Category Archives: Psychology

The Psychological Impact of Change

Understanding the Emotions and Reactions Individuals Experience During Times of Change and How to Effectively Support Them

The Psychological Impact of Change

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Change, whether anticipated or unexpected, often triggers a wide range of emotions and reactions in individuals. Understanding the psychological impact of change is crucial for organizations, leaders, and support networks to effectively assist individuals in navigating these turbulent times. In this article, we explore the common emotions and reactions people experience during change, followed by two case study examples that demonstrate the diverse range of responses. Additionally, we offer effective strategies to support individuals during periods of change, fostering resilience and facilitating positive adaptation.

Emotions Experienced During Change

Change has the potential to instigate a rollercoaster of emotions. Fear, uncertainty, and anxiety are common responses as individuals face a shift from familiar routines and into the unknown. Feelings of sadness, grief, and loss may also emerge as people let go of what they once knew or valued. Conversely, excitement, anticipation, and hope can accompany positive changes, serving as beacons guiding individuals towards new possibilities. Recognizing and acknowledging these emotional responses is crucial to provide appropriate support during times of change.

Case Study One: Jenna’s Job Loss

Jenna had been working at the same company for 15 years when she suddenly received news of her redundancy. She felt overwhelmed by a profound sense of loss, as her job had been a significant part of her identity. Initially, Jenna experienced shock and denial, followed by anger and frustration. With the support of her colleagues, she gradually accepted the situation and embarked on a journey of self-discovery. By attending career transition workshops and receiving counseling, Jenna eventually embraced the opportunity to explore new professional avenues. With resilience and determination, she transformed a seemingly devastating change into a personal growth experience.

Case Study Two: Sam’s Relocation

Sam, a 10-year-old boy, was informed by his parents that they would be relocating to a new city due to a job transfer. Sam’s immediate reaction was that of fear and sadness. He worried about leaving his school, friends, and familiar surroundings behind. Acknowledging Sam’s emotions, his parents engaged him in open communication and involved him in the relocation process. They encouraged Sam to express his thoughts and concerns, reassuring him that they would provide support throughout the transition. By focusing on the positive aspects of the move, like new friends and exciting opportunities, Sam gradually became more receptive to the change, ultimately adapting to his new environment with a sense of curiosity and resilience.

Support Strategies During Change

To effectively support individuals during times of change, several strategies can be implemented:

1. Clear Communication: Open and honest communication is vital. Providing individuals with information about the change, reasons behind it, and potential benefits helps reduce uncertainty and anxiety.

2. Provide Resources: Offering resources such as counseling, dedicated support teams, or external assistance equips individuals with tools and guidance to navigate the transition.

3. Encourage Resilience: Foster a supportive environment that encourages resiliency. Highlight the potential for personal growth, emphasizing adaptability and strength in overcoming challenges.

4. Empathy and Active Listening: Validate individuals’ emotions and actively listen to their concerns. By acknowledging their feelings, you create a safe space for them to express themselves and feel heard.

Conclusion

Change brings forth a variety of emotions and reactions in individuals, ranging from fear and uncertainty to excitement and hope. Through understanding and acknowledging these responses, individuals can effectively navigate change and harness the opportunity for personal growth and adaptation. By implementing support strategies, fostering open communication, and validating emotions, we can create an environment that effectively supports individuals during times of change, enabling them to flourish and thrive in the face of uncertainty.

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What is Social Analysis?

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GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Social analysis is the practice of understanding how individuals, groups, and societies interact with each other and how they are structured. It is an interdisciplinary field of study that draws on various methods and theories from the social sciences, including sociology, psychology, and anthropology.

Social analysis seeks to explain why social relationships and institutions take the forms they do, how they are maintained, how they change, how they are experienced, and how they are shaped by broader social, economic, and political contexts. In addition, social analysis is used to identify and address social problems, as well as to develop strategies for social change.

The term social analysis is often used interchangeably with other terms, such as social research, social science, and social theory. However, social analysis is distinct from these other terms in its focus on understanding the social dynamics of a particular situation. Social analysis is not only concerned with the empirical data collected from a certain society, but also with understanding the underlying social forces that shape its dynamics.

Social analysis often employs a variety of methods, such as interviews, surveys, and participant observation. In addition, it can draw on other sources of data, such as archival records, census data, and quantitative analysis.

Social analysis is an important tool for understanding the complexities of social life. It provides insights into how individuals and groups interact, how they are structured, and how they are shaped by larger social and economic forces. Social analysis can also be used to identify and address social problems, as well as to develop strategies for social change.

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Fix the Problem or Design it Out?

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Fix the Problem or Design it Out?

Let’s start with the problem.

According to The Plastic Pollution Coalition (January 3, 2017) – “It’s National Drinking Straw Day! Each day, more than 500 million plastic straws are used and discarded in the U.S. alone. Plastic straws consistently make the top ten list of items found, according to Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup data. In the last three years, plastic straws have climbed the list to the Number 5 spot.”

The Paper Straw Movement

In response to this growing problem, in January California made it illegal to give customers plastic straws unless they expressly request one.

Another way some restaurants have tried to to fix this problem has been to replace plastic straws with paper straws.

Or then there is the tasty fix to the problem, the cookie straw.

Starbucks Cookie Straw

But there is another way to approach problem solving, and that is to design out the problem instead of trying to fix it.

Recently a barista at Starbucks accidentally gave me a lid on my water cup that I wasn’t expecting.

I had heard that Starbucks was planning to reduce their use of the iconic green plastic straw, but I kind of assumed that meant they were shifting to paper straws like some other quick serve restaurants, but that is not what they have in mind at all.

Starbucks is instead planning to eliminate the plastic straw.

Instead of focusing on the straw they instead chose to focus on the lid and design it in a way that a straw isn’t even necessary.

Starbucks Sippy Cup

So, next time you’re wrestling with a problem and trying to solve it, look at it in a slightly different way just for fun, try asking yourself how you could design the product, service, or experience (or all three) in order to design out the problem.

You may or may not get to a more viable, desirable, and feasible solution than trying to fix the problem.

But, looking at the problem from a range of different perspectives is always worth the effort.

Keep innovating!

Accelerate your change and transformation success

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Why Change is Accelerating

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Why Change is Accelerating

In previous articles I’ve spoken about how the pace of change is accelerating, and how for many people (and organizations) things are changing so fast that they feel overwhelmed and that things may be changing faster than some of us humans are able to absorb. I’ve spoken about how we are in the middle of a period of discontinuity thrust upon us by the rapid advances in computing and mobile connectivity that have put a supercomputer in everyone’s pocket and a target on most organizations’ backs.

Why are things changing so fast?

Is it that we’ve hit some sort of inflection point never achieved before in human history that is allowing us to innovate and displace the status quo faster than ever before?

Maybe.

Have we reached some sort of perfect storm where the innovation curve has gone vertical and the singularity will be here tomorrow?

Probably not.

So if we are not necessarily innovating faster than ever before or destined to reach the singularity tomorrow and become one with machines, then what is creating the feeling that things are changing more rapidly?

One word…

“Expectations”

Changing Customer Expectations

It feels as if the world is changing faster than ever before because the expectations of our customers and our expectations as customers are changing faster than ever before. Why?

Because we as consumers are seeing better customer experiences enabled by digital technologies in parts of our personal lives and more efficient and effective business processes in parts of our business lives, we are now expecting every organization (not just companies) and every aspect of that organization to deliver an efficient, effective experience and information exchange in whatever channel we choose, whenever we want to experience it.

This incredible change in expectations is being thrust upon all organizations simultaneously and threatening the very existence of entities that have existed for dozens or even hundreds of years. This discontinuity has created immense technical debt for organizations large and small to overcome and the only way for an incumbent organization to recover and to survive in this new digital age will be to undergo a complete digital transformation.

This doesn’t mean creating a digital strategy to address one part of the organization or a single constituency, but a path to a complete transformation that brings digital approaches to both every part of the organization and its operations, but also to all of its constituencies, at the same time. This means re-imagining every system, every policy, every procedure, and every process as a digital native organization looking to enter and disrupt your industry might, and then make a plan for transforming yourself. This will require IMMENSE amounts of change, and is no small task given the 70% change failure rate, but it is the key to your organization’s survival.

The problem is that the organizational change thought leadership status quo isn’t up to the task of planning and executing the scope and scale of change required for existing organizations to survive the digital evolution underway. A new set of tools is needed. My new book Charting Change and the accompanying Change Planning Toolkit™ were designed to inspire a change revolution to free people from the tyranny of the blank word document and poorly planned change efforts.

Why the Pace of Change is Accelerating

Economics 101

Because the challenge we face is not a static one. Organizations that focus on catching up to where the customer is today and wedging their efforts into existing budget constraints are those that will find themselves falling further behind the curve of changing customer expectations.

No longer is it a victory to be seen by customers as ‘best in class’. No, now customers are expecting every organization to be ‘world class’. This means that increasingly customer satisfaction will be achieved only by providing one of the best experiences in the world. Talk about changing expectations!

And so given the time to develop new technology solutions, you should be aiming not to incrementally improve your current experience to get closer to the leaders in your industry, but instead investing in a solution that will anticipate what the best customer experience allowed by technology 12-18 months from now and start building that instead.

It’s Economics 101 all over again. In today’s reality, as most organizations seek to move up the customer experience supply curve, the customer experience demand curve is constantly shifting outward, leading your share of the market to wither and die unless you make the strategic investment required to actually shift your customer experience (CX) supply curve outward as well.

I’ve tried to capture the scenario in the figure above titled ‘Why the Pace of Change is Accelerating’. Most organizations when they see at Time⁰ that their level of customer experience is below Customer Expectations⁰ they invest in projects to increase their CX Supply⁰ up the CX Supply curve to CX Supply¹ thinking that they will then be meeting the customers’ level of expectations at Time¹. But that’s not how it works in the digital world of today, as customer expectations are changing (shifting upward) just as fast as the technology used to create better customer experiences. So, organizations that invest in moving up the CX Supply curve to catch up with current customer expectations find themselves continuously falling short of future customer expectations.

Conclusion

The reason nearly every organization follows this approach of climbing the CX Supply curve to close the gap on customer expectations is usually financial. Most managers are forced (or compelled) to try and close the gap with existing budgetary resources and by creating a digital strategy as part of these efforts. Very few organizations have visionary leaders willing to invest in a digital transformation and fundamentally re-think the architecture and capabilities the organization needs to successfully compete in a digital age. Very few organizations see how to properly use technology to fulfill the mission of the organization and to exceed customer expectations, and as a result create a shift outwards in the CX Supply Curve itself.

Choosing not to digitally transform your organization, creates the space in the market for new digital native organizations to enter and establish a beachhead and attack the incumbents.

At the same time, as our world and organizations continue to digitize this will result in decreasing variable costs and increasing fixed costs, leading to increased consolidation in many fragmented industries. Those organizations bold enough to invest in shifting their customer experience supply curves outward by undergoing a true digital transformation will improve their position to be a buyer instead of a seller as this consolidation occurs. So the real question is…

If we are living in an era of survival of the digital fittest, which side of the digital evolution do you want to be on?

I hope you’ll join the change revolution, get your copy of Charting Change today and check out the Change Planning Toolkit™!

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Measuring Change Readiness

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Measuring Change Readiness Are you and your organization ready for change?

Too often organizations define the change effort they want to pursue without first identifying whether there are people, resources, legislation, etc. present that must be in place before the change effort can begin. We will explore the circumstances you may want to explore before beginning any change effort and the areas to explore as potential prerequisites to the change program and its eventual success.

During the course of any change initiative many different challenges will appear, and the most successful change efforts will anticipate those challenges and have a plan for dealing with them. Part of that anticipation begins with identifying how ready the organization is for change.

The Change Planning Toolkit™ is designed to assist your change planning team by making the planning process easier with its collection of 50+ frameworks, methodologies and other tools.

One of the keys to change planning success is carefully identifying the prerequisites for change, including:

What must we know? (Knowledge)
What must we have? (Tools)
What must be completed? (Foundation)

This information is captured in one of the worksheets in the toolkit.

One other concept we should stop and discuss briefly is the idea of change saturation. This concept captures the idea that organizations in general, and certain individuals in specific, can only absorb so much change at one time. One frequent occurrence with change efforts is the situation where more than one project or larger change effort may require the same human, financial, physical, information or other resources at the same time. To become aware of this situation and to enable you to work to mitigate the effects of change saturation, you will want to build a heat map identifying the different timing, duration, and intensity of the different requirements all of the different projects and change efforts will place on the different types of resources within the organization. This too is a prerequisite.

Another prerequisite for change is having a deep understanding for what the current state looks like, including having answers for the following:

Who is feeling the pain? Pushing for the change?
What is the pain caused by the current state?
Where is the bulk of the change likely to take place?
When did the current state start causing pain?
Why is the change being pursued

These questions can be asked and answered during your change planning session, but they must be asked and the answers must be integrated into your examination of your readiness for this change BEFORE you actually begin the change.

An additional prerequisite for change is also having a deep understanding for what the desired state will look like, including answers for the following:

Who are we making this change for? Who will feel the greatest benefit from this change?
Where will the resources and support come from?
When do we need/want to complete the change process by? Is there a legal deadline?
What solution would we like to see in place?
Why is this solution better than the status quo?

Finally, to be ready to pursue a change the organization must have people in place to look after each of the Five Keys to Successful Change and should be familiar with both the Architecting the Organization for Change framework and my PCC Change Readiness Framework (these are three of the free downloads from the toolkit).

My PCC Change Readiness Framework focuses on the psychology of key groups surrounding the identified change, the capabilities needed to successfully execute the change, and the organization’s capacity to tackle this change effort (along with everything else).

You will notice that I don’t speak about organizational psychology or culture in my PCC Change Readiness Framework. The reason I don’t highlight culture in the same way that many other people do is that in today’s more social, customer-centric business, we must look more broadly than the typical inward focus of company culture when it comes to identifying the readiness of not only employees, but leaders, customers, and partners too. Inevitably many of our change efforts will have some impact on one or more external groups (possibly even non-profit entities and one or more governments).

You will notice that within the PSYCHOLOGY box there is a common focus on the mindsets, attitudes, beliefs and expectations of the individuals. Culture is incorporated into the psychology realm by focusing on what the shared understandings are around the potential change, but more broadly too. And, finally you will notice that my PCC Change Readiness Framework highlights the need for successful change efforts to move towards gaining commitment to the change from leadership, acceptance of the change by employees, and a desire for the change from customers and partners.

Within the CAPABILITY box of my PCC Change Readiness Framework we must investigate whether our change effort has any regulatory or statutory implications and whether we are ready to adapt, adopt or influence the changes necessary in this sphere. We must also ask ourselves a series of questions:

“Do we need to get permission from anyone to do this?”
“What knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for this change do we already possess?”
“What knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for this change do we need to acquire?”
“What relationships do we possess that will be useful in advancing the change?”
“What relationships do we need to build to help advance the change?”
“What are the enablers of making this change successful?”

Within the CAPACITY box we have to look at where our resources are approaching, or have already achieved, change saturation. This means they are unable to productively participate in any more change efforts or adopt any more change. But we also have to look at the availability of our resources:

Human
Financial
Physical
Information
Executive Sponsors
Space in our desired communication channels

It is easy to take for granted that the organization will have the capacity to undertake your change effort, but often there are capacity constraints that you will run into, especially as the pace and volume of change increases inside an organization. The one that is easiest to overlook and fail to plan for, is making sure that you’re going to be able to communicate your change messages in your desired messaging channels (they may already be full).

There is a worksheet that goes with the PCC Change Readiness Framework that will help you capture information around the:

History
Capability
Capacity
Partners
Context
Leadership
Employees
Customers
Shared Understanding
Strategic Alignment (Commitment)
Cultural Alignment (Acceptance)
Brand Alignment (Desire)

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve gone ahead and created a free downloadable flipbook PDF for people to grab. It was inspired by Braden’s article titled Change the World – Step Two, which was the follow-up predictably to Change the World – Step One.

You will find these companion tools for the PCC Change Readiness Framework in the Change Planning Toolkit™ to download for printing and use in your collaborative exploration of your change readiness.

In my next book Charting Change we will investigate additional aspects of change readiness and have a special section from one of my invited guest experts in the book, Beth Montag Schmaltz of PeopleFirm looking at several topics including change fatigue, where the change threshold lies, why people resist change, how to reduce change fatigue, how to build change capability, what change capable employees look like, and how you can embed change behavior into the very fabric of your organization.

The book is available for pre-order, and has received several strong endorsements, so I hope you’ll pick up a copy (or one for each member of your team). You can find more information on the Charting Change book page.

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The Pyramid of Results, Motivation and Ability

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Changing Outcomes, Changing Behavior

Pyramid of Results, Motivation and Ability

by Braden Kelley

When engaging in a change effort it is important to focus not on outputs but on outcomes. The difference is sometimes subtle for people, but the biggest difference is that outputs are usually activity-based where outcomes are behavior-based.

There are several good behavior modification frameworks out there including the Six Boxes framework from Carl Binder, the Six Sources of Influence framework from VitalSmarts, and the Results Pyramid® from Partners in Leadership that start with the desired performance changes, results or outcome shifts and work backwards.

Six Boxes Approach - Carl Binder

Six Boxes Approach – Carl Binder

Potential Benefits of Using the Six Sources of Influence

The Six Sources of Influence framework from VitalSmarts, a framework designed for personal change has some usefulness as we look at organizational change. Here are some of my thoughts on how this personal change framework is relevant, centered on the fact that successful change happens one individual at a time. The Six Sources of Influence framework looks at motivation and ability on one axis, and how they are affected across three other variables, which include:

Personal
Social
Structural

Taken together they form the Six Sources of Influence (see the Motivation Ability Worksheet in Figure 1) and can be used to change behavior one individual at a time. And it is from these changes in behavior that the transitions towards the new way of doing things begin to happen.

Figure 1

To utilize personal ability to influence the change will require teaching people the new skills to be successful at the new way of doing things. Consider breaking up the learning into short intervals where you can give people immediate feedback and prepare for people to have regressions back to the status quo. Work to identify those moments where people will be most tempted to regress to the status quo and create strategies that reinforce the new way of doing things.

To influence the change through personal motivation will require visualizing the change for people and utilizing physical and other cues (including vivid storytelling) to help reinforce that the change is desirable. Help people see, feel and believe in the new way of doing things (the desired state).

Social motivation can be used to influence change adoption by turning accomplices (status quo advocates) into friends (people practicing and supporting the new way of doing things), while any attempt to use social ability as an influencer for change adoption will require open and honest conversations to transform people from accomplices into friends .

Finally, utilizing structural motivation will require selling the problem in a way that people are influenced to abandon the status quo (visualize it, prototype it, etc.) and structural ability can be used to motivate people by changing the physical environment to reinforce the change. Instead of using a stick to motivate people to change, consider using carrots and the threat of losing carrots. It’s a slight twist away from using a stick, but it’s a powerful one. Finally, reward small wins and use incentives (carrots) in combination and in moderation.

Devotees of the Six Sources of Influence may find the free Motivation Ability Worksheet useful.

Using the Results Pyramid® to Create New Results

The Results Pyramid® framework from Tom Smith and Roger Connors’ book titled Change the Culture, Change the Game focuses on the importance of building a culture of accountability. Leaders can accelerate the change and results that they seek by working with the bottom half of the pyramid (“beliefs” and “experiences”). The Results Pyramid® has four main components that I would love to show below in Figure 2 but can’t:

Figure 2 would have gone here

Transformational change is most often lasting and sustainable in achieving the desired new results when leaders work to change the beliefs and experiences that people have and ensuring that people begin having new experiences that lead to new beliefs that lead to new actions that ultimately support the desired new results.

I was trying to help bring additional readers to the authors via the Results Pyramid® Worksheet, but it didn’t quite work out, so you’ll have to do without the visuals and imagine how the tool from Change the Culture, Change the Game could be used to:

First focus on identifying the new results that the group wants to achieve after making the change.
Second, ask employees and partners what new experiences they think that people will need to have in order to not only begin to leave the old way of doing things behind, but to both support the new results you want to achieve AND to help them believe the organization is serious and committed to the new results and that the leadership can be trusted.
Third, ask what new beliefs they think that people will need to have in order to commit to leaving the old way of doing things behind and prepare them to take new actions.
Finally, ask what new actions they think that people will need to take in order to achieve the new results that you are hoping to have in the desired state.

In most cases you will find that your current set of experiences, beliefs, actions, and results have achieved a sort of equilibrium or alignment and that one of the keys to achieving successful change is to move from your current state of equilibrium or alignment to a new set of experiences, beliefs, and actions that create a new state of equilibrium centered around your new results. By identifying where you want to move the top of the pyramid, your can start moving the base of the pyramid followed sequentially be the layers above it, and in doing so, prevent the pyramid from toppling over.

Potential Benefits of Using the Results Pyramid®

The Results Pyramid® is based on the idea that too many organizations focus on the results they want to achieve in the shift from the current state to the desired state and that just by communicating the desired results that the organization will see these new results manifest. But, the reality that the Results Pyramid® captures is that in order to achieve a shift from the current state to the desired state, and to achieve a new set of results, you must do more than define the new results you want to achieve. And you must provide a new set of experiences, beliefs, and actions that will help you achieve those results. The other key component of the Results Pyramid® theory is that too often companies demand new actions to get new results, but the truth is that these four things (results, actions, beliefs, and experiences) are organized like a pyramid and you can’t just move the top of the pyramid without also moving the supporting layers as well.

Meaning, that to create a shift in results (or outcomes), you must create a new set of experiences that lead to a new set of beliefs that lead to a new set of actions that result in the new results that you are hoping for as a result of your change effort. And of course by planning out consciously the shift in results that you’re trying to achieve, you can work as a change planning team to identify the new experiences, beliefs, and actions that you need to create in order to achieve the new results

I find this a useful tool to consider using as you analyze the desired behavior changes and new outcomes you are seeking to achieve with your change effort as you go through your change planning meetings or off-site.

Devotees of the Results Pyramid® would have found the Results Pyramid® Worksheet useful but, sigh, you can’t see it.

Conclusion

In this article we looked at the role of changing behaviors in achieving changed outcomes, and how we might use a couple personal behavior modification frameworks, the Six Sources of Influence and the Results Pyramid® to help us organize our conscious attempts to modify the behavior of individuals as part of our attempts to achieve our desired group behavior change and to ultimately to achieve the intended successful outcomes of our change effort.

So, check out the work of Carl Binder and grab yourself copies of Change the Culture, Change the Game and Change Anything and get started!

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Now you can buy the Change Planning Toolkit™ Basic License – Instant Access Edition here on this web site.

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Change Resistance is Not Inevitable

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Change Resistance is Not Inevitable The idea that people always resist change is a lie, and it is extremely damaging to organization’s seeking to increase their organizational agility.

The truth is that people only resist changes that they either do not understand or for which they do not interpret there to be benefits great enough to offset the costs of their participation.

The truth is also that the natural response to a potential change in an organization is greatly impacted by the level of trust in an organization.

While it is a lie that change resistance is inevitable, it is true that executing change is hard. If it wasn’t, 70 percent of change efforts wouldn’t fail, but they do. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that most change efforts are communicated not explained.

Let’s look at definitions of both words from Dictionary.com to see the root of this difference:

Communication: A document or message imparting news, views, information, etc.

Explanation: A mutual declaration of the meaning of words spoken, actions, motives, etc., with a view to adjusting a misunderstanding or reconciling differences

You’ll notice here a big difference between the two mindsets – seeking to communicate versus seeking to explain. When you focus on explaining the change, you are focusing on ensuring UNDERSTANDING, and when people understand the change, and the purpose for the change they will be more likely to support the change.

We don’t resist change, WE RESIST THAT WHICH WE DON’T UNDERSTAND.

One great way for increasing your ability to explain change is the use of a tool like the Change Planning Canvas™ to involve more people in the planning of a change, which increases the number of people capable of explaining the change and its purpose, plus it provides a visual map of the change effort that explains the change at a glance.

This is not say that even when people completely understand a potential change and the purpose for it, that they still might not not fight against it, but they will be more likely to support the change.
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(For Illustration Purposes Only – Get the toolkit or the book for a clear copy)
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The Change Planning Canvas™ is one of the more than fifty tools that make up my new Change Planning Toolkit™ that is now available via individual licenses for educational use and site licenses for professional and commercial use. It helps you move away from the incredibly counter-productive practice of planning change in isolation.

Organizations that do a better job of explaining their changes and the purposes for them, not coincidentally also tend to build up a higher level of trust over time, and organizations that do a better job at change explanation and maintain higher levels of trust are able to change faster!

But some people may still resist, why?

Some people may resist your change effort for a number of different reasons, but you need to identify up-front not only why people resist but also who will likely resist. Change Planning Toolkit™ users will want to capture the group’s thoughts on who will resist in the middle box of the People Worksheet from the toolkit and the corresponding box on the Change Planning Canvas™.

Some of the typical reasons why people will resist include:

inability to see the need for change or relevance;

loss of certainty (includes fear of job loss);

loss of purpose, direction, or status;

loss of mastery (includes loss of expertise/recognition);

loss of control or ownership;

loss of connection or attachment;

lack of trust or clarity;

fear of failure (feel unprepared);

see proposed change as irrelevant or a bad idea;

feel overwhelmed by thought of change.

You’ll want to identify the individuals or groups who have one of the above reasons for resisting change, and you will want to plan from the start to overcome that resistance in the same way that any good salesperson plans for objections, learns to hear them, and practices how to overcome them (for example, by developing and sharing strategies with coworkers).
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(For Illustration Purposes Only – Get the toolkit for a clear copy)
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In the Change Planning Toolkit™ I’ve provided space in the Overcoming Resistance Worksheet for your team to brainstorm both the groups and individuals likely to feel any of these reasons for resistance, together with space to capture some ideas for overcoming these objections (aka resistance).

The Change Planning Toolkit™ also provides the Five Change Reactions Worksheet which allows you to identify which groups and individuals tend towards each of the five change reactions highlighted in this worksheet and explained in my book Charting Change.. These five change reactions typically occur in a standard distribution (aka bell curve) and you can increase the chances of your change success by shifting enough people to the left along the curve.

So, there you have it, a quick look at The Big Change Management Lie about the inevitability of change resistance and some ways that it can be avoided or at least mitigated, and an introduction to how some of the tools from the Change Planning Toolkit™ can provide even more help.

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Innovation is Human

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Innovation is Human

In many ways organizations are like humans, and others have described organizations and organizational change in biological terms before. But this biological context applies to innovation as well, and I’d like to put it forward quickly in simple terms.

As humans we must eat to survive, but if we focus too much on eating, we get unhealthy.

If we don’t focus enough on eating or if we eat the wrong things, we get unhealthy.

If we don’t enjoy enough variety in our experiences, we get unhealthy.

If we don’t spend enough time synthesizing those new experiences to uncover insights via sleep, we get unhealthy.

If we don’t eliminate our waste, we get unhealthy.

And finally, and probably most important to our health, we must exercise to increase our strength, flexibility, agility, reduce our stress levels, to build new capabilities, and to increase our longevity.

But, you can exercise too much, and get unhealthy as well.

The key is balance.

And the same is true for organizations, and parallels for all of these human activities can be drawn to the activities of organizations as well.

And while our interactions with food can be compared to our focus on the day to day operations within the context of the organization, the pursuit of innovation is the exercise for the organization.

And in much the same way that many people resist exercise even though they know it is good for them, many organizations do as well.

But for organizations to stay fit and enjoy a long and productive life, they must strike that balance between a healthy diet and exercise.

So, is your organization going to be fit or fat?

And next time someone in your organization says that innovation isn’t important, or that they can’t focus on it right now, ask them if they think exercise is important, then remind them that innovation like exercise is how we reinvigorate our organizations and keep them vibrant and alive, and go find yourself a carrot stick.

Keep innovating!

Image credit: fitinafatworld.wordpress.com

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Change the World – Step Two

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Change the World - Step Two Are you and your organization ready for change?

In a 2008 global CEO study conducted by IBM on the enterprise of the future, IBM identified the top challenges to successfully implementing strategic change as:

Changing mindsets and attitudes (58%)
Corporate culture (49%)
Underestimation of complexity (35%)
Shortage of resources (33%)
Lack of higher management commitment (32%)
Lack of change know-how (20%)
Lack of motivation of involved employees (16%)

You will notice that many of the items on this list are more about the people factors of change rather than the process or technology factors of change. The weight of the human dimensions of change is reflected in my PCC Change Readiness Framework™. This framework focuses on the psychology of key groups surrounding the identified change, the capabilities needed to successfully execute the change, and the organization’s capacity to tackle this change effort (along with everything else).

PCC Change Readiness Framework

You will notice that I don’t speak about organizational psychology or culture in my PCC Change Readiness Framework™. The reason I don’t highlight culture in the same way that many other people do is that in today’s more social, customer-centric business, we must look more broadly than the typical inward focus of company culture when it comes to identifying the readiness of not only employees, but leaders, customers, and partners too. Inevitably many of our change efforts will have some impact on one or more external groups (possibly even non-profit entities and one or more governments).

You will notice that within the PSYCHOLOGY box there is a common focus on the mindsets, attitudes, beliefs and expectations of the individuals. Culture is incorporated into the psychology realm by focusing on what the shared understandings are around the potential change, but more broadly too. And, finally you will notice that my PCC Change Readiness Framework™ highlights the need for successful change efforts to move towards gaining commitment to the change from leadership, acceptance of the change by employees, and a desire for the change from customers and partners.

Within the CAPABILITY box of my PCC Change Readiness Framework™ we must investigate whether our change effort has any regulatory or statutory implications and whether we are ready to adapt, adopt or influence the changes necessary in this sphere. We must also ask ourselves a series of questions:

“Do we need to get permission from anyone to do this?”
“What knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for this change do we already possess?”
“What knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for this change do we need to acquire?”
“What relationships do we possess that will be useful in advancing the change?”
“What relationships do we need to build to help advance the change?”
“What are the enablers of making this change successful?”

Human
Financial
Physical
Information
Executive Sponsors
Space in our desired communication channels

In my upcoming collaborative, visual Change Planning Toolkit™ you will find the companion tools for the PCC Change Readiness Framework™, two large format change readiness worksheets to download for printing that will help you collaboratively explore all of these topics and more.

Be sure and sign up for the Braden Kelley newsletter to receive the latest news on my new book on the best practices and next practices of organizational change (January 2016) and the licensing options for the Change Planning Toolkit™.

Finally, when you consider all of the potential stumbling blocks in advance of the change that we highlighted above, evaluate your readiness in each area, and make a plan for closing any gaps (before you even begin your change effort), you will greatly increase the chances of its success. But, there are certain items that are not just good to know in advance, but are actually prerequisites for change, and we will explore that topic in the book, so stay tuned!

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve gone ahead and created a free downloadable flipbook PDF for people to grab. It was inspired by Art Inteligencia’s article titled Change Readiness: What It Is and How to Achieve It.

P.S. In case you missed it, click to read Change the World – Step One

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Making People Dance Instead of Jaywalk

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Making People Dance Instead of Jaywalk I love anything that is fun and investigates human psychology, especially crowd psychology, and the investigation of how you can use fun to potentially influence human behavior for social good (i.e. the piano stairs example I’ve shared before).

Nobody likes to wait at pedestrian crossings. Traffic lights can be dangerous for impatient pedestrians trying to save a few seconds to cross the street (and willing to risk their lives in the process).

The folks at Smart created The Dancing Traffic Light, an experiential marketing concept providing a fun and safe way to keep people from venturing too early into the street. They started by placing a dance room on a square in Lisbon, Portugal and invited random pedestrians to go into the box and dance. Their movements were then displayed on a few traffic lights in real time. This resulted in 81% more people stopping and waiting at those red lights.

It’s a genius marketing gimmick because it reinforces the brand value of fun by making people dance in a box that looks, imagine that, a bit like a smart car.

The question brought up by this example of a marketing campaign that claims that fun can be used to achieve social good, is that it claims a benefit, that without an extended test could be attributed to novelty…

Does the benefit hold up over time?

Or does it stop being fun and impactful after people have seen it once or twice or the live video component goes away and it becomes a recording? Do people then start jaywalking again at the normal rate?

What do you think?

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Human-Centered Change and Innovation

Innovation, change and transformation thought leadership, lovingly curated by Braden Kelley

Category Archives: Psychology

The Psychological Impact of Change

Understanding the Emotions and Reactions Individuals Experience During Times of Change and How to Effectively Support Them

Emotions Experienced During Change

Case Study One: Jenna’s Job Loss

Case Study Two: Sam’s Relocation

Support Strategies During Change

Conclusion

Fix the Problem or Design it Out?

Why Change is Accelerating

Changing Customer Expectations

Economics 101

Conclusion

Measuring Change Readiness

The Pyramid of Results, Motivation and Ability

Changing Outcomes, Changing Behavior

Potential Benefits of Using the Six Sources of Influence

Using the Results Pyramid® to Create New Results

Potential Benefits of Using the Results Pyramid®

Conclusion

Change Resistance is Not Inevitable

Innovation is Human

Change the World – Step Two

Making People Dance Instead of Jaywalk