SEVEN

What Change Will Bring

STEP 2. Envision the Future State

All of us have it in us to be visionaries. We think it’s just a few people—Steve Jobs, say, or Nelson Mandela, or Marie Curie. But everyone has the capacity to envision futures that don’t yet exist. We do it starting when we’re little kids and we want a bike for our birthday or a special superhero party. We see it clearly: how it will look and feel, how our friends will react, how excited we’ll be—how the cake will taste or how the wind will feel in our face as we ride down the street on our cool new bike. This is visioning.

The problem is, as grown-ups we often stop ourselves from doing this kind of visioning—it doesn’t seem realistic, or we get caught in focusing on what could get in the way, or we think it’s someone else’s job to vision. However, if you’re leading a change, this is the perfect time to dust off and reengage your inborn visioning capacity. When confronted with change, most people need to be helped to see the changed future, and to see it in a way that helps them understand that future could be easy and rewarding—and even normal. In this second step of the change model, I’ll talk you through how to envision what your organization will be like when the change you’re envisioning has been made, and also to agree on ways to measure whether or not that future will represent a successful change (Figure 9).

FIGURE 9. The five-step change model: STEP 2

Our first goal in Step 2 is to clarify the scope of the change. We talked quite a bit in Chapter 6 about acknowledging what will change as well as what will stay the same—and achieving this first goal really nails that down. Until you know the scope of what you’re planning to change, it’s difficult to create a shared picture of success, which is the second goal of this step. This is where your visioning capability comes into play. Next, you’ll get specific about what you’re hoping the change will accomplish; you’ll establish key measures of success—agreeing on what you’ll measure to indicate that your change is accomplishing what you hope it will (specific financial or customer satisfaction targets, for instance). This will prepare you well for Step 3 (covered in Chapter 8), where you pull together the change team and plan how to make the change.

——————GOAL #1——————

Clarify the Scope of the Change

Leaders

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen organizations embark on major change initiatives without getting clear about what will change and what won’t change. This is a sure route to unhappiness, wasted time and money, and perhaps outright failure. Let’s say, for instance, a commercial real estate company decides they’re going to refresh their branding but doesn’t do the necessary work on scope. They work with a branding agency, and come up with updated messaging for clients, as well as a fresh color palette, logo, and tagline. While the marketing folks are happily updating the website with the modern look and messaging, they start getting panicked messages from the field. “What about all the printed materials we have for clients and customers in the outlying offices—should we keep using them, or throw them out and wait for the new stuff? There will be new stuff, right?” And: “Our RVP in Denver just did a radio interview, and she was saying things that are really representative of the old brand—should we pull it off the air?” And: “You know the three thousand swag bags we had made for the national sales conference in Atlanta this month with the old branding . . . should we still give those out to the salespeople . . . or?” And so on.

Deliverables

The easiest way to take a first pass at scope is to define the “deliverables” of the change—that is, the actual tangible outputs of the change effort. It’s often very helpful to define related areas that won’t be affected by the change—or won’t be affected till future phases of the change. To help you and your team think as clearly as possible about this, you might want to divide your focus as follows:

•   Core deliverables. These are the plans, materials, technology, structures, or processes essential to making the change itself—to achieving the agreed-upon goals for the change.

•   Related deliverables. These refer to the plans, materials, technology, structures, or processes necessary to roll out the change to the organization.

•   Out-of-scope deliverables. These are the plans, materials, technology, structures, or processes that won’t be included in the change, at least in this phase.

So, in our branding example, here’s the initial list the senior marketing team could have made as they moved through this part of Step 2 in preparing for their change:

CORE DELIVERABLES

•   A branding package to include brand promise and attributes; core messaging for each of our four customer segments; new logo and complete style guide.

•   Talking points explaining the change for all our executives and managers.

•   A revised website to reflect the new branding in look and content.

RELATED DELIVERABLES

•   A communications plan for rolling out the new branding internally and externally.

•   A phased plan for revising all electronic uses of the brand throughout the organization (to include logos to media outlets, sales decks, fact sheets, proposal templates, and email signatures).

•   A phased plan for replacing all physical uses of the brand throughout the organization (printed sales sheets and brochures, office logos, leave-behinds and giveaways).

OUT-OF-SCOPE DELIVERABLES

•   All existing stocks of physical uses of the brand will remain, and be used until the new ones are delivered.

•   No company signage still remaining in any of the properties we’ve already sold will change.

•   Our sister company is not changing its branding to align with ours (we’re expecting that change will happen next year).

•   Our sales models and compensation will remain the same.

When you think and talk through these lists with the other leaders focused on the change, you may find that you’re not sure whether something should be in or out of scope. This is a great place to use the FIT sorting screen: think about how feasible a deliverable is, how impactful to the success of the change, and how timely—whether it can be done without first doing other things, and whether it should be done now to take advantage of some opportunity in the environment. Consider the deliverables lists you make at this point to be your first pass. You’ll continue to gain clarity about what will and won’t be involved in the change throughout Step 3, but having some initial clarity will be enormously helpful as you move through the remaining goals of this step.

Individuals

As you think through and define the scope of the change, you’ll get a clearer picture of who in your organization will be most impacted by the change, and who will be less impacted or perhaps not impacted at all. It may be wise to bring some of the more influential folks who will be most impacted by the change into the tent if you haven’t already done so, to let them know about the change. These people will generally ask great questions about what the change will involve—questions you may not have thought about or even be aware of, because they are closer to the work the change will affect than you are.

For instance, a salesperson might ask, “How will this affect customers who have become real advocates for us and who recommend us to friends and business associates? They talk about us in ways that they find compelling but are more a reflection of the old brand.” That conversation would make you think about the possibility of including the deliverable of providing salespeople with guidance for explaining the new branding to customers who are brand advocates, deciding whether it’s a feasible, impactful, and timely part of making the change successful.

Organization

Thinking about scope will give you a clearer sense of how the systems, structures, and culture of your organization may support the change—and how they might get in the way. For example, as our commercial real estate friends consider the deliverable of “a phased plan for revising all electronic uses of the brand throughout the organization (to include logos to media outlets, sales decks, fact sheets, proposal templates, and email signatures),” they might realize that they don’t even have a good organizationwide process for making sure that everyone is using the same version of the company branding electronically. Furthermore, they may discover that people in various parts of the organization are currently using different versions. They may decide that addressing this underlying organizational problem is feasible, impactful, and timely, so they add it to the core deliverable list: “Establish an agreed-upon process for assuring that everyone in the organization has access to only the most current version of the company branding electronically.”

This is a great example of what we were talking about in Chapter 4—how the organization itself can support or impede change—and it’s one of the key reasons that making any major change will most often be more complex and more time-consuming than is initially anticipated. Remembering this will help make sure that you, as a leader of change, don’t make unrealistic promises about speed or simplicity.

——————GOAL #2——————

Create a Shared Picture of Success

Leaders

This is where you tap into your farsighted leader attribute. Remember, one of the most difficult things about change for most people is that it is “the unknown.” And as we discussed earlier, fear of the unknown is deep and abiding—when we don’t know what’s coming, we don’t know if we’ll be able to come to homeostasis (“to maintain fairly stable conditions necessary for survival”) in that future state. Creating a shared picture of the future after the change has occurred is a simple, powerful way to begin to make the effects of the change “known.” And something that is known much more easily translates into the possibility of easy, rewarding, and—most important—normal.

The other important benefit of creating a picture of success that’s shared by the group contemplating the change is that if you are all on basically the same page about where you’re headed, you’re less likely to confuse others as you start building the broader change coalition in Step 3. The “how” is something you’ve already heard about; you may remember I outlined in Chapter 4 an approach that farsighted leaders can use to guide others through the proposed change part of their change arc. Completing this goal is an opportunity for you to try out this approach and engage your innate visioning capability.²⁴ Here are some tips for envisioning the postchange state:

1. Select a time frame. We are time-bound creatures, so it’s easiest for us to envision how something will be different at a certain point in time. We tend to do it automatically when we’re thinking of our own hopes and dreams (“When I finish graduate school . . . ,” “After the baby’s born . . . ,” “Next summer, when we’re at the lake . . .”). By this point, having thought through risks and rewards and taken an initial pass at the deliverables, you probably have a fairly realistic idea of how long the changes you’re considering will take. Pick a point in time when you and the rest of the leadership team believe the change will have been largely implemented.

2. Imagine yourself in that future. This is where you and your colleagues “get in a time machine”—and get out on the date you’ve selected above. On this future date, you’ve made the change(s) and the organization is now operating in the new ways enabled by that change. It’s important to let your imagination do its job and “put you” in this future time. Your imagination might also be informed by having talked with others who have already made the change you’re envisioning. (You might have had these conversations during Step 1, when you were gathering information and stories to craft the case for change.)

3. Describe what success looks and feels like. When you feel grounded in this postchange future, imagine that you’re about to celebrate with your colleagues all that you’ve been able to accomplish through this change. What’s happening at this future point in time that’s different? What’s still the same? How are people feeling about the change, and how are your clients and other stakeholders seeing your organization? Are you doing things more efficiently or more effectively than before? Write down your thoughts as they occur to you.

4. Select the key elements. If you’re working with a group, we suggest having every person select their four to five top ideas: those that are most important to them about this postchange future they’ve envisioned. Then you can all share your top items and look for commonalities and themes. Generally, you’ll be able to group what you’ve envisioned into three to five simple statements of “what will be true after the change” that will become your shared picture of success.

Individuals

Once you’ve created this vision of success—your handful of simple statements about what will be true—it’s very helpful to try it out on some employees who aren’t on the leadership team, ideally folks you’ve already told about the change, so they have some context and have probably already started moving through their own mental and emotional change arc. Be sure to choose people you believe will be honest with you about their reactions, who will be able to be thoughtful and articulate about what works or doesn’t work for them in what you’ve said, and who will be discreet if you ask them to keep the change to themselves for now.

Share your vision without trying to sell or persuade. Simply note their immediate reaction, because it will contain critical information for you. If they seem confused, for instance, it means that no matter how clear your vision may seem to you and your colleagues, it’s not clear to these other folks. You can ask what doesn’t make sense to them and try out different ways of saying those parts of it until it clicks for them. Alternatively, they may seem unimpressed or even worried about what you’ve said. That means that what feels like success to you and the team somehow isn’t coming across as positive to them. Again, ask what doesn’t resonate, or what’s concerning, and find out what would feel like success to them. In other words, if the reaction you get isn’t some version of “Yeah, that sounds good,” you and the rest of the team need to go back to the drawing board. After all, the point is to come up with a shared picture of success that will resonate with and motivate the whole organization.

Organization

By now, you should be fairly clear on how the systems, structures, and culture of your organization are likely to support or impede the changes you’re considering. Just make sure that the shared picture of success you’ve envisioned is realistic, given where you’re starting from organizationally: you want it to be a reasonable aspiration. For instance, if you know that your change requires making fundamental alterations in the technology you use to support transactions before you can begin to implement your new customer service approach—don’t envision a future three months from now where everything is happening in the new way and customers are thrilled. No one will believe you, and when it doesn’t happen, you will simply have justified their lack of trust (further eroding credibility and making change feel difficult and costly).

I’m not suggesting that you let organizational impediments stop you from making needed changes, but you do need to acknowledge the time and complexity they may add when envisioning your hoped-for future.

Let’s check in with the senior team at Moment Jewelry:

The Moment leadership team is gathered in the conference room, some around the table and a few—Rajiv, James, and Carolyn—sitting on the couch next to the door. Damian, Steven, and Gina are reading through the “scope” document together. Rachel is at the flipchart, writing up the group’s four agreed-upon vision statements about what will be true postchange.

Jade is simply observing her colleagues in the moments before Rachel calls everyone’s attention to the flipchart for a final vetting of their envisioned future. There’s a quiet excitement, a hopefulness among them that wasn’t there even a few weeks earlier. She thinks to herself, “We’re all mostly through the mindset shift part of the change arc”—and then she smiles, realizing how much a part of her these models have become.

“Okay, everybody,” Rachel says, and people turn toward the front of the room. “You’ve done an excellent job, I think, at clarifying the scope of the change. The deliverables list will almost certainly evolve as we get further into the change, but you’ve made a great start. And, based on that, we came up with our four core vision statements—your hoped-for future for Moment postchange—and you’ve tested them on some folks in the organization whose perceptions you trust, and who you think will be part of the change team. We’ve revised them based on the feedback you got. Is that a pretty accurate summary of where we are?”

Rachel pauses and looks around the room; everyone signals their agreement. “Great. Let’s review our vision elements in their revised form one last time to make sure we’re all in agreement that these are the main points we want to hit when talking about the future we’re trying to create with this change.”

She turns to the flipchart and reads:

Our customers find it equally easy and engaging to shop in-store, online, or both.

The systems and processes that support the buying experience are seamless across stores and platforms.

Many more potential customers are drawn to us through our social media presence.

Whenever and wherever customers interact with Moment, they experience our warm, personal customer service.

“So, is that the future we’re creating, with this change?” Rachel asks.

There’s a moment of silence, then everyone on the team either nods or says “yes.” Some are smiling and some look a little solemn, but Jade can tell that everyone is taking this seriously.

Rachel grins. Dan says, “This is kind of exciting,” and everyone starts to talk at once, with some random laughing and clapping thrown in.

Rachel lets it roll for a few minutes, and then says, “All right, team—now let’s focus on quantifying our vision—establishing our measures of success. Rajiv, I know you’ve been working on some measures you want to propose for tracking ease of online use and ease of transferring a transaction between in-store and online, and Steven, you wanted to propose some indicators for the success of the financial system transition. Rajiv, you want to start?”

Now that they’ve gotten to this point, Jade realizes she’s no longer impatient. She knows the bulk of the work is still ahead of them—planning and executing the actual change, supporting the organization through the transition—but somehow, having built this foundation, she’s confident this will happen and happen well. She listens as Rajiv outlines his proposal for “success measures” in the digital part of Moment’s transformation.

——————GOAL #3——————

Establish Key Measures of Success

Leaders

For many groups this goal of Step 2 is where the change starts to feel real: you’ve listed deliverables, and you’ve articulated (and agreed to) a picture of the future you want to achieve, and now you’re talking about how you’ll measure success. To put it in the frame of the change arc, this is the point where the leadership team has—as Jade noted—mostly made the necessary mindset shift and is starting to contemplate the new behaviors that will be required to make the change, and how to assess whether those behaviors will make the hoped-for improvements.

The leaders at Moment are approaching this goal in the best possible way. For each of their vision statements, they’ve assigned the person whose function will be most impacted by the change in that area to propose measures of success. This is a sensible approach: that person and the folks on their team will have the most insight into what it’s going to require to make that part of the change happen, and they will probably know what tools will best measure the outcomes in their area—and they may already be using some of them.

In addition to taking advantage of the already existing expertise on the team to determine the measures of success, the other important element to consider here is the ever-useful FIT screen. For some companies, especially those that are very metrics-driven, there will be a temptation to choose too many measures, or to choose indicators that are too difficult or cumbersome to measure (not feasible); that may not actually demonstrate whether the change has been successful (not impactful); or that won’t be helpful in the near term, but only after the change has been completed (not timely). As you work to choose how you’ll measure the success of your change, it’s best to think of your key measures as a dashboard. A dashboard doesn’t tell you everything that’s happening in your car—it just tells you the most critical things that affect your safety and the car’s performance. Here are some tried-and-true tips for establishing your “success measure” dashboard:

•   Leverage current practice. If you are already measuring outcomes that you believe will be affected by your change (level of customer satisfaction with online buying, for instance, or average speed of online transaction), don’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, agree to add that measure to your core dashboard by establishing realistic goals for improvement in the measure as a result of the change.

•   Don’t bog yourself down. Insofar as possible, avoid choosing metrics that will require lots of time or money to establish. You’re already committing yourself to a complex and time-consuming change process—don’t make it harder than it needs to be by adding cumbersome and as-yet-nonexistent measures.

•   Pick your shots. This may be the most important tip: pick just a few key measures—one or at most two for each of your vision statements—that are as feasible, impactful, and timely as possible. Having four to seven FIT measures that you track consistently to determine the success of your change efforts will feel helpful. Having many more than that will quickly feel overwhelming and confusing.

•   Set a baseline. When you’ve decided what your measures of success are, be sure to establish and agree on where you’re starting from with each of them. This will be essential when you get to the point of “monitoring and reporting progress” in Step 5 of the change model.

Individuals

By this point in the change process, each leader has probably brought a few key people into the tent regarding this change and is relying on them for feedback and insights. Involving those folks in this effort to quantify success is especially important. They may have insights into available measurement tools that you don’t have, and they will probably be a great source of information about feasibility and impact. Collaborating with your folks in this way will also help you start to think ahead to the next step, where you and your leadership colleagues will build the change team. Those staff members who seem to be most open to, clear on, and enthusiastic about the change—that is, those who are moving quickly through their own change arc—and who seem to have a positive impact on their colleagues relative to the change, may be ideal members of the change team.

Remember, part of coming to see a change as “normal” involves believing that “people who I admire, and people who are like me do this.” So, keep your eye out for folks on your team who already seem to be seeing the change as something that could be easier, more rewarding, and more normal—and who can help others to see it that way, too.

Organization

Sadly, this is a place where process problems may become glaringly obvious. If your organization isn’t set up to measure progress on the change in a consistent and meaningful way, you will have to address that lack first—and you’ll have to make that a part of your change plan. The good news is that building processes for measuring success will serve you permanently by making your organization more change-capable long-term.

You may also find that there’s a corollary cultural change that needs to be made in order to implement these measures, once you’ve chosen them. For example, if your organization prides itself on being a seat-of-the-pants kind of place (i.e., “We don’t do all that corporate measurement stuff—we just know what needs to be done and we do it”), the idea of using data to measure success might be culturally jarring. In Step 3 of the change model, when we discuss the goal of “assessing organizational readiness,” we’ll explore how to test your current culture for alignment with the change—and we’ll talk about making necessary cultural shifts part of the change plan.