Where It All Started

people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people.

How We Got To This Point

people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people.

The Only Way Out

people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people.

An Historical Perspective

people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people! Here is a word-cloud of this complex topic:

The Future Of Organizational Change Management

people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people.

The Moral For Organizational Change Practitioners

people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people.

Disclaimer

people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people people peoplepeople people people people people people people.

Building further on the insights of gamification guru Gabe Zichermann, let’s dive a little deeper into the definition and its components. Last spring I had the opportunity to interview him on the Techguru conference in Brussels. In an amazing 40 seconds he unveils the essence of gamification.

The Definition

In fact, there are different definitions for gamification, depending on who you talk to.

The use of game mechanics/dynamics to drive game-like engagement and actions in non-game environments (e.g. work, education, exercise, etc.)
- Michael Wu

Inventing new work and business practices that engage employees, customers and consumers as effectively as a good game.
- Jane McGonigal

The process of using game thinking and game mechanics to solve problems and engage users.
- Gabe Zichermann

While all of these definitions demonstrate that it is about the use of game mechanics, I prefer to show all three of them because they use a slightly different emphasis. More precisely:

• That it’s about non-game environments (Wu)
• That it’s about engagement (McGonigal)
• That it’s about problem-solving (Zichermann)

Dynamics + Mechanics = A Process

As Zichermann pointed out in the above video it is essential to make a distinction between:

• Game dynamics: how we choose to think about the world, the way we solve problems, and how we interact with other people;
• Game mechanics: the tools we use to play games, such as points, levels, badges, leaderboards, challenges and rewards.

The art of finding the right mechanics to respond to the dynamics of a specific situation and creating a process over time is gamification. The below drawing shows some examples of how some mechanics respond best to some dynamics at hand (drawing based on this presentation of Michael Wu).

Game dynamics and mechanics are proving to be critical for the next generation of social networks. We will be witnessing a similar wave heading towards organizations with a delay of … well … ummmm … depends on how late your organization already is today in unlocking the potential of social media. As a rule of thumb: apply the same delay and the same change-pains caused by being a laggard.

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop on project management where we were drawn into an experiment involving 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow. The objective was to build a structure as high as possible and the marshmallow needed to be on top.

The Marshmallow Challenge

You may be curious about what this possibly has to do with project management. Turns out that this challenge reveals all of the things that are essential and that you won’t find in the books and methodologies on project management. The ‘marshmallow challenge is a popular challenge. Designer Tom Wujec even created a website on the topic and conducted some research on the performance of marshmallow construction teams. The thing got more attention since he talked about the results on TED last year.

The Uh-Oh Moment

The biggest surprise always comes from the weight of the marshmallow. Although the weight of the marshmallow is known from the start, the majority of the project teams wait until the very last moment to put it on top. This is the biggest flaw of all projects and it gets even worse when the level of education of the participants is higher (in fact: kindergarten graduates outperform other teams on this challenge!). Here is what typically happens as the project unfolds in a team of very skilled people:

• In the orientation phase there is some power play and who-does-what gets decided upon;
• Skilled teams are trained to create a single best plan;
• They consume most of the time by building the structure according to the plan;
• When the time is almost up, they take out the marshmallow and put it on top;
• For a very brief moment you hear ‘ta-da’, and then it is most of the times ‘uh-oh’.

From Uh-Oh to Ta-Da!

So far so good. We were about 20 minutes into the workshop, played around with some spaghetti and built a structure that did not work. Obviously, the next step is to blame the marshmallow. That’s what we do in real projects, right? The target population and their needs (the marshmallow for organizational change management projects) are known from the outset, and yet we never start building with them in mind. We always build with the one single plan in mind; a plan that is based on assumptions.

Looking at kindergarten graduates, here is how we can improve our performance on the challenge: kids always start with the marshmallow and they build one prototype after the other. Designers call this the ‘iterative process’: constantly prototyping and refining.

This results in an entirely different use of the time, and for change management projects this would also result in an entirely different relationship with the target population, because it requires you to involve the target population from the outset. The point is to keep the marshmallow on top from the very beginning!

By the way, you may have noted that this is what I am proclaiming when I talk about raising the bar for our profession (only now it gets even more clear that early involvement and ownership is essential)

What’s In It For Us?

The marshmallow challenge was a real eye-opener for me and the take-aways are very enriching. I can summarize them by quoting Tom Wujec:

Every project has its marshmallow.

Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we apply the very best of our thinking, feeling and doing to the challenge that we have at hand.

Sometimes a little prototyping is what it takes to turn a Uh-Oh project into a Ta-da project.

Finally, I’d like to thank Katia Van Belle who is an extremely skilled and knowledgable facilitator for this exercise.

Classical music is no longer for arty-farty people. It can be the backbone of some serious management discussions. This time we had the honor to be eavesdropping on the very first Beethoven’s Pathetique rehearsal of the prestigious I Solisti del Vento ensemble, together with their experienced coach Etienne Siebens.

Have a look at the below video and – apart from enjoying the music – have a look at the exchange of communication cues and the resonance among the musicians.

Communication

It was striking how this ensemble demonstrated the difference between true communication and non-communication. Their coach explained it as follows:

Good communication is like breathing together. If you look close enough you will see that these musicians are constantly looking at each other for cues and resonance. This is how they communicate.

But the most important part of their communication is the ‘why’ part. The musicians communicate well because they have a shared purpose, which is to bring the most authentic and perfect interpretation of Beethoven’s Pathetique. The managers of the car assembly plant could easily relate to that: we communicate in order to build the perfect car. Seems like having a higher purpose helps to improve communication. Francis Pollet, the leader of the ensemble explained it by stating:

We are all soloists, and yet we are capable of listening to each other because we are being in service of something bigger: the great master Beethoven. But we could not have done so without growing into that attitude.

Rehearsing is Growing

‘Communication’ and ‘Community’ have a lot in ‘Common’. Got it? Rehearsing is about being there, being present and being involved in the discussions about the interpretation. As a result the musicians resonate with one another. Unfortunately, 1+1 does not make a top-performance. Instead, you need 1+1+blood+sweat+tears+time together.

Pollet continued by explaining that the rehearsals are more important than the performance. Rehearsals are moments of truth. As they are a project based ensemble, the rehearsals are restricted to an initial budget and time is precious. Therefore it is important for each musician to be present and to live every minute of every rehearsal.

Trading Places Improves Resonance

One of the practices that Etienne Siebens often uses as a coach is to scramble the physical position of the musicians. We experienced one of those scrambles where musicians had to trade places. Next, they had to play the exact same piece as they did before the scramble. The result was astonishing and the difference could be heard and felt by all people in the room – including the non-musicians like myself.

Siebens explained that this is a technique he often uses in order to improve the most important part of communication: the listening part. Time for us to wonder what a scramble would look like in our environment – whenever we sense that there is something wrong with the communication. Instead of pointing fingers, we could trade places and play the scores one more time. I’m pretty sure that would make sense and improve the resonance.

Saliva

Finally, some wisdom and observations from the shop floor. For some managers of the car plant it was surprising to see that musicians clean their own instruments on moments they were idle. Cleaning the saliva, blowing some air, etc.  To the musicians this seemed fairly logic. It’s their instrument after all! However, when we compare that to a production worker on an assembly line, there is no logical link anymore. We’d rather call maintenance for stuff we could be taking care of during idle time. Duh!

The Hunt for Leadership

The most puzzling part came when the managers had to debrief about the leadership they had observed. There was no way that they could pinpoint the ‘one and only’ leader of the ensemble. Was it the lead-player? Was it the coach? Was it an opinion leader among the musicians? There was no uniform answer.

The leadership and the decision-making was constantly switching thanks to direct communication and listening. This is the most amazing thing about observing this ensemble: you can almost see and hear communication and leadership as it happens – but you can’t attribute it to a single person or a single level. Is it an attitude? Or rather a process? Difficult to tell – but it did happen right there in front of us. That’s why Bizzarts is experience based learning.

In this series I’m going to take this basic premise and look at it from three different directions: What can individuals do to manage their own energy effectively during change? What can leaders do to create an environment that supports resilience? What can change agents do to execute initiatives in a way that optimizes resilience? So here we go with Part 1.

People are fundamentally resilient. One way or another, we pick up and carry on after just about anything—natural disasters, broken hearts, even the Holocaust. Most organizational change is relatively small in comparison to the challenges that people have overcome in other arenas of life. Why, then, do we sometimes struggle with it so?

In many ways, organizational change creates the same dynamics that life crises do. When people make decisions that affect us, we experience a loss of control. When those decisions require us to change established patterns of thinking and behaving, we grieve the loss of the familiar and we get frustrated when our mental models of how to operate no longer work. We expend energy to help us work through the emotions and build new mental models that enable us to succeed. We adapt. But sometimes we thrash around a lot in the process and burn up energy that we could be using more productively.

Some people seem to go through this process of adaptation more easily than others. In other words, they get better results with less wasted energy. There’s no big mystery to it…research and experience point to a set of elements that help them do this. Let me briefly describe each of them.

Positive This one is the cornerstone. When you are able to see hope and possibility in dark corners, you have a reason to engage your energy in dealing with the challenges. If all you see are dangers, your energy goes into worrying, defending, and protecting.

Focused By definition, change brings confusion and ambiguity. It’s not always clear what you should be doing with that limited supply of energy. If you’ve done the work of thinking about what’s important to you, and you’ve practiced saying “no” to anything that’s not, you can direct your energy wisely. If you’re responding to others’ needs and demands without a compass, you will scatter your energy all over the place and end up burned out and drained.

Flexible Most change involves solving unfamiliar problems and generating new approaches. There are two things that can help you here. First, being good at coming up with a lot of ideas. Not only is this fun, which means it usually increases your energy level, but it also helps you identify possibilities and options. When you only stick with familiar ways of thinking, and look for “the one right answer” too soon, you usually get frustrated and drain your energy trying to make old answers fit new questions.

The second part of being flexible is recognizing that other people have energy too. You don’t have to do it all yourself. Drawing on others’ mental capacity, emotional support, and physical assistance boosts your available resources. When you try to go it alone, you use more of your energy than you need to.

Organized In the midst of turbulence, order and stability play a critical role. You need to be able to establish zones of predictability by creating effective structures and plans, and using them with disciplined attention. Otherwise your energy gets drained in chaos and clutter.

Proactive If you wait for certainty before doing anything to respond to the challenges of change, you will wait a long time and miss a lot of departing trains. This last element of resilience is about taking risks; moving out of your comfort zone; experimenting and learning. You can waste an awful lot of energy trying to create a perfect solution. Sometimes you just have to move, see what happens, and adjust from there.

So the next obvious question is: Can people learn to do these things better, or are we born with a level of resilience we can’t change? My answer: These characteristics are like muscles. Some people start with more than others, but through regular practice, we can all get stronger. It’s not necessarily easy, and you don’t do it in one training class. Instead, you take time every day to do the resilience equivalent of push ups and biceps curls, so that when the challenges hit, your responses come easily and you apply your energy efficiently and effectively to adapt to the changes you face.

Next time: What can leaders to do create an environment that supports resilience?

In this article I present an overview of the things in change management I believe in. At the end of this article I try to connect the dots with Social Architecture. My conclusion is that Social Architecture is an upgrade, not a replacement.

The Four Containers

The organizational change management approach caters for 4 different elements. They are: Communication, Learning, Organization and Performance. Each element represents a specific need that people have during a change.

1. Communication: people need an identity to hang onto so they can see what is in it for them. Constructing an identity for your project is necessary in order to provide an answer to the question “What’s In It For Me?”.
2. Learning: People need to know what is expected of them in terms of attitude, knowledge and skills. A part of this is provided in the form of classroom-trainings (the know-how), but the largest part of the knowledge transfer will take place in practice, during the testing phase and the phase of problem-solving. That is why the learning work is never restricted to the classroom and – most of all – we need to carefully build a network of local ambassadors for the project.
3. Organization: this is the need to know “Who does what?”. This means that the setup of the future roles and responsibilities needs to be clarified upfront.  Next, the support structure in the long run needs to be setup, i.e.: the community of ambassadors who will be responsible for the sustainability of the solution.
4. Performance: Finally, people need to know what exactly will change in practice and how this will affect their working habits and usage of time. This includes a detailed follow-up of the chronology of tasks and the creation of a uniform procedure that is shared among all departments.

Critical Mass

The four elements above determine the scope of change management. However the key success factor for these elements to work is determined by the critical mass that we will be able to create.

The critical mass of a project is a combination of different project roles who are working together to create enough energy to make the change happen. Daryl Conner masters this subject very well. According to Conner, the different roles are:

• Advocate: An advocate is an individual (or group) who wants to achieve a change, but doesn’t have the authority to make it happen.
• Initiating sponsor: The initiating sponsor has the sanctioning power to drive the change process through to realization. He or she has ultimate control of the resources—including human, economic, political, and logistical—required for implementation of the initiative.
• Primary sustaining sponsor: report to the initiating sponsor. They formally sanction the change within their areas of responsibility. Primary sustaining sponsors provide a “united front” of leadership support for the endeavor and coordinate implementation activities across functional or geographical lines as necessary.
• Local sustaining sponsor: Local sustaining sponsors are the individuals or groups who cascade the change below the level of primary sustaining sponsors.
• Agents: An agent is an individual responsible for facilitating the implementation of a change project.
• Targets: Targets are the individuals or groups that must change for realization to be achieved.

Momentum

The main preoccupation of change management is to make sure that the above cascade of critical mass is capable of achieving a momentum in the organization.

In a recent article Conner explained that in order to achieve momentum the sponsors and agents of this project need to find a proper way to manage the pushbacks that arise from risk-factors of this project.

This is what this comes down to visually:

• The solid line shows a change in which momentum meets little pushback from the risk factors and moves quickly to realization.
• The broken line shows an initiative that faced some significant risk factor counterforce and slowly but steadily overcame the organization’s tendency to maintain the status quo.
• The dotted line shows a project in which momentum made some headway at the beginning of its implementation but then became overwhelmed by the counterforces before critical mass was reached with the local sustaining sponsors.

Social Architecture

Finally, the main question to ask before we start this project is ‘what will be left when the project is over?’. This does not refer to the deliverables, but rather to the structure of agents that is put in place to sustain the benefits of this project.

Here is what I have written about Social Architecture earlier:

The objective is to put in place an architecture of people who are bridging the communication gaps that your project is trying to solve. Moreover, this structure should be reinforced by the sponsors to operate in the long run.

Connecting the Dots

For several weeks I have been saying that Social Architecture does not replace Change Management. Rather it is an upgrade. The only question is: how do they relate? Have a look at the attempt below:

Makes sense? Please let me know – because connecting the dots will always be work in progress!

For those of you who are thinking that the mindset of a millennial is unproductive and lazy, have a look at Chase describing what it takes to accomplish teamwork and why specialization matters.

Chase Conner is a 23-year-old gamer. He has been gaming since he was nine. He likes games where you are part of a team trying to accomplish a goal together.

Progress

In a previous article of this series I compared the four things that games make us good at with the four things that motivate people.

To Chase, a sense of progress seems to be an important motivator, both in gaming and in our daily lives. As he describes, progress is what everyone is working for:

• Recognition: You do something so that it is known to the community that you have done that;
• Mastery: You want to be the one to make your character more valuable in the community.

From Boredom to Commitment

Nevertheless, gaming mostly starts with being bored and sitting around. But once you enter that world you want to be part of it and build your reputation.

• It begins with ‘I have nothing to do’.
• But it becomes: ‘I want to do more’.

Teamwork

It is striking to see that gamers like Chase have a very clear view on what it takes to create teamwork.

If you really want to be good at the game you have to your job. Everybody has a role. If you want to win you do your job.

For example, some people’s role is to attack or defend. If you have signed up to play in a certain class or rank, you have clearly chosen to accomplish a certain task. If you choose to kill people instead, the failure of the team is a direct result of that.

Surprisingly, Chase advises us not to intervene and to control the people who are not doing their job. They know what their job is and it makes no use for him to yell at them. They are not doing their job because they choose to kill people instead.

Over time, if they want to win, they will change their mind. I cannot do that for them. I have no direct influence. My influence is limited to their own feelings toward the game. Once they have received enough failure, they will change their mind.

Chase has no illusions on what is in the reach of his own actions: I can only control my own actions.

Specialization

Without any hesitation, Chase reports that specialization is his biggest takeaway so far from gaming.

In the beginning you want to be good at everything. The point is to specialize as early as you can in a certain role so you can grow and become the best in your class.

The necessity of specialization lies in the need to allocate the limited time we have to a specific task. But the real benefit of specialization surfaces when the time comes to be chosen for a team or a mission. That is when you will be picked as the best of your class. Therefore Chase advises us to specialize as soon as we can.

When the world changes, the rules change. And if you insist on playing today’s games by yesterday’s rules, you’re stuck. Hence, this manifasto. Let’s get out of the analysis paralysis and focus on what we leave behind at the end of a project. The thing that teaches people how to fish so they can eat forever.

The new Organizational Change Management is called Social Architecture.

Successful programs don’t just coordinate local roll-out projects. They provide a platform for the network of relationships that is built during each roll-out. It’s called Return On Relationships.

In the previous article I have discussed the strategic level and I argued that we need to plan for social architecture in a large scale program. In this article I will discuss the tactical level and zoom in how programs should be designed to allow for co-creation.

Once again a long article, so buckle-up. This topic is simply too important to cover in half an article.

The Anatomy of a Fiasco

But first things first: before we jump to tactical conclusions, let’s have a look at the problem from the tactical point of view: the inability to build a social architecture during a large scale program will result in a situation where there is no community that the organization can count on.

For example, in the majority of all ERP programs we find that Business Representatives do not belong to a community when the project is over. Here is how that typically goes:

Stage 1 – Long before the project: the program is heard of and sometimes there is an update in the quarterly newsletter of the CEO. Other than that there are no expectations. People take on a wait-and-see attitude, not knowing that there are a lot of design issues on the table that will impact their work. But the program has a budget and a calendar to perform against, so why should sites be represented that are currently not in scope?

Stage 2 – Right before the project: People are nominated as Business Representative. A declaration that will change their life for as long as the project will last. They have no clue what they have committed to, but one thing is certain: they have jumped and now they will have to swim.

Stage 3 – During the Project: Business Representatives work very intensively with real people: the experts onsite, the central program team and the support team. This phase is very motivating because there is a sense of purpose (representing their department in the program) and a sense of progress (their voice is heard and their participation makes a difference).

Stage 4 – Right after the project: the local deployment of the expert team ends as soon as the operations have stabilized in the new mode (a new system, a new way of working, etc.). Sure enough, there are metrics for knowing when it is time for the expert team to go. The Business Representatives stay in charge for a short period and they make a difference in the battle to get ‘back to normal’. Thanks to the knowledge they have built up and the relationships they have within the network of program experts they are valuable troubleshooters. Most of the times they also have super-access rights to solve problems or to unblock certain situations.

But their status is short-lived, like the superhero in a videogame possessing supernatural powers until the magic elixir he drank has stops working.

Stage 5 – Long after the project: “Business what?!”,… the term Business Representative is forgotten as soon as it came. After they returned to their jobs, they were still asked to solve problems for their colleagues, but they were no longer capable of solving them: their super-access to the system has been withdrawn and on top of that all the relationships they have built up with the experts, the program team and the support team are reduced to submitting a ticket in an anonymous ticketing system.

Paradise Lost

So far for purpose and progress. Time and again organizational change programs invest lots of energy in the development and commitment of great Business Representatives. And time and again they miss out on the opportunity to connect these teams to a community of BPE’s and BPA’s.

Here is an example of the local tragedy: last week I met a Business Representative who just got back to his former job after the project had stabilized.  Returning to his job means that he does his job as he is supposed to – but the “exceptional” part that we saw during the project is now buried until another personally engaging project comes along and gives him the same sense of belonging to something bigger than his nine-to-five job.

In the mean time, have a look at what happens centrally: major programs are full of overworked and burned-out people on the central level. They are trapped in the illusion that they need to know and do everything themselves. Next, they are worn out by the resistance they get from people as they implement enhancements, patches, upgrades etc. without having involved the target audience upfront.

By cutting the relationships between the program and its projects after each implementation a double spiral of negative effects is set in motion:

1. Overexposure of the central program team. They are overworked and saturated. This results in a loss of talent as people will either hide or resign;
2. Underexposure of the Business Representatives as they return to their jobs. This results in a loss of talent as people will either return to a smaller version of themselves of try their luck elsewhere.

Don’t Just Coordinate!

In order to inverse this negative spiral, let’s have a look at what sets successful programs apart from unsuccessful programs. The short version: Successful programs take care of the 3 C’s.

The three C’s is a concept that I borrowed from Charles Handy. In his 1994 book The Empty Raincoat, Charles Handy introduces the three C’s of learning. They are conceptualizing, coordinating, and consolidating. according to Handy they are the essential mechanisms underlying personal, organizational and societal learning.

Successful programs don’t just coordinate their projects well – the second C, they also take care of their conceptualization – the first C, and a consolidation after the project. This is what sets a social architectures apart from a one time effort: they are learning organizations in the first place.

The only way to activate all of the three C’s is by building a platform for the program’s community that acts as a membrane, or a matrix capable of integrating what it learned from previous projects into future roll-outs. The result to look for in this case is the return on relationships.

The Three C’s and the Program Lifecycle

Take few minutes to look at the below schedule. It represents the typical roadmap of a program, starting with the Program Initiation and ending with the Benefits Realization. Each step on the left side of the drawing finds its equivalent measuring point on the righthand side. For example: the Program Setup is done in order to ensure a Return On Investment; or the act of Testing is done in order to obtain a Flawless System.

Next, focus on the red dotted line I have drawn. Below that line are all the actions that happen within the cycle of a single roll-out. This is the cycle that is repeated every time a local project kicks-off. This is the second C: Coordination.

Regular readers of this blog will note that this shape resembles the flipped triangle that I have introduced in an earlier piece on learning. Above the red line is the Why level of a program and below the red line is the What & How Level of a program; the part that is repeated with each roll-out.

Finally, the three C’s (Conceptualize, Coordinate, Consolidate) are also drawn on this schedule. You will note that the first C (Conceptualize) and the third C (Consolidate) are the ones linking the Why of a program to the What and How. On a tactical level this is the essence of social architecture: conceiving the project roll-out from within the program community and consolidating it back into the program community.

The Program Community

Crossing the red dotted line requires you plan for a community before you even start the program (conceptualize). Co-creation is the key word here, and you can only get there by building a platform for the community of Business Representatives and program experts.

I have shown a blueprint of this community in the previous article and you will find it once again below. The point I want to emphasize as we are tackling the tactical level is that this community already exists.

This is why almost every attempt to “create” a community will not work: the failure of acknowledging a community (i.e.: a network of relationships) that already exists. Instead of trying to create a community from scratch against all odds, we should focus on being a platform.

How to be a Platform

Once we have recovered from the shock that we should be a platform instead of creating a community, it is time for action. Action in this case starts with a declaration of the program’s sponsor. The sponsor is the one and only person having the power to declare a community into existence. She endorses and honors the community in the first place.

Next it is time for the program to start being the platform by honoring and recognizing the community:

• ask them for help;
• ask for advice;
• present them the next big challenge and ask for their input;
• give them a stake in the decision process;
• grant them extra power, not only as a trouble shooter, but also as a co-creator;
• Above all, listen to them with your ears, and not with a ticketing system (because, let’s be honest, would you give the very best of yourself to a ticketing system or to a community that matters for you?).

Turning the Tide

The choice really comes down to this: will you take this challenge from zero with a new project team or will you honor the community that is already there? Honoring the community is tapping into their talent and getting a return on relationships.

Honoring the community also means working on retention without having to throw in a bonus or a reward. There is no bigger reward than honoring the talent that is already there. This is ultimately more rewarding for the Business Representatives than financial rewards. Psychologists call this intrinsic motivation: a sense of progress, a sense of contribution and a sense of belonging to something bigger than you are capable of by yourself.

Then – and only then – will people be sparked and make use of the platform you are providing: when their talent is being honored. This results in dynamics that inverse the double spiral of negative effects:

1. Overexposure of the central program team is balanced out in the community;
2. Underexposure of the Business Representatives disappears as we honor them by making use of the community.

Sure enough, this requires a certain level of maturity from the community leaders – the BPE’s and the BPA’s. In the next and final article of this series I will zoom in on this aspect when I cover the operational level.

Last Saturday I was granted a 9 minute time slot to speak at the 29th International Marketing Congress in Belgium. The theme of the congress was ‘Return On Relevance’.

It’s OK to frown and wonder what on earth marketers could learn from an Organizational Change Practitioner about relevance, because the only things I could share were some small victories and one big bump in the road. But it turned out to be a mind opener for most of them.

Here is the transcript of what I told. I titled my presentation “E Qwè?!”. A strange word…

E Qwè?!

E Qwè is the equivalent of “What’s up?” in the Walloon dialect that is spoken among shop floor operators of the production site where I recently worked.

I never could have learned this expression without access to the community of the shop floor operators and that’s the whole point I want to make:

You can be relevant all you want, but without access to the community you might as well forget it.

E Qwè is a brilliant expression because it has an explicit meaning – “What’s up?” – as well as an implicit meaning, i.e.: the knowledge of the local language is a sign that you have access to the community of shop floor operators.

Note: these shop floor operators were my customers, because I was the organizational change manager on their ERP implementation. My job is to build a bridge between intelligent software designers and hands-on shop floor operators. And the best way to that is to speak the language of both.

I’m in Marketing Too!

When I started my change management career in 2000, I was convinced that I was in marketing too. After all, I am in the business of selling things that people did not ask for: a different way of working, a new system, a change of procedures, etc.

As a result I sourced myself from the various marketing insights available. Some examples:

• I transformed Kotler’s famous marketing mix into the change management mix (the four P’s of change management);
• The diffusion of innovations by Everett Rogers served as a starting point for understanding and segmenting any target population;
• More recently I have translated the insights of John Gourville on the psychological adoption process of consumers into my context to construct a better predictor for resistance;
• Finally, the CRM philosophy by Peppers & Rogers (Customer Relationship Management). To be honest, our complete 2007 book on Managing Organizational Change During SAP Implementations is built around the idea of end-user centricity.

Where did we Go Wrong?!

Frankly, it is in this last part – CRM – that marketers screwed up big time. All of a sudden CRM was no longer about customers. It was reduced to an IT package and some fancy slides. That’s where marketing failed.

Unfortunately, this is also where I failed. More precisely, in 2005, when I was assigned to assist a production site on their SAP implementation. I had gathered all the relevant insights from marketing in one suitcase and I had 4 years of experience in another suitcase. I was razorsharp. I was smart. I was so prepared!

However, upon my arrival the site manager told me that they didn’t participate in the ERP program and that I could go home. So there I was. I can still see myself standing outside, being relevant. Very relevant indeed.

Turning Point

It was clear to me that marketing would no longer provide a solution. Marketers were too busy commoditizing CRM and running in circles. So what could I do instead?

I sourced myself from five other domains: my parents, anthropology, the internet, the war in Afghanistan, and my children. Fairly unusual – I agree, so let’s have a detailed look:

1. Mom & Dad

Standing there outside of this production site I had no idea what was going to happen next. Although I did call the project manager and a whole machinery of hierarchical support was set in motion, this was merely escorting a dead man walking into hostile territory. It was agreed to tolerate my presence.

Awkward and painful. So I did what any young man of my age would do in that situation: I turned to Mom & Dad for advice.

I didn’t even have to look very long for their advice, because a few years earlier, upon graduation, they told me the following:

Listen son, we are really glad that you have this degree, but remember: if you want to change something on the shop floor you are going to have to learn how to drive a forklift.

Needles to say, I didn’t pay much attention to their statement when I graduated, but now it started to make sense. My parents made it clear that I needed to seek to understand first and then to be understood. And this involves a lot of listening and alignment.

I suddenly realized that it takes respect in order to get there: going local, being there and spending time on what matters to them.

To summarize: I learned that safety shoes are more relevant than a tie if I wanted to get any return on my relevance.

2. Photocopier Anthropology

In his brilliant 2000 article Growing Up Digital, John Seely Brown describes the anthropological study he conducted at Xerox in order to find out how technicians solve problems. A team of anthropologists observed the technicians as they intervened to repair photocopiers.

What they observed can be summarized in two main conclusions:

1. The ‘tribe’ of technicians never used any manual or handbook to solve a problem with a photocopier. Instead, they called other technicians to share their observations in order to compare them to other problems they had run into before;
2. The knowledge that was needed to solve a problem was produced on the spot as the result of a co-creation of insights and experiences of other technicians. And when the problem was solved, this tribe gathered around a table to drink coffee and replay the whole story. That is how the new knowledge got stored into the brain of the community.

To summarize: What I learned from John Seely Brown is that coffee machines are more relevant than handbooks if I am really interested in solving a problem.

3. LinkedIn Surfing

The third source of learning comes from a domain that I always suspected to be a waste of time – even though I am spending on average 2 hours per day on it. It’s LinkedIn.

A few years ago LinkedIn introduced the Groups feature. When you subscribe to a group, the membership is tagged to your profile and you can participate to the discussions. The group I created is called Organizational Change Practitioners. With more than 12,000 members at the time of writing, it is the largest group on change management available on LinkedIn.

To my surprise, when I look at what I did in order to make this group so large, I would not be able to point to a specific action or event. An accidental empire? Maybe. The only thing I did was keeping the space clean for other practitioners to do their thing. I found myself cleaning on average 30 minutes per day over the past years.

It was only after reading Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do?, that I realized what this meant: I have provided a platform for the community of organizational change practitioners.

The community existed already. It only required me to

1. provide a platform;
2. Get out of the way, and
3. to use the LinkedIn platform to create what he calls Elegant Organization.

To summarize: What I take away from this experience is that I don’t need to be the smartest / most relevant guy in the room in order to create a community. I can be a platform for other people to be relevant.

4. Afghanistan

Major Jim Gant knows about relevance. His work on TTE – Tactical Tribal Engagement is unprecedented for counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. His contention is to work with tribalism, not against it. In his free ebook ‘One Tribe at a Time’ he talks about an acceptable level of integration.:

It is something that can be hard to determine unless you are on the ground with the tribe daily. With a platoon of soldiers, who likely will set up a mini-fire base, walking around in body armor and helmets, the tribesmen will quickly become alienated by their presence. This is at the tactical level. At the strategic level, too many troops and we become “occupiers.”

By working closely with the local tribes Gant makes progress in two specific areas:

1. He gains a tremendous amount of detailed knowledge on the territory;
2. He feels safer in the end. As he continues:

It is not the armor on your vehicles, your body armor or your weapons systems that will keep you safe . . . it is your relationship with the indigenous force that you are working with. “Friends don’t let friends get hurt.”

There is nothing (and I emphasize nothing) that can prove yourself and your team to the tribe more than fighting alongside them. That is the ultimate testament of your team as warriors and your commitment to the tribe. It will create the foundation for influence without authority that is the key to success in tribal engagement.

Influence without authority — Sitting Bull and I enjoyed each other’s company. Our camaraderie set the tone for our team’s relationship with their rest of the tribe. We laughed and spoke of many things that most US forces are taught as being taboo.

To summarize: What I have learned from Major Gant in that investing in the relationship with local tribes is more relevant than an impressive invasion strategy.

5. My Children

Finally, I learn a lot from my children. Children are very direct in the way they interact with the world around them.

• Around the age of 3 you will find them asking lots of ‘Why’ questions;
• Around the age of 8 their language gets a bit sharper, as they respond with the question ‘So what’ to just about anything that comes their way.

Those are two questions we should ask more often. I know that whenever I go in “Why”-mode and “So-what”-mode I am giving people a hard time. But in the end, the return on relevance is higher.

To summarize: we need to ask “why” and “so what?” more often if we want to get a return on relevance.

The Moral

Ever since marketing got caught up in a CRM-system paralysis, my quest has brought me closer to a new insight: if you want to have any return on the relevance you want to bring to a community, don’t forget to knock on the door before you enter.

Relevance is a matter of co-creation and you need to have the permission first. So my advice is as follows:

1. Go local. Be there. Spend time.
2. Knowledge is in the community, not in a handbook.
3. Be a platform!
4. Work WITH tribes, Not against them.
5. Ask “Why?” and “So what?” often.

Finally, ask yourself “E Qwè” in both senses of the word:

1. Explicit: What about you? What will you do next?
2. Implicit: Have you reached the ‘E Qwè’ level of your target audience? If so, then you will find myself co-creating and you will be more likely to get a return on the relevant stuff you are engaging people in.

Have a look at the presentation on Slideshare here: