NINE

Engaging the Whole Organization

STEP 4. Lead the Transition

This meeting feels like a celebration. Moment’s change plan has been turned into a detailed project schedule, and everyone can access it online. The key stakeholders who aren’t part of the change team have a buddy—and it looks like none of them are strongly against the change; the majority are at least moderately supportive. Jade has been a huge help with her dad, Dan, and her cousin James, who are now mostly on board.

Steven and Joy are doing some final clarification around the budget, but it looks as though the additional expense related to the change is going to be doable; it will cut into profit for the year, but the leadership team sees it as a necessary investment that will pay big dividends in future growth and profitability.

Rachel notices that everyone seems energized and hopeful except Gina, who is unusually quiet and looks worried and distracted. Rachel sits down beside her and asks gently, “What’s up—are you okay?”

Gina frowns and looks away. “I don’t want to be a buzzkill,” she says. Rachel waits for her to continue. “The plan is good,” Gina says. “We’re thinking about all the practical details of making the needed changes—and I think we’ll be able to do them . . . even though they’re major . . . ” She stops.

“But . . . ?” Rachel prompts.

“We haven’t thought about or planned for the employees and their reactions. I understand the change arc well enough now to know that everybody else at Moment is going to be starting at the beginning of their own arc—how are we going to help them go through the process that we’ve gone through?”

Rachel nods. “That’s the next step in the model, Gina—you’re not a buzzkill, you’re right on track. I’m just giving everyone a minute to bask in the glory of a completed change plan before we start talking about how to lead everyone through this transition.”

Gina looks relieved. “Oh, that’s right—you’ve said that throughout: Step 4, Leading the Transition. In all the focus on the change plan these last weeks, I kind of forgot that was part of our process. I was probably worried based on past experience. When I’ve been involved in big organizational changes in other companies, it was usually just ‘Here’s what’s happening—everybody get with the program.’”

“I bet I know how well that worked,” Rachel says.

Gina laughs. “Yeah, as the HR person, I always felt like a lone voice crying in the wilderness talking about the need to support people through the change.”

“No more,” Rachel says. “This time we’ll do it right.” Gina gives her a thumbs-up, and Rachel stands and gathers the group’s attention.

Based on broad research into organizational change efforts, McKinsey & Company notes that “70 percent of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support.”30 In other words, change fails not through lack of clear planning, due diligence, or proper funding, but because leaders and employees aren’t supported through the transition. As Proteus began our change practice in the early 2000s, this human side of change was the initial focus. We saw the same things McKinsey has found—that this human part of change was being almost universally neglected and overlooked, with dire results. Today, even though our work with clients has expanded to include every aspect of catalyzing needed change, we still start from the belief that successful change begins with everyone involved being supported to move through their change arc so they can behave differently and the change can occur and be sustained. Furthermore, we’ve seen that approaching change in this way has the highest likelihood of making people and their organizations more change-capable overall.

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FIGURE 16. The five-step change model: STEP 4

In Chapter 8, where we talked through Step 3 of the five-step change model, we focused primarily on preparing and planning for the change itself. In this chapter we focus on leading the people in the organization through their transition as you implement the change plan (Figure 16). Doing this step well is your best insurance against that 70 percent failure rate for change efforts. Step 4 answers the question, How will we ensure people transition successfully? You have four goals: to identify those most affected by the change; to clarify key “endings and beginnings” for those people (I’ll explain what we mean by that); to plan to accelerate the transition, to make the change as smooth and seamless as possible for those most affected; and to execute the change plan in coordination with the transition plan.

——————GOAL #1——————

Identify Those Most Affected by the Change

Leaders and Individuals

At this point, the change team will be deeply versed in the change itself. They know who will be doing what, and when, to make it happen; they’ll be deep into the tasks and timelines. To complete Step 4, they’ll need to step back from the details of the change plan for a bit to get a broader view. We often describe this as “pulling back the camera.” Let’s say you’re watching your favorite show, and there’s a close-up shot of someone’s closed eyes. You don’t know what it means: Is it someone we know? Are they asleep? Dead? Resting their eyes? Where are they?

Then the camera pans back, and we gradually see that it’s the main character, lying in a meadow, asleep, her clothes dirty and torn. The camera pans back more, and you see the city in the distance, which you know is her home, in flames with alien spaceships hovering over it. The further the camera pulls back, the more context you get, and the better able you are to understand the situation and see the important components. When you’re working on a large project—especially a change project, with its complex layers of effort and relationship—your focus can get very granular, like a camera pulled right into those closed eyes. And often that camera-pulled-in focus is appropriate, especially when you’re figuring out exactly what needs to be done at what point in order to make the change work. But then there are times when you need to pull back your mental camera so you can see the bigger picture.

Step 4 of the change model is one of those times. The change team steps back and looks at the change plan as a whole, given all the proposed deliverables, and decides who will be most affected by the change. This allows the change team to focus their transition support on those folks who are the most likely to need it. Given the human preference for homeostasis, it makes sense that the people in an organization most directly affected by a given change will generally have the hardest time moving through their own change arc around that change. They will see the change as a threat to their “normal” and will often be the first to focus on how the change will be difficult, costly, and weird . . . even before they know exactly what it is.

Figuring Out Who Will Be Most Affected

Identifying the groups most affected by your change is fairly straightforward. The main question to ask is simple: Whose daily work life will be most different as a result of the change? However, although it’s important to pull back the camera to make sure you’re thinking about the whole organization, it’s also important to be a fair witness as you’re doing that. It’s easy to dismiss the impact of the change on someone whose job you don’t do. For example, the change team at Moment might assume that the change won’t affect sales clerks in the store that much. Clerks will still be in stores welcoming and meeting the needs of customers as always, right?

Only partly right. When the change is in place, sales clerks will also need to be able to explain to customers who leave the store without buying that they can complete their purchase on Moment’s newly enhanced website, and why that benefits customers more than going to an online big box jewelry retailer to buy instead. They’ll also need to know how to support a customer who has found something they like online—perhaps as a result of the new social media marketing efforts—and who then comes into the store wanting to complete the purchase, maybe because they want to see how the piece looks and feels on them.

The changes will affect how the salespeople think, what they communicate, and how they do their job. This will require a new mind-set, knowledge, and skills . . . in other words, some pretty significant changes. Within the groups you identify as being affected, there may also be some individuals who are especially affected. It’s good to recognize that so you can focus on these folks particularly. For example, the managers of all the Moment stores will be supporting their staff through the changes as they go through those changes themselves. But the managers of two of the stores (the Danbury and Waterbury locations) will also be changing their financial system at the same time. Therefore these people will be even more deeply affected by the change.

Organization

When you’re thinking through who will be most affected by the change, take into account the organizational parameters of systems, structure, and culture. You may want to ask a second question, “underneath” the question I posed above, to tease out impacts you may not have recognized: Who will need to create or rely on different systems or processes, operate in a different structure, or behave in ways that will seem countercultural to them as a result of the change? Asking this question at Moment might make the change team realize that the staff accountants will be very much affected. Although their day-to-day job responsibilities won’t change much, these folks will be right at the heart of moving to and using a newly streamlined financial system that integrates the online component.

——————GOAL #2——————

Clarify Key Endings and Beginnings

Leaders

In this part of the change model, we’re indebted to the thinking and writing of the late William Bridges, whose seminal book Managing Transitions first proposed a distinction between “change” (which he described as a shift in an external event or situation, something that takes place) and “transition” (the process that people go through as they come to terms with the change).31 As you read that last sentence, you may realize that the change arc is all about that transition; it describes the process individuals need to go through before they can embrace a change and behave in the new ways the change will require.

Bridges was a psychologist who worked with individuals moving through significant life changes. He noticed that in order to move through what he called “transition” (and what we call the change arc), people would first have to let go of all the important things that would no longer be true for them after the change. He called this stage “endings.” Then, he noted, people need a little resting time, where they can stop and gather their resources in preparation for the new way of operating. He called this the “neutral zone.” After that, he explained, most people are ready to move on, to accept the new behaviors and mindset required by the change. He called this stage “beginnings” (Figure 17).

You can see how this transition model tracks with the change arc. During the “endings” stage, people are thinking through proposed change and are generally on the difficult, costly, and weird side of their mindset shift. During the neutral zone, people’s mindset is starting to shift but they’re not entirely there yet—they still need a little time. Finally, in “beginnings,” people are thinking and feeling that the change will be easy (doable), rewarding, and normal enough to move ahead, and they can start doing the new behaviors required—they’re mostly through their transition and the change can occur. Not only do these two models track with each other, there’s a very practical connection between them as well. As a leader, if you know the specific things that will be ending and beginning for each affected group when the change happens, you’ll have valuable insights into what they’re most likely to see as being difficult, costly, and weird about the change—and also what might seem to them to be easy (doable), rewarding, and normal about it. Knowing their endings and beginnings can help you better support them through their change arc.

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FIGURE 17. The change arc: Endings and beginnings

Here’s what I mean: Let’s go back to the earlier example of a manufacturing company changing the production process for its core product. The change team realizes that the most affected group will probably be the folks working on the production line. And they know that many of those employees will start out thinking that it’s going to be difficult, costly, and weird to make the change. But what exactly will they think is hard about it? What will they see as the costs? Why will they think it’s weird? Understanding what will be ending and beginning, specifically, for that group will help the change team to answer those questions and better plan to support them through their transition.

Production staff endings and beginnings. When the change team and some folks from the production staff brainstormed “endings” around this change, here are the first things they came up with (i.e., the things that production line staff would no longer do, have, or feel after the change):

•   Feeling confident in our ability to do our job.

•   Doing things the way we’ve always done them.

•   Having the needed skills to complete the process.

•   Doing every step in the process (no automation).

•   Speed of product through the line as our sole measure of success.

•   Only focusing on our part of the process—not teaming with shipping and quality.

Next, the group brainstormed what would be beginning for production staff, once the change has been implemented.

•   Joint ownership of the process.

•   New ways of measuring success.

•   A simpler, more efficient process.

•   New relationships with shipping and quality.

•   More time to work on custom orders (if we want).

•   Procedures that will increase our physical comfort.

Reading these lists, you can see how these endings and beginnings will inform the employees’ self-talk. These are the things their minds will be telling them are going to be difficult, costly, and weird or, conversely, easy (doable), rewarding, and normal about the change. Interestingly, a particular ending or beginning could end up on either side of someone’s mindset. For example, one employee might initially think that “joint ownership of the process” is hard and weird (“Oh no, we’re going to have to think more about quality, and talk to those oddballs in shipping”), while another might see it as rewarding (“I like collaborating with people, and it will be cool to have a broader view of the whole process”).

In either case, knowing the endings and beginnings for a particular group gives you important practical insight for creating a transition plan that will accelerate their movement through the change arc. It also helps you, as a leader, to understand the strong emotions that can be unleashed in people by change. When you realize that some of what’s ending for people might be the confidence in their ability to do their job, relationships they value, or the relevance of expertise they’ve spent years building—it’s easier to have empathy about how challenging it might be for them to go through the change. Which brings us to . . .

Individuals

When you’re clarifying endings and beginnings for an affected group, we strongly encourage you involve the people in that group. Even though the change team may have a few representatives from a particular group, they are probably fairly senior and will have already moved through their own change arc, so it may be difficult for them to get into the mindset of a mid-level or junior person newly confronted with the change. Even more important, by inviting people from the affected group to share how the change will impact them, you demonstrate your intention to be inclusive and honest about the change, and to listen and respond to their concerns. Finally, it will give you the real information you need to make an effective transition plan—one that will actually accelerate the change and help you to avoid falling into that dreaded 70 percent of change failures cited by McKinsey.

Here’s a “transition map” you can use with each group as you talk through their endings and beginnings with them (Figure 18). It includes some thought-starters, to help focus the group on the less obvious kinds of things that might be ending or beginning—relationships, identity, visibility, access to power, and so on. It’s easy (and often more comfortable) to focus only on the more tangible changes—job responsibilities, skills needed, ways of doing things—but if you can help people, both those affected and those doing the planning, see and acknowledge the more subtle and often more powerful beginnings and endings required by the change, you’ll be able to better plan to give people the real support they’ll need.

We’ve filled in the sample tool in Figure 18 with the information we discussed earlier, about the production line staff, so you can get a feeling for how the tool works.

Organization

Working with affected groups on identifying their endings and beginnings can shine a light on systems or processes that may need to be clarified or revised to support the change. For instance, regarding the changes that Moment is moving toward, one thing that will be ending for the store managers and staff is being able to see clearly which sales are “theirs,” since more sales will be happening online. This may mean that the change team will need to consider making a systemic change around tying incentives and rewards to overall company sales.

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FIGURE 18. Transition map: Key endings and beginnings

Looking at endings and beginnings often also provides important insights into company culture, especially if that culture has never been clearly defined. Remember our definition of culture is accepted behaviors and the beliefs and values that promote and reinforce them. Even if your company culture isn’t explicit, one still exists—there are accepted behaviors, undergirded by common beliefs and values, whether or not anybody has said them out loud. As people talk through what will be ending or beginning for them, you’ll be able to see whether they view those things as negative or positive. This can help you better understand your existing culture, and how you might have to address it in order to make the change easier for people.

For example, let’s say you are part of the change team for a company with four divisions that will now all be using the same sales pricing approach, rather than setting their own pricing guidelines. In talking through endings and beginnings, you might surface a theme of sales-people saying (with sadness) that their decision-making ability around pricing will be ending, and what will be beginning (perhaps said with a little resentment) is “following the rules.” If you didn’t already know it, this would be a pretty good indicator that a strong element of the culture—at least in the field sales organization—could be around independence. Knowing that is a value for people will help you think about how you may need to shift the culture—or frame the change within the existing culture, if you believe that culture is primarily positive—in order to facilitate these salespeople’s mindset shift around the change.

——————GOAL #3——————

Plan to Accelerate the Transition

Leaders

Now you have most of the pieces in your overall change puzzle. You know what’s changing and why, and what the future will look like when the change has been made. You’ve brought together the change team and built the detailed plan for implementing the change. You know which part of your employee population is going to be most affected by the change, and you’ve identified, along with them, what will be ending for them and what will be beginning. At this point, you’re ready to do what, quite frankly, most people don’t do when they make big changes to their organization: build a specific transition plan to help accelerate people, especially those most affected, through their transition around the change. In other words, you’re making a plan to best support the people in your organization through their own change arc as you execute your change plan.

Change Levers

I suspect you may remember learning about levers and pulleys at some point during your schooling—two simple machines that changed human history because of their role as force multipliers. With a pulley or a lever, you can do more work—and do it more efficiently. We’ve identified four approaches you can use as a leader in supporting people through their change arc. We call these approaches change levers, because they work to accelerate that movement and to make change easier and less painful for people. These change levers are:

•   Increase understanding

•   Clarify and reinforce priorities

•   Give control

•   Give support

In making a transition plan for your affected groups, once you know their endings and beginnings (and therefore what’s likely to seem difficult, costly, and weird to them), you can use these four levers as a frame for deciding the steps you’ll take. Here’s a bit more detail about each of the four levers.

Increase understanding. My dad used to have a cartoon posted on the bulletin board in our kitchen. It was a picture of a mushroom with a frustrated face. The caption read: “They must think I’m a mushroom. They keep me in the dark and feed me sh*t.” I suspect that’s how a lot of employees feel when big changes happen in their organizations. They may be told what to do, or what will change—but they’re often told very little about why, how, or what it will mean for them, nor are they offered any clear vision of the future toward which the change is moving the organization.

When you’re thinking about your most affected populations, and what will be ending for them, the more you can provide context and rationale for those endings, and the beginnings that will follow, the more likely these folks will be able to see how the endings and the beginnings could be easy (doable), rewarding, and normal. Take the example of the production line staff. One thing that will be ending is “doing things the way we’ve always done them”—which contains lots of other less-easy-to-acknowledge endings: “feeling superior to the newbies,” “being comfortable and confident,” and “feeling like an expert.” If you can increase the production staff’s understanding about why things are going to be done differently, and what it means for them—especially if you can focus on the whys and whats that will benefit them—you’ll be helping them to move more quickly through both the proposed change and mindset shift part of their change arc.

For instance, let’s suppose that the new production system will eliminate redundant steps the staff have been complaining about for years and will make the process more efficient overall. Further suppose that the system has been redesigned to take better advantage of their expertise—that is, steps that can be automated have been, so staff can spend more time focusing on the steps that actually require their skill and oversight. Sharing all of this with the production staff will start to answer their “what does it mean to me?” and “why the change?” questions. They’ll start to see how operating differently could actually be potentially easier and more rewarding—and even, eventually, normal.

Clarify and reinforce priorities. We make big changes in our companies to better position them to achieve their most important goals (one hopes), which means that in large change initiatives, most of the key priorities of the organization will remain the same. However, because people tend to be thrown off emotionally by change, it’s easy for them to assume that everything will be changing and that nothing will stay the same. Given that tendency, it’s hugely reassuring for people to know these fears aren’t true, that in fact many of their key priorities—the things they understand and are focused on completing—will stay the same. And knowing what won’t change also makes it easier to hear about what will change; people can better put any new or different priorities in context when they know the whole picture.

For the finance staff at Moment, for example, most of their priorities will stay the same: monthly and quarterly financial reporting packages; biweekly store-level reporting of forecast to budget; year-end close. And they’ll have two new priorities around things that are “beginning”: (1) supporting the integration of the Danbury and Waterbury store locations into the system that everyone else has been using, and (2) getting up to speed on the more streamlined order-to-cash-system with the integrated in-store/online purchase module, once it’s designed. Knowing the key endings and beginnings for an affected group will usually allow you to understand any new or changed priorities for that group. As I said, knowing that many of the priorities will stay the same in the “new world” is generally very reassuring to people—it soothes the “itch” for homeostasis and helps folks begin to see the change as less costly and difficult and more normal.

Give control. Perhaps the worst thing about organizational change for most people is that it feels like it’s happening to them, rather than with them or for them. When a change is imposed upon you without your consent, it’s easy to feel like a victim of that change. Therefore, finding ways to involve people in the decisions and actions that will most affect them during the change reduces feelings of resentment or self-protection and helps them move more easily through their change arc.

Interestingly, of the four levers, we’ve found that leaders tend to be most resistant to considering this one. They say things like, “The change is happening whether they like it or not—how can I give people control over it?” I often wonder if this isn’t just a way for leaders to express their own resentment about their lack of control over the change. Or perhaps it’s simply old-school leaders with authoritarian tendences thinking people should “just get with the program.” Whatever the reason for this resistance, we’ve found that once we talk through the situation, most leaders not only find ways to give people more control over how and even when the change will happen—they also start to see the benefits of doing so.

A few years ago, we were working with a US-based multinational company that had just acquired another company in the same industry, headquartered in Latin America, and was in the process of integrating the acquired company’s HR function. For the HR executive who had been the chief people officer (CPO) of the acquired company, a lot was ending. She had less decision-making power and less influence (she had reported to her CEO and was now reporting to the acquiring company’s CPO). She also knew that she could no longer run her HR function in ways that worked just for her employee base. She did acknowledge some very positive beginnings: that she could learn a lot from her new boss and colleagues—many of whom had a great deal of cutting-edge global HR experience—and that some of the larger company systems and processes were better than those she had been using. She especially liked the larger company’s HRIS system.

Her new boss gave her control in a variety of ways. He worked with her to come up with the timing for the transition to the new systems, and he asked her to create a communication plan for how and when she wanted to communicate the changes to her team. He also invited her to outline for him any LATAM-specific HR practices that she and her team would need to continue that weren’t part of the larger company’s HR processes. Giving her some elements of control in this way helped shift her mindset from negative to more supportive of the change; she began to focus on how to make the change easier and more rewarding for her team and for the rest of the acquired company’s employees.

Give support. By this point, you’re intimately acquainted with the change arc, so you know that when things change, people go through a lot of mental and emotional adjustment. The very worst thing you can do as a leader is to try to talk people out of what they’re feeling. By the time we as managers communicate a change to our people, we’ve generally had anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to go through our own change arc. Then we sometimes expect our employees, on first hearing, to be as accepting of the change from that first moment as we are after months of thought, questioning, and mindset shift! Give them a little time to be worried, to hesitate, to ask questions, to want to know the impact on them, even to be sad or anxious. Listen. Summarize their concerns and ask what you can do to address them. Rather than labeling it “resistance,” recognize they’re going through exactly the same process you went through: they need to understand and process proposed change and then move through their mindset shift about the change.

Another important way to give both support and control during a change is to involve the affected people, as I’ve recommended, in the transition planning itself. Invite them to think through their endings and beginnings, and to ask for things that would make it easier for themselves and their colleagues to make the needed changes. Simply including them in the core conversations—authentically, with real listening and dialogue—will feel hugely supportive and will go a long way toward disabusing them of the notion that they have no voice in the change. Finally, you can offer people very practical support based on their endings and beginnings. If what’s ending is the “old way of doing things,” make sure they have the skills, tools, and resources they’ll need to do things in the new way. If what’s beginning is “joint ownership for outcomes,” make sure that decision rights and processes around those outcomes are clearly defined, and that they know who to go to if some part of the new approach isn’t working.

Building the Transition Plan

Now you have the critical information and tools to build the transition plan that will support everyone in the organization through the change(s). Here are four additional things to keep in mind:

•   Build the transition plan into the change plan.

•   Have transition plan owners.

•   Focus on communication and removing impediments.

•   Remember those less affected.

Build the transition plan into the change plan. The things you’ll do to support people’s transition need to happen in sync with the change itself. For example, the change team at Moment has to make sure the transition plan for the finance staff coordinates with the tasks in the finance workstream. If the communication to the finance staff about the change and how it will affect them (based on an understanding of their endings and beginnings) doesn’t happen before they need to start learning how to operate differently, it will erode trust as well as create unnecessary confusion and negativity. Use the approach you’re already using for the change plan: make transition planning a workstream with deliverables and tasks. Moment’s change team decides that the deliverables in their transition plan workstream are “Finance staff ready and able to make the agreed-upon financial changes,” “In-store sales staff ready and willing to incorporate online sales marketing into their jobs,” and “All staff understand and accept the changes we’re making.”

By building the transition plan as part of the change plan, you’ll be able to see, when you get to building the transition plan tasks under the deliverables, if there are already tasks in the change plan that will support the transition plan. For instance, Steven has built in a series of meetings with the financial staff about streamlining the order-to-cash process. When he added them to the change plan, he intended for them to be nuts-and-bolts, focused on the process itself. Steven and the rest of the change team realize, as they’re building the transition plan, that the first two meetings of the series can be focused on helping his staff through their change arc, to move through proposed change and begin to make their mindset shift (and that he can help them do that by using what he now understands will be their endings and beginnings).

Have transition plan owners. Just like all the other workstreams in your change plan, the transition plan needs an overall owner and deliverable owners. I hope I’ve made it clear how central the transition plan is to your change—and it needs clarity about owners and outcomes in order to be successful. It often works best for the transition workstream owner to be your head of HR, since he or she will probably already be focused on the human impact of the change, but this isn’t always the best choice. There may be someone else on the change team who feels particularly passionate about this aspect of the change. Or the CPO may not have the bandwidth to own the transition plan, especially if he or she is owning other major workstreams, or if HR is a big part of what’s being changed.

In any case, the transition plan owner needs to be someone who deeply understands the change arc and the importance of supporting people through it, can help drive clarity about what people will need to support them through the change arc, and can communicate and coordinate well with all the other workstream owners. Consider making the deliverable owners for the transition plan those folks who own the analogous deliverables in the change plan. For example, Joy, who is Moment’s deliverable owner for the “Single financial system” deliverable volunteers to own the transition plan deliverable of “Finance staff ready and able to make the agreed-upon financial changes.” By doing both, Joy can easily make sure they’re in sync and build on each other.

Focus on communication and removing impediments. Remember, the transition plan consists of the steps you’ll take that will most help people to move through their change arc so the organization can successfully make the changes you’ve envisioned and planned. Most of the things you’ll do involve either communicating with the people affected or removing obstacles to their success. Increasing understanding is all about communicating: sharing with people the what, why, and how of the change; letting them know what the future will look like when the change is made; and using information, stories, and experience to help them see what the change will mean for them.

Clarifying and reinforcing priorities is all about communication, too—letting people know what’s staying the same, and sharing with them any endings and beginnings around priorities that are specific to them (e.g., new objectives or objectives that are no longer relevant). And the communication needs to be two-way—you need to invite their questions and concerns and respond to them in a way that continues to increase understanding (and give support).

Giving control is about both communication and removing impediments. In conversation with those affected, help them figure out ways they can make the change as easy, rewarding, and normal as possible for them and their teams. Agree on what decisions they can make about the how and when of the change, and how they’ll work with others to implement their decisions (and how they can give control to those who report to them).

Finally, giving support is primarily a matter of communication and removing impediments—but the communication here is largely “receiving” rather than “sending.” Listen to people’s concerns, take time to hear what they see as difficult, costly, or weird about the change. Ask them how they can address their own concerns, and what they need from you or others to address those concerns. Remove the impediments to change by providing needed tools, resources, or skill development. If people surface cultural, systemic, or process impediments to the change that you haven’t thought about, go back to the change team and see if those things need to be built into the change plan.

As you’re building out the tasks within the deliverables of your transition plan, check to see if most of what you’re planning involves two-way communication and removing impediments to change. If so, you’re on the right track.

Remember those less affected. We’ve spent a good deal of time in this chapter focusing on the folks in your organization who will be most affected by the changes. However, everyone in the organization will be affected to some extent—even if their jobs, their reporting relationships, and their interactions with others stay pretty much the same. They will still want to know what’s happening, and they can still get stuck in feeling (and saying) that the change will be difficult, costly, and weird if they don’t get any help to move through their change arc. That’s why one of Moment’s deliverables is “All staff understand and accept the changes we’re making.”

For the less-affected members of your organization, you don’t have to think too much about endings and beginnings, but it’s helpful to use the four change levers—increase understanding, clarify and reinforce priorities, give control, and give support—to help everyone move through their change arc. The Moment change team built a town hall meeting into their transition plan, and then twice-monthly video update meetings with Jade (as sponsor), Steven (as leader of the change team), and other members of the change team, leadership team, or stakeholders—depending on what would be most needed to be communicated at a given time. Staff could participate live or watch later. These meetings were helpful to everyone—both those most affected by the changes and everyone less personally impacted.

Individuals

Whenever possible, involve key individuals—stakeholders and those in the most affected groups—in creating the transition plans for their groups. The easiest way to do this is to build on their involvement in identifying endings and beginnings for their group. Once you have the “transition map” for a group, explain the change levers to them and have them brainstorm ideas for ways to increase understanding, clarify and reinforce priorities, give control, and give support that would be most useful (feasible, impactful, and timely) given this group’s endings and beginnings. These ideas will be hugely helpful to the change team as they work to build the transition plan. Once the transition plan is built, be sure to go back to the brainstorm group and let them know how helpful their input was and which of their ideas have been incorporated into the transition plan. Including people in this way will not only materially improve your planning—it also increases understanding and gives both control and support to those people, helping them through their change arc.

Organization

As when you’re building the change plan, be very attentive to systemic, structural, or cultural problems that your transition planning might reveal. One of our client companies had decided to give control to their district managers by having them create individual timelines for the communication of the change to their folks within a six-week period. However, they soon realized that because the district structure was unclear in regard to outside salespeople, one salesperson might be getting the message from two different managers at two different times. They decided to build clarifying that structure into the overall change plan, and at the same time they worked with the district managers to make sure their communication timelines were coordinated where necessary, while still giving them as much control as possible.

——————GOAL #4——————

Execute the Change and Transition Plans

Leaders

At this point, you may just want to lie down and take a rest. You’ve done a lot!

Sorry, this is where the most important work begins. You have a clear and connected plan for the change itself and for supporting people through the change, with owners and timelines. Now you need to do what you’ve said you were going to do. The change team is more important than ever as they turn from formulating the change to driving it. In Chapter 8 we noted that the first critical characteristic for a change team leader is to have a proven track record of getting important things done well. This is where that quality will get put to the test: the change leader needs to demonstrate that quality daily, and encourage, support, and reward it in every team member.

As you implement the change and transition plan, keep this in mind: use what you’ve built. Sometimes change teams can get so focused on implementing the plans they’ve made that they let go of all the associated (and necessary) mechanisms for supporting the change that they’ve put in place along the way. Continue to use the cadence of change team meetings that you built in Step 3 of the process. It’s the simplest and most effective way to do the other two things I’ll talk about in a bit (responding to reality and keeping in sync). Continue to take advantage of the positive and supportive relationships you’ve built with stakeholders and the senior team; I hope they’re included in some of the change and transition plan tactics, but in any case it’s important to simply keep them in the loop, especially when good things happen or when you need their help. In fact, you may want to build in some time to review these key connections, and how they’re being nurtured, into each change team meeting during implementation. Most important, continue to rely on the core skills and understanding you and your change colleagues have gained: remember the change arc; focus on endings and beginnings; use the change levers and information, stories, and experience; and take advantage of the power of recognizing and managing self-talk as a means to support people’s understanding and acceptance.

Respond to reality. In the timeless words of Robert Burns, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / gang aft agley.”32 No matter how excellent and complete your change and transition plans are, they will turn out to be somehow insufficient, inaccurate, and/or untenable. Any plan is a best guess, and the real world will always throw curve balls. Given this, make sure that the change team’s meetings during plan implementation aren’t set up to be self-congratulatory dog-and-pony shows. Instead, every deliverable owner should talk about what’s not working as well as what is working and offer or ask for alternatives when something goes offtrack or new obstacles arise. In other words, use your change-capability daily and weekly as you implement the plans. Notice when something isn’t working, and get clear about what needs to change, why, and what that will look like. Revise the plans as necessary to move forward—and be sure to think through how to support anyone affected by the change in plan.

Stay in sync. As the plans evolve and change, pull back the camera as a team to think through the dependencies and make associated adjustments as needed. It’s especially important to keep the transition plan and change plan in sync in this way, so that employees get the understanding, clarity about priorities, and support to succeed when they need it. For example, let’s say that in the production line change we’ve talked about, the new equipment to automate part of the process has been delayed and won’t be installed for another three months. The change team shifts the timing for all the related practical changes in the plan—teaching staff how to use the new machines, installation of the new receptacle at the point on the line where the new machine will be working on the parts. However, the team also needs to make associated changes to the transition plan, to build the communication about these timing shifts into the weekly staff meeting and to reschedule post-installation Q&A sessions.

Celebrate success. Executing a complex change and transition plan can feel like a long, tough slog at times. And the change team members can get pretty head-down into just making things happen and meeting their deadlines. Build some time for reflection, pride, and celebration into your change team meetings as a way to remind yourselves why you’re doing what you’re doing: that you are building a future that is actually easier, more rewarding, and that will become the new normal. It’s important to celebrate real successes around the change more broadly in the organization, which brings us to . . .

Individuals

At this point, everyone is involved. Generally, even those not deeply affected by the change will be aware that it’s happening. Much of your transition planning will focus on—as I noted earlier—communication to help people through their change arc, keep them focused on what’s important, and help them understand how to do the new behaviors once they’ve made their mindset shift. As with the change team, make sure that at least part of that communication focuses on real successes—the ways in which the efforts you’re all making are starting to pay off in terms of ease, reward, and normalcy. Remember to use information, stories, and experience in these communications: you can share data about improved customer satisfaction or lowered cycle times; have people tell their own stories about successes they’ve had or benefits they’ve reaped; invite people to share their own (positive) experiences of changed or newly available approaches, systems, or opportunities.

And don’t forget to listen carefully. As a driver of the change, you will hear, especially early on, a good deal of normal grumbling, negativity, and hesitation (that initial difficult, costly, weird mindset). I encourage you to give support by simply listening, acknowledging people’s concerns, and then asking them what they would suggest to address these concerns (giving both support and control). Generally speaking, as you listen and as you increase people’s understanding, clarify priorities, and provide the tools, skills, and experiences they need, you’ll observe their mindsets shifting. Folks will start to do the new behaviors that will make the change occur.

What if people won’t make the change? In any change effort, there will be some people who decide consciously that the new world isn’t for them. These people can be easy to spot because they’ll often be pretty straightforward about their discontent (e.g., “This isn’t what I signed up for”). You can work together with these folks to manage them out of the organization, or perhaps into a different job that’s not affected by the change. There will invariably be others who don’t make that clear decision for themselves, but who simply stay stuck in the difficult, costly, weird mindset. These people will spend a lot of their (and others’) time complaining about the change and talking about how it’s a bad idea. They may even do things to undermine the change or diminish the credibility of the change team members or others working to implement the change.

If these “stuck” people are valuable to the organization, give them added support to change by having an honest conversation with them about their endings and beginnings. Perhaps there are ways you could use the change levers to help them make the transition (e.g., offering information, stories, or experience to increase their understanding, making sure they understand how the change supports priorities that are important to them, giving them control over when or how they make the change, or simply providing them emotional or practical support). However, if they are still stuck after you’ve applied everything you’ve learned to help them through their change arc, it’s almost always best to let these folks go. If they stay in the organization, they will only be a force for negativity and doubt—and will make it harder for others to embrace and operate in the new reality.

A final note of caution: sometimes it’s easy to mistake genuine, useful feedback about something in the change process that’s not working for mere “stuckness.” There is a way to separate the two, however. When someone comes to you and says, in effect, “This change isn’t working and it’s a bad idea,” get curious. Respond with something like, “I’d like to understand more about what you’re observing.” Then ask, “What part of it isn’t working?” or “How is it a bad idea?” Listen really carefully—focus on understanding as opposed to responding or defending the change. If their response is additional generic negativity (e.g., “Nobody likes the new system,” or “The old way was working fine”), that’s a good indication they’re simply having a hard time moving out of their difficult, costly, weird mindset. In response, figure out how to increase their understanding, clarify priorities, or give control or support. If, however, their complaint is more specific and tangible (e.g., “I’ve had customers tell me this doesn’t work as well for them because X,” or “We keep getting error messages when we try to use the new screen”), then really listen and find out more. This may well be one of those “Gang aft agley” moments, when you’ll need to change the plan in order to respond to reality.

Organization

Most often, the places where reality will intrude rudely into your carefully-thought-through plans will be organizational: systemic, structural, or cultural. You’ll discover your HR information system doesn’t have the capability to support a performance review workstream that’s key to your revised performance management approach. Or the person in charge of building the new social media marketing plan will tell the change team that the marketing organizations in the various geographies are so differently organized that it’s hard to tell who should be responsible for what. Or when you begin to share with the salespeople the proposed shift to give more individual support to larger customers (and more programmatic, less personalized support to smaller customers), you run head-on into an unexpected but strongly held cultural value about “doing everything possible for every single customer.”

The more you involve stakeholders and employees in building the plans upfront, the fewer of these organizational stumbling blocks you’ll encounter during execution. Instead, you’ll hear about the key problems early enough to build in responses to them. But it’s impossible to foresee everything. We’ll talk more in Step 5 (covered in Chapter 10) about how to address these kinds of organizational impediments for the long-term, but for now, while you’re executing the plan, you’ll have to do a kind of triage. When you run into unanticipated systemic, structural, or cultural obstacles to the change, you can use the FIT sorting screen to decide which ones to address. Ask yourself whether it’s feasible to address the obstacle, what the impact of addressing (or not addressing) it will be, and how important it is to address the problem in a timely way. If you realize, for instance, that you can address the obstacle fairly easily (feasible), that it will be really problematic if you don’t (impactful), and that you need to address it as quickly as possible to avoid those problems (timely), that makes it pretty obvious that you need to build addressing this obstacle into your plan. If, however, it’s feasible but neither hugely impactful nor very urgent, you can probably let it go for now. And if you realize that although it doesn’t seem feasible to address, it’s both impactful and urgent, then you’ll have to figure out a way around the feasibility problem—a short-term fix that can minimize the negative impact.

Having this framework for conversation and decision-making will help the change team keep moving forward so the organization can continue to implement the change when these kinds of unanticipated organization-level impediments arise. At some point, if you just keep building on what you’ve learned, responding to reality and staying in sync, whether the changes you’re making are relatively simple and quick, or complex and time-intensive, there will come a day when you’ll look at each other and say, “Wow, I think we’re actually operating in the new world. Wait a sec. Have we . . . ? I think we’ve made the change.”

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