Unleashing Transformation: Secrets to Shaking Up Large Organisations
What does it take to change large organisations?
Is there a magic formula and how can consultants encourage clients to change?
Let’s start with the barriers
Efficiency blockers:
The fear cycle (it is better to be mildly punished for lack of progress than to be severely punished for taking risks) – this is very common in government
Fixation on one solution and delusion about all other evidence – Kodak’s fixation about “wet film” long after the industry had moved on to digital technology
Short term thinking – putting off difficult and costly change in favour of a short term quick fix – very common in government, particularly local authorities
Changing organisations to make them more efficient involves dealing with the power and belief systems that reinforce culture and lived through behaviours.
Digging into the Emotional World:
I have been reflecting today with a group of Systems Thinkers about how an organisation reacts to a systems intervention:
We find a lot of the emotions that Elizabeth Kübler-Ross describes well in her seminal text assessing the emotional states of people who are given a terminal diagnosis.
The same emotions crop up when you try to change an organisation – people react and denial is a particularly prevalent emotion within government departments. When the people who hold power live in denial things can get very stuck. It is common to see the senior staff take a view either there are “no big problems”, or that there is “no hope of doing things better so we have to live with the current situation”. This very much mirrors the thinking described by Nicole Lepera in “how to do the work”. Nicole talks about the “Monkey Brain” – the thing that keeps us busy doing lots of doing and worrying about the next thing – the customer orders, the queues, the technical problems... BUT the “Monkey Brain” is not helping us do the things that will make significant changes, just doing work to feed the “too busy to be strategic” mantra.
As Systems Thinkers we want to effect change. So naturally we have to press the “deniers” to change and move forward. We encourage the senior staff to make changes by facing the fact that things are not so great. This is always a key turning point for a piece of consultancy work. One of two things then happens –
either we are ejected from the consulting role just as virus is ejected from the human body, or we get a hearing and a chance to change an organisation.
So, what can we do to improve the chances of getting a hearing? Two things make a difference to which way that this tough conversation will go (1) the credibility of the presenter and the way that the message is presented (2) the pressure within the organisation for change. If both are strong it is likely that changes will be made. But having one of these without the other is likely to lead to an unsuccessful change programme. I once worked on a project that had had eight independent reviews – all of which had said the same thing. I was the ninth – and what I was about to say was not significantly different from the eight that had gone before me. I quite rightly approached this particular “graveyard” of consultancy with a good amount of fear. Yet after my review changes were made, not because I was any more credible than the eight very well established and highly esteemed professionals that had been there before, but because I brough both credibility and found a way to pressure the department for change.
So, this journey is never straightforward. There is never a “very similar” consulting experience. Every assignment is different. It is a bit like the work of a good therapist, the client has to see new opportunities and has to want to change. No matter how much you want the client to change, they have a perfect right to remain exactly where they are – and a number do and always will. Exactly as in therapy, they also will feel that they have a right to blame innocent third parties for their failings “I paid …. “ and I am on the sixth consultant and STILL the consultant didn’t solve my problems!!!
Feeling the Heat
As a consultant you can, and often do, find yourself in the “firing line”. Bill Clinton said that “if people can find a way to transfer the heat from them to you, they always will”. So, personal resilience is key to being able to make changes and remaining resilient. This can be the biggest challenge for any consultant – whether they be new to the practice or a seasoned professional who believes that they have seen it all. Resilience begins with knowing and understanding yourself – accepting the beauty and fragility of who you are. We are all perfect and ideal in some ways, and we can all be total failures in others. When I teach resilience to new consultants I get them to look at famous people who are either at the end of their careers or who have long since left this earth. History presents some people in a wonderful light – think of Winson Churchill and most people will recall the great Churchillian sayings “We will fight them in the hills, we will fight them in the dales and we will NEVER give up”. Churchill was undoubtedly the rock that held the UK and its allies together, particularly during the early days of World War 2. Yet Churchill lost his way in the later years of the war. Fatigue had set in and Churchill was nowhere near as capable as a leader during the Normandie landings. So, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. We become resilient when we recognise this, and embrace it. Living as closely as we can to our authentic selves makes us capable, credible and resilient. We can acknowledge that “maybe it would have been better to do something different but then again hindsight is a wonderful thing!”
Going back to the work of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, everyone is familiar with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – but one additional stage was added more recently with the permission of the Kübler-Ross family – “Meaning[1]”. While in grief terms this is usually expressed as “how can we stop anyone else having to suffer the way that dad/grandma/auntie did?” In change management terms it can also unlock a situation. I will often ask individuals or boards of companies to look forward say 10 years – and I will ask “what legacy will do you want to leave?” People will tell me with great passion about what they believe, what their company stands for and how it will stamp its mark on the world. I then ask a very simple question “will your current course of action enable you to deliver the legacy you seek? And if not, what are you willing to change so that it does?”
In the end we all want to leave a legacy. When the people who are treading water are told that their headstone could read “here lies Adam Jones … he kept everything more or less on budget” this can have a very inspiring effect. If Adam Jones wants to be remembered as a true innovator and a thought leader, even just uttering the suggestion that this won’t be the case can breath life into a change initiative that everyone else would have said was long since dead.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-53267505
