This chapter will explore how organisations and individuals react to changing circumstances. It will outline and introduce the various strategies that are consciously or unconsciously adopted in the face of change and points towards tangible things that you can do in your capacity as a team leader. Your aim must be to drive meaningful changes of practice and behaviour and hence contribute to enhancing your customer value proposition⁸ and delivering increased customer benefit.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Change is the one big certainty in our organisations. What makes us successful today is often the root of our failure tomorrow. The problem is that when organisations are faced with instability in the environment, it generates uncertainty, which in turn leads to higher levels of stress and anxiety. This, in turn, leads to the very human reaction of falling back on established and familiar patterns and solutions. Paradoxically, the very time we most need to be flexible and accepting of change tends to be the time when we are least emotionally equipped to deal with the possibility and consequences of change.

If organisations don’t change they become extinct and if people don’t change they become irrelevant or surplus to requirements as far as their organisations are concerned.

THE IMPACT OF THE ISSUE

It is a sad fact that most people and most organisations don’t tend to seriously consider changing their behaviours until there is no other viable choice, and when you get to that point it is invariably too late.

Simply saying you need to be more proactive rather than reactive is not very helpful. What organisations need is people who can shine a light into the darkness and illuminate a new way forward – to be the pathfinder for others – to lead the way to new behaviours and practices. Such people tend to be called change agents; they are the people who are skilled at asking the difficult questions that challenge existing ways of thinking and working. But it is not enough just to ask difficult questions – you have to do so in a positive way that excites people about an alternative future and ignites in them a passion to be part of that future.

All organisations need change agents, but being a change agent is not a role; you don’t get appointed by HR. Being an agent for change is just something that some people can do and if you are one of those people you are a precious asset and will be quickly recognised as such.

MAKING SENSE OF IT ALL

Change happens; your external environment can change in response to any number of independent or related variables over which you generally have little or no control. Your organisation will then find itself having to adapt to continue to function in that changing environment; the actions you take may be planned and deliberate, or you may just stumble into them almost by accident.

Change has always been with us; the only new thing is that our external environment may be changing more quickly than it used to, or may be prone to more violent and unanticipated swings. What has not changed much is the way that managers and leaders react to change. In broad terms, there are four types of leadership response:

• Defender. Leaders with this mindset tend to see little or no uncertainty in the environment. They are comfortable and feel a level of immunity to the turmoil that appears to beset others. Their response, if any, is to make minor adjustments in organisational structures or processes.

■

History tells us that this defensive stance leads to extinction.

• Reactor. Leaders with this mindset see that change and uncertainty exist, but will not initiate any response until they have overwhelming evidence that inaction is no longer an option. At this stage, they may make substantial adjustments, but generally they are too late to gain advantage and the result of their actions is merely a slowing of the rate of their corporate decline. This mentality leads to a protracted struggle for survival and the best outcome is an extended life in the margins.
• Nimble mimic. These leaders see change and uncertainty, but are reluctant to make the necessary investment of resources to deal with them. Instead, they perfect the art of waiting for someone else to find a solution, and then rapidly adopt and adapt that solution for their own ends.

■

This sort of stance ensures survival and can even produce growth, but such leaders are always playing catch-up and are always under threat from someone who can learn to copy better, faster or more cheaply.

• Pioneer. These leaders understand that change and uncertainty are constant companions. They continually experiment with new ways of responding to emerging trends. They are masters of intelligent opportunism. Pioneers have the ability to relate a proposed change to the business strategy or bigger picture and, in doing so, they can be instrumental in anchoring the change into new ways of working.

■

Organisations and individuals who adopt this attitude will survive and prosper in any environment.

What we find interesting is that even companies which are, by nature, reactors or mimics still desire their managers to be pioneers. Indeed, a significant emphasis of many current leadership programmes is how to make managers more future-focused and innovative.

It appears then that the most valuable management skill is not the ability to react to and manage through change, but rather the ability to anticipate movements in the market and have capacity in place to take advantage as it is happening. The ability to anticipate in this way usually comes from a process of constantly watching and looking for opportunities, rather than as a result of genius.

PRACTICAL ADVICE

There are no end of books that will help you understand the process of organisational change and the strategies that have proved to be successful for others. But most of them start from the assumption that you know what needs to be done and the main problem is how to make it happen successfully. Our question has a little wider focus; we recognise that your organisation needs people who can:

• see opportunities for change that others can’t see; this means being able to look upwards and outwards and, in effect, see the money that others are leaving on the table;
• see an opportunity and then devise a strategy to deliver the benefits and reap the subsequent rewards for the organisation;
• galvanise people and resources behind an initiative and make something happen;
• remain focused on the main chance and take advantage of serendipity along the way.

We have studied people who appear to be adept at leveraging these benefits for their organisations and identified a number of common characteristics that drive their actions. If you want to be seen as someone who makes change happen, we suggest that you take every opportunity to model the following behaviours.

Be someone who knows where they are going. Understand what is important for the long-term health of the business, how your business creates customer value and what you and your department can do to increase customer value in that context. What does the business model look like and where do you fit into it? What new capabilities or approaches can help transform or renew your business model? Pick one or two things that will become your focus for the next 18 months to 3 years. Make sure that your thinking is aligned with that of your boss and that you both want, and are driving towards, the same goals:

• Don’t just blindly respond to short-term, flavour-of-the-month initiatives. Focus on things that will contribute to the wider, long-term goals of your organisation.
• Focus on the outcome. In all your discussions pull the thinking back to the outcome and create solid mental links between what is being done now and how it will build towards or enable the long-term goal.
• Don’t get locked into a quality mentality of right first time, or thinking that there is one best solution to any problem; that approach works well for business as usual, but not for organisational change. When you are dealing with change you need a very flexible, iterative approach that values experimentation and recognises that failure is an essential component of success.

Bring the truth into the room. When you are dealing with issues that involve change, there are always at least three agendas at play: rational, personal and social. People are always comfortable about sharing their rational concerns and agenda, such as cost, resources and growth. They are less willing to share their personal and social concerns and agendas, yet you know that up to 80 per cent of their decision-making will be based on their personal and social agendas:

• Have the courage to say the unsayable, to ask the forbidden questions, confront the ‘taboos’ of the organisation and challenge the ‘eternal truths’ that are accepted about how things work around here.
• Don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations; they are both liberating and insightful.
• Get people to articulate their fears; getting them out in the open makes them less powerful.
• Get resistance out in the open; listen to people’s concerns and issues and get them to engage in ‘change talk’.
• Agree the facts of the situation. Often business issues that are raised turn out to be just personal issues that are dressed up. Get people to confront their own fears and give them a factual basis.

Utilise peer pressure. Work to create allies and advocates who will carry your message with passion and commitment:

• Provide your followers with an igniting purpose: a question, task or vision that engages their hearts as well as their minds and gives them a way of making a contribution that can stand the test of time. You also need to engage their heads by calling upon the unique skills, knowledge and experience that they possess and only they can bring to the venture.
• Recognise that change only happens when enough people think it is a good idea and they are prepared to invest their personal resources (and reputation) in the endeavour. You need to constantly expand your network of committed followers and connect them together, so that they can mutually support each other when you are not there.

Cultivate a predisposition towards action. All great successes are built on the back of constant experimentation and frequent failure:

• Start today. Do something now and see where it takes you. It is mind-numbingly time-consuming to sit around and discuss, debate and delay. Often there are no right answers, only choices, so make a choice and do something. If it takes you closer to where you want to go, then do more of the same; if not, then do something else. If you do something, you always have the opportunity to move forwards. If you don’t do anything, you will always stand still or slip backwards.
• Adopt a relentless focus on a few (maximum two or three) key outcomes that you want to achieve and link every decision you make to its ability to get you a step closer to one of those key outcomes. Avoid long wish lists of activities; they can be overwhelming and a sense of being overwhelmed stops action.
• Be opportunistic! Often our actions have unintended or unanticipated consequences. Learn to sense those consequences and find ways of capitalising on those that could have a positive impact on what you are trying to achieve.
• If you think you need ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking, then get out of the box. Involve people from a different business unit, culture or industry; find people who see the world differently. Use their new eyes and ears to help you see new possibilities and to refine your own understanding of how you communicate about your vision and desired outcome.

Engage both hearts and minds. Communication can be directed at either the head (cognitive, supported by facts and figures) or the heart (affective, emotional, appealing to values). In his book, The Heart of Change (2002), John Kotter suggested that people don’t change just because they think it is a good idea; they change because they have made an emotional commitment.

• Don’t just communicate facts; let your passion show and don’t be afraid of letting people see why something is so important to you.
• Don’t talk at people; rather, engage in dialogue with them. Your aim is to gain committed behaviour, not compliant behaviour. When people are committed they give generously of their time and resources and they actively champion your cause, rather than watch from the sidelines.
• Connect people together and give them the space to use their talents to find new and novel ways of rising to the challenges you identify.
• Look for people who are full of ideas and dissatisfied with the way things are currently done. If you can harness their enthusiasm they can be a valuable resource. But make sure that you pair them up with someone who is 100 per cent aligned with what you are trying to achieve; otherwise you can find that the intellectually curious have wandered off down a different track. Passion combined with brains can produce great things, but generally you need someone else’s hands on the steering wheel too.

Deal with the resistors. Not everyone can, or will, become an ally or advocate. Change always produces winners and losers and just hoping that people will come around is not a great option:

• Once you have a critical mass, some will follow the herd and get on side. You may need to neutralise others by bargaining with them or co-opting them onto the project. Find out what is important to them so that you can understand their price and the potential value they can bring.
• It is important that you don’t let the resistors take up too much of your time. Pick them off one at a time and try to limit your overall effort in this area to no more than 25 per cent of your available time.
• If all else fails, make it clear that resistance is useless and propose a ‘take it or leave it’ deal. Manipulation, co-option or removal from the team may be your only options, but these tactics should only be used as a last resort.
• Ensure you operate ‘fair process’ and that you send a consistent message. The theory behind fair process is that people will buy into an outcome, even if it is less than ideal for them, as long as they agree with the process that led to that outcome and perceive it to be fair.

Celebrate your successes. Change is a tiring business and people need periods of rest and recuperation so that they can get ready to fight the next battle.

• Be generous with the way you recognise important contributions.
• Learn about what is working well, particularly around critical interpersonal relationships.

THINGS FOR YOU TO WORK ON NOW

We have pointed to a range of things that you can try in order to become more adept at seeing and exploiting opportunities to initiate and deliver change. We are not talking about change for the sake of change or change that is superficial in nature. What we need is change that drives your business forward and delivers benefits to your customers. In order to do this, your efforts need to be focused in the right direction. We suggest that you use the questions below to help you identify where you can start to make a real contribution.

Your answers to the above questions should help you focus on the key areas that can deliver benefit but you need to be clear that any change you devise must be consistent with the current business model. So, your first task is to really understand how your business creates value and what ‘big assumptions’ underpin the model. Try the exercises below to help you get a clearer picture of your customer value proposition. If you are unfamiliar with the idea of the business model we suggest that you first read through the Johnson, Christensen and Kagermann article listed in the resource section.

FURTHER FOOD FOR THE CURIOUS

• Beavan, C. (2017) ‘What It Takes to Change Hearts and Minds’. Yes! Magazine. Available from www.yesmagazine.org/issues/science/what-it-takes-to-change-hearts-and-minds-20170223 [18 July 2017]:

■

This short article contrasts communication that appeals to the mind with that which seeks to move people by inspiring and speaking to core values.

• Kotter, J.P. and Cohen, D.S. (2002) The Heart of Change. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA:

■

In the intervening years of research after the initial statement of the eight conditions of change in his previous book, Leading Change (1995), Kotter came to realise the importance of the human aspect and the need to appeal not only to the head but also to the heart. This book is more rounded and contains more examples of his ideas at work in organisations.

• Kotter, J.P. and Rathgeber, H. (2006) Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding under Any Conditions. MacMillan, London:

■

This is a retelling of the Heart of Change (2002) as a metaphor. It is simple to read and engaging, while losing none of the theoretical underpinning of his work.

• Johnson, M.W., Christensen, C.M. and Kagermann, H. (2008) ‘Reinventing Your Business Model’. Harvard Business Review, December, 51–59:

■

This easy to read article sets out the key elements of a business model in terms of customer value proposition, key resources, key processes and profit formula. The article contains many illustrative examples that help clarify the concept.

⁸ A business or marketing statement that sets out why a customer should purchase a particular good or service.