Change is emotional

A recent incident at home reminded me of the sometimes extreme challenges of change. I won't go into the incident but it helped me to recollect that individuals change at their own pace.

The business case my be compelling, the organisational rationale all-encompassing etc but at the end of the day individuals have emotional attachments to what currently IS. It is those emotional attachments that we ultimately have to address - the pain of changing has to be lower than the pain of staying put, otherwise what does the rational person do but stay put!
Remember also that sometimes it is the pain of the process, rather than the end-point, that is the challenge. This is an arena not for rational dialogue but for comfort, support and belief that the individual will find their own way through their own pain.

Always remember that effective change leadership is more about the people than the process!

Process or People - helping change happen.

There is a really interesting discussion in a forum to which I subscribe about organisational change, under the general title of “What is missing”. It got my juices flowing, so here are some of my thoughts on the topic…

I find myself yawning at those change practitioners who go on about Change Project Management, Business Cases, n-Step Processes and anything to do with the hard/systems/processes/procedures/models aspects of change. This stuff is at the easy end of the spectrum - it's essentially a technical issue and in the arena of 'puzzles', ultimately solveable.
I label proponents of such programmed approaches the "it's Thursday, so it must be Module 17b" merchants.

Conversely, my juices flow when anyone considers the people involved (do you know, I almost used the phrase 'wetware' but that soooo... degrades the people to an abstract concept and misses the point!). It's the people that are the real, and un-programmable, challenge. We all have our different motivations, propensities towards change, desires for involvement, abilities/desires to learn, etc and any change wallah (let's not get back into manager or leader!) who fails to address the different needs of every single individual involved in or associated with the change faces an uphill and potentially disastrous challenge. I vividly remember upsetting a newish MD who spouted to the workforce about the changes he was going to make before being challenged along the lines of "Well, that is what you want, what you will get is what the 4500 employees are prepared to give you" (I said it and we never really saw eye-to-eye thereafter!).

So, I would like to see MUCH more attention paid to how to work effectively with the humans in the system - they can and will deliver the change when they understand and feel the imperative for change, when they understand and feel what is in it for them and when they have a real change to be involved in designing and delivering the parts of the change that interest and/or affect them.
I have learned to 'do what I can, where I can, when I can', working with whoever is willing and able at the time to move the agenda forward. One willing partner is worth a hundred unwillingly donkeys.

Change is not a linear process, progress very rarely follows a predeterminable plan, it often runs across rocky territory, meeting unexpected obstacles along the way. It's fairly straightforward to produce a Work Breakdown Structure and a Gantt Chart for designing a piece of software (which, BTW is NOT change management despite what many IT guys woudl claim!)or even redesigning a business process. What is a lot more difficult (dare I say impossible?) is anticipating and planning for the many different people issues that will emerge at different times throughout the process. Yes, there will be some resistance, but I cannot say it will appear in Week 17 and be handled using Process #27 with a duration of 3 weeks; it will appear when it appears, at different times from different people (even in respect of the same technical change). Which is not to say that planning is not important – it’s the plan that isn’t.

The easiest way to get a lorry to roll downhill is to remove the chocks under the wheels, take off the brakes and make sure it is out of gear - you need all three otherwise it will stay where it is. Someone on the steering wheel helps, but I promise you that if the first three conditions are met, the lorry WILL go downhill. The 'someone on the steering wheel' needs to be very conscious of the dynamics (culture?) of the vehicle; you can no more turn a 30 tonne lorry on a sixpence than change a multimillion organisation in a week. I remember learning to drive and making BIG turns of the steering wheel, now I know that a gentle adjustment will get me what I want much more efficiently and smoothly.

My experience is that the more attention, and resource, is given to helping the people in the system understand and work in the change, the more effective the change.

Stuff happens - we can choose how to deal with it...

Something in an article I was reading reminded me of the acronym CIA when used to ‘deal’ with the stuff that happens around us.

C – can I Control the situation? If the situation does turn out to be controllable then do so and get on with life. Most likely it isn’t (we can’t even control our own breathing, heart rate etc for more than a few minutes) so get on with life…

I – can I Influence the situation? Always (yes, always!) a matter of choice. A little fella called Ghandi decided to influence the Brits out of India when others gave up. Conversely you might decide not to influence the situation (I did/do not agree with the Iraq War but decided not to go on the million man march in the UK). If you choose not to influence then accept and get on with life…

A – am I prepared to Accept the situation? (See Iraq above) If I am going to accept the situation, and if I cannot control nor choose to influence then I have no other choices, then accept it fully and get on with life…

Education, education, education...

I have shamelessly ripped this piece off from a piece written by John Wood that I read in "What Matters Now", a free ebook distributed via Seth Godin's blog.

Education has a ripple effect. One drop can initiate a cascade of possibility, each concentric circle gaining in size and travelling further.
If you get education right, you get many things right: escape from poverty, better family health, and improved status of women.
Educate a girl, and you educate her children and generations to follow.
Yet for hundreds of millions of kids in the developing world, the ripple never begins. Instead, there’s a seemingly inescapable whirlpool of poverty. In the words of a headmaster I once met in Nepal: “We are too poor to afford education.
But until we have education, we will always be poor.” That’s why there are 300 million children in the developing world who woke up this morning and did not go to school. And why there are over 750 million people unable to read and write, nearly 2/3 of whom are girls and women.
I dream of a world in which we’ve changed that. A world with thousands of new schools. Tens of thousands of new libraries. Each with equal access
for all children.
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.

John Wood is Founder & Executive Chairman, Room to Read,
which has built over 850 schools and opened over 7,500 libraries serving 3 million children.

For those of us who have the chance of education, make sure we take it; for those hundreds of millions who do not, what are YOU going to do to help make it happen?

Top Tips for Organisational Change

Every now and then, I think to myself that I ought to capture the wisdom of many years’ change leadership efforts. Few of us get the chance to concentrate our efforts on facilitating change, so perhaps my experiences might help you, so here is some of it. It’s (probably) not in any particular order, although I have loosely grouped concepts together.

Do your work. You were probably not employed to change the organisation. Do the work you were hired to do, or risk losing respect, and with it, the ability to make any changes. Doing the ‘day job’ well gives you the platform and freedom to do other things.

Seek first to understand. There really is a reason why things are done the way they are, and it is not because your co-workers are incompetent or malicious. Sometimes they may be ignorant, but even that isn't the only reason. Listening is a key competence of any change agent.

Understand motivations. As you proselytize, be aware of what motivates the person to whom you are talking. Address these motivations. People ultimately change for their own reasons, not yours, so you have to find out what motivates them – and it may be something very different to what motivates you or your boss. Work with the gaps between what they are getting and what they want. Show people how your changes will make their lives easier, not more difficult.

“Do what you can, where you can, when you can”. There is generally too much to do, so why waste your time and energy banging your head against a brick wall – take action where you already have support. I see this as ‘lighting fires around the organisation’ – some flourish and some go out, use the ones that flourish to generate wildfires! And always remember that sometimes the organization needs to change to fit the process, and sometimes the process needs to change to fit the organization; it's easier to change the process.

Talk slowly. Explain ideas in a calm, measured tone of voice. Sometimes technical people speak at a hundred miles an hour, particularly when they are excited about an idea. Your tone should denote "wisdom of the ages" rather than "geeky excitement."

Be respectful. Don't ever look down on anybody, no matter what, not even in the privacy of your thoughts and never, ever, criticize people. There are problems with the process, sure. Criticise the process. Improve the process. Leave names out of it. A differing opinion does not mean ignorance, and ignorance does not mean stupidity. Always remember Marcus Aurelius “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

Be careful with vocabulary. Words that means something positive to you might mean something different and negative to someone else. For example, “pilot” might mean “trying out a good idea” to you, but “they are experimenting on us” to your audience.

Establish an escape route. You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. If you are doing your job properly, you will eventually upset so many people that you need to get out. Determine how you can successfully get out, whether that means finding another job, going back to your old duties, or something else. Think about how and why you would make your escape.

Find a sponsor. Related to the above point – your effectiveness, and longevity, will be better if you (and others!) know that you have a senior sponsor in the organisation; someone who will back you when things are rough, someone who will listen to you when you have stuff to say, someone who will oil the wheels if necessary.

Find support. Find other people in the organization that share your views. Sometimes two voices are more convincing than one. It's also nice to talk to someone that agrees with you occasionally. The more respected these people are, and the more accessible they are to you, the better.

You have no real authority. You can talk about stuff, and you can make suggestions, but you can't force anybody to do something. Remember that.

Respect is your currency. The more people respect you, the more credibility you have. The more credibility you have, the more opportunities you'll have. Earn respect by your actions.

Cultivate champions. You need lots of advocates for the change – find them, feed them, make them experts, encourage them to actively promote the change, reward them.
Value resistance. You will frequently feel like you are not accomplishing very much. The resistance you feel is sending a message – figure out the message and act on it. Keep going... but consider circulating your CV!

Don’t worry, be happy. It's easy to get frazzled by all the things that are being done wrong. Stay calm. It will inspire confidence in you. Find small things to do that give you a feeling of accomplishment at work, and have good relationships with family and friends outside of work. You know, if it all does go to **** the world will still be there and you will still be alive!

It’s amazing what you can achieve if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit. If you make a change, and it's successful, don't gloat. Don't remind people it was your idea. Don't say anything at all. You know the truth – that it takes lots of individual efforts to make any change.

Take ownership. Take ownership of things that nobody owns and that are related to your change goals. If you assume ownership and lead in those areas, leadership will naturally fall to you. In time, you will accrete actual authority over the things of which you took ownership. Your actions will be more visible and you will earn more respect.

Work top-down, bottom-up, inside-out and outside-in. Simultaneously work on creating memes that change people's way of thinking and permeate the organisation. Direct some of your efforts at bottom-up change: lead by example and cajoling on the parts of the organisation with whom you have continual contact. Direct other efforts at top-down change: write essays and give presentations about the changes you want to make to people with authority.

One step at a time. Always remember, and talk about the big picture/vision for as long as you have a receptive audience, but when it comes to actual change, make it step by step. Start with high payoff changes to gain support for the more difficult ones later on.

Queue your thoughts. When you create a document advocating some sort of change, do not send it out straight away. Instead, wait a day and review it before sending it.
Acknowledge the past. It is nearly always the case that there is more right than wrong in the past, value and acknowledge this. If you find fault with everything, people will not take you as seriously. Pick something specific to work on.

Speak to real/known problems. Don't try to introduce an agile process for the sake of introducing process - talk about how it will solve real problems. Make sure they are problems management will recognize and to which the front line workforce will value a solution.

...and above all...

Be natural. Do not follow these or any other rules by rote, there is no ‘solution’ to change leadership – that’s what makes it such challenging fun. Instead, internalize the concepts and then do what comes naturally.


Geoff Roberts runs Hidden Resources, his own change leadership consultancy. He focuses on helping people create successful change in themselves, their teams and their organisations. Clients describe Geoff as being challenging, open-minded, creative, thoughtful, passionate, generous, straight-talking, friendly...
Starting his career as an analytical chemist , he moved to the water industry, where he became head of the company's quality regulatory efforts. During this time he developed his skills in organisational change and development. Geoff facilitated most and co-designed some of the major interventions that transformed the culture and performance of the organisation over a 15 year period. He now draws on that expertise in personal, team and organisational change to help improve personal and organisational performance. He does this by focusing primarily on how people need to change in order to facilitate wider change in the systems of which they are part - be they at home or work. Geoff has designed and delivered numerous coaching, team development, manager and leader training programmes as well as facilitating major organisational change.

People who plan the battle, rarely battle the plan

One of the schools where I am a governor (chair in fact!) faces a challenging year or more with significant change for pupils, staff, parents and all stakeholders.The challenge in change is not to 'design a solution' or to 'manage the processes', it is to keep the people on board.

I recall making myself slightly(?!) unpopular with a new Managing Director once when they guy spent half an hour expounding what he was going to do to the company and I asked "Well, that all sounds interesting Mr XXX, but I do wonder if you understand that you will get what the 4500 people who work here want and that may not be what you say will happen". Not subtle, but true - he really had not understood (and never did, to his ultimate cost) the power of the people.

Well sometimes as leaders we have to make difficult decisions (whoever said leadership would be easy had not been there!) and we should not shirk from them. However implementation needs all of our people on board and that is truly what leadership is about - helping the people get to somewhere they might not have thought of going themselves.


There is no room for "mushroom management"; exhortations just tire out the voice; instruction leads, at best, to compliance. Only genuine involvement in the processes of designing (if possible) the end-point and figuring out how to get there leads to commitment.


Schools, and Education Authorities, can sometimes be very bureaucratic organisations, often led by formalities around statutory processes. But just because we have a formal process to go through does not mean that we cannot treat our stakeholders as human individuals with current needs for information, clarity and support. Those of us involved in change and leadership know full well that it is the 'dark' side of organisations that gets things done - the informal networks through which things can be made to happen, or not. We must feed and work this informal side of the organisation well - their power is such that we need them with us not against us.

Principles of Effective Communications

Just been reviewing some principles I set up for a corporate change I was facilitating a few years ago (in anticipation of another change in a different context!). I wonder how you respond to these - do you want to add/subtract anything:

• Those most affected will be the first to hear
• Our people will hear things first from their managers
• We will use multiple channels to communicate with our people
• “One hymn, one hymn sheet”
• We will be as quick to give any bad news as the good
• We will be as open as possible
• Face-to-face will be our preferred route for all major communications
• Wherever possible we will avoid jargon, where not possible we will explain it
• Individuals making decisions will have personal accountability for ensuring that those affected by the decision are communicated with effectively
• We will ensure that there is an unfiltered feedback route from our people to the top team
• There will be regular updates on progress
• We recognise the existence of The Grapevine and will try to be sure that it deals in facts not fiction