Change-Management from A to Z

ADVOCATES intend to achieve change, but -- even in those high-visibility groups who drive media coverage -- they lack the formal power to deliver it. Recommendations to redesign policy, save money or boost effectiveness can go nowhere when those who are enthusiastic for an idea lack the skills to gain support from the Sponsors. (About that word sponsors -- it’s a big one, but we’re not supposed to define it this early in the alphabet.)

AGENTS are responsible for making change happen, or at least some critical slice of it. Their effectiveness is defined by their ability to diagnose potential problems, plan a better way, and execute competently. Agents must be “organizationally aligned” with -- here’s that word again -- their sponsor. (If you’re impatient, the definition can be found under S.)

BURNING PLATFORMS are the Public Governance metaphor for situations and environments you need to get off of, or away from, fast. They are the greatest -- in the sense of “strongest” rather than “best“ -- motivator for change. A person, family, organization or whole society can find itself on one of these platforms, as it threatens to fry them.

BLACK HOLES are the opposite of burning platforms. In both the corporate and political worlds, a black hole is the spot that exerts, on change projects, an effect akin to what the real black holes do to matter in space. The leadership group’s commitment is pulled, as if by gravity, into bureaucratic layers and structures, ultimately vanishing without trace or effect. Burning platforms compel change, black holes kill it.

CHANGE is a process, not an event. Change is a transition that -- sooner or later -- supplants one way of doing or looking at things in order to install its replacement. Change will be resisted, even when it’s “positive” change, and the group or individual claims to welcome it. “Imperative” change is the kind that saves agencies, governments and societies, often making history as it redirects the lives of citizens.

COVERT communications are dangerous to leaders of change. Granted, the average leader does not like to hear complaints. Some think it best that complaints are out of sight and off the site. But most complaints are actually the key to success -- after all, it’s very difficult to get a handle on what is buried or festering backstage. Work hard to get complaints out in the open, overt in words, where they can be resolved, reframed or refuted.

DARYL CONNER is a Public Governance Institute collaborator whose lifetime of discovery, consulting and training led to creation of this foundation. Author of Managing at the Speed of Change (Villard Books, 1992) and Leading at the Edge of Chaos (John Wiley & Sons, 1998), he chairs Conner Partners, and earlier founded ODR®, a training and consulting firm. Since 1974, he has worked with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and nonprofit institutions. The Public Governance Institute translates his private-sector experience into change agendas for public-sector groups.

EXECUTION is a word that, in the political sphere, can get you embroiled in a debate about capital punishment. From the 2002 Bossidy/Charan book of the same name -- Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done -- we prefer a drier meaning, but one that carries nearly as tough a message: "Everybody talks about change. In recent years, a small industry of changemeisters has preached revolution, reinvention, quantum change, breakthrough thinking, audacious goals, learning organizations, and the like. We're not necessarily debunking this stuff. But, unless you translate big thoughts into concrete steps for action, they're pointless. Without execution, the breakthrough thinking breaks down, learning adds no value, people don't meet their stretch goals, and the revolution stops dead in its tracks. What you get is change for the worse, because failure drains the energy from your organization. Repeated failure destroys it.”

FOCUS, even though doing so does violence to the spirit of the word, can be defined three ways: (1) It’s the name of an exhilarating 1996 book by marketing strategist Al Ries; (2) It’s the result of using a magnifying glass. And (3) focus is what a change-management consultant expects from his client -- ideally the Sponsor (see SPONSOR).

GARGANTUAN can be the fiscal cost and political humiliation for governments who try to do big things without change-implementation skills.

HAPPINESS tends to be the enemy of all change. If such a thought makes you sad, then you’ve come to the right place. I mean, if you were happy, why would you be scrolling through a web document anything like this one?

IMAGINATION is essential to Sponsors, Agents and Advocates as they move the change process along. Although resistance is natural to change, imagination finds ways to “reframe” the discussion so the value of the new policy or procedure looks more desirable than staying with the failing system. Imagination is the key to creation of communications that force Targets (another player soon to be defined) to rethink their resistance.

JERRY CLIMER founded the Public Governance Institute and he sponsors this website. He will come to your meeting and explain the finer points of “change-management” in ways that this document has to handle as blunt objects. In doing so, he will rely on 30+ years of experience with top-level government leaders and a policy-creation background that makes it very heard for you to show him anything he hasn’t dealt with before. But that background has led to great frustration, because Jerry has witnessed leader after leader fail to implement needed public policy change. This is why, beginning in 1990, he dissected those failures while working with Daryl Conner to translate secrets of success for public-sector sponsors.

LEADERSHIP is more direct in the private sector, where it’s normal to speak of “managing” change. Why? Because it’s relatively simple for a top executive to order the change to be implemented; when a CEO or division chief gives such an order, “managers” at least attempt to carry it out. Over in the public sector, it’s rare to find an official with such laser-like authority. That’s why effective “change leadership” for good governance requires unusual discipline and planning, not to mention leaps of innovation.

MARKET means the people who have to hear, read, discuss or see a framework for the related principles to cause any change. Our assumption is that you are part of the market for this document, yes? If so, then who might you be? Someone who (1) is weary of academics who overvalue research, and politicians who elevate rhetoric, at the expense of delivering real change; and (2) has a vital interest, probably as part of a team, in the process of moving from today’s norm to some desirable new state of affairs.

NIMBLE is the organization that can succeed in unpredictable, contested environments by implementing important changes quicker and better than its rivals; or, if it has no rivals, than the implementation is becoming reality ahead of all the negative forces trying to thwart it.

OVERT communications are the ultimate desire of the consciously competent leader of change. Remember: Covert bad, Overt good. Skilled leaders get the fears and complaints on top of the table, letting them be appreciated, and dealt with as the (mostly) serious expressions they are.

PAIN-MANAGEMENT has nothing to do with that set of disciplines the medical pros call “disease-management.” Rather, it’s the orchestration of information to help people (colleagues, employees, citizens) understand the high price they will pay if the status quo continues to rule. The real Status Quo was a U.S. rock group that had two minor hits -- “Pictures of Matchstick Men” and “Ice in the Sun” -- during 1968. The lower-case “status quo” is something with tens of millions of friends -- trouble is, they never use that term on its behalf and just refer to it as “that’s the way we’ve always done things” or think “why change when just a few tweaks will do?”

QUITTERS are almost never identified as such in the public world. Instead we hear them cast as “responding to calls for compromise” or acknowledged for their “wisdom in seeing that the new policy would be too hard to implement.” In reality, most efforts to change policy implementation in the public world fail not because the change is wrong, too bold or even ill-timed. No, most fail to bring about needed changes because quitters in positions of leadership did not know how to bring about complex changes in such a way as to garner enough citizen and/or employee support.

RESILIENCY means the capacity of an individual or group to recover from disruptions. People who are positive, focused, flexible, organized and proactive have more ability to cope with change. If you started with our “A” words, and have gotten all the way to here, you are persistent and diligent, and we thank you -- but to become “resilient” you’ll have to sit through one our seminars.

RESISTANCE to change is persistent, cross-cultural and independent of race, creed and income levels -- therefore, this force of nature (human nature, in this case) defeats many change agendas by outlasting their proponents. Although natural and predictable, its “roar” is enough to stop most proponents of change, and seriously weaken those who keep fighting.

SPONSORS have the power to sanction or legitimize change and therefore don’t need to ask for permission. Wait a second, that’s a pretty core concept, no? Indeed it is. We claim that no change can take place without committed sponsorship. Well, so much for a set-up that takes awhile to get to the S-words. But we got here quickly enough, and would like to repeat the definition: A CHANGE SPONSOR has the power to sanction or legitimize change and therefore he or she does not have to ask for permission. “He or she”? Actually, a group can also function as Sponsor, it must have a clear goal, great communications skills, commitment that is unswerving and a willingness to reward supporters and punish objectors (within the cultural definitions of their organization).

TARGETS are the people you expect to actually change, not just behaviorally but also in outlook. For you to move those people and groups, objections must be surfaced. Help them to understand the changes; ideally, you’ll also make them part of the implementation. Of course they then become something better than “targets.” (Sorry, can’t get too detailed here.)

TOLERANCE FOR AMBIGUITY is a 1980s mantra that got carried to extremes. By all means, “tolerate ambiguity” in things you have no influence over. Yet being committed to change actually makes ambiguity one of your chief foes. Needed: A methodical, measured system for delivering change that makes clarity your ally, while evicting Mr. Ambiguity.

UNIQUENESS is an off-abused word that means the only example. We might not go so far as to label our view and methodology for public-sector change-leadership “unique.” But the combination of Daryl Conner’s private-sector experience with Jerry Climer’s public-sector experience is, so far as we can tell, unmatched. Hmmmm. You know what? Maybe it is unique.

VICTIMIZATION in the change field is when you are faced with a negative situation and assume no workable alternative is available. When you have no options, “nothing can be done,” and therefore someone or something else is totally at fault. This stance is good for a few days of righteousness, after which depression and paralysis take over. The wiser course is to -- you knew this was coming -- launch your own change project.

WORK is the best word to define the task of leading public-sector change successfully. It is hard work because it taxes the mind more than anything else. If attempted using traditional intuitive skills, it will experience the failure rate of most such changes -- about 70% fail. If the leader has found ways to be exposed to the lessons learned in both public and private worlds over the past 30 years and then “works” to apply those consistently, the change can be implemented for the benefit of society, or at lest your agency.

XANADU may be an idyllic, exotic, or luxurious place, but that has nothing to do with the methodology defined on this site and promoted by the Public Governance Institute. Rather, we’re talking about real places where real people work to deliver lasting good for themselves and their fellow citizens.

YABBER may be the Australian aboriginal language of the Melbourne area to define “talking” but -- be it yabber or speech or communication -- the activity is essential to the change process. All change will be resisted and almost all successful efforts to overcome resistance will be rooted in intellectual exchanges. The key “yabberer” must be the Sponsor of the change. Agents need to be just as effective at getting “targets” to talk.

ZAMBIA is one sort of country we’d love to be hired to enhance the capacity of leaders and teams to bring about needed change. We might take Zaire, too -- but let Zimbabwe pass: That Mugabe fellow is too zealous a “Sponsor” for our tastes, and our sympathies lie with that nation’s Resistors. Seriously, we stand ready to talk with democratic leaders, anywhere in North America or around the globe, who are committed to effectiveness. Our skill is not in telling you what to do, but in helping you learn how to succeed in what you know needs to be done to improve life in your realm.

© 2006, Public Governance Institute