ago to learn more about the consulting profession.  He did a nice job of providing a verbal resume outlining his well-chosen major, his proper corporate summer internship and the reasons why that prepared him for an entry level job in consulting.  Based upon the facts alone, he was a good candidate for a job in the field.  Based upon the level of excitement in his voice, however, I was compelled to ask another question.

“What do you do for fun?”

He responded by saying, “Since I was a little kid I’ve played hockey.”  And for the next ten minutes told me about playing in hockey leagues four seasons every year, reffing for younger leagues when he was in high school and during the summer, coaching hockey at summer camps and meeting his favorite players at various events.  His tone was entirely different.  You could hear the smile in his voice.

“What are you doing with that?”  I asked.  Silence.

Not everyone can be a professional hockey player.  Not everyone can get a job in the hockey industry on a team, a league office, or an equipment manufacturer.  Although the more we talked, the more he discovered his options were much greater than the “conventional” jobs found in the college placement office.  He realized there were countless careers in the hockey world that were not just about playing.

More importantly, the more we talked, the more he realized there were aspects about hockey that could be translated to other potential career choices.  He enjoyed the camaraderie.  He enjoyed the competition, but he really valued the learning and growing and hard work, whether winning or not.  He also really enjoyed the teaching and development of others when reffing and coaching.

We didn’t have to talk any more about consulting.  He was fired up to listen to his heart and think about options that were more closely aligned with his innate talents, interests and joy.  He may yet end up in consulting, but if he does, it will be when he discovers it is the best place to live his purpose.

Oh, yeah, and by the way . . . If you are on the other end of this and looking for the job candidates who are going to knock your socks off, remember that no matter how killa the resume, you have to listen to the heart of the candidate.  It’s the employees who work from a sense of purpose and passion that will always, always kick it.

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Randy Nelson knows something about how to build collaborative, innovative cultures.  Although currently the Head of Artistic Development and Training at DreamWorks Animation, two years ago when he did this piece, he was the Dean of Pixar University.  For twelve years, Randy was responsible designing curriculum and delivering classes and programs to continuously increase the skill and collaborative ability of Pixar’s mixed technical, artistic and management staff.

Pixar’s business model differs significantly from the standard Hollywood model in which there is a production organization that is set up in an ad hoc way for each film.  Pixar is an organization with regular, full-time employees that has sought to shift the center of focus from the ideas to the people who create the ideas.  Central to this strategy is Pixar University, a cross between an art and film academy that seeks to develop the skills of the employees, the learning curve of the organization and the collaborative spirit of the culture.

So, for those of you interested in improving the collaboration environment of your organizations or project teams, here are a few takeaways:

• Like a good improvisational actor, accept every offer to collaborate.
• Make your partners look good.  It’s not about judgment or saying “This is pretty good. How can I make it better?”  It’s about saying “Here’s where I’m starting. What can I do with this?”
• Focus on error recovery, not failure avoidance.  It’s about resiliency, adaptability and the ability to make something from failure.
• Be interested, not interesting.  Be a great listener who amplifies the person talking.  Seek to know what others want to know.
• Use communication as an opportunity for translation. If you just emit “techie speak,” nobody really hears you. The responsibility for translation gets pushed to the receiving end of the conversation, and as a result, gets garbled. Do the translation at the sending end so that it doesn’t have to be done at the receiving end and the listener can say, “I understand.”
• See collaboration as amplification.  This means connecting a group of individuals that are interested in each other, that bring separate depth to the problem and that bring a breadth that gives them interest in the entire solution.  This combination it allows them to communicate in ways that promote understanding and add to overall solutions.

The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man…It is more powerful than the external circumstance. Seneca

Change is best led by those who have sailed in broken boats.  Because the lessons learned from adversity are more powerful teachers than the lessons of success.  Navigating change with the insight and preparation required to achieve broader and more satisfying results, requires the experience of fixing broken masts and torn sails with duct tape, chewing gum and a whole lot of adaptive ingenuity.

When searching for your program managers, change leaders or other key project resources ask them to tell you about their failures and mistakes.  Those stories will tell you more than their academic or corporate pedigree.  The deception of the perfect resume is that it doesn’t reveal the perfect knowledge required to lead change.

Seek change leaders who have weathered the storm and you will find leaders with the courage and spirit to stay the course.

Sometimes it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a change leader to take on the full responsibility of change . . .

A couple weeks ago I completed an Accelerated Change Readiness workshop with a project team for a Fortune 500 company.  They were preparing for a technology implementation and the workshop was designed to help them think through the change management issues for the initiative.

We spent three very active days understanding the project objectives, assessing the organization’s cultural and political context, and identifying methods and protocols for stakeholder engagement, communication, decision-making, and conflict resolution.

It was intense, but fun, and the group, who was from various functions throughout the company, did a terrific job working through the project risks and creating a roadmap for managing change.

At the end of the workshop I pulled the project leader aside and asked for her thoughts.  I wanted to know whether she thought the project team identified the core issues and risks, gelled as a team, and were ready to manage change on the initiative.

She looked down at her feet, then out the conference room window.  She forced a smile and said, “I understand all that happened over the past three days.  So many of the risks we identified described exactly why these kinds of projects have fallen short of expectations in the past.  I mean, it’s true, we need to address these risks if we want to meet stakeholder expectations.  The problem is that to get there, we will have to take on more than the stated scope.  The team is ready to do it, but I’m not sure that I am.”

“What makes you hesitant?” I asked.

“Listen,” she said.  “I know the best sol . . . no, make that the right solution, the right thing to do for the company, is to add to our scope and complete the other elements of solution design.  But that would mean extra work, and for me, extra risk.  Getting other stakeholders involved to weigh-in on the solution will make this more complicated.  My job is just to get this project done on time.  It’s not to resolve political battles.”

“I can understand your feelings,” I consoled.  “Will you be able to complete the project without navigating around or through a few of those battles?”

“I’m not sure, but isn’t it enough just to focus on the project alone?  That’s doing my job, right?”

This project manager was staring straight into the eye of the needle and confronting the dilemma many project managers must face:  Should she work around the more strategic change challenges and get the project done?  Or should she take on the larger challenges to achieve the more impactful result?

In my mind, as well as the stakeholders interviewed and surveyed prior to the workshop, there is no choice.  Achieving the narrowly focused, “practical” result would be worse than awful.  The end-users would receive the technology with a yawn and the project team would know they compromised.  Executives may well call it a success publicly, but privately confess that the end result was uninspiring.

One of the great fictions of modern business is that the 80% solution is acceptable.  All the talk about moving from “Good to Great” or being “In Search of Excellence” or achieving the “Tipping Point” and too many businesses settle for “good enough.”  Just fly in an airplane, eat at a fast food restaurant, shop at all but a few grocery or retail stores, call into a call center, or ask human resources for anything.  Most change initiatives also fall into the same pattern.

It’s not that any of the above is all that bad, it’s just rare that they are exceptional.

How often in your projects are stakeholders saying, “Wow!  That was really well done.”

So my challenge for change leaders is:

Do you want to put any amount of effort into an uninspired result?  Or are you ready to stay on the straight and narrow path through the eye of the needle to extraordinary.

Throw out all your change management books and methodologies and theories.  Burn every PowerPoint presentation filled with diagrams and flow charts and tools and templates.  Delete your change project plans.  Forget agonizing over deliverables that your change work team must produce.  Fire every project manager or internal auditor or procurement specialist who minimizes your change effort to a mind-numbing checklist of activities to be completed for a contract to be in compliance.

Change can’t be managed.  It can only be led.

In the real world, neither logic, nor project management certification, nor executive authority, nor flashy communication will convince employees to embrace a new program with enthusiasm if it doesn’t feel right to them.  And if it doesn’t feel right to them, it isn’t.  You’ve lost them before you’ve started.

Let’s face it.  Most organization initiatives are conceived and implemented by a small group trying to impose their preferences on all or a part of the larger organization.  One department or manager makes a decision that will benefit themselves and then hopes to sell the idea to everyone else who was happy with the status quo.

They ask others to commit themselves to a new direction—spiritually, emotionally, physically, and even financially—without giving them a choice, without involving them and after the decision has already been made.

Fait accompli.

The problem isn’t the idea.  The problem isn’t even in the planning.  The problem is that no matter how “right” or well-planned an idea may be, it must be implemented well to be successful.

Implementation isn’t about a detailed project plan.  Implementation is about knowing how to connect with people and gain their support.  It’s about connecting emotionally and getting an emotional commitment.

And that’s why change can’t be managed.  Because connecting and engaging and inspiring and listening and involving are the adaptive activities of leadership.  So, instead of getting blinded by the details of the project plan, get focused on providing the leadership required for change success.

Sometimes the best solutions are the most obvious, and unfortunately, the ones least considered.

Organization change is hard because leaders and project teams forget to do the simple, but important things, while spending extraordinary amounts of effort in the glitzy and complex.  Technology projects focus on the technology.  Outsourcing focuses on cost analysis.  Mergers focus on the synergies or the marketing, sales and finance strategy.  Process reengineering projects focus on, well, the process models.

Yet, somehow, amidst all this great thinking, projects struggle . . . because we don’t do the obvious things that would help us be more successful.

In a recent workshop, a technology project team was discussing how they could test the technical design specifications for their tool.  Should they survey what other companies have done?  Should they complete a study of best practices (which they hoped the vendor would provide)?  Should they build an online survey that contained screen shots and multiple choice questions?

After almost 30 minutes of this discussion, one of the less experienced members of the team finally asked, “Why don’t we just show the tool to some end-users and ask their opinions?” (Out of the mouths of babes!)

“That’s great,” said an experienced participant.  “We could organize focus groups and build a questionnaire . . .”

“Does it have to be that formal?” asked the newbie.  “Couldn’t we learn a lot just by talking with some people and listening to what they say?”

Simple, straightforward, and effective.

The best techniques to ensure project success are not fancy, but they are amazingly effective.  Here are five that should be part of every project:

1. Involve stakeholders.  Successful projects involve stakeholders—end-users/customers, executives/steering committee members, functional experts and others—from the outset and throughout the initiative.  Whether involved formally or informally, stakeholders shape the criteria for solutions, evaluate decisions along the way and help communicate to the organization.  They will help create success and be champions for the project . . . if we let them.
2. Listen to stakeholders.  Listen to what they say and what they don’t say.  Listen to their ideas and their emotions.  See the world through their eyes and learn how your project impacts them.  Understand their fears, concerns, needs, and desires, and let that understanding be part of the criteria for the decisions you make during your project.
3. Include your vendors.  Make vendors a part of your project team.  Leverage their experience.  Show them the real organization, warts and all, and so they will understand how to adapt their solutions and offer suggestions for navigating the challenges.
4. Learn from past projects.  Gather the project managers from the last few organization change efforts in a room and have them compare notes.  Or spend time with them one-on-one and have them share their “inside secrets.”  Learn what went wrong and make sure not to do it.  Learn what went right and make sure to put that in your plan.
5. Be transparent.  Transparency helps get all the information out on the table for consideration.  It makes the challenges, and our decisions about how to manage challenges, easier for others to understand and accept.  All projects have trade-offs.  When we increase our openness, it engages others, compels them to become our collaborators and enables us to create greater buy-in along the way.

As Ed Roland and Collective Soul express so well, great results happen when you begin to listen.

In the late 1980’s, the economy in Japan was strong, and everyone was making money, trading stocks, investing in real estate, and busy buying assets throughout the world.  Behind all the luxury and pleasures, however, lay the realities of a grueling corporate life that had employees constantly working and constantly stressed.  Physicians in corporations started to worry about stress related disorders in the work force as their schedules became overrun with employees suffering from anxiety attacks, ulcers, headaches, insomnia, and depression.

The word “karoshi” (Karo= overwork, Shi= Death: Death from overwork) became a regular topic on the evening news, in the morning papers and in the conversations of union leaders, business executives, attorneys, statesmen, clergy and families.

With the mounting social pressure, Japan’s health and safety law was amended and made business owners responsible for the health and safety of their workforce, including mental health. A subcommittee of the Ministry of Labor decided that managers in corporations should have some knowledge of stress and stress related disorders as well as relaxation methods and listening skills.  The government also gave out grants and other promotional measures so that businesses would implement a Total Health Promotion plan (THP).

During one of the promotional workshops Akira Ikemi, then a teacher and researcher at University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Japan (UOEH), met the health and safety staff form Daihatsu.  As a result of this encounter, he went on to create a remarkable listening workshop that he taught for the next twenty years at Daihatsu and to other major Japanese corporations including Mitsubishi Chemicals, Sumitomo Steel, Nippon Steel, and NTT.

The real value the workshops came from the results of a study he conducted while teaching with his colleague Shinya Kubota.  Using pre-training and post-training surveys, they discovered a strong link between managerial listening and the mental health and satisfaction of employees.  Employees who perceived their supervisors as having strong person-centered attitudes—demonstrated significantly by active listening skills—exhibited less fatigue, depression and anxiety than those who did not.  They also found that this same group of employees had higher levels of motivation, better relationships with coworkers, and increased levels of productivity.

Ikemi also found that listening skills are teachable.  Managers who participated in listening training programs were able to develop the skills and techniques that create these positive effects.

So, listening isn’t just some touchy feely practice held up as an ideal by those trying to get managers to put away their iPhones.  It’s hard-core capability that is proven to produce profound physical, emotional and cognitive results.  It can take managers from “walking in the desert all alone” to having the capability to connect, engage and create higher levels of employee performance.

Hey you’re now thirsty
Walking in the desert all alone
Hey you’re now searching
Lost in isolation from your soul
The bullets you bite
From the pain you request
You’re finding harder to digest
And the answers you seek
Are the ones you destroy
Your anger’s well deployed

Hey why can’t you listen
Hey why can’t you hear
Hey why can’t you listen
As love screams everywhere

Hey you now hunger
Feeding your mind with selfishness
Hey you now wander
Aimlessly around your consciousness
Your prophecies fail
And your thoughts become weak
Silence creates necessity
You’re clothing yourself
In the shields of despair
Your courage now impaired

You crucify all honesty
No signs you see do you believe
And all your words just twist and turn
Reviving just to crash and burn
You’re fighting till the bitter end
If only your heart could open up
And listen

Orchestra conductors must exercise a unique style of leadership.  They must listen intently, and without saying a word, draw out strong performances from their orchestras.  This requires that they learn to be the ultimate collaborators,  understand the unique capabilities of each musician and decide how best to blend them into a coherent whole.

In this video, Itay Talgam shows that contrary to their popular image, the best conductors are not dictators.  Instead, they are successful by being great teachers and by mastering the art of helping others give voice to expressive contributions.  The most successful conductors believe in the inherent capacity of the people they lead to accomplish whatever is required.  The players may need to be coaxed, nudged and enticed, but masterful performances reside within them.

Benjamin Zander, conductor for the Boston Philharmonic and author of The Art of Possibility, suggests that one way to determine whether you are on track is to look into the eyes of those you lead.  “The eyes never lie. If the eyes are shining, then I know that my leadership is working. Human beings in the presence of possibility react physically as well as emotionally. If the eyes aren’t shining, I ask myself, ‘What am I doing that’s keeping my musicians’ eyes from shining?’”

Conductors, or leaders, who recognize that they do not need to make a sound or dominate or control, can focus on enabling others to be more effective.  They can help others feel energetic, lively, engaged and focused not only on the task at hand, but more importantly, connected and listening to the other musicians, their orchestral collaborators, required to make beautiful music.

How to love.  How to live.  How to fix anything.  How to lose weight.  How to stop worrying.  How to find your passion.  How to train your dog, bird, cat or dragon.  How to make money.  How to get into college.  How to stay in college.  How to interview.  How to get a job.  How to get a good paying job.  How to start a business.  How to sell.  How to manage projects.  How to manage time.  How to set goals.  How to influence people.  How to negotiate anything with anybody.  How to teach.  How to train.  How to write.  How to retire.  How to survive the end of the world.

We live in a “How-To” world.  A quick search of “How To” in Amazon.com yields over 300,000 books with the phrase in the title.  The popular For Dummies series has over 1700 titles and the Idiot’s Guide series has nearly as many.  And take a look at your local newsstand and you’ll see magazine covers littered with articles telling you the 5 things you must know, the 3 insider secrets that will guarantee success, or the 7 steps to improved performance.

We love quick solutions that are easy to identify and implement.  It is comforting to think that the answer to all of our problems—with romance, with money, with business—can be provided with a few simple action steps or the application of a “best practice.”

We know through our own experience, however, that the How-To’s don’t always solve the problem because they rarely have the depth required to affect our particular situations.  The quick fix might get us part of the way there or solve the problem momentarily, but inevitably we revisit the same issue again and again looking for another band aid to stop the bleeding.

Here’s the deal . . . Managing change well is not about a quick fix.  It’s about a mindset.  It’s not about a multitasking shortcut or a cell phone app.  It’s about consistently applying the disciplines of listening, understanding, adapting, learning, changing, creating, inventing, and engaging.

So, go ahead and stock up on the tools, templates, technologies and How-To manuals.  They will help you get started and be a reference when you get stuck.  But then, let go.  Roll up your sleeves, dig a little deeper, let your mind take flight, color outside of the lines, play, innovate and have fun with the real, collaborative work required to create sustainable change.