It is interesting to reflect on the purpose of this book, and in particular what value can it offer in exchange for your hard-earned cash. If asked I would argue that the book’s key value (feedback reinforces this) is that it gives a simple pragmatic change model for use in turbulent contexts.

Let me expand on this – first the notion of ‘simple’ doesn’t mean dumbed down. It means that the ideas are presented in a way that is hopefully effortless, undemanding and most of all accessible. For me this notion of accessibility is key because the book is deliberately constructed to be helpful to readers from a wide range of professions and not just a narrow band of ‘consultants’. This is because the book is very much about the process of consulting, where the goal is to deliver sustainable value within a diverse range of client situations, as opposed to being a ‘consultant’.

Second is the idea of a ‘pragmatic model’. There are many inspiring, complex and academic models out there that deal with change and consulting in far more complex way that I could ever possibly consider – but the trouble is that they can be too complicated to pull out of the back pocket when needed, typically when the client is screaming at you and you are about overrun the budget by 30%. We all need tools and simple heuristics to survive and the Seven Cs is designed to offer such a solution.

The final point to highlight is this notion of ‘turbulent contexts’. It is this point that I will expand on slightly in this third edition of the book. Any mild reflection on history will tend to inform us that in reality little changes. Although new processes, policies and operational platforms come along to dazzle us on a regular basis – in reality very little deep shift occurs. I would argue that this is because as human beings we are driven by basic human factors and instincts that define who we are and how we behave. So although the latest management technique, project planning system or quality control procedure may work on the basis of uniformity, conformance and a common purpose – people are people and they do what they want in reality.

Like the areas where the sea meets the beach, traffic merges on the motorway or kids stream out of school to meet their mums – this is the point where turbulence erupts. To understand this turbulence we need to understand the human forces that drive and reinforce this chaotic model. Let’s just consider what is it about people that we need to understand to get any chance of understanding what causes the deep complexity and confusion in most change programmes.

Self-interest

Up to a few years ago, modern economics tended to be driven by the idea that investors were rational and markets were efficient. As such it would not be uncommon to find the economic ‘experts’ treating the ideas of sociology and psychology with some scepticism and maybe mild amusement. However, the global market crash in 2008 prompted people to relook at some of the underlying assumptions that had be made about economic and global financial management. This was nowhere more apparent than in the testimony given by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan who conceded that the meltdown had revealed a flaw in a lifetime of economic thinking and left him in a ‘state of shocked disbelief’. He acknowledged that he had made a ‘mistake’ in believing that banks, operating in their own self-interest, would do what was necessary to protect their shareholders and institutions and that there was a flaw in the model that defines how the world works. ‘A critical pillar to market competition and free markets did break down,’ Greenspan said, ‘I still do not fully understand why it happened.’ I would argue that the root cause of this is a simple human condition called greed. Even the Pope set this idea out in a document called Charity in Truth. He denounced the profit-at-all-cost mentality of the globalized economy and lamented that such greed has brought about the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. But here is the rub – do we really think that a pronouncement by the ex-head of the Federal Reserve or the Pope will actually stop people being greedy – I wouldn’t bet on it.

This same greed (let’s call it self-interest because it sounds better) is a natural condition and can be traced to early human origins on the plains of Africa and no doubt will still be part of the psyche long after I am six feet under. This is because self-interest is a natural and positive human instinct that tends to get us into trouble when unrestrained. The key thing that we need to do when undertaking a consultancy or change exercise is to understand that people are driven by self-interest, and then factor it into the change model and, critically, don’t try to brush it under the carpet the first time it emerges. It is a timeless factor that has always impacted on change programmes – if that is the case then let’s bare our souls and start the process of factoring it into how we manage change.

Short-termism

An article in The Times considered the idea that something must be done to break the cycle of failure in the various government IT programmes. It argues that ‘Almost every time there is a failure of a large project to deliver what was promised within the original budget or time frame, the heads of departments and agencies say that the lessons have been learnt’. But they have not, or have been pushed to one side, because each project is regarded as unique. So ministers, encouraged by potential suppliers and other enthusiasts, approve incrementally larger and riskier schemes, while potential suppliers reach for their calculators and ministers look forward to a series of press releases on the (potential) of the new technology’ (The Times, 2009).

The core problem is the bridgehead between people’s short-term dreams coupled with a compulsive unwillingness to look back and learn from the past. Thus large, expensive and risky project proposals are approved without anyone seriously or effectively challenging whether or not a scheme is being too ambitious. This is because it can be hard to challenge someone’s idea if we don’t have the data to critique the ideas – but because we don’t seek to reflect and learn from the past, we never make the time to gather learning from previous experiences. This is like the smoker or alcoholic who tries yet again a new wonder solution that will fix everything for them without ever taking the time to reflect on why the previous eight magic solutions never actually worked.

I would argue that the unwillingness to learn from past errors is because we seek, naturally enough, to avoid the pain or embarrassment of perceived failure, and so it is easier to bury the problem and then move to a new role while someone else resolves the problem. Against this is a natural human issue that is both latent and, to a degree, learnt as we assimilate the accepted ways of working within each organization we join. If we can accept that short-termism is a natural human trait then it behooves us to not run and hide, but rather incorporate it into a change dynamic to ensure that all learning is applied to all new projects – so hopefully we increase the chance of truly delivering value through sustainable change.

Social connection

A very deep, repeated and reinforced argument throughout the Seven Cs model is that change is about people and, in particular, it is personal. When running the Seven Cs programme I make a very simple request, ‘tell me the last time you changed (without coercion) at work’. First of all, I don’t get a windfall of responses – in reality people don’t actually change that much – but of more significance is that fact that I have yet to find someone who really changed how they felt and what they thought and did as a consequence of a new poster, banner, email from the director or a flash cup that proclaims how much we ‘love our customers!!!’. The time when people actually change all three dimensions (heart, head and hands) is when the change occurs in contact with other people. Hence the mantra that I repeat about 30 times on a three-day programme – ‘time and association’. Change is about people and people need it to be personal, and hence tend to want social contact. So there needs to be human contact and this needs to be over a period of time and not just a fleeting town hall meeting or corridor conversation.

Stuck

One of the common and consistent human traits that I come across (in a wide range of market sectors) is the sense of people being stuck where they are. Although a large number of people are entrepreneurial, do take risks and are change junkies, in the main the majority of people seem to find what they like and get comfortable with it. This is why we see such an outpouring of negative emotions when people are faced with redundancy, relocation or reorganization notices because so many have forgotten that any job is a temporary contract of employment and not a marriage. There is no life commitment and we cannot expect such a thing.

One way of representing this sense of being stuck is that people become ‘addicted to now’. ‘Now’ in terms of where they are, what they do and who they work with. The term ‘addiction’ is used to describe a recurring desire by someone to engage in a certain action, despite possible damaging consequences. For example, at a human level we see this with drink, drugs or debt – all common addictive things that we see people affected by. However, if we take the definition of addiction as offered – a recurring set of self-harming behaviours – this can be seen at the team, business unit and organization levels. There will be one or more patterns of behaviour that, in effect, undermine and erode value in the business as people keep doing more of what they did, as opposed to doing what they need to do.

So human addiction might be viewed as seeking to hold onto established patterns or norms – this is the problem that almost all consultants come across on a regular basis. We might see field staff who vote to hold onto old working practices even though such a choice will kill their job viability in the future. We see organizations addicted to continual process changes without ever stopping to wonder why the last one didn’t work – a favourite addiction is that of reorganization. At a more human level, I have worked with clients who are addicted to poor time-keeping – so meetings never start on time – or poor budget management or endlessly recycling a pattern of centralization and then decentralization.

Although addiction may sound a strong word, I use it deliberately because these are subconscious patterns of behaviours that I routinely see that underpin an organization’s performance. As we tune into the notion of addictive corporate behaviours it becomes possible to sense the addictive factors after being in the organization for no longer than an hour. It can be seen in the way people walk, talk and look – it is the style of the unit and the way things are done. This is key to our understanding of change and how we deal with change. This leads to the idea that people don’t resist change – they just resist being changed. If we know that these addictive, or ‘being stuck’, tendencies are always present then it is imperative to include this in any change model that we are using to effect transformation.

Sentiment

I was listening to a financial programme on the radio recently – a fund manager was being interviewed who for over 20 years gave a 20% yearly return on his clients’ money. This is a challenge to deliver over a three-year period let alone 20. When asked what criteria he used to make his decisions over that time he argued that there were three key factors – the first is market patterns, the second is stock valuation and the third is sentiment (BBC Money Box, 2009). This last one was interesting because in what we might view as a hard edged, quantitative world where the decision-making process needs to be rigorous, one of the key factors for him was human emotion. This is the feeling or tone of a market (i.e. crowd psychology) and can be seen in the activity and price movement of securities.

In reflecting on this, we can see the financial market as a muddled group of people whose primary goal is to understand the future sentiment of the market. In effect mapping the relationship between a bull market (a prolonged period in which investment prices rise faster than their historical average) and a bear market (a prolonged period in which investment prices fall). By doing this, investors can optimize their investment. However, the market is not an entity – it is simply a group of people with differing and competing thoughts, feelings and behaviours. In any financial market the prime outcome is to tune into the sentiment of the market in order to effect better commercial decisions.

In the same way that an efficient market broker’s purpose in life is to read the sentiment and stay ahead of the odds to give a better than normal market return on their investors’ cash – I would argue that a key part of a consultant’s role is to tune into the organizational sentiment to ensure that the change being delivered offers the anticipated returns and doesn’t drift into negative equity. Bear and bull markets exist in organizational change as well as financial markets. A bull market in the change business is where there is a groundswell of support and encouragement for the outcome of the project – people believe it will be successful and so are prepared to bet their personal brand on the outcome (by getting involved and showing commitment to the project). A bear change market is one where there is a sense of impending doom about the project – to the point that personal investment is not being made. So people on the project start updating their CVs and there is little market attractiveness for outsiders to get involved.

Although much of the bear and bull change dynamics can be driven by ‘facts’, there will also be a strong predominance of sentiment in the mix – and the good consultant learns to tune into this and feed it back to the client. The great consultant is able to then take the sentimental mood and influence it using a range of tools, tetchiness and theories. In effect, that is what much of the Seven Cs process is about – helping to engage and influence the people in the change process so that they are converts rather than coerced players.

The five conditions

The net result is that there are five key human conditions and drivers that permeate all change programmes to varying levels. These are:

• self-interest – the drive to look after oneself;
• short-termism – the drive for pay back today rather than tomorrow;
• sentiment – the tendency to be driven by emotions;
• stuck – the tendency to seek a comfortable place and stay there;
• sociability – the need for human stimulus and contact.

In understanding and accepting that these five drivers at present and active, we also need to accept that we can never truly ‘beat’ them because they are as core to our humanity as breathing, eating and sleeping. I suggest that great consultants seek to embrace and harness these human factors rather than fight them – that way they can begin to deliver change that is both successful and sustainable.

To do this we need to understand that wherever two or more of these conditions meet there is a risk of turbulence. Just think about the football match, kicking-out time at the bar, the school playing field or the January sale. There are points where the five human forces interact, and at times oppose each other. The net result is a tendency to chaos and, in some cases, tension and frustration.

However, as human beings we learn from a young age a set of deep strategies to deal with the interesting points of turbulence and in the main avoid killing each other. However, like dropping a catalyst into a solution (a catalyst is a substance that works to accelerate a chemical reaction), so the introduction of a new change idea or project can act as an organizational catalyst that triggers a rapid and energetic response and so turns a potential for turbulence into actual disruption. It is the potential for such a response that is key to the deep and high-value skills offered by a consultant. Where the five conditions are not taken into account we typically see the emergence of industrial action, increased sick leave, covert industrial damage or negative PR.

It is also useful to recognize that instead of accelerating a reaction, some catalysts can slow a reaction down – these are called negative catalysts or inhibitors. Negative catalysts are important in medicine where inhibitors are critical in treating mental illnesses, high blood pressure, cancer and a myriad of other health problems. So often the role of the consultant is to discover ways to intervene in the human system and trigger inhibitors to prevent the turbulence and chaos kicking in too soon and killing the change before it has a chance to bed in.

We need to undertake a shift from a process and policy driven approach to managing change towards recognizing and harnessing the human touch. To do this we need a set of tools that both help to make sense of the human condition and also help describe how they interrelate with the procedural and technical demands that are often imposed during a change programme.

We can do this by taking each of the five human factors and understanding the level to which each is present in the client group and present in a positive or negative way. Then ask if the presence of the human factor will aid the change process or act against it – almost like a skilled glider pilot who uses the natural earth forces to power their flight.

For each factor, ask:

• short-termism – what is the organization’s history around the project and how great is their need for immediate pay-back? How can this be used to aid the current project?
• safe – to what extent are people stuck in the ‘now’ and how can this preference be put to good use?
• social – do people place a high value on close contact or are they happy operating through a more remote way of working?
• sentiment – to what extent does emotion drive how they operate and what is the current emotional state?
• self-interest – is it a climate built on self-interest or is it more collegiate in spirit?

My argument is that these conditions are what they are, and the consultant is unlikely to change them. But by understanding the nature of the human conditions within the system you are then better placed to determine how best to work with them and not lose the battle before you start. That is, in effect, the purpose of the Seven Cs – because it is designed to be a ‘simple pragmatic change model for use in turbulent contexts’.