LaMarsh & Associates Consulting

Change the Victim to the Partner

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:33:22 +0000

It has been our experience at LaMarsh & Associates that even with the best efforts of companies committed to managing change, many employees still feel like victims of the changes that are being made. Many companies are making a good faith effort to figure out what issues and concerns their employees have with specific changes. We at LaMarsh believe that is at it should be; that is the responsibility of the company. And it pays off. More acceptance of change, faster change, less loss of productivity or quality in the transition or delta of change.
But there is also a problem with that process that we are beginning to see. The company is taking on the responsibility to manage the change. The employees are coming to expect them to. However, in too many cases that is leading to a relationship where the company is the enabler of successful change and the employee has a sense of entitlement: entitled to good change management from the employer with no reciprocal responsibility on the employee’s part.
Our founder and CEO, Jeanenne LaMarsh, has set about to change that relationship. Change Better Survive – and Thrive – During Change at Work and Throughout Life, her newest book, published by Agate Press, is a resource FOR the employee. It will help your employees to understand what is happening to them in the change process and give them a Personal Change Management Plan that will enable them to take more control over the change process for themselves. The result – a partnership between the employee and the company. If you want to know more about this book: www.lamarsh.com

Filed under: Change Management

They’re Getting Smarter….But That Could Backfire….Some More Thoughts

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:15:10 +0000

In our last discussion we shared with you some of our observations about the growing awareness on the part of leaders that they need to pay attention to managing the changes they are making and play a more proactive role as sponsors of change. We mentioned that we are somewhat concerned, however, that these leaders, so willing to be good sponsors of change, may have a blind spot that could derail the changes they are trying to make. Many of you responded commenting on this with thoughtful observations about the importance of sponsorship and how to develop it.

One of the most difficult coaching challenges when working with sponsors is to open the eyes of a sponsor who has made the commitment to change management to the fact that he or she has to walk a very fine line……about four inches wide…between being the cheer leader and the realist. The leader has already gone through the mental (and sometimes emotional) work of accepting that the change is the right thing to do. So, his or her natural job, then, is to get everyone affected by the change excited about it and create a desire to ‘go there’. What can sometimes happen, though, is that the leader is closed to the effort it is going to take for ‘everyone else’ to reach the same level of commitment and excitement. If you are a change agent faced with this dilemma, a sponsor committed to doing a good job of leading people but having a difficult time understanding why they are having so much trouble going along with him, what do you do?

Filed under: Change Management

They’re Getting Smarter….But That Could Backfire

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 11:58:39 +0000

We at LaMarsh & Associates are noticing an interesting trend in how leaders are sponsoring change. The men and women coming into senor management positions today are much more thoughtful about the importance of their role in insuring that the changes they need to make happen. They know from their experience and their education that their role as the sponsor of change is key to that success. From their reading, from their own experience as targets of change, from coaching and learning by change management consultants they are coming into their leadership positions with an idea of how to lead their people through change. They have been told it is critical for them to be seen as committed to the change, to be the cheer leader for the change, to be willing to get out in front of people and demonstrate that they believe in the change and will not waver from making it happen. They know that communication is key and they are both willing and able to give the speeches that targets need to hear.

That’s the good news. It is so much better than what we saw in the last century when leaders seemed to believe that all they had to do was make the right decisions and people were expected to accept those decisions and change without question or hesitation. We are getting a little concerned, however, that these leaders, so willing to be good sponsors of change, may have a blind spot that could derail the changes they are trying to make. In their belief that these are the right changes, and their commitment to being the cheer leader for the changes, they may not be able to see that others do NOT see the change the way they do but are frightened to say so in the face of such strong messages about how important and valuable the changes are….as the leader sees them. When you believe something is right and know how important it is that others believe it to, it can be hard to understand why anyone wouldn’t have the same view, the same perspective. When you are busy shouting the cheers you may not be able to hear the whispers of resistance.

If you are a change agent, have you run into this? If you are a leader who must sponsor change, have you had this experience?

Filed under: Change Management

Respect the Irrational

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:10:35 +0000

If you are a serous student of change management you may have been reading the work of the several behavioral economists who are studying how people make decisions. Their experiments are showing us that the rational mind is not always at work as we decide things in our lives. Their focus is largely on the impact this irrational process has on purchasing decisions from buying cereal in the grocery store to stocks in the market place.

We who are concerned with the decisions people make when faced with change should also be seeking to deepen our understanding of this work. For example, in his most recent book, The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely (ISBN 978-0-06-199503-3) describes experiments where a certain level of pain inflicted upon the participant will not be motivating, it will be paralyzing; reducing their ability to make good decisions and think clearly.

What is the lesson for us? We know that people experience change with their own personal interpretation. That interpretation may result, for them, in a very high level of pain. It may appear irrational to us that they experience the change that way but the fact is they do. Then we put them in a training class to learn and practice the new system or the new process and expect that they will perform with the promise that they will get to keep their jobs, perhaps even get a bonus for their improved efficiently in the desired state. But if, for them, the pain is too strong they are preoccupied with the pain and it prevents them from learning. What is the lesson for us? Respect the irrational. It is a fact. It exists. And to ignore it, to not provide mechanisms to express and reduce that pain before expecting people to learn the new way is disrespectful of the reality of people’s feeling and needs.

Leaders, project managers, trainers, Black Belts, change management resource people……all of us need to remember to respect the irrational. This premise triggers some big questions for us, though. How do we actually do that? What if we don’t have time to do it? Are there tricks to shorten the time that people are paralyzed by the pain of the change?

Filed under: Change Management

How Do You Give Them What They Need?

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:43:46 +0000

We said that at LaMarsh & Associates we are ‘target-centric’. We agree that the change agents need to have an organizational focus….to deliver the change the organization needs in order to grow and thrive. And we urge them also to focus on the targets of the change, the people impacted and what they need in order to support the change. Often those two needs are not entirely matched up. The organization needs the change to happen as fast as possible with as little expense as possible with no disruption to the day-to-day business while the change is happening. The people impacted need to have time to understand the change, lots of communications, an adequate amount of training and time to get ‘good’ at doing things the new way and for management to cut them some slack in their performance goals as they learn and adjust to the new way of doing things.

No wonder it is so hard to be change agents. How do you meet both those needs? If you are an experienced change agent you know you ignore the needs of the people impacted at your own (and the organization’s) peril. Where is the balance between these two needs and how do you deliver to both?

Filed under: Change Management

How Do You Know What They Need? (A Continuing Dialogue)

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:52:02 +0000

Last week we were thinking a lot about how the agents of change know what the people impacted need from them and from their leaders. The point we were making was that we, the change agents, don’t necessarily know, indeed often cannot know, what it is the ‘targets of change’ need. We can speculate based on our own experience from past changes. We can use our own ‘target’ issues as the foundation of our plan to help people. But there is a very basic answer to the question that will give us much more than those two ways of figuring out what people need. We can ask them. Ask them questions such as: “Do you know why we have to change? Do you agree that we cannot stay the way we are? Do you believe that it is important to change the way we ……? If you disagree, why?” And those are only the question around the need to change. We also have to find out what they know about what we are changing to and how they feel about it. What is it about going through the change that will cause them problems? And the list continues.

The point: ask them. Will they tell you? Not always and not right away. Not if they don’t trust you with that information. Not if they can’t articulate it. Not if you don’t make it safe for them to answer without fear of repercussions.

So, before we launch into the communication so vital to a successful change there is a very important step. Find out what they know. What they don’t know. What they believe. What they fear. What they are excited about. What they need. Then start communicating from a ‘target-centric’ perspective. Give them what they need AFTER you find out what that is.

This is not an easy task. Have you, as a change agent, developed any techniques for finding out what is going on with the people impacted? Was taking the time to do that worth while?

Filed under: Change Management

How Do You Know What They Need

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:02:49 +0000

How do you know what they need? Those people who are being asked to change. You want to help them get through the change. You want the change to be successful and, therefore, you need them to accept the change. So as a change agent you struggle to make it easier for them. You know that communication is a key to successful change so you spend a lot of time thinking about what needs to be explained and how to explain it. You know that leadership is a key to successful change so you work hard at getting your leaders to ‘sign up’ for the change and to commit to giving the speeches and sending off on the e-mails you prepare.

But how do you know what to say? How do you know what it is that people need in order to accept the changes they face? How can you be sure that you are giving the right information, the information they need, in ways that are meaningful to them, with enough detail but not too much, without making assumptions about their ability to understand as well as accept the information you are providing?

Over the years, we have seen too many change agents who believe they know what needs to be communicated. We often wonder how they can be so sure. We have also seen many occasions where the change agents, with the best of intentions, try to find out what the people impacted by the change need but the methods they use do not provide those people with a safe nor effective way to express their fears and concerns.

At LaMarsh & Associates we talk a lot about being ‘target-centric’, identifying and addressing the issues that the people impacted, the targets, have with the change. Are you ‘target-centric’? How do you know you are truly meeting the needs of the people you are asking to change?

Filed under: Change Management

The Status of Change Management Around the World

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:50:11 +0000

We at LaMarsh & Associates earlier this month spent several weeks in Brazil working with our partners there, T2People, to talk about managing the changes Brazilian companies are experiencing. We were not surprised to find that Brazilian companies have a high degree of awareness of the need to manage change better and are hungry for more support and resources to build change management into their organizations. Managing change has become a world-wide effort and companies in Brazil and all over the planet are searching for more knowledge and resources. One of the lessons we have learned over the years is that the issues that people have, when faced with change, are universal: they are common to peoples of all countries. When faced with change, we are more alike than different whether we live in Beijing, China or Lincoln, Nebraska. What concerns us?

Ø We are reluctant to leave what we know, what we are comfortable with, what we are familiar with

Ø We are often not anxious to go where our companies are telling us we need to go: to use the new technology, to follow a new way of working.

Ø We don’t want to go through the effort of getting from here to there: from the way we are today to the way we need to be

Ø We don’t believe our leaders will support us in the effort to change

Ø We don’t trust the people who have been assigned to make the change happen

The tactics to deal with these legitimate issues that people have may be different in Beijing or Lincoln but the basic need to have these issues addressed in order to make it easier to change are pretty much the same everywhere.

Change is a universal phenomenon. Change management is a universal need. We all share that need; no matter what country we live in.

Filed under: Change Management

An extremely effective book to develop sponsor communication skills

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Tue, 11 May 2010 00:13:08 +0000

There is probably not a leader of a company anywhere today who is not aware that he or she needs to play an active role in making change happen. Most have read or hear a lot of about the importance of being a sponsor of change. Many know that it is important for them to communicate the change themselves rather than to let the change agents do it. Knowing what to do and how to do it though are two different things. We at LaMarsh recently came across a book we think is extremely valuable for the leader who must sponsor a change. We are sharing it with our clients and thought you would be interested in it as well. The book is You Can’t Not Communicate: Proven Communication Solutions that Power the Fortune 100 by David Grossman. Both in content and in style it is just right for delivering a leader’s ability to communicate change.

Filed under: Change Management

An independent change management competency assessment and certification body will emerge …. (Continued)

By: LaMarsh and Associates, Inc. — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:01:55 +0000

This blog entry generated plenty of passionate and insightful discussion. Based on the dialogue, more than half of you agree with feedback we received from our LaMarsh clients and colleagues when we asked them the “Top 10 Change Management Predictions in 12010”. They told us —- there is a need for such a formal change management association similar to PMI (Program Management Institute) that will acknowledge the change agent’s expertise and grant an official certification. You reinforced the perceived value of accreditation and affiliation with an association from both the individual and company/organization’s perspective. Others took a direct opposite position. They voiced the concept of certification as “self serving and unnecessary. They felt it was largely impossible to incorporate the many skills and competencies and particularly the required experience working as a change management practitioner into a certification process and examination.

The dialogue also identified the existence of the Change Management Institute ( www.change-management-institute.com ) and the emerging Association for Change Management Professionals ( www.acmp.info ) of which I am a member of the working group guiding the definition of certification standards. Visit these sites and let’s continue the dialogue.

We would like to hear from you……Do you agree with the prediction…is there a need for a certification? Would your organization value a professional association for change management practitioners? If presented with the opportunity would your organization be willing to invest in an association-based certification?

Filed under: Change Management