Issue #14 - January 1, 2003

1.	Happy New Year!
2.	Feature Article: "Ten Questions that Catalyze Great Change Leadership"

1. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! We hope your holidays were exactly what you needed to prime you for 2003. And we wish you a healthy, prosperous, and fulfilling year of leading successful change!

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Ten Questions that Catalyze Great Change Leadership
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Introduction

A good change consultant’s primary job is to catalyze insight and clear thinking in their clients so they are able to lead their organization’s change efforts with greater skill and competency. Sometimes the catalyst for such insight is another executive who knows to ask the questions that promote the right type of thinking and actions to support change.

We begin our consulting interventions by asking a series of briefing questions of the key executives in charge of the change. These briefings provide us with background information about the change, as well as surface high leverage opportunities for adding immediate value. But most importantly, answering our questions expands the executives’ perspective. The more profound and penetrating the questions we ask, the more insightful the executive becomes in answering them. Done properly, such a briefing can and should be a powerful intervention in itself.

In this month’s article, we present five key topic areas for questioning, and next month, five more. As a change consultant, project manager, or executive change leader, you will want to carefully consider these questions as you initiate a change, or help to assess and course correct one that has already begun.

There are, of course, many more questions that can and need to be asked of sponsoring executives than are presented here. We selected these ten particular topics because asking them usually catalyzes critical insights in executives and leads to a more thorough and successful change strategy.

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Instructions

Think about a change effort that you are currently working on as you read through the questions. Consider whether all of the executives in charge of the change, and all of the consultants involved, would answer each question the same way. Very fruitful discussions can occur among change leaders and their consultants concerning their different perceptions of the answers to these questions. If a sponsor has no answer to a particular topic, or discounts a certain area of inquiry as unnecessary, explore what is motivating his or her response. Then, use the information and insight you generate from the discussion to establish the conditions for successful change.

We have included a commentary after each set of questions to provide further insights about the questions and what information and related issues may surface.

THE TEN QUESTIONS: Part One

1. What outcomes and business results do you need to achieve through your change effort? How do you define “success” for this change? If this change were to be wildly successful, what would be happening to make it so?

   Desired business results are a powerful driver of change. They can shift the perceptions of a particular change effort from a “nice to do” to a “must do.” Consequently, a key area of inquiry is determining how the change will help meet business objectives and whether there is alignment on this among the leaders. Consistent understanding of why the change is occurring and what benefits it will bring is essential to generating enterprise-wide support.

   The definition and measurement of success for the change must include both business and cultural/human criteria. Whether individual change leaders perceive business value in both terms is very revealing of their existing mindset about what they believe is important to business success. Asking about both the business and the human success factors is a powerful way to help executives broaden their thinking. If the executives are not defining success in both arenas, then they will likely not plan for the human and cultural ingredients that are necessary to achieve the business results they covet. Publicly including these factors in the definition of success also gives the change effort more credibility for the people who must make it happen.

2. From your observations, to what degree do the people of the organization understand and buy in to the need for this change? If low, how will you help them understand the case for this change and engage them in ways that are energizing and inspiring, rather than threatening? What is in it for the people of your organization to want to make this change succeed? How will you motivate them?

   This topic area is a great way to engage leaders in thinking about the human element in change. The executives will benefit from both observing and then trying to articulate the degree of commitment, excitement, and readiness for change existing within both management and the workforce. Getting the leaders to determine how to wake up the organization to the need to change, especially if people consider the company to be successful already, is essential, and not easy.

   When discussing motivation strategies, it is very important to get the leaders to talk about their perceptions of how their leadership style impacts motivation. Ask them if their style is getting them the behavioral and emotional effect they want and need. Inquire about their beliefs regarding human motivation, and what they think works or not. Some leaders believe that workers will do what they are told, and therefore think that giving clear mandates is key. Others believe that workers will naturally resist, so then negative consequences (fear-based strategies) are best. Yet others believe that workers will buy-in if they are able to co-create the change, so participation is critical. Getting these beliefs on the table for discussion is the first step to building a motivation strategy that will work.

3. What major change initiatives are needed in the organization for the outcomes to be achieved? How would you define the full scope of this change? Consider changes in any aspect of the organization: strategy, business processes and systems, structure, leadership and workforce mindset, culture, resources, technology, behavior, etc.

   New business directions always trigger a range of change initiatives. Executives typically identify the tangible organizational initiatives, such as re-structuring, reengineering business processes, altering systems, or implementing new technology. They frequently miss the need for changes in culture, leadership mindset and style, working relationships, and new behaviors, which are less tangible yet equally essential to success.

   This topic area reveals the leaders’ view of the scope of the change, and again hints at whether or not the leaders recognize--and value--the human and cultural changes as well as the business changes. It also reveals the degree of clarity that leaders have about how the organizational and human changes are interdependent determinants of success. Both are key to success, and must be led consciously from the beginning.

4. What values, behaviors, or ways of working and relating must be in place for the change to occur? What are the organizing principles that lie at the heart of this change and are key to its success?

   These questions are perhaps most important of all. They may also be the most challenging to ask and answer.

   The intent here is to get the change leaders to think more deeply about the principles that underlie what they are attempting to achieve through the change. You might call these principles the heart and soul of the change, its governing principles. For example, core principles driving ERP and CRM implementations include: 1) the enterprise operating as one integrated system, 2) information sharing across boundaries, 3) people empowered to make decisions, and 4) people contributing in higher impact ways.

   Overtly naming these principles enables change leaders to then identify what conditions exist that support them or not. For example, does the executive team act as one entity, or do turf wars divide them? Is information shared openly in your culture, or withheld as a power game? Does your approach to change engage people in decisions, or are you leaving people out of decisions that are most important to them? Change efforts succeed only to the degree to which prevailing cultural conditions support the underlying principles of the change itself.

   Once articulated, use the core principles of your change effort to audit both organizational and cultural conditions to see if they already support the change. Where they don’t, you can then formulate change initiatives to alter them to what is required. For instance, we often create an intervention we call “Breakthrough Training,” designed to instill in executives necessary changes to their leadership style, mindset, and ways of working that reflect and accelerate the core principles of their change, and therefore their outcomes.

5. What key aspects of the organization and the culture are critical to protect and preserve because they already support your outcomes and core principles? How can you celebrate and build on them?

   This topic area follows #4 intentionally. It focuses attention on both the organizational and human dimensions of the current state that are essential to keep in place, providing the benefits of familiarity amidst change, pride, stability, and confidence to succeed in the change. It is essential to celebrate and strengthen what already works, as long as it directly supports the creation of the desired state. This enables the leaders to identify and communicate respect for the past as well as bring firm grounding into the future. This enhances confidence and security amidst the unfamiliarity and stress of change.

   In developmental and transitional changes, this is relatively easy to do. In both of those types of change efforts, you build the future off of tangible aspects of the current organization. In transformational change, this is not always the case, so a focused exploration of this question is a key strategy for mobilizing support, readiness, and confidence in the organization. This is especially true when the desired future—the transformed organization—will be profoundly different than the norm.

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Summary

Because leading transformational change efforts is so radically different from running current operations, their success often requires change leaders to think more deeply and thoroughly about how they will lead the effort and what should be included in it. Asking profound and direct questions can generate the discussions and decisions required to set your changes up for success. Use and adapt the questions above to catalyze such conversations.

And, stay tuned to next month’s issue of “Results from Change” for Part Two of the “Ten Questions that Catalyze Great Change Leadership”!

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See you next issue, and the best in change to you!
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RESULTS FROM CHANGE is written by Linda Ackerman Anderson and Dean Anderson, and is published by Being First, Inc., www.beingfirst.com, 1242 Oak Drive, DW2, Durango, CO, 81301, 970/385-5100.

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