Did you know that there is a specific field of psychology that specializes in what we have previously called ‘social theatre’ and ‘social economics’? This field is called Transactional Analysis (TA).

Flashback: What We Learned So Far

One of the models of TA describes very well what happens when we throw our emotions into the power-play of status and face-value. This is the sixth article on Unraveling Human Interaction, therefore a small flashback of what we observed so far:

1. The situation we are in determines the roles we play and the rules we follow; and we reciprocate every request with a response.

2. We also saw that each situation determines the face-value that we can claim for ourselves. The face-value comes with the situation and it is scripted in our roles.

3. The way human interaction actually works is through the constant exchange of social currency (love, attention, acknowledgement, etc).

4. In the end, human interaction can easily be summarized as a series of “+1″ and “-1″ in order to equilibrate the face-values that have been claimed.

5. We build and deepen relationships through cycles of testing and response. Building a relationship can be compared to making deposits of empathy (the exchange of “+1″) on the emotional bank account of trust.

6. In the same way as our reciprocity-reflex forces us to equilibrate the “+1″ and the “-1″ statuses of a situation, we have another reflex: the chameleon-like tendency to resonate with the influences of a situation.

7. The PDI (Power Distance Index) of the culture you are from determines what the “+1″ and the “-1″ exactly are worth to you. It turns out that formality provides a system of calibration when cultural differences are too big. You can think of formality as the use of a single currency (like the Dollar or the Euro) in order to make the transaction safer between parties from different cultures.

8. In digital communications the same rules and laws of gravity apply, but we lack non-verbal cues of feedback. Therefore the best strategy is to rely on “connection” instead of “control” in order to equilibrate relationships.

The Problem With Emotions

The problem with emotions is not their intensity, but the fact that they always come in disguise. You will almost never hear people say that they are scared, angry, or sad because of a certain situation.

In 99% of the cases people (and yes – this includes me and you) communicate their emotions through “playing games.” The classic result is an emotional competition between people which – regardless of who is the winner –represents a loss for the relationship. Transactional Analysis expert Steven Karpman created a simple decoder for games like these: it is called the Drama Triangle.

Basically, there are three roles on the drama-triangle and they all have the same purpose: to create drama and to stay miserable. For example: when I behave helpless because of the train-delays today, this may trigger you to respond with resentment (‘You could have taken the car to get here’).  This is how a victim creates a persecutor. Without any doubt this interaction will also create a rescuer, i.e.: a person taking a stand for me either by offering help or by justifying your situation. The interaction between a victim and a persecutor has made it very tempting for a third person to step into the role of a rescuer.

How The Roles Play Out

This is a very brief summary of how the roles play out:

1. Persecutor (prefers Anger)

I am OK – You are not OK (REVENGE)

• Only sees errors, is critical, often in a bad mood.
• Often feels incapable and is not self-confident.
• Leadership through threats, orders; disallows flexibility.
• Can be loud but also calm.
• A persecutor does not accept ‘no’ for an answer.

2. Rescuer (prefers Fear)

I am OK – You are not OK (RESCUE)

• Always goes that extra mile to ‘help’ others.
• Is always very busy, tired, sometimes lonely, does not have 5 minutes to himself.
• Can be loud but also a silent martyr.
• Deals with feelings of guilt or shame in a very subtle manner.
• Often a hand of steel in a velvet glove.
• Helps unasked.
• A rescuer does not accept ‘no’ for an answer

3. Victim (prefers Sadness)

I am not OK – You are OK (REGRET)

• Doesn’t answer, doesn’t help, never holds a point of view.
• I don’t know / I can’t / it’s all the same to me.
• A master at using feelings of guilt.
• ‘Super-sensitive’.
• Pretends to be incompetent, but is not.
• Irresponsible regarding details that can be important to others.
• I give up! This provides me with the ultimate power.
• A victim does not accept ‘no’ for an answer.

As the drama plays out, people may suddenly switch roles, or change tactics, and others will often switch unconsciously to match this. In transactional analysis, the drama triangle is recognized in situations or ‘games’ such as:

• Why Don’t You;
• Yes But;
• If It Weren’t For You;
• Why does this Always Happen to Me?;
• See What You Made Me Do;
• You Got Me Into This;
• Look How Hard I’ve Tried; and:
• I’m Only Trying to Help You.

The purpose for each ‘player’ is to get their unspoken – and often: unconscious – needs met in a justified way, without having to acknowledge the real situation. As such, each player justifies their own position, rather than acting in a responsible way.

Getting Somewhere: A Definition of Maturity

The drama-triangle is one of the biggest dynamics causing people to behave very chameleon-like in certain situations. The waves of emotion can be so strong that one needs to be extremely strong to resist falling into one of these roles.

And that is unhealthy, because here is the thing: when we have a closer look at how drama plays out we see that drama is created and sustained though a constant exchange of ANTI-reciprocal “+1″ and “-1″! The persecutor asking “Why are you late again?” will be throwing out a status difference of one-upmanship, thereby lowering the other person in the relationship (like a parent to a child). This makes it very easy for the other person to just confirm that position in a passive-agressive way with absolute silence (childish and victim-like). The gap of status differences has widened even more with that response.

What we see here is that status differences resemble the difference between parents and children. Transactional Analysis makes it clear that there is a way out of this drama. They call it  the ‘adult’ position. In terms of social theatre and social economics this is BAD NEWS, because the adult position will equilibrate situations by:

• Redefining the roles from drama-roles to adult positions;
• Reciprocate with the correct – instead of negative – currency

So there you go: the most boring theatre you have ever seen. No fireworks anymore and no juicy details. The GOOD NEWS? You can still watch drama on TV – no need to play it out in your own relationships once you know how to decode the dynamics of it.

Finally – as a good old disclaimer – I add the warning that Daryl Conner once gave me: “Understanding human behavior does not make you immune to it.”

In this week’s post I am returning to Richard Bartle’s player types that have emerged from research on gamers since the 1980′s. Why? Because it contains an insight on managing resistance that is essential for organizational change practitioners.

Bartle identifies four player types – Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.

• Achievers will go to great lengths to achieve rewards that confer them little or no gameplay benefit simply for the prestige of having it.
• Explorers are playing for the social credit of having discovered something. They find great joy in discovering an unknown glitch or a hidden easter egg.
• Socializers are probably the biggest group making up about 80% of the population. According to Gabe Zicherman they are after ‘light-weight, non-confrontational easy-to-reciprocate social interactions with other people’. The game is merely a tool they use to meet others in-game or outside of it.
• Killers thrive on competition with other players in order to win at their expense.

As organizational change practitioners we can go great lengths to describe what resistance is and how we should manage it. Unfortunately we tend to get lost in analysis paralysis. Bartle’s typology shows us how resistance occurs in gaming-like interaction. It tells us that there is a difference between killers and achievers. As simple as it may seem, it’s something we tend to overlook whenever we categorize a behavior as resistance.

So apart from suspecting yourself first – something we must do whenever we feel ‘being resisted upon’ – there is a second question we can ask:

Is this person acting out of a desire to achieve something or rather out of a desire to kill?

The answer to this question will largely determine whether your effort, time and money will be spent on ‘damage prevention’ or rather on ‘relationship building’. The lesson – in the end – is always the same: play more video games!

Organizational change practitioners who are acquainted with the literature on change management know that I am referring to Elisabeth Kuebler Ross, who stated that dying underwent five stages.  Although I think that the stages are surprisingly accurate in describing what is going on and what will come next during a change, I suspect we could do better if we look at these stages from a birthing perspective.

Same Cycle, Different Angle

It is striking how the major insights of the change cycle come from two angles that seem at first to be opposites: development psychology, and research on death and dying. Psychologists and biologists observed that we typically find children whining and being more difficult when they learn something new and it often takes a while before they adapt to and assimilate these new abilities. For human development “things will get worse before they get better” is almost a law of nature: A biological upgrade of our brain software leads to a drop in performance before we pick up and use our new- found abilities.

On the complete other side of the spectrum, Elisabeth Kuebler Ross has described her work with terminally ill patients and found that they typically come to terms with their prognosis in five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. In these cases, it is self- esteem that shows a serious drop-off and then picks up with acceptance in the same way as an infant coming to terms with its new abilities. Although most organizational change is not of a life-or-death nature, people may experience similar stages as they adjust to it, making Kuebler Ross’ advice highly applicable.

Looking at the change cycles in the figures above, it is remarkable that our field of expertise has taken the death-curve as a frame of reference. This is even more striking because the child-development perspective dates from 30 years before Elisabeth Kuebler Ross’ fieldwork.

Birthing

In an earlier article I have referred to Jean Piaget – who is generally regarded as the father of child-psychology. Piaget was the first to discover that during each new stage of development, the child’s brain-mind is prepared for the new potentials appropriate to that stage of growth. If appropriate models for those potentials are given in a safe space, learning is automatic, spontaneous and natural.

Before a child is born, there is a magical interplay of stress hormones in the bodies of the mother and the child that cause the birthing process to kick-off. The next thing you know is that childbirth goes through different stages that can equally be compared to what people go though during an organizational change. In my opinion the metaphor of birthing (instead of dying) contains far more possibilities in the context of an organizational change. Here are some examples:

• Contractions: these are the first signs of a point of no return. Contractions are painful (so I’m told) and both mother and child are going through an intense period of stress. There will be blood everywhere. There is no such thing as a clean birth. It’s unavoidable.
• The umbilical cord: It’s the cord that gives life to the child and the channel through which the child has been given strength during  pregnancy. The umbilical cord symbolizes the relationship between the owner and the future state (be it a new organization structure or an ERP platform). In most organizations the future state is strengthened by external project teams, giving little possibility for a natural umbilical cord to do the work.
• Vernix: procrastination, grapevine and whining are a necessary catalyst in the birthing of a future state. It’s the vernix that is necessary for our own protection and that is useful during the process of birthing. And just like vernix it looks ugly. You don’t need to wash it off because the skin of the newborn will absorb all of it.
• Wombing: How’s that for a new verb? With ‘wombing’ I refer to the need of a mother (a future owner) to have a child-wish, to conceive the child  voluntarily and to have an intense bonding with the child even before it is born. The bonding that occurs during pregnancy convinces the mother that the contractions and the labor ar worth it.
• 9 months of pregnancy: Time and again we see project managers trying to make 9 woman pregnant in order to deliver a baby in 1 month. It happens over and over – and every time these project managers run into the wall of time.

I am sure that you can think of much more possibilities that come to life with this metaphor and I invite you to share them in the comments section. I am convinced that a 2 hour brainstorm may result in a sparking and inspiring document detailing every aspect of the birthing process in terms of organizational change.

The Point (and the Disclaimer)

The point I am trying to make in this article is that both perspectives describe a cycle where ‘things will get worse before they get better’. It’s a law of nature. This article is an invitation to look at a same change situation from a different perspective. This will not change the nature of things – the cycle remains the same – but it will fundamentally alter the conclusions and actions that we draw from it.

And finally: a big disclaimer. The fieldwork of Elisabeth Kuebler Ross is unique and will continue to be one of the fundaments of our field of expertise. There is no way that I am doubting its validity or added value.

The first two articles in this series focus on understanding the elements of resilience and what individuals and leaders can do to build and support it. Here I’d like to focus on the third element in this model: What can we as change agents do to support and enhance human resilience as we execute critical initiatives?

Change Agents are Stewards of Human Energy

When we take on the responsibility of assisting an organization in transition, we are entrusted with a very precious resource: the life force of the humans in that organization. If we do our work well, that energy is multiplied; liberated; freed to flow more effectively. If we do our work poorly, that energy is drained; stuck; used in unproductive ways.

The link to resilience is direct: Change creates turbulence. Humans expend energy to regain equilibrium. The less energy people use to adjust to each change, the more change they can absorb, and—by definition—the more resilient they are. This means that everything change agents do to minimize the level of turbulence, increase the productive flow of energy, and decrease the energy needed to adapt for those involved in change without compromising the effectiveness of the change initiative, raises resilience.

Here’s a list of some of the things that come to mind, with questions to think about for your current project:

Minimize the Level of Turbulence

• Evaluate the level of disruption the change is introducing. What elements of the change are most disruptive to the people involved? Is there a way to reduce the level of disruption without compromising the goals of the change?
• Provide as much direct control as possible. Lack of control is one if the key contributors to disruption. Are there areas where people can have options/choices?  How can we involve them in shaping the direction of the change?
• Where direct control is not possible, help people establish accurate expectations (indirect control). Are we communicating clearly, accurately, and honestly what will happen, when, and to whom? Are we trying to artificially protect people from disruption by withholding information?

Increase the Productive Flow of Energy

• Pay attention to the flow of energy. It’s intangible, and can’t easily be quantified, but it can be sensed. Where are we seeing enthusiasm? Momentum? Engagement? Where does energy seem low?
• Tap into individual discretionary energy. When individuals see a path to achieving personally important outcomes (growth, learning, serving a higher purpose, etc.), they can contribute almost unlimited amounts of energy to initiatives that also benefit the organization. Do we understand what outcomes are important to individuals? Can we help them achieve these goals while helping the organization succeed?
• Identify things that are impeding the flow. I like the theory of constraints as a mental model here: Imagine energy as water flowing through a hose. The flow will always be limited (constrained) by blockages, leaks, or narrow places in the hose. Rather than trying to find and fix them all at once, we need to figure out which one is biggest issue, address it, and then look for the next one. What’s our biggest energy blockage or leakage right now? If we could change one thing right now (an unsupportive leader, a lack of resources, etc.) to address this issue, what would it be?

Decrease the Energy Needed to Adapt

When we consciously take each of the personal resilience characteristics (described in more detail in the first article) into account in planning and executing the change, we help each individual engage their change muscles most effectively. In each area, I’ve included one or two sample questions for reflection; I invite you to create and share others as well.

• Positive: The World—Are we viewing and communicating the change, and the reasons for executing it, purely in terms of problems and dangers, or are we seeing and sharing the hope, possibilities, and opportunities that are also present?
• Positive: Yourself—Are we effectively aligning the talents and skills of individuals with the demands of the initiative? Are we helping people see where they have contributions to make?
• Focused—Are we clear about where this change fits within the organization’s overall set of priorities? Are we communicating these priorities to everyone involved so they can align their energy accordingly?
• Flexible: Thoughts—Are we getting out of our own habitual ways of thinking about things? Are we including time and space for people to participate in innovation, creativity, and playfulness as we identify new approaches and solutions?
• Flexible: Social—Are we using collaboration and teams effectively? Are we making it safe for people to ask for support and help from others?
• Organized—Are we creating clear processes and structures to guide us and others through uncertainty? Is everyone clear about what these are and how to use them?
• Proactive—Are we encouraging experimentation and risk-taking? Are we allowing people to learn from mistakes as they move out of their comfort zone and into new ways of operating?

One last thought: I have seen many project teams focus most of their attention on the team itself and the work it is doing while spending far too little time on the people throughout the organization who must shift their mindsets and behaviors to operate in the new environment. It’s certainly important for the team to maintain and enhance its own resilience, because the demands of project execution can be high. But it’s also essential to pay attention to the resilience of the participants/targets/contributors in the change, including leaders at all levels. Their energy is required to achieve sustained success.

I’d love to hear other ideas about how you support resilience through your actions as a leader. You can find me on Twitter, on my blog, or on email.

In the below video we can see Gabe Zicherman, a gifted speaker and an authority in the world of gaming. The key concept in his speech is gamification – a word that my spell checker annoyingly keeps on resetting to ‘ramification’. My spell checker may be trying to give me a conservative hint in order not to get carried away with all of that stuff, but bear with me.

Zicherman describes gamification as ‘the use of game-thinking and mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems.’ He chooses gaming as a metaphor of interacting with the world, just in the same way as Shakespeare used the metaphor of a play. Today Shakespeare would probably state: “All the world’s a game”

Status

According to Zicherman, status is the one motivator that underpins all gaming dynamics. Point systems are important and the signaling function of a status is what drives a point system. The below drawing depicts the basics of such a point system.

Further to this point, Zicherman mentions Richard Bartle’s player types that have emerged from research on gamers since the 1980′s. He identifies four player types – Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.

• Achievers will go to great lengths to achieve rewards that confer them little or no gameplay benefit simply for the prestige of having it.
• Explorers are playing for the social credit of having discovered something. They find great joy in discovering an unknown glitch or a hidden easter egg.
• Socializers are probably the biggest group making up about 80% of the population. According to Zicherman they are after ‘light-weight, non-confrontational easy-to-reciprocate social interactions with other people’. The game is merely a tool they use to meet others in-game or outside of it.
• Killers thrive on competition with other players in order to win at their expense.

How Game Designers Would Manage Resistance

Now here is where it gets interesting for Organizational Change Practitioners: recently Zicherman was asked  by an online publisher how they should go about with “comment killers” on blogs and articles. Normally one would moderate those people or ban them. However, that is not how a game designer would approach this problem because according to Zicherman:

Killers are the most active and most engaged member of the community. They are just expressing their behavior in a bad way.

The right response from a game design perspective is to put a killer on rails. In other words: to shape their behavior by shaping the pathway they go down.

Knowing that killers want to be recognized as smart, we should make sure these commenters can earn status points by means of setting up an incentive system that is ‘more carrot’ and ‘less stick’, like a commenting system that shapes your commenting behavior by making it possible to gain points for constructive comments.

Examples of this include the Mashable standard commenting system (shown above) and the Disqus commenting system (shown below) that allow to display the status of your comments, both in quantity (number of comments) as in quality (number of ‘likes received).

I am sure that if we look through the same lenses to other cases of resistance, we could be helped a lot better by making our response to resistance less about sticks and more about carrots. Just bear in mind that most of the gen Y people who are entering our organizations now wear those lenses by default. We should learn to see gamers for what they really are: an asset for the future of our economy. Mark my words.

In my experience the failure rate of those endeavors is quite high. This is because we fail to see ownership for what it is: a process instead of a switch. Unfortunately accepting that ownership is a process is not a guarantee that it will work. There are many pitfalls along the road.

Ground Zero

The first reaction you are most likely to meet is denial. Denial has many faces. Examples include:

• No;
• Up yours;
• Over my dead body;
• Not in a lifetime;
• Not in my backyard;
• Who do you think you are?;
• Been there, done that, doesn’t work.

It’s no wonder that this first phase is one of denial. This is common ground for many developments involving human beings. Organizational change practitioners can show you tons of literature ranging from early child psychologists (Jean Piaget),  studies on death and dying (Elisabeth Kuebler Ross), insights on burning platforms (Daryl Conner), to the latest findings on positive psychology (Jonathan Haidt) and an analysis of how you put it all to practice (the Heath brothers).

The Dip of Ownership

The next phase you are likely to meet is deconstruction. The alleged owner of your project or initiative will now take it all apart in an attempt to fully understand what it is all about. Although this is a very healthy indication of future ownership, chances are you will be hooked by the fallacy of resistance.

The fallacy of resistance occurs whenever we label this behavior as ‘resistance’ and pull our guns. Most of the times we will be tempted to respond with more control and discipline. And this is exactly the opposite of what is needed when people are coming to terms with their new identity.

It’s like opening the oven too early when baking bread. There is no better way to make the bread collapse. The worst part is that we you will probably react along the lines of: ‘You see, I told you the bread would collapse.’

Just when you thought you had it all, reality hits you with another with another kick in the butt. We are in the dip of ownership. The only way to get out of that dip is by increasing the level of trust – also on the public level.

Crossing the Fence

Even when you realize that controlling and sanctioning will evaporate all the investments of time, manpower and money in a split second, you could use some help in navigating the situation.

We are now in the next phase; the phase of claiming. After deconstructing the components of the initiative, the future owner will now start to claim the initiative. The mechanics of this phase are simple: after denying and deconstructing, the future owner is now confronting her new identity with the world. The future owner is now crossing the fence of public space.  They will either step in with both feet or run like hell.

This is when you will need to step back and allow even more trust. There is a great risk that you will not have the maturity yourself to let this happen because – most of the times – this is a messy phase (it’s called learning) and you will be tempted to ‘rescue’ the person claiming the ownership.

My advice: don’t.

Able to Respond

The next phase is the one of responsibility. It’s the final test before ownership. When people claim something in a space, chances are the space responds with feedback. This is the time for owners to mature and interact with the reactions they receive on their new identity.

Responsibility is a self-regulating mechanism. Everything becomes clear when we study the English definition for “responsible”: It literally means “able to respond” or “being capable of responding.” When people choose to take responsibility in a situation, they co-own it.

The propulsion of this mechanism provides a last filter before arriving at the destination. Responsibility touches the soul. If the new identity resonates with the owner’s soul they will make it. Else, well… they will break. (Note: there is nothing wrong with ‘breaking’. It’s a neutral fact; a confirmation that this identity is not who she wants to be.)

The Destination

Finally, we have arrived at the stage where the owner is pulling her own weight. Ownership is the word. It’s a process. Most of all: it’s the road less traveled.

When I just started this series I was exaggerating a bit in order to get m point across that gamers are not a ‘lost’ generation. However, after four articles the evidence starts piling up. There is a game layer on top of our world and acknowledging the game dynamics in our daily life may well be a key to saving our economy.

Let me explain how this translates into my world. In organizational change management we often have to deal with resistance. At least, that is how we label it. But what would happen if I would relabel resistance as a  dynamic that defines the game? How would I play the cards? What would be the playing field? How would I redefine ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in this case?

The Game Dynamics of Organizational Change Management

The most powerful game dynamic I posses is something I found out by hitting my head against the wall of resistance several times. Like in a computer game I had to trial-and-error my way through resistance, only to discover that you can’t change the cards that you are being dealt, only how you play the hand.

Take for example Sebastian, a colleague of mine who is running the Master Data cleaning part of a large-scale project. He depends on other people’s input and committment for the quality of his own work. If they screw up Sebastian will be blamed. It gets even worse when you realize that he has no hierarchical power over the people who need to get the master data cleaning done. So why would they care?

If Sebastian plays the Authority game he will lose it. He needs to aim for a different game and redefine the dynamic he is up against.  This new game is called “Fire – Ready -Aim”:

1. FIRE!

Here is the game situation: the data cleansers need to be guided through their change cycle, (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) but at the same time the work needs to get done. The solution is to combine both and to nudge them with a series of deliverables that people can shoot at, nicely ordered in the same direction: forward.

The dynamic we are after is what Edgar Schein calls Diagnostic Interventions. By asking people for their involvement, you also begin to influence their thinking. For example, once you are conducting a survey, you have influenced the thinking and expectations of the people you are surveying.

So the point is to suspect yourself first. You are the foreign element in the room. Once people are aware of your existence and your assignment, you start to influence their behavior and reactions. Like it or not. If you get that, you are already halfway.

2. READY!

Then comes a simple trick but no fun. It goes against your intuition and it sets your ego on fire. The point is to reengineer all of your deliverables so they allow full collaboration.

The hard part:

• It means downgrading the built-in look-how-great-I-am- intelligence;
• It requires you to chop your deliverable down in chunks that the customer can swallow;
• It means you have to let the customer tinker with the deliverable, take it apart and move it forward;
• It means your prototype will be improved by the customer;
• Ultimately, it means that you will not be the most intelligent person in the room at the end of the day: the community is!

In short, you need to know that co-creation of the deliverables is the first step to ownership. Being aware of this will improve your deliverables so they allow for co-creation. In the case of master data cleansers this may mean providing them with the tools to track the progress etc.

3. AIM!

People make sense of the change as they react to the prototype of your deliverables. This will get their minds in motion and their noses pointed in the direction of the change. Sense making is a process that requires you to build a platform of psychological safety (knowing that it is OK to step out of an old habit and to try something new).

The point here is to listen, listen and listen because the cause of major setbacks is due to going faster than the speed of making sense.

Elegant Organization

The “Fire – Ready -Aim” approach requires you to paint a bull’s-eye on each of your deliverables, because people will be tempted to shoot when they see one. If they shoot, two things will happen at the same time:

1. People will make your deliverable move in the right direction: forward;
2. People will automatically take ownership of the deliverable and start to take care of it.

It’s dangerous to conclude that you can just throw about any unfinished deliverable at people’s heads to provoke a reaction.

Try it. You will soon find out that people have a bullshit-detector and will only accept the very best of your efforts to accommodate their needs. This is what Jeff Jarvis calls elegant organization: you don’t create a community but provide elegant organization and then the community will let you help them.

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:

Some time ago I overheard a conversation between consultants who were talking about how difficult it was to make progress with their customer. One of them said: “The only difference between a consultant and a prostitute is that the prostitute sometimes says no.” At first that was funny; but the more I came to think of it, I realized that this statement is painfully close to the truth.

Everyday I see consultants showing up and running on automatic pilot. In fact, that is how I started my career as a consultant, before I decided to go the road less traveled. Now, on certain occasions I do say ‘no’ and I have to sit with the stigmatizing guilt for some time. But when I say ‘yes’ I mean it.

The Choice

For the short timeframe that I am on a project, I receive some authority, mostly by means of a function title, a vague task list, a sense of urgency and a set of deliverables. That’s pretty standard in my world.  But from then on it is up to me to top this package with my individual commitment. The choice is clear:

• I can play safe, stick to the job description, produce impeccable deliverables, and push them into the lap of my customer. I am now in the position of being right and calling the customer ‘stupid’ when my advice is not followed.
• I can dive in and commit to their commitments. Attention here: boundaries become less obvious, influence happens without authority, and the true value of deliverables gets embedded in the relationship.

It’s the difference between being a spectator and being a player. Even though I am an outsider, in this very timeframe I tip over by committing to their commitments. All of a sudden time flies, passion is abundant, and devotion defaults into whatever I am working on.

It’s a relationship thing. Relationships matter. I start thinking: what if I would receive such an advice? How would I react? How does more empathy affect my advice? ‘Them’ becomes ‘us’. Their goals become my goals. I become a local. I am liberated from the attachment to being right. I am in relationship.

The Doughnut Principle

In his 1994 book The Empty Raincoat, Charles Handy introduces the doughnut principle.

Handy compares the work we do to a doughnut and says the core is what is essential. It is the agreed given of a job, or a project: the job description. And the outside of the core is our potential. The potential is variable and you can develop as much or as little of it as you want.

In my world, the outside is the relationship part. The point is that we are responsible for balancing our own doughnut: with a core (a duty) that matches our profession, and an outside that caters for our potential.

The Tragedy of Fitting in

Although the relationship part is less measurable, it is more valuable; both: to the customer and to myself. The tragedy for most consultants is that they are conditioned to comply to explicit measures that have nothing to do with fostering relationships.

Everybody wants to make progress, and from a compensation & benefits point of view, this is best done by complying to the measures. Most of us prefer to push the dimensions of the performance review to the max, that is: focus on the core and forget about the rest.

Who’s to Blame?

The truth is that we get into trouble when we try to measure ‘being in relationship’. The problem is that “getting suspicious of one’s own advice”, “connecting on an emotional level”, “committing without knowing how”, “creating art that matters” can’t measured on a scale from 1 to 10. Even though the values are beyond measures, the nature is subjective and non-linear. If Pavlov could not simulate it with a dog, you might as well forget about it.

Function descriptions, performance evaluations and well defined deliverables set the standard to good performance. Sadly enough, they also limit to our ability to develop the outside of the doughnut. When you are caught in the treadmill of performance evaluations, why on earth would you stand out and follow your heart – knowing that this may dilute the results on your evaluation? You don’t contribute beyond what is measurable. It’s not done.

The Happiness of Standing Out

There is a wonderful quote from Handy’s book that describes the feeling of disillusionment you get from focusing too much on the core of the doughnut:

We were not destined to be empty raincoats, nameless numbers on a payroll, role occupants, the raw material of economics or sociology, statistics in some government report

When reaching that point most consultants either cynically quit or numb themselves into automatic pilot.

However, for those who push through in search of more gratification in their work, they will find it in the outer part: the relationship part. Their gratification will make it easier to see the bigger picture of the contributions they are making. Eventually, their job might turn into a calling. The meaning of work then becomes connection, engagement and commitment.

Pushing is the Path

This is the strange part. It doesn’t just happen like that. In order to get there I have to leave the ‘position’ (i.e. fixed by definition) of a spectator, invisible to the players of the organization and blind to undercurrent; and get involved into the dynamics (i.e. in motion) of the insiders: I declare myself a player in the field.

It’s push, push, push. Like the character of the Muppet Show throwing himself under a taxi in order to catch a ride to the airport. There is no poetry in this move from outsider to insider: it’s a pure and blunt exercise of pushing yourself into the reality of the customer: language, habits, ways of thinking… you name it. You eat the same food and you laugh at the same jokes. You go local. You are local.

The Trust Strip

Pushing links me to the context of the customer to such an extent that I become ‘one of us’. I get connected. My work becomes connected. The leverage is in the relationship. I no longer need authority to have influence. Earlier in this series, Seth Godin called this emotional labor. Doing emotional labor is a blessing for a consultant: within the limited time slot of your assignment you are a allowed to land on the landing strip of people’s trust-airport. You are allowed to contribute the best you’ve got.

This landing slot doesn’t come for free. You need to push through the depressing belly ache that precedes committing to their commitments. To go beyond the nausea that precedes letting go of being right. Pure anxiety. The only thing you want to do is run. Hang in there. The next thing you are likely to experience is something that matters: growing into a customer.

Are you getting the results you need from the changes you lead? This really is the key question: Are you getting the results you need from the changes you lead? If the answer is “No” you’re not alone.

In fact, according to research by McKinsey & Company, about 70% of all changes in all organizations fail. After almost two decades of intense change from corporate reorganizations, new software systems, and quality-improvement projects, the failure rate remains at 70%. As an executive, you know the cost when a major project fails. That’s like throwing money away and wasting months of efforts.

Not to mention the lost opportunities: That Six Sigma effort that never made it past Two Sigma… that merger that never quite took hold…that new org chart that never made your firm any leaner… that costly new software that never lived up to its promise. When you’ve lived through that kind of failure, you know how painful it can be.

Failure breeds cynicism

When changes fail, people often grow cynical. They start to mutter under their breath, “Here we go again…” or “Here comes another flavor of the month…” or, as one middle manger told me, “We’re lying low until this fad blows over.”
It’s awfully hard for managers and staff to get motivated when they believe that the latest project from on high is going to die just like the last one… no matter what they do.

Fear makes change intensely personal Don’t forget, change scares most people:

• They fear for their jobs
• They worry about their families
• They wonder what will happen to their careers. When fear kicks in, that big corporate change can become intensely personal.

When people are afraid, they literally can’t hear as well. It’s much harder for them to take in much information when their bodies are on “high alert.” This can be a big distraction that undermines your team’s ability to focus and stay productive… just when you need them most.

There’s no winning formula

When big projects fail, your team can start to feel that leading change is like visiting a casino. You can roll the dice, but you know the odds against you. You can spin the wheel, but the ball going to land on lucky number 23. You can place your bets, but you’re never going to win.

Any organization without a sound plan for implementing change is like a player moving from table to table, hoping to get lucky with the next game. Strangely, many management teams indulge in this kind of behavior. They read books, go to workshops, and hire consultants… always hoping that the next new “resource” will give them a secret winning formula that works forever, an edge that tilts the odds in their favor. But of course, nothing ever does.

And it’s getting worse…

Not only are 70% of organizational changes failing, but that failure rate may even be increasing. According to 2008 research from IBM, the need to lead change is growing, but our ability to do it is shrinking.

In IBM’s 2010 follow-up study, three of the top seven priorities identified by CEOs are dealing with changes in their industries, business models, and revenue models.

… because change is getting harder

Think about it. Change is getting harder. Many executive teams are scattered across different continents. A single team can span six or 12 different time zones. The days when everyone could sit around a table, roll up their sleeves, and get something done are a distant memory. This increases the risk of missed cues, different priorities, questions that never get asked, and concerns that never get addressed.

On top of all that, there tends to be less money for change management projects today. That means even though you have more complex and frequent changes to deal with, you likely have less money and fewer people to assign to those initiatives. Does that sound like a recipe for success?

Four major reasons why changes fail, time after time

This section describes four major reasons why changes fail, and sums up some key ideas from three significant business books.

Reason for failure #1: Lack of knowledge

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton coined the phrase “the knowing-doing gap” in their compelling book by the same title. They found that there’s a huge gap between what people know and what they do. All that knowledge not being applied, all that talent not being used costs organizations billions of dollars every year.

It’s like owning a high-performance racing car—but only using it to drive a few blocks to pick up groceries. Many leaders know most of what it takes to lead change well. But there’s a huge gap between what they know and what they actually do. Leaders often make the mistake of thinking that the basic problem is a lack of knowledge.

You’ve probably thought that yourself. You’ve probably sent your managers and project leaders to training, bought them books, brought in guest speakers to motivate them… but did all that really make a lasting difference? You’ve probably learned by now that the problems of leading change can’t be solved simply by piling up more knowledge. The real trick is to apply what you already know more effectively.

Reason for failure #2: Lack of skill and practice

Do you know any golfers who read all the books, watch instructional DVDs, maybe subscribe to Golf Digest… but still never improve their game? The best golfers do something the rest don’t: They practice. In fact, they practice a lot. And they practice very deliberately.
When a good golfer hits a practice bucket of balls, they analyze every stroke to see what’s working and what’s not. They study what’s causing their balls to hook, slice, or fly straight as an eagle. That’s how they get better at the game.

The same is true for any serious artist, musician, or writer… for anyone pursuing any type of craft or building any kind of skill. When you practice, you get better at it. Yet diligent and deliberate practice is often missing from management education. (Don’t confuse highly focused practice with the silly games that fill up a lot of training sessions.)

Malcolm Gladwell’s fine book “Outliers” discusses the work of Anders Ericcson, who found that most people who gain mastery in any field have practiced it for at least 10,000 hours. For example, the Beatles played 1,200 live shows in Hamburg before breaking in on the hit parade. The best pro hockey players started skating when they were really young. Bill Gates was already writing software when he was 13. Many managers confuse knowledge with skill. They teach people change management concepts, but don’t give them time to practice their skills.

But how can you expect people to suddenly do anything, whether it’s leading change or playing rock and roll, without lots of time to practice… and learn from their mistakes? Sending someone to training and then expecting them to lead a multi-million dollar project brilliantly is setting them up to fail. Where was their chance to practice those new skills?

Reason for failure #3: Hidden conflicts working against change

Some leaders know how to lead change, but they don’t put that knowledge into action. They continue to lead ineffectively. They make the same mistakes over and over. They never improve their game. Something powerful must be getting in their way. But what?
In their book “Immunity to Change,” authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey suggest that even when we set goals for ourselves, we still harbor conflicting goals.

And we often don’t recognize these traps or hidden commitments for what they are. For example, we all know what a good diet should include and how much exercise someone our age should get. We know how to eat salad, and we likely know how to use the machines at the gym. But do we do it? Not always. At lunch, a lot of us order fries instead of salad. After work, a lot of us skip going to the gym. We don’t act on what we know is clearly in our own best interests. Something blocks us from taking action to protect our own health and vitality. But what?

Did you know that only one out of seven people with life-threatening heart problems actually does anything to change their lifestyle? That statistic startled Kegan and Lahey. They were curious how a goal as compelling as “I want to stay alive” could possibly conflict with anything else. Wouldn’t people do just about anything to make sure they stay alive? Yet clearly, we don’t.

The same thing happens in organizations. Most executives would say that their number one goal is to help their organization survive and flourish. But does every executive act that way? Here are some things I have seen first-hand:

• Leaders don’t share information for fear that employees “can’t handle the truth”
• Leaders feel it takes too long to involve others
• Leaders believe delegating is a sign of weakness.

Self-limiting beliefs like these create conflicts between what a leader knows they should do, and what they actually do. Without realizing why, they undermine their own plans. This can lead executives to develop change management strategies that look good on paper, only to find they’ve unconsciously set up barriers that block their organizations from getting where they want to go.

Reason for failure #4: Culture working against change

Research shows that leaders of successful changes get people at all levels deeply involved by keeping them in the loop, listening to their ideas, and encouraging them to take ownership for their part of the change. Sadly, many organizations punish (or at least fail to recognize) the very behaviors that lead to success.

It’s as though there are two sets of rules. The “official” set of rules is posted on your walls, listed on your company website, and printed in your employee handbook. You know that list. That’s the one where your organization says that it respects individuals, teamwork, diversity, innovative thinking, and so on. Who wouldn’t say that?

Then there’s the “real” set of rules. That’s the one you hear whispered about in hallways… the one you run into when you make the mistake of speaking candidly in a meeting… the one that actually governs how your organization works. One junior executive told me he always warned new managers never to criticize the owner’s ideas in a meeting; anyone who did could find themselves out of a job. So when that leader claimed to be “open to different views” he was only giving “the party line…” and not dealing with the underlying reality.

It’s important to know the real rules that govern your people’s actions, and then see if those unwritten rules support or hinder the way your organization handles change.

Conclusions

Even though 70% of changes fail, you don’t have to be part of that dreadful statistic. To succeed at change, you must find a way to overcome many challenges:

• cynicism and fear;
• lack of applied knowledge;
• lack of practiced skills;
• hidden conflicts that undermine your efforts;
• unwritten rules that work against change.

There are lots of resources out there on leading change. But none of these will likely help unless you are truly willing to ask yourself these four fundamental questions:

1. Do we know how to lead change?
2. Have we developed the skills to put that knowledge into action?
3. Are there hidden conflicts that stop us from using what we know?
4. Are there unwritten rules in our culture that kill our well-intended plans?

Root out the honest answers, and look closely at what you find.

________
Rick Maurer is an advisor to leaders in large organization on change. he is author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance and many other books on leading change. You can learn more about his work at www.rickmaurer.com