Happy New Year to everyone! The Calgary CM Think Tank started 2010 in fine form, with 18 members joining in a lively panel discussion. Thanks to Sonja Miles, Michelle Phaneuf and Blythe Butler for facilitating our table groups. Summaries of their groups' outputs are included below.
Be sure to join us on February 23 for our next meeting. Topic and speaker information will follow shortly. As always, feel free to post meeting topic and content suggestions to our LinkedIn discussion page:
Topic: Heads & Hearts - Logical vs Emotional Appeals to Change (Michelle Phaneuf, facilitator)
Most change requires us to deal with both Logical and Emotional
Decisions to make a change are usually based more in the logical aspect.
People affected by the change usually respond more to the emotional aspect.
Adjust your approach to change based on
Most people are not ready to hear the logic about the change until you acknowledge the emotion.
Commitment to change comes from the heart.
Need emotional buy-in from the people affected. Employees are often informed, but are they engaged?
People accept decisions on an emotional level, but rationalize it through logic.
Culture of the organization is important – a directive culture will tend to lean towards the logical appeal to change, while an open culture will have more success when dealing with the emotional aspects.
The ‘Sandwich Approach’ is when you deal with the emotional first, logic second and then go back to emotional aspects again. It will take multiple phases of this to occur before change is accepted.
What to do when resistance to change is apparent – don’t fight against it, find out what’s behind it.
Be flexible about having to change based on feedback from the ground up.
Provide other communication channels to allow silent (un-spoken) resistance through – blogs, etc.
Give control to the employees through coaching, listening, input, etc.
Consultant being brought in to implement change has to deal with a different dynamic than if change is implemented by employees. Consultant must be a facilitator and have excellent communication skills. Commitment from leadership is especially important when you are a consultant implementing change.
Topic: Generational Aspects of Change Management (Blythe Butler, facilitator)
Summary: Our initial discussion focused on whether generational differences factored into change initiatives in a material way. From there we moved into a discussion on organizational culture and the effect it has on change management and learning systems within the organization.
• There have always been differences between generations in terms of how people view and handle change. This not only depends on how people approach the change, but is also influenced by the change itself. Are the nature of the changes in today's environment any different than before?
• It is important to look at what values are in place within each generation: the culture in which we are raised has an effect on our values.
• How do organizations translate values into expectations? For instance: the younger generation in the workforce tends to want to be involved in strategic decisions at an early stage. This doesn't work with the 'old school', paternalistic view of many senior managers.
• Resource: Dr. Morris Massey: "What are you are is where you were when"
• It is also important to recognize that there can be a culture gap mixed in with generational gaps within a work force. i.e. new Canadians and younger/older mix.
• Being able to assess the generational and cultural gaps, as well as the overall corporate culture should be something that is addressed during on-boarding and orientation sessions. This would allow employees to have the language and the tacit permission to discuss any cultural or generational gaps from the outset and may mitigate resistance to change.
• Observation: There is no need to change instructional design to manage generational differences when it comes to specific task-based training.
• Perhaps the question is more about cultural differences vs. generational differences as the cultural aspect will be at the foundation of each generation.
Organizational Culture:
• The definition of an organizations culture needs to go back into the history of the organization - to its roots. This needs to be translated into a language and embedded in all aspects of the organization's activities. Culture can either support change or work against it.
• Organizational culture has to include:
◦ accountability structures (who is going to hold up the mirror to the organization?)
◦ transparency
◦ leadership behaviour
◦ knowledge of corporate history
◦ structures and systems to support the on-going integration of culture. i.e. link to performance management.
• Question: Can external consultants lead change management effectively? Does this vary between culture-based changes vs. project-based changes?
Topic: Accelerating Recovery after Organization Trauma e.g. mergers, layoffs, etc. (Sonja Miles, facilitator)
(also covered some Hearts & Heads content)
Internal Audience:
- consistent message to understand why the change needed to be made
- focused on front line teams
- people’s value to the organization is clarified; look at the org as a whole
- explain to people the change curve so that people understand the emotions they (their staff) are experiencing/going through
- try to keep leaders from jumping to doing instead of leading
External
- had to be careful about timing of when the change was communicated to customers
Approaches:
- Assess which groups/people are most effected
- Start early with transition education in workshops
- Make the change part of people’s objectives
- Make sure people understand the value they bring to the organization
- Senior team to be realistic that productivity may drop and that is it ok during the change timeframe
- Ask people about what they like/don’t like about the change
- Use Change Agents to speak/represent concerns for their group
- In recovery reset expectations
- Appeal to both head and heart
- Set expectations on time commitment
Heads & Hearts:
Q: Can you separate an audience to use a Head vs. Heart approach?
- May not want to do this as it is hard to split groups apart and also may look preferential
- Make sure that your messages have components of each
- Leader could analyze their teams to know how to best communicate change to their team. E.g., first ‘red’ (drivers) might help to lead the change
Approach – ‘Towards’ & ‘Away’ people
Towards people – describe where the org is going, benefits
Away people – talk about how to mitigate the pain
Ask stakeholders what they don’t like about the change (1 thing) – this may help to disarm people and make them aware that the project understands it is not all positive.
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