It’s a great model and anyone who would like to compel people to break away from the current state of things. Here are the key parts of the document:

Connection to values

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Acknowledgment that the status quo is easier

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

Reasons why the current state can’t be tolerated any further

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The bulk of the document lists a number of egregious offenses by the King, that anyone who valued freedom would find appalling.

Recognition that what we’re doing isn’t working

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.”

Clear vision of the future

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

Statement of leadership resolve

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

If your organization wrote a Declaration of Independence from the present, what would it say?

If you want to know why your internal change communication doesn’t seem to be landing, listen to this show!

Listen here (30 minutes):

Be sure to visit the radio show page to listen to past episodes and subscribe to the show.

Lara shared a number of feedback methods and tools she has used in organizations to improve communication and engagement.  She talked about the factors to consider when selecting a feedback method and also shared common mistakes you will want to avoid when implementing employee feedback.

As a special hand-out for Enclaria listeners, Lara provided this 1-page Feedback Favorites summary (PDF).

Listen here (30 minutes):

Be sure to visit the radio show page to listen to past episodes and subscribe to the show.

The Ten Essential Tools include personal influence and structural influence methods, plus a focused foundation that every change agent needs to start with.  If your change initiative is stalled, use the Ten Tools as a checklist to see what areas might be in need of a boost.

Listen here (30 minutes):

Be sure to visit the new radio show page to find other ways you can tune in to the show.

If you prefer to read a small synopsis of the list, see the previous post Ten Essential Tools for Change Agents.  However, you will miss out on a special offer that is presented at the end of the show!

I don’t think there is an official definition for cringe factor; it’s something that you know when you see it… or really when you feel it.  You feel a cringe factor in your face when you flinch from what you’ve just heard.  Your shoulders might tense and you might even feel sick to your stomach a little bit.  You might even throw your hands in front of your face in an attempt to block the offending message. If you haven’t already while reading this, take a second to cringe and see what it feels like.

The church, of course, wants to avoid this feeling in its target demographic, people who might be looking for a reason not to come back next Sunday.  And you want to avoid this feeling in your organization toward your change initiative.

In my experience, the most prominent category of cringe factors in organizations is terminology.  For example, I’ve worked with a number of people who implemented Balanced Scorecards without calling them Balanced Scorecards.  They deliberately selected another name because there was either a bad connotation from a previous bad experience or the term was considered to be too high on the jargon list.  Other cringe factors include the incentive program that doesn’t quite align with people’s motivation, or a leader saying something that seems hypocritical.

Pay attention to the things that make you cringe as you design a new program or listen to leaders talk about your change initiative.  Recruit other people in the organization to tell you about cringe factors that they experience.  Then, see what you can do to avoid them.  The last thing you want is for people in the organization to have an automatic negative visceral reaction to your change initiative!

What might be your cringe factors?

A similar phenomenon happens in organizations.  Consider that the equivalent to verbal communication in organizations are the formal words that come to employees in the form of official documents:  values and mission statements, strategy, policies, newsletters, websites, announcements, press releases, and other communication devices. The rest of internal communication comes from everything else employees experience.  Similar to a conversation, the vast majority of meaning and understanding is generated by “non-verbal” communication.

The following are examples of “non-verbal” communication in organizations that speak louder than words:

Accountability

Employees assess which policies count and which ones are merely guidelines based on how consistently they are enforced.  Processes and procedures are generally followed to the extent that they are required.

“Everyone must contact the IT helpdesk to resolve computer issues”
(unless you know who to call to avoid waiting).

Rewards

Rewards in all their forms tell employees how to be successful.  Traditional incentive programs signal expectations but may conflict with stated values or even inadvertently motivate a different behavior than what is desired.  Furthermore, who gets promoted and what behaviors elicit praise send powerful messages about what is expected.

“Safety first!”
(Here’s your efficiency bonus.)

Decisions

How managers spend resources speaks volumes about what they truly value and prioritize.  The decisions they make about how to allocate funds and how they spend their own time demonstrates what they believe will lead to success.

“Strategic initiatives are important”
(until we need to cut something out of the budget).

Management behavior

More than anything, employees look at the behavior modeled by management to see if it matches what is officially communicated.  The most influential person in this regard is an employee’s own boss.  The attitudes and behaviors displayed by people in authority tell the real story of what is expected.

“We value employees’ ideas”
(but not the terrible one you just shared).

Employees will rely on “non-verbal” communication to understand what is expected and to decide appropriate action in the midst of uncertainty. When introduced to news of change, many employees will take the stance, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  It is not enough for them to hear it or read it.   It is imperative to monitor your organization’s “non-verbal” communication to ensure that actions and behaviors are consistent with your official change message.

1.  Change Knowledge

Change agents are the people in their organizations who understand how change works – or at least how it is supposed to work.  Your own change knowledge helps you know what to expect and understand what is really happening.  When the initiative is stuck in a rut, your knowledge helps you generate ideas for what to do next.

2.  Clarity

A lot is said about the importance of a clear vision.  In addition to making sure leadership has a vision and that it is clear, change agents also assess current reality and identify the barriers that stand in the way of achieving the vision.

3.  Your Role

When used correctly, your role as change agent can be a powerful tool.  As trusted advisor, you help leaders fill in the gaps to ensure that change happens.  It is necessary to strike a balance of ownership of the initiative and to manage relationships.

4.  Power

People who have power are able to take action, make decisions that affect other people, model behavior and open minds.  Since change agents don’t have direct authority, they need to build up indirect authority to influence others.

5.  Leadership Support

Also, since you don’t have direct authority as a change agent, you need to gain a partner who does have it.  When you have leadership support, you need to make sure it manifests as behaviors and activities that drive the change forward.  If you don’t have support, you will eventually need to get it.

6.  Conversations

The one-on-one conversations you have as a change agent will help get beyond fear and develop mutual understanding.  Conversations are a means of providing feedback and preserving relationships.  The most important conversations are the ones you don’t really want to have.

7.  Meetings

Most meetings are seen as drudgery, or necessary evils; however, when effective they can be a key means of moving a change initiative forward.  Whether you are meeting with a project team, a leadership team, or a work group or a steering committee, your job as the change agent is to make sure people are collaborating for results.

8.  Accountability

Without having direct authority, you will most likely not hold people accountable yourself.  As a change agent, your responsibility is to make sure a system of accountability is in place.

9.  Incentives

Although incentives can be tricky because they frequently have unintended consequences, effective change agents find ways to motivate desired behaviors or results.  The best motivation techniques are not external rewards but psychology-based nudges in the right direction.

10.  Communication

Some say the first law of change is communicate, communicate, communicate.  To be more specific, the key activity for change agents is to get the appropriate message to the right person and to have them do something about it.

Whether you are executing strategy, implementing technology, designing process improvements, or transforming culture, your role as change agent is fraught with challenges.  Use these ten tools to help navigate them successfully.

For a more in-depth look at the 10 Essential Tools, check out:

• The 10 Essential Tools webinar
• The INflux Change Agent Network

Well, technically no.  The word mavens and official time keepers (whoever they are) will tell you that the decade does not officially begin until 2011.  2010 is the last year of the 00’s.  Just like the first year of the millennium was 2001, not 2000.

It’s these same word mavens that maintain that everyone else improperly uses the words “ironic” and “moot.”

Which is entirely my point.  If everyone ascribes new meaning to a word, then effectively, that word holds that meaning, regardless of whether it is in the dictionary.  We are choosing to end the decade now, whether or not the people who count time agree.

This phenomenon is something to keep in mind when you are selecting language to communicate your change initiative.  Just because you decide on words and their meaning doesn’t mean everyone else will choose to use the same words, or give them the same meaning.

Once I was facilitating an executive team on creating a strategy map (a la Balanced Scorecard).  Technically, the oblong bubbles on the map are called objectives, but the team started calling them “footballs” due to their shape.  “Footballs” does not mean much in the context of strategy, but for some reason it stuck.

When the organization starts using your language improperly or choosing their own words to help them assimilate what it going on, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.  After all, it’s better than ignoring it altogether.  However, you will have to decide whether the official language is worth fighting for – or whether you can adopt their words as the new official ones.

What language has your team or organization distorted from the original meaning?  What is the effect on your initiative?

However, not all surveys will improve the situation.  The following are four warning signs that conducting a survey may do more harm than good.

1.  The leaders don’t really want to know what people think.

The people who hold the top spots in an organization are usually out of the feedback loop.  As they move up the ladder, they are increasingly unaware of the pulse of the organization.  When the intent to conduct an employee survey is proposed, leaders who understand this phenomenon will jump at the chance to collect information that they have gradually been phased out of.  These leaders will want more details about what will be asked, and might even propose other questions that they would like to ask.

On the flip side of the coin are leaders who think they already know, or worse, don’t really care what the employees think or how they feel.  If you propose an employee survey and receive a resounding, “Sure, go ahead” without any curiosity or concerns, beware.  They probably don’t really want to know what people think.

2.  The leaders won’t believe the results.

Sometimes leaders will dismiss the results of the survey, even if it seems they wanted to know.  I once conducted an employee satisfaction survey that I created in-house due to lack of funds for the project.  Once I presented the results, the leaders wanted benchmarks to compare against to see if the results were “normal.”  Of course, having created the survey in-house, there was no other data to compare them against.

Before conducting a survey, watch for signs that the leaders commonly deflect accountability by picking apart the validity of numbers in other settings.  One way to combat this scenario ahead of time is to discuss the output that will be generated from the survey.  Discuss hypothetical results with the leadership team to determine up front what else they will want to know, so you can build it into your analysis.

3.  The leaders won’t do anything about it.

Even leaders who want to know and believe the results still may not do anything about it.  If employees give their opinion and then nothing is done, the integrity of the leaders and you as the surveyor drops, and future surveys will not be taken as seriously.

When discussing hypothetical results, gauge the interest of leaders in taking action.  For example, if the survey says that people don’t know the direction the company is going, are the leaders willing to share strategic information?  If the answer is no, then don’t bother asking.

To combat the first three reasons not to conduct an employee survey, make sure leaders know the questions you are asking and what you are actually measuring with the questions.  Discuss ahead of time what the implications and actions might be based on hypothetical responses you think they might have trouble absorbing.

4.  You don’t want to say what you already know.

The fourth reason not to conduct an employee survey, instead of being directed at the leadership team, is directed at the surveyor.  Are you conducting the survey because you don’t know the answers, or are you conducting the survey because you don’t want to say what you already know?  Is fear getting in the way of you speaking up and sharing the problems you see in the organization?  Is the survey actually a cop-out?

If any of that rings true, here’s an idea for you:  Include your point of view in the proposal for the survey.  State your hypothesis – what you believe to be true – and say you would like to conduct a survey to test it.  Share the implications and the action plan for improving the situation if you are right.  Then offer the option to skip the survey if they agree – they just might.  If they don’t agree with your hypothesis, then you will still conduct the survey.  Not only will you get more involvement from people who disagree with you, it will also be more scientific and objective than if you were just using the to communicate for you.

Yes, surveys can be very useful tools to help direct a change initiative.  That is, of course, if the leaders want to know what employees think, will believe the results, and will do something with the opportunities that are revealed.

Do you feel like your change communication is:

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Previous webinar attendees on the Pinpoint Communication process said: