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Talent And Transformation: A Delicate Balance

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Change: It’s not what it used to be.

As the availability of new information and technology continues to proliferate, there are direct implications for how organizations adapt and grow.

Within many companies, what used to be considered radical transformation is now merely change — often thrusting smaller organizations into a world once dominated by the Fortune 500. With each “out-of-nowhere” success, we become more accustomed to watching one disruptive innovation after another arise from startup status and send status quo players to the realm of obsolescense.

With each wave of innovation comes more knowledge — and with knowledge being the byproduct of information and context, we are becoming increasingly aware of the change around us. For most people, that is scary.

Change vs. Transformation

It wasn’t long ago that businesses ran with modest, almost unnoticeable change, year after year. Business inertia meant that employment was a lifelong commitment for many employers and employees alike.

For the human psyche, this was ideal. That’s because deep down people don’t like change. It isn’t so much because change is a bad thing. Most people in fact would probably suggest that change is a good thing.

However, the same group of people will become scared, resistive, or even combative when they feel change that affects them. That is because, regardless of their opinion on change, if change is unexpected and/or unprepared for it tends to yield less than satisfactory results.

So, if change creates problem, what happens within an organization when transformation rears its beautiful yet unforgiving head?

The idea of transformation vs. change (for anyone who is wondering) is that transformation takes the very definition of change and makes it exponential across all axes.

During typical organizational transformation, employees can quickly feel lost. Sometimes this is due to their own fear of what they see coming. With fear and change looming in their minds, this can trigger a mass exodus of those affected, or perhaps even worse, the loss of key employees who are outside of the “transformation planning” sphere.

When this happens, companies must face a myriad of problems, not the least of which is turnover, which can be cancerous within a delicate corporate culture. Beyond cultural disruption, turnover is extraordinarily expensive and it slows down the transformation process, which is how we arrived here in the first place.

To add insult to injury, some organizations choose to blame the exiting employees. While this is easy (kind of like sales saying “price” is the reason you lose a deal), it is often nothing more than a scapegoat. Simply suggesting that some employees weren’t “moving with the times” reveals both a lack of character and a lack of class. Further, it is most likely not true.

Leading The Way Through Transformation

This brings us to the best course of action. First, as an organizational leaders, we must continuously evaluate our workforce, focusing on which employees demonstrate the strongest cultural fit, and ability to adapt to change. Then we must do everything in our power to motivate those who best fit our culture to align their efforts with the company’s direction.

Finally, it’s essential to re-center our thinking and focus on control. After all, as leaders we are ALWAYS responsible for setting the sails of our proverbial ships, and we all know that a ship will move faster and more true to course with all hands on deck. Just look for that “Motivation” poster in your office…you know, the one that says “Teamwork.”

Of course, we can’t control the entire domino effect that occurs as organizations shift, we most certainly have control of most of it. This includes the messaging, the process of continuous communication that is required between leadership and the team, as well as the creation and cultivation of a culture of change.

The transformational organization isn’t going away. In fact, the velocity of change and transformation is only going to continue increasing. (This is emphatic, although I have no science to prove it). Just look at what is happening around us for the cues.

While we cannot reverse the trend, we can control our outcomes. This starts with a culture of resilient people, and ends with great leaders who value and protect that culture, as it embraces the future..

Shift happens. The essential question is: how will you make the most of it?

(Editor’s Note: To discuss World of Work topics like this with others in the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events every Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome. Learn more…)

(Also Note: This article originally appeared at Switch & Shift. It is republished with permission)

Image Credit: From Black Swan by Fox Searchlight

Get Creative: Take Your Organization Off-Road

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A recent Articles.com piece notes that unorthodox recruiting styles may actually pay off. Looking in unique places and creating a non-traditional way of recruiting can be an alternative to the tried and true.

But how do we push beyond our boundaries? HR folks and leaders typically attend many of the same conferences and seminars, so much of what is being done becomes somewhat incestuous. Learning what has worked with others is great, but don’t let that limit your options.

Many leaders may be okay with taking a new approach to how things are done. What really gets feathers ruffled is when structure and processes are approached with the same sense of flexibility. Difficult to argue against words like “quantifiable”, “metrics”, “strategy” and others of a similar ilk begin getting thrown around. Out of fear, loyalty and “good business sense” is questioned and the feral uprising is summarily squashed.

Leadership, regardless of level and department, requires things quite different than what was necessary or effective say 10 years ago. The latest catch phrase, 21st century leadership, has some merit behind it (at least until it gets used to death). A post on The Customer Collective makes a great point.

Leaders of the future will also have to be emotionally efficient. They will promote variation, rather than promoting people in their own likeness. They will encourage experimentation and enable people to learn from failure. They will build and develop people.

If we look at many of the most successful and growing organizations, they all have at least one thing in common: Taking their organization off-road in some way. It’s incredible how the success rate of doing this seems to have little to no bearing on those still humming along in the granny lane.

Going off the map isn’t comfortable for anyone, but when given the choice between the anxiety of venturing into the unexplored and the anxiety of wondering about future viability, I’ll take the former any day of the week. I think if leadership were painfully honest, they would feel the same way.

Here are some tips to help you put on some honkin’ mudder tires and have a go with going off-road with your organization.

  • Ease into it – Nothing says you have to have your entire organization jump in with both feet and throw caution to the wind. Choose an area that could result in a significant change and get you toes a bit wet. People don’t respond well to the revolutionary dynamic of sudden and drastic changes, so don’t think you have to do everything at once.
  • Find your adventurers – Every organization has a group of them. Those who are free spirits and are quick to adopt new things out of mere curiosity. They typically get excited about trying something different just because it’s different. It will be like handing the key to the chicken coop to the fox. They will most likely drool the moment they have the opportunity to develop an alternative option than the status quo.
  • Support the effort – As with any initiative, there must be support from leadership. Consider having a member of the C-Suite, or at least the VP level, act as a sponsor so there is a little more chance of things having the freedom to succeed.
  • Give it a fair chance – It’s going to be ugly, awkward and uneasy at first. Manage your expectations. Don’t approach it from a right/wrong perspective, but rather one of “what worked, what didn’t work?” Nothing wrong with piecing together a solution.

Transforming the Workplace: Charting a Path to a Better Place

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Originally posted by Chris Jones, a TalentCulture contributing writer. He is an IT Strategy & Change Management consultant, with a passion for driving new levels of engagement and learning in the modern organization. His research areas include the dynamics of organization culture, and more recently, the importance and implications of critical thinking. Check out his blog, Driving Innovation in a Complex World, for more.

In my last TC post, we did a deep dive on critical thinking in the workplace.  We discussed ways to drive innovation in our day to day exchanges by tracing the value of engagement in the modern organization and focusing on the mechanics of collaboration as a more rigorous way to solve problems.

These are all core elements of a desirable future state culture.  If achieved, they could serve to foster organization-wide learning.

But what about culture change itself?

So often executives will speak of the need to drive a full transformation of the business or its culture. It’s not too difficult to imagine an alternate future state.  But it can be difficult to know how to get there.

The research I’ve done in this space indicates that culture change can be guided by leadership, provided there is a focused, coordinated, and ongoing effort to achieve it. Too often culture is viewed as a quick fix, a “memo” to the team (remember those?), or a simple expectation of management for the troops to ‘figure it out’.

Organization change is too complex for simple solutions. Learned behaviors run deep into the fabric of the organization, and are not easily changed.

I see value in attacking the problem at two levels simultaneously, a simple, high-level framing like the one recently popularized by Chip and Dan Heath in Switch (2010), supplemented by a more detailed approach, such as the one famously outlined by John Kotter in Leading Change (1996).  A combination provides a reinforcing framework, a ‘scaffolding’ of sorts, that will be resilient due to its diverse structure.

Let’s take a look at a synthesis of these two models, and outline what the core transformational elements might be:

Viability of an Organization’s Vision

Stakeholders must be able to see themselves in the future state, and will gain value from participating in the visioning exercises.  The vision must be achievable and actionable, and defined in a language recognizable to those who must seek it.

Ability of Leaders to Motivate

A guiding coalition must form around the change effort to create a believable, unified front to shepherd the changes through.  This coalition, representing elements of the entire organization, must be able to articulate a clear “value” story for stakeholders to rally behind. A “burning platform” is ideal to create a sense of urgency.  There must be an emotional appeal for an organization to be truly motivated, and a sense of empowerment that gets people engaged.

Ability of Managers to Clear a Path

Hurdles and roadblocks will invariably get raised, because human nature is to avoid change and maintain a status quo.  Pockets of resistance and politics will resit new approaches, and the guiding coalition must be sure that the team receives full support.  Communication will be critical, as well as establishing momentum, and, eventually, being sure to embed changes into daily operations.

Neither a checklist nor a new framework will be sufficient for an organization’s transformation to be successful.  It takes commitment and focus, and an investment of energy over the long-term.  Working together, stakeholders can build a transformation road map, charting a path to a better place.

Do you think these steps could serve as a means for driving change in an organization? Which of these steps have worked for you?  What do you see as challenges?

Let’s discuss adoption.  It would be great to compare notes, and to drive this thinking forward.

IMAGE VIA bbsc30