One of the surest signs that change leaders don’t know what they are doing is the excessive use of jargon.  It’s easy to spot.  Just listen for words like strategic, alignment, partnering, values, sustained, vision, execution, branding, methodology, governance, scalable, global, integrated, empowerment, enablement, or any other intelligent-sounding, yet empty clichés that assume speakers have the right answers and listeners should feel assured.

Jargon epitomizes the use of karaoke leadership¹.  Dreary leaders without a shred of inspiration can have the false security of instant, plug-and-play success.  Here you go, pick up a microphone and read this script.  It’s safe and well produced and gets heads nodding and crowds whooping with lighters in the air.  You are a business genius.  You are a rock star.

Business leaders are not the only ones who are susceptible to the empty-headedness of jargon.  Listen to politicians talk about unemployment, for example.  The policy discussion on both sides of the Atlantic is filled with the rhetorical jargon of the policy extremes.  The conservatives talk of “fiscal responsibility,” “tax cuts,” and “deregulation.”  They say that the long-term unemployed “don’t want to work” or they “lack the necessary skills.”  The liberals, who have been noticeably silent of late, talk of “job creation,” “retraining,” and the need for “compassionate leadership.”  Meanwhile, 14 million Americans are jobless, and millions more are staying afloat with part-time work that fails to use their skills.  The situation is even worse in Europe where countries like Spain are experiencing 21% unemployment.²

The jargon on both ends of this debate gives the appearance of strong leaders taking proud, principled stands.  But that’s the problem.  They just keep standing.  And standing.  And there is never any action.  There is never any real change.

Jargon is a tool of dominance.  It creates distance.  It marginalizes.  It forms a barrier that blocks open communication.  It limits innovation and thwarts authentic, grass roots problem solving.

Worst of all it fools change leaders into thinking they can hide their ignorance, their uncertainty and their fear.   They can’t.  Listeners are smarter than that.  Whether employees, customers or citizens, they eventually see through the gibberish.  They know that complex, large scale change is imperfect and messy, and that’s okay.  That’s part of the deal.

Include others by speaking directly and in plain language.  Truth helps people get beyond the guesswork and confusion and on with the business of managing reality.

1. _{Karaoke leadership.  I borrowed this concept from Malcolm McLaren’s presentation “His Life, Authenticity vs. Karaoke Culture.”  McLaren was the designer, producer, and founder of the Sex Pistols who died in April 2010.}
2. From “Against Learned Helplessness,” by Paul Krugman, The New York Times, May 29, 2011.

At 7:51 am on January 12, 2007, a man wearing a baseball cap, T-shirt and faded jeans entered L’Enfant Plaza in Washington D.C. amid the morning rush of commuters and quietly removed his violin from its case. The violin was the rare Gibson ex-Huberman handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master’s “golden period,” when his technique had been refined to its highest levels. After tossing some seed money into the case to encourage those passing by, the man lifted the violin to his chin and began to play the beautiful “Chaconne” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita Number 2 in D Minor, considered one of the most difficult pieces to master.

On this particular morning, however, the violinist was not your ordinary street musician. It was Joshua Bell, thought by many to be one of the finest violinists in the world.

Of the nearly 1100 commuters that passed Bell that morning only seven stopped to listen and only twenty-seven gave money. Just three days earlier, Bell had played to a sold-out crowd at Boston’s Symphony Hall where mediocre seats cost $100. Bell usually earns around $1000 per minute, but his earnings that morning amounted to a little over $32.

“It was a strange feeling,” Bell said, “that people were actually, ah . . . ignoring me.”

Context is everything.

Bell’s performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities as well as an assessment of public taste. They wanted to answer the question, “In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”

This is the same question we face every time we implement change. And the answer is a resounding “No!” If change is not framed in the right context then the organization will never see the beauty of the solution.

Researchers Achilles Armenakis, Jeremy Bernerth, Jennifer Pitts and Jack Walker identified five important precursors that determine the degree to which change recipients accept the context required for successful organization change. Assessment of these factors can help to gauge the degree of buy-in and determine the specific gaps in contextual understanding that may impact the success of your initiatives. In addition, these factors can serve as basis for planning and executing actions to enhance the understanding of change recipients.

As you manage your change efforts ask whether your stakeholders believe the following factors to be true:

• Discrepancy. The belief that a change is needed. The belief there is a significant gap between the current state of the organization and what it should be.
• Appropriateness. The belief that a specific change designed to address a discrepancy is the correct one for the situation.
• Efficacy. The belief that the change recipient and the organization can successfully implement a change.
• Leader Support. The belief that the formal leaders (vertical change agents) and opinion leaders (horizontal change agents) in an organization are committed to the success of the change and that it will not be another passing fad.
• Valence. The belief that the change is beneficial to the change recipient.

Earlier this week I was sitting in a town hall meeting held by the head of human resources for an organization going through a major overhaul of its HR function.  The audience was a collection of HR professionals from throughout the world gathered in person and via the web to hear about state of affairs with the massive change that had begun a few months earlier.

The audience waited anxiously expecting an announcement of inevitable job loss, but also hoping their leader would share a vision of a modern, effective department whose contributions were prized by the organization. 

Instead, the SVP droned for thirty unfulfilling minutes spouting meaningless clichés about tackling the “low hanging fruit” (eight times) on their way to having a “seat at the table” (five times) where they could be a “strategic partner with the business” (six times).  He stumbled through his too-detailed slides in a lifeless monotone with a stiff back and an empty facial expression.  Detached.  Distant.  Not revealing anything of substance.

The feedback from the audience after the meeting suggested he failed not only to provide any meaningful information, but more importantly to make the connection required to get anything more than dutiful compliance to the task ahead.  The comments after the presentation ranged from the politically correct (“I think his plan is still developing”) to the skeptical (“I’m not sure he fully understands what’s required”) to the confused (“I’m not really sure what the heck he said”) to the hostile (“He doesn’t have a clue”).

He will need much more than that to get the focus, energy and commitment required to complete the effort.

Now, imagine the difference if he stood at the front of the room, took off his jacket, sat on the edge of a table and said:

“Our business has changed a great deal over the past decade, and it’s clear that the HR function that brought us to this point needs to change to support our company in the coming years.  To help us identify the right steps to take, we hired some experienced advisors to share their insights and present us with recommendations.  I would like to say that I understand all that we need to do, but I’m still learning about these new tools, processes and structural changes and what they will mean for us.  What I do know is that with your help, we will be able to make the right decisions—even the tough decisions—that will take us in the best direction.  Now, let me share with you some of what I understand and where I am still learning.”

Our instinct during times of uncertainty is to domesticate reality.  We try to put life in a box where we can control it and we hide behind platitudes hoping that the appearance of certainty will bring comfort to those around us.  The result?  We appear inauthentic and we put distance between ourselves and those we are trying to lead.

Instead, we must learn to live with a robust and confident uncertainty.  Only by allowing ourselves to be seen, showing our own vulnerability, will we draw others close enough to engage in the creative, collaborative process of facing the unknown.

“When all else fails, read the instructions.”

That simple, seven-word warning ought to appear on the instruction manual for everything that comes unassembled.  It should appear in bold face, large font letters on every purchase from Ikea, every home theater system, every backyard play set, and every brightly-colored, multi-part plastic child’s toy packaged in an injection-molded, twist-tied, tape-enclosed box. 

If you are like me, you may have looked at a seemingly harmless collection of parts and tossed aside the manual thinking you could put it together using common sense.  “I’m intelligent and capable,” you thought.  “Who really needs to bother with the time-consuming process of reading the instructions?  How hard can it be?”

Right!                                                                                                                                    

That’s when we find ourselves, hours later, furiously picking through the rubble to find the discarded instructions.

It is part of our proud, achieving nature to try to do everything our way, and only when the prospects of failure become overwhelming do we begin to think about asking for help.  Even then, we do so not by recognizing our own shortcomings, but by asking for help with the failings of those who thwarted our success.  The product was designed poorly, the instructions were unintelligible, or the bystanders were making too much noise for us to concentrate on this ridiculous mess.

There aren’t many areas this applies better than managing change.  All too often I watch seasoned managers rush headlong into large change efforts with the idea that their own common sense will get them through.  Even those who have led change before think that the only help they need is with the execution of deliverables—that’s project jargon that translates to producing PowerPoints, emails and pdf’s.  Rarely do change execs look for help assessing the human risks or identifying actions for managing them.  That would be like admitting they couldn’t lead or their managerial skills were ineffective. 

“Our organization doesn’t have much patience for change assessment,” stated a senior executive for a financial services organization going through a post-TARP operational restructuring.  “We’re a smart group focused on the business of implementation.  People around here only need help making sure the work gets done.”

That sounds strong, business-like and efficient, except for the fact that two months into the three-year project, they were over budget, facing stiff internal resistance to the proposed solution and negotiating with project sponsors who were “losing confidence.”  To make matters worse, the corporate communications group was so nervous about the change communications work product that they inserted themselves by requiring approvals before the change team could send any communication to the employee population.

Maybe the change leaders should have read the instructions.

Amazon.com lists over 13,000 books about managing change.  I have only read a few dozen, but it’s enough to know the lessons learned are similar no matter the author and approach.  Save time, hassle and the pain of undoing the mess caused by applying common sense.  Instead, read the instructions.

My view of organization effectiveness starts with two important assumptions:

1. We are interdependent, and as a result
2. We need to collaborate.

Interdependence implies that people need to cooperate in order to accomplish what they want.  In the workplace, managers need employees to accomplish results that lead to department or organization success.  Likewise, employees need managers to help clarify goals and objectives, give feedback about performance, and provide fair compensation for the work performed.  During change initiatives, technical resources, subject matter experts and stakeholders need each other to shape workable solutions.  In families and personal relationships, people rely on each other to enhance emotional satisfaction through mutual acceptance, support, encouragement, or love.

One of the most troubling and frustrating aspects of human existence, however, is this notion of interdependence.  We realize that our needs, wants, desires, goals and objectives involve the participation of others and getting their participation sometimes can be confounding.  We feel dependent upon them to satisfy our need, resolve the difference, or provide needed support.  On the other hand, we also feel the need to eliminate the obstacle—or the person—which stands in our way.  We want to get the desired results independent of them.  We wish we could get what we want through our own effort, or at least exist without this “problem” in our life.

So, we are faced with a dilemma.  Our desired outcomes require a degree of dependence on them. It requires their contribution, their input, and their feedback.  Our preferred way of obtaining the outcome requires independence of us.  It requires that I do it, I take responsibility, I become self-reliant, and I achieve the result.  We resent dependence because we are not in control and can be blocked from our goal or manipulated to a different outcome, yet we recognize that independence is unrealistic because others often have something we need.

The trouble with this binary thinking is that it leads to destructive conflict.  When getting what we want becomes challenging it triggers our fight or flight instincts, and as a result, we are tempted to either to try to dominate and control or to run away.  That’s why bosses become “bossy,” employees quit, business partners become litigious, and personal relationships crumble.

And that is our big clue:  Conflict occurs only between interdependent parties.  We would not be in conflict with someone unless we needed something from them.  But interdependence does not mean we must lose ourselves in order to get what we want.  Interdependence requires drawing out the value of we.  If I am independent, I can achieve a great deal because I am self-reliant and capable.  But when we work together, we can achieve much more than I could produce alone, especially if you have something that would enhance my success.  Interdependence requires that we create a better outcome by exchanging or creating something of value to each of us.

The first step is realizing the fact that we are interdependent.  That is Assumption #1.  Then, it is about embracing Assumption #2 by recognizing that interdependence requires collaboration.  And collaboration begins with understanding the needs, desires and goals of each party required to create mutually beneficial solutions.

The amazing result is that when we choose to work together to achieve our desired outcomes, we are more inclined to coordinate our efforts, attend to one another, and have increased levels of productivity.  We also tend to like one another more and participate in more constructive communication and exchange.

So, the key to hacking the buggy code of intolerance, and minimizing the The Dangers of Corporate Fundamentalism, is to make the shortcomings of independence more painful than the patience and discipline required of collaboration.  Only then will others come to the table ready to listen, learn and create.

I’m sentimental

So I walk in the rain

I’ve got some habits

Even I can’t explain

I go to the corner

I end up in Spain

Why try to change me now

Whether voiced with the fragile anguish of Fiona Apple or the charming cockiness of Frank Sinatra, these Cy Coleman lyrics express the unapologetic resistance we often face when managing change.  Overcoming resistance is an essential capability required of change leaders. Here are a few techniques for gaining support as well as the pros and cons of using them.  An adaptive change leader may deploy multiple strategies throughout a project:

1. Education and communication are used when there is a lack of information or inaccurate information and analysis.  Advantage:  Once persuaded, people will help with the implementation of the change.  Disadvantage:  Education and communication can be very time-consuming if lots of people are involved.
2. Participation and involvement are used when the change leaders do not have all the information they need to design the change and when others have considerable power to resist.  Advantage:  People who participate will be committed to implementing change, and any relevant information they have will be integrated into the plan.  Disadvantage:  Involving others in the change process can be very time-consuming, especially if participants design an inappropriate approach to change.
3. Facilitation and support are best when people are resisting because of adjustment problems.  Advantage:  No other approach works as well with adjustment problems.  Disadvantage:  Facilitation and support can be time-consuming, expensive and still fail.
4. Negotiation and agreement are used when someone or some group will clearly lose out in a change, and when that group has considerable power to resist.  Advantage:  Negotiation has proven to be a relatively easy way to avoid major resistance.  Disadvantage:  It can be too expensive in many cases if it alerts others to negotiate.
5. Manipulation and co-optation are used when other tactics will not work or are too expensive.  Advantage:  It can be a quick and inexpensive solution to resistance problems.  Disadvantage:  It can lead to future problems if people feel manipulated.
6. Explicit and implicit coercion are best when speed is essential, and the change initiators possess considerable power.  Advantage:  Coercion is speedy and can overcome any kind of resistance.  Disadvantage:  It can be risky if it leaves people angry with those who initiate the change.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a project manager who wanted an assessment of his team’s capability.  The project had been moving along without significant problems, but was approaching an intense period with several critical milestones.  The project manager felt unsettled because his team was not providing the analysis and insight he expected.

“I don’t think I have a team that has the right skill set,” the project manager confessed.  “We’re coming up on some very important milestones and they’re not sharing the usual level of detail.  I’m concerned they don’t know what they are doing and that I’ll have to make some decisions without their input.”

When I spoke with the project team, they expressed a similar frustration.  “I don’t feel like he trusts us,” the validation lead shared.  “Meetings feel more like an inquisition.  We’ve all worked on similar projects before, but he hasn’t recognized any of our experience.  We know he’s a good project manager, but he doesn’t seem to know we’re good, too.”

There have been a number of studies that examined the relationship between trust in management and the actual performance at the group or organizational level.  One study, for example, found that when basketball team members trust their coach, their performance is better.  Another study found that when restaurant employees trust their manager the restaurant’s sales and net profits increase.  The results of these studies demonstrate that when employees trust management, organizations have greater success.

More importantly, a study by Sabrina Deutsch Salamon (York University) and Sandra Robinson (University of British Columbia) found that when employees feel that they are trusted by management, organizational performance is improved.  This is significant because it shows that a sense of “felt trust” affects performance beyond the effect of employee trust in management.  It shows that when employees feel trusted by management it can have a direct impact on the top and bottom lines.

This is a very different picture than the leader standing on a pedestal waiting for employees to prove themselves and earn his or her trust.  These results suggest that successful leaders start the relationship by actively showing employees they trust them through words and deeds.

For many organizational leaders and human resources professionals, this study validates what they have known intuitively for years: the more you engage and involve your employees, the more you give them autonomy to perform their jobs, the better you tap their intrinsic motivation and drive employee performance skyward.

Unfortunately, many of the well-developed techniques of organizational management and control work directly against these findings.  This is especially true of rigorous project management methodologies.  They enable companies to organize people in different places with different skills to perform tasks with structure consistency, but at the risk of marginalizing the relationship building skills that build trust.

It’s a delicate, but important, balance.  To be a successful leader, especially under the demands of time-intensive projects, requires that you apply the formal structures and process needed for systematic execution AND that you show a willingness to be “emotionally vulnerable and human with one another.” (Patrick Lencioni)

It turns out that Douglas McGregor was on the right track about how to manage in the future with his concept of Theory Y managers:  People are more self-directed, committed and creative when managers develop a climate of trust by communicating openly, minimizing the relationship distance between themselves and their subordinates, and creating a comfortable environment where employees can develop and use their abilities.

Change, transformation, re-engineering, BPR, Kaizen, Six Sigma, reinvention, lean, optimization, globalization, standardization, integration, turnaround, downsizing, rightsizing, reductions-in-force, outsourcing, in-sourcing, self-managed teams, learning organizations, and the list goes on.

Maybe these employees have the right idea about change.

While driving during a horrible snowstorm, a young project manager became disoriented and lost.  Thankfully, he remembered what his father had once told him: ”If you ever get stuck in a snowstorm, wait for a snow plow and follow it.” Within a few minutes, a snow plow came by, and he started to follow it.  He followed the plow for about 45 minutes.

Finally, the driver of the truck got out and asked him what he was doing.  He explained that his dad had told him if he ever got stuck in the snow, to follow a plow.  The driver nodded and said, ”Well, that’s very good advice.  Now that I’m done with the parking lot here at shopping mall, you can follow me over to the supermarket.”

The biggest challenge when implementing organizational change is not resistance, it is inertia.  Resistance by definition is an active force of opposition.  It implies that there are two sides working toward different objectives.  Inertia, on the other hand, is the tendency of a body to preserve its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force.  Inertia can be the same as being stuck in a rut or routine.

For example, two years after the implementation of PeopleSoft HR technology, more than 40% of the human resources generalists for a media and technology company continued to maintain their individual Excel files with employee data.  The data in PeopleSoft was so out of date and inaccurate that when one new division manager ran a report to find out the name, job title, salary and last performance rating of his staff, only one of twenty names was correct.

The company spent millions of dollars configuring the system, cleansing and inputting data, and reworking processes and jobs to maintain the data integrity.  In the end, it was made useless by the inertia of employees happy with their current system.

When asked why they continued to use their separate Excel files, the HR generalists replied, “I’ve done it that way for years,” “It was easier than learning the new system” and “I never trusted the new tool.”  After the company mandated that generalists, and subsequently data entry clerks and employees, maintain the data in PeopleSoft, the generalists still insisted upon retaining their Excel databases, doubling their data entry workload.   As one generalist defended, “Although it takes at least two hours every week to check and recheck the data on both systems, I feel more secure about the reliability of the information.”

Even project leaders get stuck in a change management rut.  A project manager for a different technology initiative continued to drive her original project plan months after she learned the specifications would not meet customer expectations.  “My job is to complete the project,” she said.  “I tried to understand customer requirements, but they weren’t clear and it was taking too long.  I needed to maintain a consistent schedule.”

These stories remind me of the Air Force Inertia Axiom: Consistency is always easier to defend than correctness.  To break the inertia and move people in the direction of change here are three key steps:

• Create Dissatisfaction (With the Status Quo).  The motivation for change must be generated before change can occur.  So, the sooner you create dissatisfaction with the status quo, the sooner you will get people in motion.  Since dissatisfaction is emotional, not intellectual, facts and stats won’t cut it.  You have to tell a story that challenges beliefs and hits people between the eyes.  Make it real.  Make it personal.  The strong reactions you get are exactly what you need to knock people out of their routines.
• Fill the Void.  Once you cause pain, you have to offer fast pain relief.  The status quo must be replaced by an alternative before the dissonance sends people back to the safety of the solution they know.  Most importantly, don’t provide one new solution, provide a few.  This gets people engaged in the process of defining the future.  Once they define it, they will own it, and you have helped them go from inertia to action.
• Draw the Map.  While it feels great to know where you are going, it feels even better to know how you are going to get there.  Once the destination is defined, project leaders must quickly define the roadmap that will take the organization to the future.  It must provide enough of the step-by-step detail to create comfort, but not so much to create complacency.  The unanswered questions become a great tool to keep people engaged.

Use these three steps each time you see inertia in a project leader, team member or in your everyday interactions with employees.  The extra push will help them get unstuck from mud, snow or the status quo.

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.