Engine For Change

For a moment, remove your shoulder from the grindstone, take a deep breath in, hold it, then exhale.  Relax for a moment longer.  You’ve persevered through a long year.  You’ve earned some rest.” – what I’m telling myself this holiday week

If you’re at all like me and you need to give yourself permission to relax every now and then, consider permission granted.  Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Wishing you a wondrous 2011 full of success while driving change!

All my best always – April

Rogue Polymath has saved me the trouble of having to write a post today.  Check out his post on rejection and how to cope with it.

I love the quote:

Never attitude to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance.

You never know who’s watching and you never can tell how far your example of driving change will travel.

Often, when we drive change, we focus only on how we impact the people right in front of us.  In reality, we are creating second and third order effects in the people who observe our example of driving change and then in the people those first observers share their story with.

Last week, I had second and third order effects of driving change presented to me directly.

Early Tuesday morning, a woman stopped me in the hall to thank me for all the help I’d given her with a class presentation she’d given the night before.  I’d never talked to her about her class, nor interacted with her directly regarding change management, so, I was more than a bit confused by the gratitude.

She explained how she’d used my driving change work to prepare herself for her report on change management.  As she studied my work, she felt more comfortable presenting the topic and as a result of her knowledge and excitement with the topic her class enjoyed and appreciated her presentation.  She was smiling from ear to ear as she told me the story.

Her story brought a smile to my face too and prompted me to remind you, in case I haven’t told you this enough already:

Always remember how powerful an example you are when you walk the talk of driving change.

Everyone is watching and everyone can benefit.

Be the example.

Drive change.

It helps when Seth Godin does my work for me.  Check out these new business cards complete with Seth Godin quotes.  What’s your favorite quote?  I can’t pick a favorite, but I really like,

Catering to the passionate is exactly what you should do.” – Seth Godin

…I’ll ask for it, or so the saying goes.   The sad part is that too often in organizations, leaders assume they either can’t ask for your opinion without looking weak or they ask for your opinion in roundabout ways (e.g., anonymous surveys, comment cards).

Few leaders seem comfortable having an open, sharing ideas conversation with their followers.

I should clarify there: few leaders, who are driving people to change, seem willing to have honest conversations with their followers.   I theorize that these driving people to change leaders assume that asking for feedback would make them look weak (actually, not asking does that) and would make them seem like they don’t have all the answers (News flash: No one thinks you have all the answers!).

When you’re driving change everything is different.  As the leader, you must have these open, sharing of ideas conversations or you can’t be driving change.  How else would you ever learn what the obstacles were to implementing your change unless you asked the people implementing it?  We all know you’re not psychic.

Forget the anonymous surveys and ignore the comment cards.

Talk to your followers.

Ask them, from their perspective, what the obstacles are to implementing the change.

Then, help them tackle those obstacles.

Don’t forget to claim the conversations and the obstacle destruction as wins.

Keep your eyes up, your feet moving forward and keep driving change!

What type of movies best describe how people behave in modern organizations?

Zombie movies!

Can you picture it: their lifeless eyes, their tortured expressions, their slow and painful movements, and their moaning and groaning?  “Oooohhhh, only eight years, three months and six days until retirement. Oooohhhh!”

Imagine a typical scene from a zombie movie: a street lined with industrial buildings, one rundown building blends into the next, each covered with tattered, faded old signs, setting a glum, gray mood.  The street is filled with drab, soulless zombies staggering in all directions.  All appears hopeless.

This is the scene of the typical organization where driving people to change is the norm.  Where once these citizens of the organization may have been full of life, slowly the poison of driving people to change spread through their veins until it seems not a soul remains full-of-life, happy or joyful.  No one remembers how the infection spread and there’s no first zombie to blame for the infection (though regularly they try to find the “they” who poisoned them first). This sad existence might as well be all they’ve ever known.

Let’s inject some driving change into this organization.  How would it change our zombie movie scene?

Watch there, at the far end of the street. Did you see that first flash of color into our gray scene?

It’s a girl.  She’s coming closer, walking with her head held high, full of purpose.  She’s still a ways off, but even from here you can clearly see the smile on her face.  Is that a flower pinned into her hair? Yep, and from her right arm she’s cheerfully swinging a basket of daisies.  It’s hard to say, but she may even be whistling a happy tune.  She’s so spirited and alive, she’s almost glowing.

It looks as though our zombie scene has been invaded by a lost, but cheerful, extra from a musical set.  A zombie-meets-musical scene?  No, not Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.  This is even better!

Are you waving to her as she skips toward you?

What must the zombies think of our spirited new addition?  How utterly and completely out of place she seems.  Watch how a few zombies quickly pounce on her, herding her off to the edge of the street.  Clearly she doesn’t belong here.

Watch the scene unfold with me.  Watch her hand a daisy to any zombie that will take one.  Watch her smiling at everyone she meets, saying hello, calling them by their names, and encouraging them to be their best today.  Watch how, slowly at first, the zombies touched by her driving change spirit regain the color in their faces, the light in the eyes, and their own, beautiful smiles.  Soon the citizens pick up their heads, fix their gaze forward and start walking purposefully down the street.

Someday, perhaps we’ll look out on this scene, and all will be renewed. Someday, perhaps we’ll see a street lined with industrial buildings with newly painted facades adorned with clear, sparkling signs, setting a upbeat mood.  The street will be filled with smiling, joy-filled citizens walk purposefully up the street.   Though a few, faded zombies remain, all will appear hopeful.

What’s the point of all of this imagining?

Don’t fear the zombies in your organization!  They are just fellow citizens not yet revived from the ravages of being driven to change.  Once you know driving change is possible, they and their poison can never infect you.

Instead, be the joy you want to see in your organization. Smile and shine and drive change.

Why not try?

You can’t sell complicated to someone who came to you to buy simple.” – Seth Godin

Try to always remember that the people you’re typically talking with haven’t thought about the change you’re trying to make nearly as much as you have.  They’ll need you to guide them to where you’re at, not talk down to them from the mountain you’ve already climbed.

Driving change often requires you to return to where you started to gather more followers.  Going back for others is not regression, it’s progress.

Have a great week driving change!

Extra blog note: My order of Engine For Change cards arrived this weekend.  The card features the blog address plus the definitions for driving change and driving people to change.  If you’d like a card or several for you and your friends, just send your address to engineforchange@gmail.com and I’ll get the cards right out in the mail to you.  Think of them as your Christmas gift from Engine For Change.  p.s. Tell me truly how many cards you’d like.  I got a ton and am happy to part with them.

Imagine your organization as a small city.  It has all the positions and dramas a city has.  Your top executive is your mayor.  The top executive’s leadership team can stand in for a city council.  You’ve got your town busy bodies and old hermits, and then you’ve got your first responders.

Do you know who your organization’s first responders are?  Are you a first responder?

You can find your organization’s first responders quite easily.  They’re the people who rush toward the smoke of a burning platform, who save the pillars of the organization from being destroyed, and who serve above and beyond their job descriptions or narrow roles in the organization.

But, your organization isn’t a small town.  In a small town, the citizens can call for the first responders.  In an organization, it’s the top executive and their leadership team who have the near sole possession of the alarm summoning the first responders.   These days it seems the leadership of organizations is more than willing to sound the alarm, not early, but often.

What happens when the alarm is sounded? Always committed to their passion for helping their fellow man, regardless the hour or the situation, the first responders stop everything and surge to their posts.  They quickly are on post, charged up with adrenaline, ready to rush out to serve and save.

Again, your organization is not a real city.  If it were, the first responders would have control of the garage door blocking their start away from their current location and toward resolving the crisis.  In an organization, it’s the top leaders who often solely control that door, and here’s the scenario that often unfolds.

0030: Alarm sounded by the leadership team.  Urgent change required to save the organization.  First responders arrive on post, ready to serve.

0400: First meeting of leadership team called to discuss the alarm, why it was pushed and agree that pushing alarms is a solid leadership action.  First responders are twitching aboard their rescue vehicle, eager to assist those suffering as the organization falters.

0800:  Second meeting of the leadership team to finally agree who is responsible for actually pushing the button to release the first responders.  Now, this decision, if made, will have to be followed by a lengthy discussion of who can issue the order to push the button to the the person who is responsible for pushing the button.  Did you catch that?  Neither did I.

By the end of the meeting no one is appointed responsible of either decision so no decision is made; instead the leadership team agrees to reconvene after lunch and the door is still shut.  The first responders remain at their posts, though their energy is fading and each noise near the door jolts them back into full attention.  The internal energy is quickly depleted.  Frustration, anger and sadness are taking hold of the first responders.  More than a few first responders have turned in their resignation papers and gone home.

1230: Third meeting of the leadership team.  An ally of the first responders tried to push the button to open the door while the other leaders weren’t looking.  He has since been chastised by the group for not being a team player.  Meanwhile, almost all the first responders have left their posts and the citizens of the organization have started protest campaigns just outside the door over the deplorable state of the organization.

1400: The organization is in ruins.  The leadership team adjourns without a decision, content they put in a long day of “work”.  The last, exhausted first responders sulk home, their lives wasted.  They are now shadows of their former selves.

Now that I’ve pushed you into a pit of despair about how organizations really don’t change, let me attempt to build you a rope ladder so you can free yourself from the pit.  You’ll have to go with me on this one. Some days I think I’m still in the pit, so who am I really to give advice.  But, since not knowing has never stopped me from talking, here are my suggestions for first responders coping with an alarm followed by the door still shut in front of you.

1.   You can’t stand at your post, jumping at every sound following the latest alarm from the top leadership that, “This time it’s different.”  You’ll kill yourself with the stress. TRUST ME!  You must get the adrenaline out somehow before you collapse.  My way to get it out is to go for a run, an angry, pounding the pavement ignoring my pace sort of run.  When I’m done, the door isn’t any more open, but at least I’m not twitching at every sound.

2.  Let the leaders know you’re waiting.  In the story above you could think that the leaders must clearly see what their decision delays are doing to their first responders.  Often, they don’t.  If you’re a first responder, don’t be shy about telling them what you’re doing and why you’re ready to go.  It usually doesn’t hurt to mention it, as long as you use your “driving change” techniques and tell them about your obstacles without ordering them to do something for you.  Keep the focus on the organization and they just might open the door.  This has worked for me a few times.

3. Leave the organization (or never join it).  I’d like to tell you that other organizations will be better, but Dilbert does seem to be universal.  You could choose an organization based on a proven track record of letting the first responders loose on the organization, but even that may be fleeting.  Years ago I didn’t take a job offer because I could tell from my initial interactions with the company that they had no intention of opening the door for the first responders.  That’s not my kind of organization.

4.  Don’t leave.  Just give up.  This I can’t recommend, but it is an option.  If you’ve ever met someone who is “retired in place,” chances are they were once a first responder who couldn’t take it anymore and just gave up on the inside long before their body gave out.  It’s your choice to give up, but I don’t think that’s any way to live.

Now, for the few of you reading this blog that are the leadership team in our story and who happen to find themselves seemingly trapped in the story above, I offer these suggestions.

Step 1: Don’t push the alarm unless you mean it and you’ve already agreed to open the door.  Pushing the alarm then discussing the door is insulting and frustrating for too many people in your organization, and is debilitating to your first responders.  They may not be telling you that to your face, but it is.

Step 2: Analyze why you pushed the alarm and then choose to not open the door.  Your behavior is causing many people pain and you shouldn’t be able to avoid that truth.  Either don’t push the alarm (which is hard to do these days when the world won’t stop changing just because you want it to) or open the door before you push the alarm.  It really is that simple.

On the rare occasions that I’ve seen the door open before the alarm went off, the organizations have been stunned by the rapid success of their first responders.

For me, it seems being an organizational first responder is a life’s calling.  What I’m learning more and more every day is that this calling can crush your or save you.

I bet your organization is worth saving.  To all my organizational first responder brethren out there, stay strong while you wait for the door to swing open.  Stay strong and keep driving change.

Extra note:

If you’re a leader who just wants to vent about your problems without any intention of solving them, please don’t vent to a first responder and definitely don’t push the alarm (e.g., hold huge meetings) that summon all the first responders.

Call someone, anyone else.  I bet there are plenty of people you know in your organization who will never try to help you solve your problems.  Let them listen and do nothing.  They like it that way.

When you’re driving change, you’ll need the help of people you’ve never met.

How do you find those people and create a connection with them?

First, you must know what my long-ago-boss’-boss called “Who’s Who in the Zoo.”

In organizations governed by their org. chart, you must know who the head of each section/division/department/whatever-you-call-it is, if you hope to ever get information from or about that group.

Even more important in organizations governed by their org. chart, you want to know desperately who the person is within that section/division/department/whatever-you-call-it who actually helps people.  Too often the boss is the boss, distant and unapproachable.  Instead, look for the person on your level or below in that group, who can tell you who really wields the power or controls the information.  These are the true “who’s who”s to map.

Finding the person on top of the org. chart is easy.  Check the company or organization’s website.

Finding the person who actually does the work or has the information is harder, but it is manageable if you’re willing to do a bit of digging.

I’d go looking for these people in non-organizational organizations, such as a management organization, a union, or a Toastmasters Group.  Frequently, the socially-inclined people in the organization are the socially-inclined people outside the organization.  These are the people that enjoy making a new acquaintance, get excited about serving a new acquaintance and can be lasting connections for you to the organization.

If you can’t find them there, go looking for the person through your current connections.  Ask the people you always go to for advice on “Who’s Who in the Zoo,” to tell you who they know in that group, and would your connection mind if you used their name to introduce yourself to the person.  Most times, I’d bet your connection agrees.

Last but not least, go to their organization area (e.g., their office spaces) and start asking people for help.  “Excuse me, can you tell me who I should speak to regarding…?” Most times, they’ll point you to someone, who will point you to someone, who will get you to the person you want.

Let’s review:

1. Check the org. chart.

2. Look for them at non-group group functions.

3. Ask your connections to connection you.

4. Ask at the organization directly.

Making a connection may take some effort, but if the connection is essential (which it often is), your investment of your time will be rewarded in the end.

Why not try?

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.” – Confucius

When you’re driving change, don’t be surprised if no one notices.

Why?

Because most people have never seen someone honestly choose a change for themselves and offer the opportunity to others to choose the change too.  They’ve never seen someone driving change.

Think of it from their perspective.  They change because someone tells them to, because someone threatens them or because someone pays them to change.  Without knowing anything else, they’ll assume that’s why you change too.

At first, when you talk about your passion for your change and when you offer yourself willingly to move their obstacles, they’ll think it’s a trap.

They’ll be waiting for the beatings to come, as they always do when all those other people drive them to change.  You can tell them until you are blue in the face that you’re not like those others.  They’ll never see it in your lectures.

You have to show them, but you should know that you can’t force them to look or to see you driving change.

You just have to, day after day, live your driving change example.  You’ll be the most pure, most open, most explained change they’ve been through.  Soon, they’ll see.

Everything, including driving change, has its beauty.

Give them time to see that beauty.  Shine your example bright.  Someday they’ll see your light.

Why not try?