Start with the fundamentals if you want to succeed.

When installing something new in your organization, it can feel like you are encountering resistance at every turn.  No one seems to be listening or cooperating, even though it’s your job to get it done!

When I was a young engineer, I frequently became frustrated when coworkers would not just implement the new-and-improved processes I designed.  After banging my head against the wall, I started to realize that my job was more than just making higher quality widgets more efficiently.  Really, I was trying to change the way people work.  After years of education, personal trial and error, and working with clients, I have narrowed down the change process to the ingredients that are essential to success.

Perhaps you, too, would love to improve your workplace and make others’ jobs easier, more efficient, or more meaningful.  It doesn’t matter if you are in IT, HR, project management, strategic planning, engineering, sustainability or process improvement.  Ultimately, to make a difference in your organization, your job requires that you influence and manage change.

I have no doubt that you are already good at figuring out what people should be doing differently.  The challenge is knowing how to get them to do it.  Once you know the fundamental ingredients to implementing change, you can move from being a discouraged professional to a bonafide change agent.

Introducing:

In this 2-part online series, you will gain clarity about your own project through the lens of organizational change.  This unique series includes an assessment, a workbook, and three hours learning the fundamentals of change.

When you sign up for Essentials of Organizational Change, you’ll get:

• The Flash Point Change Assessment – Before you start the program, you’ll complete a questionnaire to evaluate your change initiative in 8 key areas.  You will also receive a personal report detailing what you are doing well and where you might get stuck.
• Two 90-minute Group Webinar Sessions - Learn the essentials of organizational change and share experiences with fellow professionals.
• The Change Starts Here Workbook – As homework between the sessions, you will complete the workbook, which contains a 4-step process for gaining clarity about your initiative.
• Webinar recordings – A record of the webinars, so you can revisit all the valuable information we discussed.
• Bonus #1:  Influence Factors – A checklist of 99 strategies to help people change, a quick-start guide for when you are feeling stuck.
• Bonus #2:  Two article reprints – “Tips for Getting Your Project Approved” and “8 Fundamental Ingredients of a Successful Change Initiative.”

Register by Thursday, September 9, 2010 to receive the Early Bird rate:  All this for just $159! That’s 20% off the regular price of $199.

I don’t believe in just teaching concepts in my programs.  My goal is for you to gain clarity and make progress on your initiative even before the series is over.  At the same time, you’ll learn a repeatable process for your next initiative.

After this program you will:

• Understand how change works
• Gain clarity about what you really trying to change
• Know the areas you need to work on so you don’t get stuck
• Step into the role of change agent

If your job requires changing the way people work, you won’t want to miss this concentrated dose of practical insights about how change really works.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me.

The example he used during the presentation was a program to reduce lead poisoning in children.  In his core diagram were the activities done by the CDC and others in the community, such as Conducting Screenings, Identifying Children with Elevated Lead Levels, and Training Parents.  These were all the things under the control of the CDC and its partners.

On the right side of the diagram were all the intended outcomes the activities were expected to influence, such as Changes to Cleaning Habits, and Reduced Lead Levels.  One of the shorter-term results was a change in at-home behaviors of parents, and the longer-term effects were the health benefits.  Each of the activities and outcomes were connected by arrows in cause-and-effect linkages.  He called the diagram a logic model, since it showed the assumptions, or logic, behind how the program was expected to work.

The generic logic model looks like this:

The same type of diagram can be used to model the expected outcomes of organizational change activities (in fact the speaker mentioned that the CDC has done logic models for internal initiatives like diversity and leadership development).  The Control side would contain all the activities you are implementing, such as various communication vehicles, incentives, and training programs.  On the Influence side would be all the behaviors, attitudes and culture changes your activities are expected to elicit.

Once you create the logic model, you can test your assumptions.  Will Activity A really cause Behavior B?  What reinforcements might be required?  What other factors might stand in the way? In his presentation, Mr. Chapel said to look for where the miracles are supposed to happen and unravel them.

The purpose of the logic model is to gain clarity about the relationship between activities and their intended effects.  Over time, by measuring the activities and outcomes, you can test the logic model to see if it’s true.

What are your assumptions about how your change initiative will create its intended outcomes?

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

Implementing organizational change is an uphill battle.

Studies show that only 30% of change initiatives meet expectations. When a change agent is involved, the success rate actually drops. The reason? Change agents have the difficult task of implementing change without actually having direct authority over the people going through the change.

Whether you are executing strategy, implementing technology, designing process improvements, or transforming culture, your role as change agent is fraught with challenges: Convincing people to try new things. Keeping change a priority. Getting leaders to take ownership. Aligning actions towards desired outcomes. Overcoming resistance at all levels. And yet, despite (perhaps even because of) the daunting task ahead, you want to help the organization move forward.

As a member of the Influx Change Agent Network, you will expand your arsenal of influence methods and gain a community of peers to help you push the boulder uphill. Step fully into the role of change agent so you can pull all the pieces together and effectively implement change in your organization.

Download the brochure

Program Details

Members

Members of the Influx community are mid- to senior-level managers or individual contributors who are responsible for implementing one or more change initiatives within their organizations. Examples of change initiatives include but are not limited to:

• Strategy execution (e.g. Balanced Scorecard)
• Quality or process improvement (e.g. Lean / Six Sigma)
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Technology implementation
• Mergers or restructuring
• Culture change

Working Group Format

As a working group, the Influx community is much more than a training program. Members bring their own situations to the table and work on them over time with a community of practitioners facing similar challenges.

The Network provides a unique combination of training, community, and individual support to help you implement change:

• In-Depth Training. Monthly webinars examine methods of influence to help you be an effective change agent for your organization.
• Personalized Support. Your program host provides individual coaching to work through your immediate challenges.
• Community. In group calls and online discussion boards, participants have many opportunities to learn from each others’ experiences.

Because interaction and trust are key components of the program, the group is limited to 15 individual members.

Learning Topics

The working group focuses on three core areas to help members influence change: clarity and focus, personal influence and structural influence. Each topic includes training, group discussion and exercises. Occasional guest speakers round out the experience.

Resources

Upon registration, you will gain immediate access to our online community. Member profiles, session recordings and other valuable resources will be available throughout the program to members only.

The online tools also help you to learn and connect with a community of organization change practitioners through discussion boards and live chat.

Annual membership includes:

• 10 webinar training sessions
• 12 monthly group support calls.
• 3 hours of individual coaching (3-6 sessions).
• Year-round access to online resources.

Program Fee

Annual membership is $2495. Save $350 when you register by December 15, 2009.

Interested but not sure yet that this program is right for you? Please contact me and I will answer any questions you might have.

Do you feel like your change communication is:

Clinic Pricing:
The investment for the 2-session clinic is $149 per person, which also includes the Pinpoint Communication Workbook and companion PowerPoint templates.

Early Bird Special:

Attendees who register by Friday, September 4, 2009 pay $119 per person.

Previous webinar attendees on the Pinpoint Communication process said:

As change agents, we frequently Dance in the Moment (a term I learned a few years ago in the CTI coaching program).  While we work toward an envisioned future, we can only handle what is right in front of us, which is constantly shifting based on the reactions to the strategies we’re using to try to influence change.

If you think of the process of change as a dance, you realize it’s a partnership between two entities.  Even if you haven’t taken ballroom dancing classes (or watched Dancing With the Stars), you probably know that each person in the duo has a specific role:  leader and follower.

A few of the moves that the leader does to show the follower where to go are overt gestures that can be observed from the audience.  However, most of the time the follower just seems like she knows what to do next, even if the dance is not choreographed.  For the most part, the dance is a series of subtle nudges by the leader:  a tug of the hand, a slight pressure at the waist that indicate the steps and the direction to go next.

The follower, for her part, responds to the nudges with what she interprets as appropriate movements, and adds her own flair to the dance.  Sometimes the corresponding movements are what the leader intended, and sometimes they aren’t. Depending on the leader’s ability to react quickly, the result can be a seamless transition, or it could be a disastrous fall.  Either way, it is the role of the leader to make the follower look good.

It’s important to note that the dance doesn’t work at all without a third element:  the music.  The nudges by the leader mean nothing to the follower if there is no context, no framework that they share. The music tells the dancers if they are doing the Waltz or the Mambo.  They won’t get very far without stepping on toes if they are performing one of each.  The music also keeps them in step, moving together at the same time.

The analogies of the dance’s leader and follower to the subject of organizational change are obvious.  But the music might be a lot of things.  What do you think?

What role does music play in the dance of change?

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:

• Make your organization road-ready

The 30-page Change Starts Here Workbook walks you through four steps to clarify your organizational change initiative: assess the current state, define the future state, identify the gap between them, and determine the actions that will move the organization forward.

If you subscribed since then, just send me a note and I’ll send you a link to the workbook.  If you want a preview or more detail about the workbook, you can find it here.

As an internal change advocate for your organization, communication is one of the main tools you use to reach your goal and desired outcome.  Yet, we frequently see people who are responsible for implementing change who use communication in a haphazard fashion, without a solid plan.  The resulting hodgepodge of newsletters, posters and meetings tells a less-than-compelling story of change.

Use the following five-step process from the Pinpoint Communication Workbook to develop a comprehensive communication plan for your change initiative:

1.  Target Your Audience
Your change initiative is not one-size-fits-all.  Expectations vary for different groups when it comes to the new behaviors and attitudes that are required for success.  How you communicate to each group should vary accordingly.

Examples of the various ways you might slice and dice the organization are:

•    Organization level (executives vs middle management vs front line employees)
•    Region or geography
•    Department or function
•    Union vs. Non-Union
•    Internal vs. external stakeholders

The whole organization is also often considered to be an audience – it’s just not the only one.

2.  Craft Your Message
The content of your communication is the message you will deliver to the organization.  Organizational communication is made up of broad-based themes that help ensure consistency while maintaining flexibility to customize for each audience.

There are three phases of communicating a change initiative:  Entice, Educate, and Engage.

Entice
At first, you want to gain attention by making your message stand out from the myriad other inputs that employees deal with every day.  Pique your audience’s curiosity, and surprise them with the unexpected.

Educate
Once you have the attention of your audience, the next step is to inform and educate them about your initiative.  Let them know what it is and why the organization is doing it.

Engage
The next step to communication is to motivate the audience to take action with the information they’ve been given.  Tell them what you want them to do, how to do it, and what’s in it for them to participate.

3.  Select Your Media
Once you know what you want to communicate to your audience, the next step is to determine the means.  There are a variety of communication vehicles at your disposal, including in-person meetings, audio/visual methods, written messages and the internet.  Also, the messenger, the person who is delivering the message over the channel, is also important to consider.  For example, is it an email from the CEO, or a one-on-one conversation with a supervisor?

4.  Map Out Your Schedule
Arrange the details of your communication plan – the audiences, the messages and the media – into a manageable timetable that fits the project plan for your change initiative.  The plan should be a visual representation of communication over time that is easy to track.

5.  Monitor Your Effectiveness
The ultimate measure of change communication is the change itself.  The lagging indicators, then, are the metrics that show how well the message is received and whether change occurred.  Instead of waiting until the end of the project to see if communication worked, consider other leading indicators that show progress, like whether people are receiving the media and understanding the message.  Some examples include Traffic, Comprehension, and Retention.

Ultimately, the real goal of any communications plan is to make itself obsolete.  The best-case scenario is that managers and others start talking about the change without having to be a part of a plan, and that the desired changes become incorporated into the day-to-day operation of the company.  In order to get there, remember you must take deliberate steps to share the intended message with the appropriate audience using accessible, credible media in a manageable timetable.

If you like this approach, you might also like:

• Eight Fundamental Ingredients of a Successful Change Initiative
• The Pinpoint Communication Workbook

Of course, this doesn’t happen overnight.  And you can’t go straight from where you are now to where you want to be.  There has to be a journey.  The key is to not be sidetracked by the process of change.

Kurt Lewin (1890 – 1947) was the first to describe change as a 3-step process:

1. Unfreezing – dismantling the old way, creating a sense of urgency and a need to change
2. Changing – a period of transition, challenging the old way but not really knowing what the new way is
3. Freezing – a returning to a sense of normalcy and comfort, crystallizing the new way

A good example of this is in a case study I wrote called A Roundabout Path to Increasing Employee Suggestions – the roundabout part is exactly what I’m talking about here.

In the case, the three steps could be described like this:

1. Unfreezing – We started a steering committee separate from the executive team to collect and manage ideas.  We challenged the concept of paying for ideas.
2. Changing – The steering committee collected ideas, and was proactive in the response and tracking.  We started a weekly newsletter to keep idea-generation and problem solving at the forefront.  Idea submission levels increased dramatically.
3. Freezing – Managers started holding regular meetings with their direct reports to identify and discuss opportunities for improvement, and to brainstorm on ways to address the issues that came up.  The number of ideas, maintained by managers in a central database, increased even further.

If we had stopped with the centralized suggestion box as the final way for employees to submit suggestions, then we wouldn’t have followed through with the ultimate purpose of the change program:  to increase innovation, not because employees submitted more ideas, but because managers asked for and valued them, and involved their teams in solving business problems.

Bottom line:  It’s important to not get stuck in the change step, and keep in mind the final state and ultimate mindset change that you are going after.  Plan to make your change initiative obsolete.

Inquiry:  What will your organization look like when your initiative dissolves?

This post is also featured at Tenacious Tortoise.

Pinpoint Communication: Plan to Avoid Scattershot Change

Communication is one of the primary tools you will use to bring about change in your organization, and yet we frequently see communication used in a haphazard fashion.  The resulting hodgepodge of posters, newsletters and meetings yield a less-than-compelling story of change.

The workbook walks you though 5 Steps that build on each other.  By the end, you will have developed a complete communication plan, including a schedule and measures of success.

The Pinpoint Communication Kit includes not only the workbook, but also high-quality, presentation-ready MS PowerPoint templates.  Just complete the template with the information you developed in the workbook, and you’re ready to share with your organization.

This practical guide is truly something I wish I had back when I was an internal change agent.  I would have been much more organized and deliberate about how I used communication.  I’m excited that it might help you be more effective as you implement change in your organization.

For more information, a preview, and to purchase the workbook, templates or kit, visit www.enclaria.com/communication/.