Engine For Change

If I’ve seen it once I’ve seen it a hundred times.

Implementers turn on their tools when a Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, Learning Organization or whatever implementation fails.

The implementer, let’s call her June, knows the tool should have worked, if only the people would have done the behaviors as requested.  She tells herself the next time she implements the tool she’ll: push the people harder, report their lack of participation to their boss sooner and redouble her efforts to explain in more-and-more detail why the tool should work.  She’ll tinker with her methods and the machinery behind the tool but she’ll never recover her implementation nor succeed in the future.

Why is that?

Why isn’t turning to the tool and away from the people a winning strategy?

Here’s my theory: the problem that caused the implementation to fail is almost never in the implementer’s failure with the tool and nearly always with the implementer’s failure with the people affected by the implementation.

As implementers, we train ourselves in Lean, Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints or whatever. We focus almost all our efforts on learning the tools. We seem to forget, if we ever knew, that in-the-end people have to use the tools, follow the processes, and want to create the results we crave. The tool will do what it’s designed to do; it’s predictable.  It’s the people, with their pesky free will, who don’t listen to our directions.  They don’t follow our suggestions. They don’t do, according to us, the right things.

Every implementer needs to win the people to their side, creating people actively engaged with the implementation,  people doing and driving the implementation.

What can an implementer do to win the people, energize them, and get them in the driver’s seat?

They must drive change in their implementation whenever and wherever they can.  They must choose the change for themselves, share their vision of the destination, and assist the people in removing the barriers keeping them in their current behaviors.

Implementers must focus their efforts where the people are struggling to exchange their behaviors of today (behaviors they’ve probably been doing for years if not decades) for the new behaviors you’ve explained.

As the people struggle, they’ll encounter obstacles, both internal and external, to living the new behaviors.  When they look to the implementer, help them clearly identify the obstacles and create strategies (often using the tools) to eliminate the obstacles.

Don’t drive the people to change by responding with a longer-than-last-time explanation of how the tool work.

Never attack the people by notifying their boss  (often one of their biggest obstacles to adopting new behaviors) that they aren’t cooperating, supporting, changing enough.  (This is the fastest way to lose the people forever.)

When the people look to you for support, understanding, and assistance as they struggle to modify their behaviors, give them what they need.  Help them move the obstacles, show them how to use the tools to destroy the obstacle, or together admit the obstacle isn’t going away and plan a path around it.

To succeed more often with any sort of implementation, stop driving people to change.

Start driving change.

Watch what happens.

Why not try?

What has held us back is not what we don’t know, but what we think we know so we’ve stopped asking.”

We take so much of how our world works for granted.

We think we know so much more than we do.

To be truly successful when you’re driving change, practice looking at situations with fresh eyes.

Imagine you have just reported to your organization and you are struggling to make sense of it all.

Force yourself to describe details, to state what action you are taking, and to offer a “Why?” behind you taking it.

What would you notice? What would you say? What reasons would you offer for your actions?

Now go look, go describe and go offer your reasons.

When you do, you’ll be amazed what was hiding in plain sight.

Imagine your old, driving-people-to-change behaviors as an old, familiar car.

It doesn’t run much anymore, but you insist on taking it everywhere you want to go.

You don’t go fast. Honestly, most of the time you don’t go at all.

It takes more effort than it should.

And, you’d likely admit that you often give up on your destination long before you reach it.

You’re always physically and emotionally spent from all the pushing the vehicle along every time it breaks down.

Picture yourself today, once more, stalled en route to your destination.  You’re pushing the driving-people-to-change vehicle down the road.  It seems, especially today, that the harder you push, the slower you go. You can feel the energy draining from you one more time.

You know you’ll have to give up soon.

Now, imagine me pulling up next to you in a new car emblazened with “DRIVING CHANGE!!!” and flames (for fun) along the side.

I’m not here to offer you a ride.  I’m here to offer you a deal.

Abandon your driving-people-to-change rig and I’ll give you this cool “DRIVING CHANGE!!!!” vehicle, no strings attached.

Would you take the deal?

DRIVING CHANGE!!! will get you where you need to go fast; it’ll go faster than you like at first.  After all, you’re accustomed to walking pace.  Any pace feels fast after that.

DRIVING CHANGE!!! requires little energy from you after the initial push to start.  Once you get it rolling, if you don’t drive-people-to-change, it’ll seem like the tank refills itself.  At first you’ll feel like it’s running on magic and you’ll start to think something is wrong.  Nothing’s wrong. You’ll get used to it and you’ll begin to love actually reaching your destinations with some energy left in reserve.

But, DRIVING CHANGE!!!! is new.

It is scary fast.

It is, at first, unfamiliar.

But it is effective too.

Only you can choose whether you’ll stick with driving-people-to-change or switch to DRIVING CHANGE!!!

But, if you want to go fast…switch vehicles.

Take it or leave it, this little bit of all-for-fun link fuel:

• Leading in dancing
• Motivation, nothing new (plus, look for the Kurt Lewin equations (!) in the left panel.  Now that I’m looking I’m seeing Lewin everywhere.)
• Have I ever mentioned how much I love Edward Tufte.  This quote alone makes him awesome, “…the important books in my library are the unread books.” That’s awesome!  Want one of his books?  Have a few million?

When Seth Godin gives you a second opportunity, you take it.

Join me at Cloverleaf Tavern and Pizza (1240 Hollis St, Bremerton, Washington) for worldwide-meet-the-tribe-of-Linchpins Day, Tuesday, December 7th.  We’re meeting up  in the back room at 5:30 pm.  You can sign up for the event at Meetup.com.

Whether it’s two of us or 200, I know we’re going to have a great time on Linchpin Day.

Will you join me?

If you can’t join us in Bremerton, start your own event or join one in your area.

You don’t have to be alone on Linchpin Day.

Seth Godin has provided all of us driving change with a new rallying cry,

Our normal approach is useless here!”

Unite with me and let’s drive change together!

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light” – Albert Schweitzer

Sparkle bright as you drive change.  There are those around you flickering.  Be the example and transform them into a flame too.

We all can drive change.

Why not try?

They say actions speak louder than words.

That’s so true when you’re driving change and trying to set yourself apart from the pack of people still driving others to change.

When you’re driving change you must practice and practice and practice the driving change behaviors until it seems foolish to do anything else (e.g., driving people to change).

You must practice acting first instead of ordering others to act.

You must practice clearing the obstacles to the change instead of complaining that others aren’t moving fast enough.

You must practice lifting your eyes to your vision of the future and telling everyone what you see instead of focusing everyone on their feet and the last order they didn’t follow.

You must practice withstanding the criticism of people who are still driving people to change.

They don’t see it yet.

Keep practicing your driving change.

Let them see you practicing at driving change.

Someday they’ll see.

Act.

Practice.

Drive Change.

Be the example.

Why not try?

• Can you fail less?
• Do you fear success?
• Just picture it!
• Do what you can to live the emotions that drive change, and though those around you are mired in the emotions that stall change, you will succeed.

Something new:  I want to go on the record and say that until today I’d never heard, or don’t remember if I did, of Kurt Lewin and his action research as it relates to topological psychology.  So far I can find details of his concepts of goals and forces and vectors, but no pictures of what implementing these thoughts looks like.  If anyone out there is a closet Lewin fan and can point me in a good direction, please let me know.  I’ve already ordered his topological psychology book through interlibrary loan.  I can’t wait for the book to get here! (Yes, I am that big of a nerd!)

I love the internet.  Whenever I’ve had a rough day, I type in a search term that somehow describes what I’m feeling and the funniest stuff pops up.   Tonight I decided to look up “How to Find Your Way Out of Wet Paper Bag,” and I actually found a post telling me what to do; it’s genius!

If you haven’t already found this out, let me tell you something very important:

Some days are TRULY AWFUL days when you’re driving change.

Some days you’ll see years of effort wiped out in a moment.

Some days you’ll feel frustration so real that it’ll seem as if it is crawling up your back and gnawing at your neck while those people, with their pesky free will, just up and decide not to drive change anymore.

You’ll want to yell, scream and DRIVE PEOPLE TO CHANGE!

Hey, where’s my change driving whip? I know I put it down over here somewhere…

(…I’m writing this next part as much for myself as I am for you…)

Don’t give in to the frustration.

Don’t let the setbacks get to you.

Don’t go for the whip.

Don’t drive people to change.

You know better than that.

Claw your way out of the wet paper bag…take a moment for yourself. Find another change driver; talk to them; vent.  If you can’t find someone you can always visit the rest of us change drivers here at the blog or on the Engine For Change Facebook page.  We’re all here for you. (Yes, I’m speaking for all of you now.)

Let’s stick together.

Let’s fight past the set backs, the frustrations, the bad days.

Let’s drive change together.

Why not try?

p.s. Yesterday, in contrast, was a fantastic day.  My first “Motivation Mapping: How to Drive Change” course was well received by my eight person audience.  I’m so glad I had the opportunity to push myself to create the training.  Thanks to Jim, Gary, their team and Anna Lee too for putting up with me for two-and-a-half hours.  From their comments, it seems they found the course well worth the investment of their time.