Organizational transformation is a central issue for businesses today, and there is an abundance of literature on the subject in management books and magazines. However, nothing has changed insofar as it remains a preoccupation that we have to keep explaining, and about which we keep giving good practices, even though it should be part of the fundamentals of every executive and manager, a bit like knowing how to read, write and count.
I’ve been reading the same clichés on the subject for almost 30 years, but the same two thoughts come to mind every time.
The more things change, the less they change
The first is that it’s just common sense, the obvious, and that by repeating it over and over again without having anything to add, I end up finding it ” sugary “, to put it mildly. When you keep saying the same thing over and over again, and it continues to be a topic, it means that either you’re misleading (which isn’t the case) or you’re missing something.
The second is that it’s not even a subject that’s evolved so dramatically over the years that it requires a totally new approach, and maybe that’s part of the problem. I’m not reading much that’s new compared to the “change change” major I had when I was a student in the early 2000s. Yes, we’ve got new tools to support people, but the fundamentals remain the same. Just because footballs have been vastly improved over the last few decades doesn’t mean that the rules of the game have changed, just the way players learn to play with them and take advantage of them.
I was reading a Fast Company article entitled “Leading a Major company shakeup? This is how to succeed”, which only said the common-sense things everyone needs to know about the subject, and concluded that employee engagement was key in such a context. All common sense, even if the famous “change agents” have a major role to play, not only do businesses make little use of them and therefore find it hard to mobilize them (Why Change Agents have been very hard to recruit), but I think it’s time to move to an ” everyone is a change agent” approach. It’s this last point that brings me to a certain dimension of change programs.
Several months ago, I had already said how dusty I found the current approaches to change, particularly when they concern organization and operations (Change and transformation need a new approach), and here I’m going to come back and dig deeper into one of the dimensions I mentioned on that occasion.
Transformation: company vs. employee perspective
I have no quarrel with anything I read on the subject, it’s all valid, so if it doesn’t work or doesn’t work well, it’s because something is missing, and that something is employee orientation.
Depending on its size, a business usually runs several transformation programs at the same time. But even when they are different facets of an overall plan, and even worse when they have nothing to do with each other, they live their lives in silos, each in its own corner.
Each program manager thinks of his program and nothing else. He sees nothing else.
He thinks in terms of a beginning and an end. The program is therefore a state of temporary instability that interrupts the stability that is the norm.
He sees it, thinks it, manages it and communicates on it as such.
Perhaps, in some cases, the program is just a first step, to be followed a little later by another, of which it is the necessary precondition, but the same logic will be applied. With the same people in charge, or not.
Now let’s put ourselves in the employee’s shoes.
At any given moment, they are often affected by not one, but several programs, with different start and end dates and durations. The unstable state of the business therefore lasts longer for him than for the people in charge of each program.
And I’m not even talking about whether deadlines are met or whether things drag on.
Secondly, it’s not uncommon for one program to be followed by another, whether in the same field or not.
So, from the employee’s point of view, change is not a state of temporary instability before a new period of stability, it’s a quasi-permanent state, and stability is rare.
What are the consequences?
Dissonant visions create misunderstanding and frustration
When you say “it’s only temporary, but then things will calm down”, and you know that things are going to rock for a long time, or even indefinitely, how do you think employees react?
First of all, by a lack of engagement. The famous “it’s always the same story, we’re told the same things and it ends up the same way”.
Then, sometimes, there’s a loss of confidence and, eventually, mistrust. When someone paints you a picture of a situation that isn’t the one you’re experiencing, there are two possibilities: either the person doesn’t understand reality (and so loses your trust), or they’re lying to you with full knowledge of the facts (and then you fall into mistrust).
A divide that could be avoided: on the one hand, you know but pretend you don’t, usually so as not to frighten people, and on the other, you know and are surprised that it’s not being said, and that’s frightening.
It couldn’t be more counterproductive.
A VUCA world? But for whom?
I remember that the acronym VUCA was used in the late 2000s to evoke and justify the digital transformations that were now inevitable (it seems to have gone out of fashion, even though it has never been so relevant).
VUCA stands for : Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity.
Translation: the world moves permanently, unpredictably and incomprehensibly, and that’s its nature. I leave it to you to draw the appropriate conclusions in terms of transformation management.
But who were we talking to? To leaders, of course, who needed to become aware of this new paradigm in order to make the necessary decisions and change their approach.
Why wasn’t it being used to make employees aware of permanent change? I was given three answers.
1°) We don’t give a damn about employees; what we want is for decision-makers to decide, and the rest will follow willingly or unwillingly.
2°) Employees are experiencing this on the ground, they’ve understood, they’re demanding. It’s the leaders who are immobilists and have a conservative attitude to change, innovation, experimentation etc. who need to open their eyes.
3°) We mustn’t scare employees, because they’re not capable of understanding or proposing solutions, and we prefer to keep them in the comfort of a world that would be stable.
All three were right: the first came from external parties in a logic of commercial conviction, the second because it’s true, and the third because it reflects a vision of a strict separation between those who know and those who don’t, which still persists in far too many places and prevails in many approaches to transformation.
So when we have to deal with employees whose perception is that we’re neglecting their understanding of what’s going on, that we’re not judging them to be mature enough to face up to reality and, in fine, that we’re hiding a known truth from them, we’re going in the opposite direction to what transformation requires today:
– Co-constructed as much as possible, rather than vertical and without listening.
– Agile rather than with a tunnel effect.
– Based on continuous change (A New Model for Continuous Transformation) and gradual rather than big bangs (which ties in with the previous point).
– Solving employees’ real problems, rather than asking them to make an effort to deal only with problems that are not their own.
However, this employee-oriented approach to transformation can only be possible on one condition for businesses: a change of posture and a discourse of truth that shows the disappearance of a form of condescension towards employees.
What businesses never tell their employees
In the past, I’ve had to radically transform an organization: structure, roles, processes, managerial approach, in a turbulent context to say the least. All under time pressure, of course.
My idea was to involve the people concerned in translating my target vision into organizational and operational terms (they arrived at more or less the same things as me, but it had the merit of coming partly from them in this case) and in the concrete implementation of the transformation (which is why they had to buy into the initiatives by being involved upstream). (Improving a team’ s work: a story of continuous improvement).
It was explained to me that this was impossible, but as I felt that the opposite method was doomed to failure, I tried it anyway. Betting on people’s common sense works more often than you think.
The stumbling block? “If you tell them the truth, you’ll scare them off”. Really.
“You know the internal and external context but more generally the need for adaptability vital to any business.
We have a lot of things to change, and in depth.
There won’t be just one transformation, but several.
I’m not going to sell you the idea of a difficult period to get through, because that’s not true.
I’ll give you the starting date: now.
I won’t give you an estimated end date, because there isn’t one. We need to make change a permanent obsession. It’ll start with a big transformation, but once we’re up to speed, it’ll be nothing but constant adjustments. But forget stability.
On the other hand, we’re going to start like this (see above and other articles quoted) and we’re going to do it together, starting with your problems (which were the consequences of the things you wanted to change).
What do you think?
The answer was simple:
“For once, we’re told the things we already know, and we don’t find out overnight that a plan has fallen out of the sky…
Shall we get started right away? “.
QED.
We can talk about the method, the approach, but before that what, in my opinion, was the key to success was simply to kill the presuppositions of transformation programs and change management.
– Change is not the exception but the rule, it’s all the time. There is a beginning, but no end. Kurt Levin’s principles, inherited from the 50s and still at work, need to be thrown out. It’s no longer “unfreeze – change – freeze” but “unfreeze – change – keep changing”.
–Stability doesn’t exist anymore and won’t come back.
– If we think of change as a continuous process, it will be as gentle and gradual as possible, otherwise it will be violent jolts.
– Change is no longer planned for the long term, but is (co)constructed in an agile way.
– The first to pay the price of immobility are the people on the ground… who we need to move forward.
– The closer they are to the field, the more aware they become of the pressure of an unstable environment, changing customer expectations, evolving competition… they don’t always understand the causes, the extent or the profound implications, but they are the first to experience and suffer the consequences.
– You don’t embark people on a process of change by ignoring them or by being condescending. It’s not us vs. them, but us together, in trust and transparency (as far as possible).
Bottom line
The difficulties encountered by transformation programs are largely due to their lack of employee orientation, favoring a self-centered vision of the business that sees them as subjects rather than partners.
And all this starts with a clear message about the need for transformation and its paradigm. Businesses don’t do themselves any favors if they think they can keep their employees under the illusion that stability and status quo can exist.
