Episode 4 - Change Management in Leadership

John and Chris discuss change management and its importance in organizations. They mention the Kubler-Ross change curve, which consists of five stages: status quo, shock and denial, disruption, exploration, and rebuilding. They emphasize the need for effective communication during the change process to prevent panic and fear. They also discuss the eight stages of change management from a business perspective, including creating urgency, forming a powerful coalition, and communicating the vision for change. They highlight the importance of removing obstacles and creating short-term wins to drive the organization forward. Hello and welcome to another episode of Lead, Follow and Get Out of the Way. We've got Chris here and John for another episode and what are we going to be talking about today, John? Today we're going to be talking about change management and how you can steer an organisation the way you want it to be. It's a pretty deep subject, change management. There are books, courses, it's quite a big topic, Johnny. Yes, it is. It's a big topic but a lot of people don't know the topic exists or don't know how to implement it or try to implement it and make mistakes and don't think about the consequences of those mistakes. It's a big field and we're only going to have a quick dabble at the subject. Just to introduce our viewers to a few concepts and see some thoughts as leaders of how you can impose change to an organisation and let's face it, right, change is guaranteed in any organisation, ain't that right, Johnny? Yes, of course. Change is always there, whether you perform well, whether you perform badly, there's always change, new products come in, new ideas arise. People come and go in organisations as well, so new staff come on. Things happen. Things happen. The worst case example before we get into the content today is the legendary story of Kodak and the resistance to change when it came from the traditional film photography to digital, when digital photography emerged and Kodak as an organisation didn't jump on quick enough and that's quite an interesting story to explore. So it's quite important and we've got some strategies or some backgrounds to talk about today and how you can impose change or apply change and we'll explore those shortly. But what I'm thinking, Johnny, is I'm going to first just start talking about the bare basics. I'm going to talk about the human, right? Yes. I'm a big advocate for EQ. If you're leading people, you've got to understand them and one of the interesting points about humans is how they approach change and process change, particularly emotionally, right? We're humans, we've got emotions. And there was a good example I found and heck, this model I'm about to deliver, it was formulated in 1969 by a psychiatrist named Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She was American and she explored the human process of change which happens to be the fundamental model that a lot of service change management curves and strategies and plans and models have stemmed from and John is going to look at that one in a moment, hey John? So change management. When it comes to humans and change, there can be up to five stages on a change curve that we call it. Some summarise it as four stages but Kubler-Ross change curve starts at a point where people are doing the status quo in an organisation and so you've got a status of your company where everything is normal, everything's fine, you're about to impose a change, you deliver that change and then bang, there's shock, there's denial. That's the human reaction to the change. What are you going to do? What are you doing that for? Why are you changing it? That's stage one, the start. Followed by stage two, disruption and this is quite a challenging part of the change curve process. Disruption is where the reactions are negative. There's anger, there's fear from your workforce, from the humans reacting to these changes and then you end up down at the bottom of the curve. You're at the top at the start, you're heading on down, you've got disruption for that second phase, now you're at the bottom of the curve. Things are flat and this is where you as a manager or a leader or both rather, you've got to stick to your guns and go for the ride and expect these things to happen because after the bottom of the curve, the only way is up and that's where we get to stage three which is exploration. That's where your team is less focused on what they have lost, they start to let go of what was the status quo way back at the start and accept the changes. They're going to go play with the changes, they're going to see what the benefits are that are coming. And now we're starting to curve way back up to the very last stage if we go through the fourth stage model or the five, it can be summarised. The last stage in the fourth stage change management curve is rebuilding and that's where we see staff starting to commit to the new system. They're not just accepting the changes but they're embracing them. It's now status quo, it's business as usual but it's a heck of a ride and if you do impose change to your workforce, have a look at the psychology of it. See people's reactions, see the denial and we even saw that recently during the pandemic with people being rugs pulled out underneath them when it came to things like lockdowns, requirements, hygiene, all that change. The very first introduction to status quo saw a lot of people in panic. There was anger, there was fear, there was concern and now look where we are now, right? Chris, the way to prevent panic and fear and what people don't do very well when they do change management is explain the reason why. If you communicate the reason why we're doing this, people get a better understanding of what you're doing. If you don't explain to people why and you just do the change, then people make assumptions that you are doing a cost cutting exercise to keep your job. I'm always an advocate for communication and that's a very good point John. If you're not transparent right, people will speculate and I'm sure they'll speculate in the media. That's right, yes. You know, that's the psychology model side. What about the business side? This is where we're lucky with John having been an operations manager for quite some time and a qualified MBA as well, right? I'm going to start blowing the textbook. Oh, we're on the textbook now, aren't we? We've got the textbook here, yes. So as a practitioner in business, how do you apply a business acumen model to change management to deal with these things? So there is a business textbook talking about eight stages of change management. It's pretty much engraved into every business degree you do. So the first step we want is to create urgency on the change. The reason for the change. You create the urgency. If you don't have the urgency, there's nobody going to go and move. So you've got to create the urgency for the change and then you create the urgency. We have to change because people are going digital. If we don't create the urgency, we'll be out of a job within a year, if we don't move we should move faster. So create the urgency so people understand why you have to make the change. Step two is form a powerful coalition. So you have to get your senior leaders together and create a group of smart people that see the trend or the bad wave coming towards you and say, hey, we've got to move. Are we all good? Yes, we see it. How are we going to avoid it? How are we going to get past it? Right? Coalition. Right? Third, create the vision for the change. You want to see what's on the other side of the wave. How are we going to be good to get this calm water? To the end stage. To the end stage, yes. The vision for the end stage. In a year's time, we want to have, say, 24 people, everybody working here, everybody's having a bit of a job. At the moment, COVID's here, the sales are going to go down. You're going to have to do something to create some new products to move. How are we going to do that? So at the end of next year, we're going to be good. So create the vision for the change in step three. All right? Step four is communicate with everybody about the changes, but what you're going to do, why you're doing it, because you can see the threat coming onto you. How are we going to deal with it and what's coming out the other way? Which tackles that? Which tackles that negative impact. Again, get the staff to ask you questions. We're back at you so you can say, hey, this is why. Try to cater to the lot. I'm not doing this because of this, I'm doing it because of this, I'm doing it because of this. So try to get them to understand your decision-making process because change management is all about making decisions on how to drive the organization forward. So communicating that vision out to the staff is very important. Step five, removing obstacles. No, no. What are the obstacles? Obstacles are talking about staff, about computer systems, but staff is mainly redundancy factors. So you would have an organization chart and you want to change because you want to be more dynamic and flexible. And there is some people you want to join teams together and you see there's a team of four and there's a manager and there's a team of five and there's a manager. You want to combine them because they're working together so you want to combine the teams together. But there's no two roles for two managers, there's only one role for one manager. So unfortunately, you're going to have to make a decision who stays and who goes. It might be ugly, but at the end of the day, you're going to move forward. It's the obstacle. So you're just going to have to pay a person, make them redundant and watch their time is up. That's the life of being a manager. And that's just, again, you go through the redundancy pay and a bit of staff. Then what you have is going to find another job. Remember, change managers is about who moves my team. So... That's a great philosophy. Yeah, great philosophy, because people are used to going to work for the same team. And if you say, well, the team has moved, then you're going to have to get up and move. Don't cry with yourself about it. Listeners? Our listeners do look up who moved my team. It's a short story, and I even have a video version of that, but it's a fantastic concept. It's my life in process. So what's the next step? So you move the obstacles. Yeah, and then you've got the new teams together, and then you say, you create short-term wins. So you create some KPIs over the next three months. To get to our goal, we have to do A, B, and C. Let's see, can we do the stuff... Can we achieve the low-hanging fruit? That's what they call it. So like you say, there's a couple of apples here, but the grape is there. We've got to eat some of the apples first, so we can come to the grape. So let's find out what our short-term wins are and create some models or KPIs to achieve them. And those wins are going to create motivation in the workforce, too, right? That's right. You're hitting the elephant slowly. Hey, look what we've done. We did this. Yes, that's right. Ah, cool. It's great. The vision comes right. We understand the decisions, and we're going forward with everybody on the bus. And then it's building on the change. Step seven is building on the change. Now we get some momentum. Now we keep going with that change, and through the organization, so now we see that we celebrate it. We make some short-term changes. We get people going forward. What can we do next? How can we improve? And that's right. And step eight is to apply the change management process to the corporate culture. So we say, this is the frame. Every time we do it, we just do the framework. And next time we do the same thing. We show the process works. Last time, let's do it again over here. This is the situation we should have an issue with. Now it's business as usual. Business as usual. Support the change management process to actually continue in the organization. Yeah, yeah. That's a bloody good model. And that, for our listeners, provides a more practitioner's guide to at least plotting a change and planning a change by at least knowing how you address each one of these areas or how you plan to do that. Yeah, yeah. And now, obviously, we can go talk about these models, but as a manager, though, what kind of risks do you think you need to deal with when it comes to change? Like, what can... The one that comes to mind is... Well, actually, there's two real strong ones, Johnny. One is courage. Yes. You will have people that will deny the change and say this is ridiculous, and they'll push back. Yes. You need to be courageous and confident, but not ignorant, that where you're going is where you need to go. Yes. And second to that, if your personality is to be a pleaser, you need to overcome it. Yes. Big time. And I can vouch personally for those two that I personally have to go and treat those. That's OK. Yes. We're all different, but courage and not being a pleaser, it's going to be hard. Yes. But it's for that outcome at the end, right? That's right, yes. That's right. It's like you lose the battle to win the war. Yes, good point. Yes. But you've got to be strong enough to lose to know that the outcome is coming, right? Yes. Yes. But, again, you've got to... The risks... You've got to have 10 A, 10 B, 10 C. Contingency. Contingency is the place... Before you do step... Before you do step one. Before you do step one, contingency, you've got to be creating these plans way early. Because if you start saying stuff and making changes and then the plan... You make some redundancies and whatever and then it goes to crap. You can't bring the guy back. So you've got to think... This is going to work. What's the plan B? What's the plan C? Because it's not... The first plan may be OK. It may... It may hit your face. It may hit your face. Well, how are you going to fix that and how are you going to move forward? That's a good point because when you're at that point where the change is working as planned, you've already disrupted a working environment. That means the change needed to come about. You've already worked that out, hopefully, right? You've done it proper. Yeah. You've got to have a way to go and rebuild that. That's right, yeah. And, you know, some other, I guess, mitigators too. The risks, I think, come back to what you may have mentioned about communication. Yeah. I think transparency, progress and consultation is very important. But one thing that comes to mind, Johnny, is ownership as well. Trying to get the workforce to own the change, it's probably more an ambition than an actual thing that you can do, but... And I can... I'm thinking about when I was in a unit where we had engineers and we had a big org review and as a result of that organization review, numbers of staff and the way staff reported, it all changed. There were people worried they'll lose their jobs and there were people concerned that them and their teams won't be able to have the capacity to deal with the workflow that was planned and coming because they had courses to deliver, they had product to engineer, there was a whole heap of stuff. And what we found is that whilst instilling the change, yes, as the leader or manager, we own the vision, we control the plan, we steer where the organization is going, in order to get the workforce to jump on board with the change more quickly, we would make them responsible not for the aim or where we were going, but the individual processes, the how, if you will, how will the change operate, make them accountable to go and devise that and take ownership of it. So you'd have a middle manager or a lower level manager or a team lead that may be leading a team of four or three or something and you're like, hey, we're going this way, you already know that, your workforce already know that, for your org, we need to achieve X, Y, Z, come up with a process for it, that's your job. And then they will go and devise that, take pride in that hopefully, all good, right, and then they will actually start owning part of that change and they will be positive towards it and therefore be an advocate for the overall change to the rest of their team and will filter that through. Particularly when chances are, Johnny, that when they're a team lead, with any luck, they'll be the alpha and if they're on board with it, then those will follow. It's a tricky one. It's a tricky one. But you've got to be strong. Of course, and being strong is the key, right, and communication and having to know the answers to the questions and stuff like that and having fully thought out the change and understanding that you're going to get resistance, but at the end of the day, you're seeing it from a macro perspective and they're worried about their macro perspective, their job, right. So communication is the biggest thing, right. Again, why you're doing the change. People, you just keep saying it over and over again, at least 50 times because people do not, will not listen to you once. They will, you have to keep going and make it until you're, it's in their head, it gets ridiculously boring, so you keep repeating it, but you have to keep it because people forget stuff you say day one, day two. They only say it when you think about it two weeks later because, you know, you've got them in their head and kind of still want it. So, communication, and saying it once. And expect people to not get, not get the picture, don't get the big picture because they're only worried about the atmosphere. They will deny it. They will deny it, but at the end of the day, they will move on to you. Yeah. And it's, it's, yeah, I, it's a complex thing and we've only just dabbled in it and, but it gives a good, a good baseline for people to start as leaders to go and pick and work out how they can practically apply change and at least explore these concepts further, right? It's a whole different facet. And there's a lot more meat to it, but we simply haven't got capacity today to go through all of it anyway, but no doubt we'll explore this later in more episodes. Yeah. So, that comes to the end of this episode, Johnny. What do you reckon we'll talk about next time, eh? Next time we're talking about goal settings and reports. That's a pretty bloody good concept, Johnny. In particular, not all humans, right, but generally humans have a tendency to take the easiest routes. They're inclined to be lazy, right? And that doesn't mean that everyone is. However, right, in order to get the most out of people, allow them to stretch themselves and be somewhat uncomfortable, they can actually end up with a sense of achievement and personal satisfaction from their job. And so we'll talk about goal setting and reporting and how we can do that. For one, achieving goals for your organisation, but for two, better workforce satisfaction and development. Anyway, this is just the end of episode Five? Five. Yeah, Johnny. Five, dude. Leave. Get out of the way. See you next time. See ya.