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.

Are we really surprised?

Companies have been obsessed with pay for performance for almost two decades.  And like any obsession, it has clouded the judgment of executives and others, such as human resources professionals and consultants, who should know better.

The problem is that pay for performance is founded on a two faulty beliefs:

1. If you reward something you get more of the behavior you want.
2. If you punish something you get less of the behavior you don’t want.

Unfortunately for our misguided execs, study after study has demonstrated results that massively contradict this way of thinking.  It’s hard to fault them entirely.  Logically, one would think that incentives work.  The science, however, has proven otherwise and has found:

1. As long as the job involves only mechanical skills or rules-based tasks, incentives work as expected.  The higher the incentive, the better the performance.
2. But once the job calls for even rudimentary cognitive skill—some conceptual and/or creative thinking—a larger reward leads to poorer performance.

These results have been replicated over and over again by psychologists, sociologists, and economists . . . including those funded by that left-wing, socialist institution, the U.S. Federal Reserve.  Even a recent study from McKinsey found that three noncash motivators—praise from immediate supervisors, attention from leaders, and a chance to direct projects—are at least as effective as the three most highly rated monetary ones.

Now, don’t misunderstand me.  Money is a motivator.  If you don’t pay people enough, they won’t be motivated to do the job.

Once you pay people enough, however, it is no longer a factor in motivating performance, especially in jobs that require basic cognitive, conceptual and creative skill . . . the majority of jobs in the U.S. economy.

Organizations must stop drinking the pay for performance Kool-Aid.  Pay for performance, carrot and stick management, performance appraisal, time clocks, verbal and written warnings, and many other management and HR practices are outdated and just don’t work.

Instead, it’s time to equip managers with the tools to manage in the modern workplace and support them with HR programs and practices that encourage the right behavior.  That’s about redefining what it is to manage and it’s about completely overhauling HR.  More importantly, it’s founded on the notion that we stop treating people like cogs in a machine and start treating them like smart, creative, self-motivated people who want to at all times do their best.

That’s not just some feel good manifesto.  It’s the fact-based, scientific reality required to be a high performing organization.

It’s simple, really.  Most “modern” corporations kill human capability the way we strip-mine and deplete the earth of natural resources.

Think about it.  We hire bright, ambitious, enthusiastic young people fresh out of the hope and idealism of school.  We stick them in cubicles under fluorescent lights away from windows so they can’t tell whether it’s day or night, sunny or rainy.  We tell them to dress a certain way, show up at a certain time, eat at a certain time, and stay late enough to make a good impression.  We encourage them to not express emotion, talk with the right jargon and tone, write with a particular style and embrace certain values and principles and mission statements.  And we force them to comply with standardized procedures, criticize their shortcomings when they fail to do so, and threaten their security if they get too far out of line.

It sounds a bit like the way cults program people, doesn’t it?  In fact, it’s not too far from the truth.  Cults program people to be silent, loyal, endure pain (to be “strong”), to do the jobs they’ve been assigned and to subscribe to the spiritual values of the group.

I’m not saying that corporations are cults . . . not really . . . I’m saying that the traditional structures of managerial control are designed for compliance and to produce performance within a steady, predictable, average range.

And that’s not good enough anymore.

While it’s cliché, the world is changing too fast, too dynamically, too organically, too symbiotically.  The old linear, command and control, carrot and stick model may work when you want compliance to routine tasks.  If, on the other hand, you want innovation, creativity and high performance, this doesn’t work.

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson argues that we don’t get the best out of people because we educate them to become good workers, rather than to be creative thinkers.  Sir Ken led the British government’s 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements.

Students with restless minds and bodies — far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity — are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says.

We can apply the same thinking to the way we manage people in organization life.  Take performance appraisal, for example.  The primary HR methodology pushed on organizations over the last 40 years is a standardized, “fast food” model.  It’s built around standard ratings as well as standard competencies or goals or some other check list for evaluation.  It’s meant to be batch processed once or twice per year and rolled up to higher executive, finance or HR authorities for approval.  The expectation is that our staff will fit a normalized distribution curve and that we won’t have too many people that exceed expectations.  This way the compensation distribution will fit the budget.

What’s the point of that approach?  Certainly not developing people.

To create an environment where people can reach their highest potential, you need the “Zagat or Michelin” approach where development, motivation, and engagement are “customized to local circumstances.”  In other words, talent is incredibly diverse even within the same department or function.  People have different aptitudes, passions and motivation.  To help them apply their unique gifts to their jobs, we have to tailor our approach and create the conditions where they will begin to thrive.

Instead of separating people from their natural talents so they can fit a standardized mode, we have to help them identify and connect those talents to the ways they can contribute.  Developing human potential is not a mechanical process.  It’s an organic process that requires customizing to your circumstances and personalizing our approach to managing to people we are managing.

We can’t do that simply by installing a new technology, rating methodology or competency model.  We do this by developing the ability of organization leaders to listen and identify the talents of employees, and to help them apply their gifts in unique and remarkable ways.

“This integrated talent management solution ushers in a new era for our company that’s about improving how we think about and manage talent.  These new tools will enhance our ability to identify the talent our business needs to grow and to be successful.  Acquiring, rewarding and retaining high performers are the keys to our success as a company.”

It’s hard to disagree with the above statement (except for the notion that technology will solve the problem!).  It boldly reaffirms the old homily:  People are our greatest asset.

But that’s just the point.  It’s unimaginative, overused, and as a result, rarely perceived as sincere.  And in the case of most companies, especially in the era of constant “restructuring” (see The Trouble with Layoffs), it rarely is sincere.

If you think I’m being tough, just listen to some of the quotes from employees and managers working for companies pushing the talent mind-set:

• Across the organization, I’m not sure we do a good job of hiring.  We seem to be more impressed with credentials than capability.  What I mean is it’s more important for you to have gone to an Ivy, than to actually be able to do the job.
• Performance management is a once a year process that managers and employees dread.
• Performance appraisal is not really about performance.  It’s about adjusting ratings to fit the merit budget.
• We believe in pay for performance.  High performers get significantly greater merit increases and performance bonuses.  But beyond sales, I’m not sure we measure performance well.
• We are very proud of our succession planning process . . . but we have never promoted anyone as a result of the effort.  The information isn’t used.
• We do not actively manage the development of our employees, even high potentials (Note:  the engagement survey data confirmed this).

The obsession with talent is a sign that executives aren’t leading.  They are failing to appreciate and nurture the potential of their existing employees.

Like love-struck teenagers, these executives are unpredictable, reactive and focused desperately on short-term gratification.  They are always on the lookout for the perfect resume, the “star,” the romance of the moment.  They seek the dream employee who is so smart that no training, motivation, supervision or coaching will be required.

Much of this obsession is based on the faulty assumption that top performance depends primarily on talent—innate, genetically-based qualities.  There is considerable evidence that hard work and intrinsic motivation—which can be supported or undermined by the social environment—also play central roles.

For example, researchers studying the impact of learning environments on cognitive skills have discovered that students who over an extended period of time are treated as if they are intelligent actually become so.  If they are taught demanding content, and are expected to explain and find connections as well as memorize and repeat, they learn more and learn more quickly. They think of themselves as learners. They are able to bounce back in the face of short-term failures.

These results are giving rise to the new idea of intelligence-in-practice:  Intelligence is the habit of persistently trying to understand things and make them function better.  Intelligence is working to figure things out, varying strategies until a workable solution is found.  Intelligence is knowing what one does, and doesn’t, know, seeking information and organizing that information so that it makes sense and can be remembered.  In short, one’s intelligence is the sum of one’s habits of mind.

Maybe in the case of executives currently obsessed with finding unicorns, intelligence is knowing that such potential is already hard at work in their own organization.  Intelligence is knowing when you lead them, they will perform.

After struggling to develop a viable electric light-bulb for months and months, Thomas Edison was interviewed by a young reporter who boldly asked Mr. Edison if he felt like a failure and if he thought he should just give up by now. Perplexed, Edison replied, “Young man, why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitively over 9,000 ways that an electric light bulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp.” And shortly after that, and over 10,000 attempts, Edison invented the light bulb.

Failure is one of the best things we can do to enhance our ability to be successful. It’s too bad that so many organization leaders don’t understand this.

Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has been studying how people handle failure for 40 years. Her research has led her to identify two distinct mind-sets that dramatically influence how we react to it.

A fixed mind-set is grounded in the belief that talent is genetic–you’re a born artist, athlete, or financial whiz.  Individuals with a fixed mind-set believe they are entitled to success without much effort and regard failure as an outrage and caused by something outside of themselves. When things get tough, they are quick to blame, withdraw, lie, and even avoid future challenge or risk.  In the fixed mindset it’s not enough to succeed, you have to be flawless and you have to be flawless right away.  Either you have “it” or you don’t.

A growth mind-set, on the other hand, assumes that talent is not genetically based and that effort and learning make everything possible. Because the ego isn’t on the line as much, the growth mind-set sees failure as opportunity rather than insult.  When challenged, it’s quick to reassess, adjust, and try again.  In fact, it relishes this process.

When those with growth mind-sets fail at a task, Dweck found that they enter a more focused mental state as they try to figure out their mistake.  And in subsequent trials, they improve. In effect, they’ve learned, and their brains have “grown.” Those with fixed mind-sets, however, never enter this focused state of learning and show little, if any, progress.  Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Chieti, Italy, back this up and have used MRI’s to show that individuals with a growth mind-set actually “sculpt” the brains wiring.

Interestingly enough, the fixed mindset and its desire to think of oneself as perfect is often referred to as the “CEO disease.”  To be fair to CEO’s I would extend this obsession with infallibility to all the wannabe kings that exist in organization life . . . right down to many project managers.  And this explains why so many leaders fail to behave adaptively during times of change.

One of the primary reasons I’ve seen change initiatives fall off the rails is because project teams hate reporting bad news.  And they hate reporting bad news because project sponsors, project managers, organization leaders, procurement, and other technically-focused, fixed mind-set types sit on the sidelines waiting to pounce.  When something goes wrong, they quickly point the finger . . . at the vendor, the contract, the functional leader, each other or whomever and whatever is an easy scapegoat.

Consequently, this kind of environment causes project managers and teams to hide problems rather than coming clean about a missed deadline or an unclear project specification.  Eventually the problems escalate, and instead of learning, growing, and moving the project forward, everyone starts worrying about being judged.  As Dweck says, “It starts with the bosses’ worry about being judged, but it winds up being everybody’s fear about being judged.  It’s hard for courage and innovation to survive in companies with this mindset.”

Amen, sister!

Years after his mother pulled him out of school when the teacher thought him unteachable, Edison recalled, “My mother was the making of me.  She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.”  She didn’t see the imperfection.  She saw the potential.

Success is not defined by perfect pedigrees, perfect resumes, and perfect personas.  It’s not even defined by perfect project plans or perfect execution.  Instead, it’s achieved by adapting, learning, growing and the constant warts-and-all quest for improvement.

The new reality show Undercover Boss from CBS should be required viewing for every corporate executive and everyone who aspires to be one.  It follows CEO’s as they slip anonymously into the rank and file of their companies.  While working alongside their employees, they see the effects their decisions have on others, where the problems lie within their organization and they get an up-close look at both the good and the bad of work life in their organizations.

This show demonstrates the power of listening and the deeper understanding that comes from seeing a situation from the eyes of others. Years ago, Hewlett Packard introduced the concept of MBWA, Management By Walking Around.  This show takes the concept one step further and introduces MBDTJ, Management By Doing the Job.

Larry O’Donnell, President and COO of Waste Management, found the experiences painful and eye opening.  He had no idea that the corporate office’s demand to increase productivity would result in an employee having to run to a time clock so she wouldn’t get docked twice her rate of pay.  He was shocked that a woman working on one of the garbage trucks has to “pee in a can” so she can meet her daily average of 300 homes a day.

As he said at the end of his episode, “In my role there are a lot of policies that I put out there and you all have to live with them.  I feel more of a connection with the folks that do the really hard jobs of this company.  I’m going to be a different manager because now I have a whole new appreciation of the impact of some of my decisions can have on you folks.”

In another episode, Dave Rife, one of the owners of White Castle, can’t keep up with the pace of a bun production line, and as a result, shuts it down causing waste of almost 5,000 buns. He talks about going into the role with a procedural mindset hoping to identify ways of making the operation better.  What surprised him was the way he connected with the people.

Both of those comments show a very real leadership challenge.  The demands of executive roles disconnect leaders from the reality of the organizations they lead.  They risk being disconnected from employees, disconnected from customers, and disconnected from the realities of daily work life.    That causes them to make decisions that are analytically incomplete because they lack a critical element of contextual understanding.

There really was something to the old school concepts of starting in the mail room and working your way to the top.  Even in family owned businesses, offspring worked summers on the front lines and in the bowels of the factory before they graduated from college and were given an piece of the business to lead.  You learned.  You cultivated an appreciation of the heart and soul of the business.  You developed empathy.

Empathy is a cognitive skill.  It starts to develop by age two at the emotional level when kids begin to feel empathy for another’s pain.  Later in childhood, kids develop the more cognitive aspect of empathy which involves the ability to understand that other people may have beliefs that are different from one’s own.  Just because empathy is a natural stage of cognitive development, however, doesn’t mean that it ever develops fully.  And this has a real impact on leading and managing.

A couple weeks ago David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a terrific Op-Ed piece called “The Power Elite.” He suggested that the meritocracy of our current world has made society fairer, but has created huge gaps in leadership capability.  The modern era emphasizes technical knowledge over contextual understanding, encourages excessive dog-eat-dog competitiveness, and creates huge chasms between social and professional classes.  He doesn’t suggest that we return to the days of white shoe elitism, but he does question whether the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction where our leaders lack the breadth of understanding required of their roles.

The lessons of Undercover Boss suggest that leaders can develop some of this insight when they actively listen to their organizations.

Unfortunately, the show becomes a narcissistic publicity stunt at the end when the executives provide grandiose offerings to their working class coworkers and stand on a stage spouting clichés that seem overly scripted and anything but heartfelt.  That’s likely the result of unimaginative network producers wanting a tidy conclusion.

The ending aside, the undercover experience is powerful.  Maybe if this became part of the regular routine for executives we would see higher levels of employee engagement, more innovation, real—not paper—gains to productivity, fewer layoffs, and best of all, leaders with the wisdom required to serve their organizations.

You better start loving up your employees.

As we begin to recover from the economic downturn, organizations will be relying on their workforces more than ever to help them return to stronger financial performance.  But with recent studies showing that fewer than 1 in 3 employees are engaged and as many as 55% are passive job seekers, the risks to organization performance are significant if companies are not prepared to actively reengage disaffected employees.

And that’s going to take a lot of love.

According to the research, companies with engaged employees—those that are fully involved in and enthusiastic about their work—have been shown to have higher levels of retention of talent, customer service, individual performance, team performance, business unit productivity, and even enterprise-level financial performance.  The research has also shown that emotional factors impact employee engagement four times as much as rational factors.  Recognizing this fact will be essential for managers because no matter how your company has fared during the last 18-24 months, employees everywhere are emotionally drained.

Layoffs, the threat of layoffs, tight and shrinking corporate budgets, stressed bosses, tense workplaces, fears about economy’s impact on personal and professional life.  These factors have our reptilian brains in high gear as we try to process the fears that are being triggered by this environment.

There are profound implications in Antonio Damasio’s research.  Emotions drive much of our decision-making processes because they allow us to mark things as good, bad or indifferent.  Our emotional responses to situations become memories, many of which are subconscious.  This means that we don’t just remember the facts; we remember our emotional perceptions of the facts.

So, given that even in the best workplaces fear has been running high, it’s no wonder, as the above statistics report, that employees will be, at best, indifferent to their jobs coming out of this economic period.  That’s not necessarily the fault of you or your organization.  It’s part of living in this time.  Nonetheless, it shouldn’t make us complacent.

To drive corporate performance, it is more important than ever to improve the level of engagement and begin to build back positive emotions.

And that brings us back to the love.

Creating employee engagement is about something more important than giving employees a $10 Starbucks gift certificate . . . although that can’t hurt.  The strongest driver of employee engagement comes from believing we are valued and involved.  That’s about some simple and very important things:

• Listening.  Employees need to feel able to voice their ideas and that managers value their contributions.  That sometimes means managers have to hang in there even when the view is voiced as a cheap shot or some other negative emotion.  Listening to understand and show empathy for the emotion helps employees move beyond the emotion and feel understood and accepted.
• Accepting.  Employees need to feel like you see their strengths as valuable and that you see their shortcomings as valuable, or at least a neutral part of an otherwise terrific package.  We get great performance when we help employees leverage their strengths for the best overall contribution.
• Involving.  Employees need to feel involved.  Involve them by over communicating and increasing transparency.  Involve them through problem-solving.  Best of all, involve them in decision making.

Helping employees get engaged during and after change requires that we create a workplace environment that builds positive emotional memories.  And the best tools to help managers do this are those that build relationships, gather insight and create opportunities for employees to shine.   This helps you not just get the most, but the best, from everyone in your organization.

A marketing exec friend of mine gave me a call yesterday to catch up.   After swapping stories about families and our current work, he finally asked after years of knowing me, “What exactly is change management anyway?”

I had to think for a moment before answering him for a couple of reasons.  First, because he’s miles away from IT, HR, PMO’s and the project world, and I didn’t want to lose him to jargon.  And second, ever since launching Solleva Group mid last year, I have played with a number of pithy elevator statements designed to answer that succinctly, powerfully, and in a manner that would immediately resonate with potential clients.

In these situations, I generally apply the Mother In-Law Rule.  If my mother in-law understands my explanation, then I probably have it right.  I’m not questioning my mother in-law’s intelligence.  She’s a sharp cookie.  But her native language is Italian and she hasn’t worked professionally since the 1950’s.  In her world, if you want someone to change, feed them well and they’ll do anything you want . . . there’s something to that!

So, I answered my friend saying, “Change management is the process of helping organizations plan for, implement and manage the human side of projects like technology and outsourcing implementations, merger integrations, or restructurings. We help make sure that people get excited about the change and don’t create problems that cause missed deadlines, budget overruns or poorly used new capability.”

“How do you do that?  What do you do?” he asked.

I thought about taking him through an example and explaining things like as is/to be analysis, business requirements documentation, readiness assessment, stakeholder analysis, communications planning and execution, training and knowledge transfer.  I thought about explaining the difference between technical challenges and adaptive challenges, and the approach for solving adaptive challenges.  I also thought about talking about urgency, organization alignment, resistance, and vision.

Instead, I applied the Mother In-Law Rule and said . . . “I listen.”

I listen to make sure we understand the needs and concerns of those who are receiving and those who are implementing the change.  I listen to understand executives and project sponsors.  And I listen to understand the culture and values of the organization.

Then, with that understanding, I use a variety of tools to make sure all of these groups help to make the new thing successful.

By listening to the organization, we begin to see through the eyes of those that will experience the change.  We empathize.  And that give us the ability to know how to engage others by linking the change to what’s important to them.

“Oh, I get it,” he said. “It’s a lot like marketing.”

Exactly.

“We need to discuss your performance.”

There are few phrases that cast more fear in the hearts of employees.

I was talking with a client last week about managing change for their implementation of performance management technology.   After a quick technical chat about scope, the vendor, the timetable, resources and current tools and process, I asked the obvious question, “What are the larger objectives you are hoping to achieve with this implementation?”

I expected her to say something about improving process efficiency or ease of data entry or access to data.  I also wouldn’t have been surprised if she had said that her HR function wanted to increase the number of managers completing appraisals on time.

Instead, she said, “Our CEO wants to create a high performance culture and we think that a better performance appraisal process and the right tool to deliver it will get us there.”  Their new and “improved” system included a 10-point scale (up from 5), a new universal competency model and the addition of an evaluation for how employees exhibited company values.

Pretty snazzy, but . . .

This is the moment where I take a deep breath and remind myself that being a change management consultant often requires detached responsibility*.

It’s amazing to me that 45 years after the Harvard Business Review published “Split Roles in Performance Appraisal” (Myer, Kay, & French), we still believe performance appraisal works.  The study, conducted at GE, found that the company’s performance management system not only didn’t work, it produced results that were the opposite of what was intended.  The researchers found:

• Criticism has a negative effect on achievement of goals
• Praise has little effect one way or the other
• Performance improves most when specific goals are established
• Defensiveness resulting from critical appraisal produces inferior performance
• Coaching should be a day-to-day, not a once-a-year, activity
• Mutual goal setting, not criticism, improves performance
• Participation by the employee in the goal-setting procedure helps produce favorable results
• Performance appraisal “interviews” should not be conducted with salary or promotion in the balance.

Countless other scientific studies conclude the same thing.  And more powerfully, research conducted with brain scanning technologies such as SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) have shown us these result are directly connected to the way the brain works.

Yet, we still insist on conventional approaches to performance appraisal.  The technology and evaluation frameworks may provide more sophisticated window dressing, but the underlying process remains flawed and the results are questionable.

So, what works?  What generates higher performance?

Two things.

First, intrinsic motivation.  High performance comes when people love what they do.  Some of the most dedicated employees on the planet work for free.  They are called volunteers.  And they work countless hours for organizations that give them a sense of purpose.  They don’t care if they get raises, bonuses or even praise.  They volunteer because their work has meaning to them and because they feel like they are making a contribution.

We all know people who approach their day jobs with the same passion.  They are engaged, plugged in and having fun.  There’s no need to manage their performance.  They are too busy managing it themselves.

Second, goals.  High performance also is achieved with goals.  These aren’t the goals that are set once per year and forgotten about until it’s time for the annual review.  These are goals that are set, reviewed and tweaked every day.  Myer and company called this WP&R, or Work Planning and Review.  WP&R discussions between an employee and manager are an ongoing process built on a foundation of collaborative problem solving.  No judgment.  No rating scale.  Just the continuous process of improving.

That’s what passionate people living their purpose do.  They strive to be better.

Amazing, isn’t it?  Getting high performance from employees is not about some Frederick Tayloresque command and control system of alpha dominance.  It is about engaging employees and tapping passions.  It’s not about incenting behavior with rewards and punishments or demanding compliance to some generic norm.  It is about collaboration.

High performance happens when you gather people who enjoy what they do and who have fun figuring out how they can do it better together.

My suggestion is that we set aside the folly of formal appraisal as well as any notion of a manager being able to improve performance.  Instead, let’s focus on making sure our managers know how to listen to employees, understand and sometimes draw out their passions, and create collaborative cultures working toward a purpose greater than next quarter’s earnings.

• Detached responsibility—the ability to educate, resolve conflict, or manage change by taking responsibility for what is within our control and letting go of the need to resolve issues out of our range of immediate and direct influence.  For more on detached responsibility and the other Principles of Interaction read, Listening to Conflict:  Finding Constructive Solutions to Workplace Disputes.

I am often asked by executives and project leaders to share the results of the latest research studies on change management.  Sometimes they are interested because they want to understand the risks associated with not budgeting to address the human side of change.  Other times they know the risks all too well and are looking to make the business case for additional change management resources to support a project.

In all cases, however, the need for statistics and research points to the recurring question about the value of change management.  And with project budgets already slim because of the stressed economy, global competition or the need for higher project ROI, most organizations struggle to justify spending money on something that they believe should be a core competency of those asked to lead change.

Unfortunately, this highlights a sad fact:  When it comes to managing change, most organizations are operating in a state of denial.  And the majority of managers need a little . . . well . . . help.

Let’s look at the facts.

Countless studies examining the change efforts of thousands of companies have concluded unequivocally that 50% of all change efforts fail.  Or it might be 80%.  Well, sometimes it’s 25%.  But it is definitely between 25% and 80% . . . Definitely!

Okay, I know.  The research is all over the map depending upon whether they are examining technology or outsourcing implementations, mergers, product launches, customer relationship initiatives, organization restructuring, leadership transitions or less complex forms of change.

It also depends upon how the researchers define failure.  Is failure defined as total failure, such as cancellation of the project?  Sometimes.  More often, it is defined as some degree of budget overrun, project delay, reduced ROI or some other variation of less-than-expected results.

When you strip away the variations in the research, however, study after study suggests that at the very least, change gets derailed with some degree of regularity.  Even if you use the best-case data and pick, say, 25% as the likely failure rate, it is still remarkable.  A 25% risk of project failure is significant considering how frequently organizations undergo some form of change.  And since most of the research suggests that the failure rate is more than 50%, organization leaders should take pause.

The research results also suggest that change failure is not solely the result of a lack of managerial capability.  A recent study by the Ken Blancard Companies showed that only 29% of change initiatives are launched without some formal structure or methodology (Those 29% are in complete denial!).

This means that we have many motivated, skilled, and historically successful leaders who apply a proven change methodology and still fall short of their organization or project change objectives.  And yet, project leaders and their executive sponsors come to work each day convinced that this time it will be different.  You gotta love the optimism!  Or the naivete!  Or the denial!

It’s time organizations come to accept a few inconvenient truths.

First, leading change is hard.  As Niccolo Machiavelli said more than 500 years ago:

There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things.

Change requires hard work, focus, and patience.  Humans are hard-wired neurologically to resist change. So, there is much work to be done to achieve the results desired from any change initiative, especially those requiring even small measures of transformation.

Announcing change does not mean that employees will embrace change, and taking a hard-line, change-or-leave approach is out of touch and doesn’t recognize the realities of the modern workplace.

The change management effort begins before project launch and continues long after the technical effort is complete.  It is an ongoing process  that requires an understanding of both the technical and behavioral objectives in order to anticipate human emotional reactions and develop action plans to address them.

Second, effective change management requires budget and resources.  There is no way around it.  Either you budget for change upfront or you risk paying more throughout the life of the project because of delays, rework and unrealized goals.  How much you budget will depend upon a number of factors, but as a rule of thumb, plan to spend 5-15% of your total project cost on resources to support change management-specific activity.

And finally, methodology is not enough.

The difficulty leveraging the value of proven change models may lie less in the construct of any change model itself, and more in the challenge of applying a rational and uniform framework to the irrational and unpredictable elements of human behavior.  As Frank Lloyd Wright once said about architecture, “the architect’s most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking bar at the site.”  So, too, with managing change, the most useful tools are those that help you behave adaptively once the project begins.

Successful change leaders apply these tools, like the eraser and the wrecking bar, to adapt the methodology-driven blueprint to the situational realities encountered on change initiatives.  They have learned how to go beyond the blueprint to adapt the design and make it more actionable.  Their flexibility helps them rapidly assess obstacles to generate workable solutions.

That’s the hard work.  That’s the reason why change management requires proper resourcing.  It is this adaptive capability when developed, that can help organizations move beyond statistical chance to achieve change management success more consistently.

Oh, and by the way, before I close, here are even more statistics to help you build your business case . . .

• CIO.com cites a Dynamic Markets survey of 800 IT managers, reporting that 62 percent of IT projects fail to meet their schedules.
  • 49 percent suffered budget overruns
  • 47 percent had higher-than-expected maintenance costs, and
  • 41 percent failed to deliver the expected business value and ROI
• Researchers at the Ken Blanchard Companies found that 70% of change initiatives fail or get derailed
• The Standish Group’s Chaos Report reports 44% of projects are challenged (late, over budget, and/or less-than-expected results) and 24% fail (cancelled prior to completion).
• The PricewaterhouseCoopers survey on Current Program and Project Management Practices reports that 50% of all change initiatives fail.
  • 20% determine project success based on the satisfaction of their stakeholders, 19% on on-time delivery, 18% on budget, 17% on the delivery of benefits, 15% on quality, 9% on acceptable ROI and 2% on other factors.
• Gartner’s industry analysts report:
  • 55-70% of CRM projects fail to meet their objectives
  • 70% of ERP project fail
  • 70% of Supply Chain Management projects fail
  • Fewer than 10% of projects in large corporations are delivered with the functionality specified at the beginning
• Over 30% of web development teams deliver projects late or over-budget, according to a survey commissioned by Ruby development shop, New Bamboo.  According to the report:
  • 24% of website projects fail to be delivered within budget
  • 5% were unable to confirm the final cost of their web development project
  • 21% fail to meet stakeholder requirements
  • Nearly a third of web based projects (31%) were not delivered within the agreed timescales