Mr. Van Slyke

Human Resources, Recruitment & Training

Beyond Platitudes: 5 Tools for Driving Real Change

By Erik Van Slyke, Founding Partner, Solleva Group

To go beyond platitudes and achieve the operational benefits of broader behavioral change, project leaders can apply five tools that will enable project teams to more rapidly identify adaptive solutions and create more comprehensive success.

Leading change is hard no matter how much experience a change manager brings to the table. Managing change in the hospitality sector is especially challenging because the close interactions and relationships between employees and managers adds complexity that requires extra attention to sustain performance during the transition. Successful change leaders have learned that to achieve desired success, they must use adaptive capability to more effectively work through these project challenges.

Countless studies across a range of organizations have reported that change fails at an alarming rate:

• Researchers at the Ken Blanchard Companies report that 70% of change initiatives fail or get derailed (includes projects such as implementing new technology, rebranding after an acquisition, and launching new customer service programs, among others)
• The PricewaterhouseCoopers survey on Current Program and Project Management Practices found that 50% of all change initiatives fail based on measures of customer satisfaction, business value, schedules, budgets, and quality, among other factors
• The Standish Group’s Chaos Report reports 44% of projects are challenged (late, over budget, and/or less-than-expected results) and 24% fail (cancelled prior to completion)
• A survey by CIO magazine reports that 62% of IT projects fail to meet their schedules, 49% suffer budget overruns, and 41% fail to deliver business value.

Even when there is a formal plan to manage the human side of change, efforts can fall short. Organizations may “complete the project,” but often miss opportunities for broader operational improvement and customer satisfaction. This point was underscored in a conversation with Margaret, a human resources executive for an international hotelier and the project sponsor for an HR technology implementation. The project was over budget, behind schedule and receiving poor reviews from executives, line managers, and employees.

“We started this implementation using a well-established change methodology and built a plan we thought would support the project. We were really caught off guard, however, by the volume of issues that came up that were not directly related to the project. Many of them were more about organizational politics than the technology. And since we thought those things were out of our control, we just put our heads down, focused on the immediate scope and executed our plan. By not knowing how to get underneath the issues, and prioritize and identify solutions, we limited our impact and the problems just kept growing.”

The difficulty managing change may lie less in the effectiveness of any formal methodology or approach, and more in the challenge of using rational and uniform tactics to manage the irrational and unpredictable elements of human behavior. The human brain is hard-wired to resist, if not fear change. As a result, the tools of logic and reason are ineffective without first creating ways of managing emotions.

But that can get sticky. Individuals express different points of view, defend turf, or reveal competing agendas. Sometimes, to create the best outcome, we need to interact with and get buy-in from the project’s biggest detractors. That can be an emotional process for everyone involved, create delays, and without the right approach, leave conflicts unresolved.

As Frank Lloyd Wright once said about architecture, “the architect’s most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking bar at the site.” So, too, with managing change, the most useful tools are those that help you learn and adapt once the project begins.

In order to understand and manage human emotions and behavior surrounding a project, change leaders can apply five tools that will enable project teams to more rapidly identify adaptive solutions and create more comprehensive success.

1. A Balcony Perspective. A balcony perspective is about staying strategic, lifting your eyes out of the details and keeping the larger organization objectives in mind. The tendency on a project is to stay right in the front row, focusing on the task at hand, and to solve the immediate problem. As a result, it is easy for project leaders to lose perspective as they focus only on the immediate challenges. But every change initiative must fit within a larger context—the business, culture, and operations of the organization. When you focus only on solving a specific project-related problem, you may fail to see that the best solutions come from understanding the relationship between problems. A balcony perspective helps maintain this perspective.

2. Listening. Listening may seem obvious, but with the pressure of timelines and deliverables, and the drive to create results, it’s often a tool that stays on the shelf. Change leaders sometimes see listening as unnecessary because they have heard it before and because it interferes with the task at hand. Especially during the heat of a project, it can be challenging to go beyond the words people say to hear the real meaning behind the words—needs, interests, and goals.
   
   For example, when a work stream leader in a recent project said that the technology solution needed to be modified, listening helped discover that it did not need tailoring after all. Instead, listening helped identify that his boss, a division VP, had developed the previous tool and did not want any new tool deployed. After the technical team spent two months making futile modifications, listening helped them realize that project leadership had a very different problem to solve: Getting the division VP to support the new solution.
   
   Listening helps clarify the technical issues, but more importantly it helps uncover the emotional issues and motivations that drive behavior. By establishing mechanisms that enable listening during the course of the project, change leaders develop the understanding that helps prevent problems, manage them more rapidly when they occur and reduce emotional resistance along the way.

3. Honesty. Often the key to helping a project move forward is the ability to mention the unmentionables. Maybe the project is stalled by a leader that isn’t making a decision or by information that is not being shared by subject matter experts. It may be that project team members, while well-intentioned, don’t have the necessary skills and need help to do the work. Or it may be that someone’s role in the organization gives them an incomplete perspective or a strong feeling about a particular situation.
   
   Effective change leaders understand they must be aware of the way things really are and help project teams see and manage that reality. They also must clear away the “shoulds” and eliminate a project culture of denial and blame. Honesty is not about judgment, it is about objective observation. It helps project teams see the facts that are needed to plan and manage effectively. Any truth can be managed. It is the surprises that result from hiding truth that create delays, cost overruns, and ineffective solutions. Being honest helps change initiatives get to the truth faster, so project teams can adapt solutions to meet the contextual demands.

4. Tough Questions. Another tool that change leaders use to help projects move forward is the ability to ask tough questions. Successful adaptive leaders are not willing to take things at face value. They ask questions to make sure they have the proper perspective and are seeing project realities. Questions can seek knowledge, build comprehension, as well as analyze and evaluate situations. This helps uncover truth and gets underneath the surface to find the real problem. Questions also can be supportive and promote the understanding required for stronger working relationships.

5. Clarity. The final tool that enables adaptive is the ability to provide clarity. When a change leader provides a clear understanding the objectives and goals, project teams have the clarity to create the right solutions. When change leaders listen, ask tough questions and share truths, they help project teams sift through the noise and develop a clear understanding of the factors impacting the project. By providing a clear understanding of perspectives, a clear definition of issues, a clear vision of the future, and a clear idea of how the organization will get there, change leaders help project teams move beyond conflict toward understanding and collaborative problem solving.
   
   During a recent change planning workshop the program manager for the project threw her hands in the air with determination and said, “I get it! I get it! I get it! But I have to tell you, I feel nervous and excited. Every project I’ve ever done before examined the project context only. And when you started asking about our business goals, organization politics, the personalities of executives and how our department operated, I thought you were headed into dangerous territory. It was stuff we couldn’t control.
   
   “But now I see that by understanding the entire context–the project and how the project fits into the overall organization–we are better prepared to manage the unknown. I’m nervous because I’ve never been this strategic before, but I’m excited because the broader perspective will finally help us do projects well.”

By applying these five adaptive tools, change leaders can make a profound impact on their ability to navigate the human aspects of change. They create a climate of understanding that helps get information on the table and accelerates the ability of project teams to identify adaptive solutions.

Erik Van Slyke is the founding partner of Solleva Group (www.solleva.com), experts at helping organizations plan for, implement, and manage outsourcing-driven change. With nearly two decades in consulting and HR leadership roles, his integrated approach helps business executives worldwide create, implement, and lead more effective organizational change, operational transformation and HR strategies. Regularly quoted on a variety of workplace and business strategy issues, Mr. Van Slyke’s just re-launched book, Listening to Conflict: Finding Constructive Solutions to Workplace Disputes (AMACOM Books), was named by Soundview Executive Book Summaries as one of the Top 30 business books of 1999. Mr. Van Slyke can be contacted at 609-460-4102 or erik.vanslyke@solleva.com Extended Bio...

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