Blessed Are The Peacemakers

Great change is often a matter of small actions, constant conversation and doing the right thing. In this case, it is also the stuff of heroes.

The documentary The Secret Peacemaker, broadcast on BBC2 last night, was one of the most moving things I have seen for a long time. It was the story of a businessman called Brendan Duddy, who lives in Derry in Northern Ireland.

He isn't, by the normal ways of looking at things, anyone special. He was an ordinary man who owned a chip shop. But what he did was amazing.

A republican and a pacifist, Brendan acted as the broker to facilitate dialogue between the IRA and the British Government for more than twenty years during the 70's, 80's and early 90's, the darkest time of the Troubles.

He set up meetings at his house and elsewhere to get representatives of the IRA and the British Government together, during times when neither side could be seen to be talking to each other. He did so at immense personal risk to himself and his family. In Northern Ireland at this time, to be seen talking to a British soldier could get you shot by IRA paramilitaries paranoid about 'touts' or informers. Loyalist paramilitaries were shooting catholics seemingly at random. Being seen with militant republicans could have you thrown in jail indefinitely without trial.

There was nothing in it for Brendan, except the belief that dialogue was better than killing, and that the killing had to stop.

For twenty years, he spoke in coded messages on bugged telephone lines, drove through the dark to anonymous houses to convey messages to men who were ordering murders by the day, and kept it all secret from his friends and neighbours - everyone except his family.

He brokered meetings in his house, making cups of tea for killers and intelligence agents sitting on his sofa, being a trusted witness to conversations where the politically unthinkable was discussed and deals were done - ceasefires, doors kept open, promises made - that paved the way to the Good Friday agreement and the brittle but enduring peace that exists in Northern Ireland today.

I am sure that the story I saw had been cleaned up, sanitised and edited nicely - and that the truth is more ambiguous, murky and uncomfortable than the version broadcast. But regardless of what we learn in the future I have no doubt that this man is a hero of the highest order.

He did the right thing when it would have been easier to put his head in the sand. He risked everything he had to make things better, when there was no realistic prospect of success for years. And he did it effectively alone - not working for anyone else, not following anyone else's policy - but because he personally saw that something needed to be done and he could do it.

I grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles - and because I know how bleak those days were, I have nothing but admiration for this man who tried, in small steps over many years, to work to end them.

And, at the risk of sounding crass, I think Brendan can teach us something about change. First of all, the primary driver of peace process was conversation - dialogue between people - not 'communication' formally issued. Indeed the main time things went wrong for him was when some information was released the wrong way - announced in the House of Commons - rather than in discussion.

Secondly, if you want change to happen, it is much better to get out there and do something, rather than wait, even if you don't know every step of the journey. Brendan facilitated the dialogue, often when neither party was clear about what they were to talk about. Doing something and getting the dialogue going was critical.

And finally, change is about having a compass, not a map. Brendan was a pacifist - he wanted the killing to stop. He didn't have a great plan for peace, he just knew that if he could put the relevant people together, then the killing became less likely. It was a move in the right direction and that was the right thing to do.

Now the changes we have to face in our companies are much less mortal, are more defined and are much simpler than the things Brendan faced. But his example, I think, is something from which we can all learn.

- Mike

The Word Is Spreading

Bloomstorm features in a new podcast and in another blog.

Technology is a wondrous thing - it lets anyone do anything... And in this case, it lets me talk to Howard Graham of the Made Simple Group about Bloomstorm in this podcast. In it, you'll hear me explain where the name 'Bloomstorm' came from, why 'resisting change' is not what you think, and why change implementation, rather than management, is critical...

It was pleasing also to find that the most recent Bloomstorm Briefing (our free bimonthly newsletter offering tips and insight on change - you can sign up for it here) gave Howard a theme for his latest blog - on the notion of punctuality and respect.

You know what they say: great minds think alike.

Regards

- Mike

PS We've made some nice tweaks to our website - have a look and let us know what you think of it as well. Ta.

The Emperor's New Talk

The terminology of the change industry gets in the way of doing real change. Try cutting out the jargon and watch performance improve.

My friend and ex-colleague, Vincent Rousselet, has considerable intelligence and great experience of making and seeing change happen. I interviewed him today for the book I'm writing on change implementation - working title: Everything You Know About Change Is Wrong (But You Can Do Something About It) - and in the course of an excellent discussion, we wondered if, for the next change his organisation is implementing, he should remove all reference to the word 'change' altogether.

"Don't say we're implementing a change - say this is how we are going to work differently". An immediate change of focus, from jargon and 'stuff' to real activity. A chance for people to focus on real work, not workshops.

And this, of course, is one of the themes of the book. If you are managing change, you are not delivering it. If you are engaging stakeholders, you are not getting people to do things differently. If you are developing a communications plan, then you're not talking to your people.

It's like we've all been infected by a disease. Politicians talk like this. Business schools train their graduates to talk like this. And we pay consultants thousands of pounds to talk like this. And, after a while, we begin to believe it too: if we say certain words and do certain activities, we can sound impressive and make it look like we are doing real work, but we're not: in fact we are doing things that get in the way of real work.

Colette, my wife, says these things are 'Waffle Words' - words that sound meaningful and make you feel intelligent, but actually mean very little and deliver less. But the purpose of change is not to engage stakeholders, or to execute a comms plan: it is to improve business performance by working differently. Anything else is noise.

So next time you're involved in an activity to have people work differently, try this: do not permit anyone to use the following words and see what happens. I'll guarantee that people focus more on real results rather than the jargon.

• Change (try 'working differently')
• Strategic (try 'big' or 'important')
• Tactical (try 'small')
• Stakeholder (try 'someone who needs to do something')
• Commitment (try 'what we need them to do')
• Intervention (try 'task' or 'activity')
• Communications (try 'letting people know what they need to work differently')
• Outcome (try 'improved performance')
• Vision (try 'what we need to do')
• Rationale (try 'reason')
• Engagement (try 'working with each other')
• Model (try 'way of looking at it')
• Deliverable (try 'what we need to have')
• Performance System / incentives (try 'pay and perks')
• Process (try 'how to do something')
• Culture (try ' how we talk and do things round here')
• Analysis (try ' work out what I need to know to move forward')

To make it more interesting, try fining your consultants, say, £5 every time they use one of these terms. You could get a refund on their fee in a couple of hours...

I'm sure you can think of many others - I'd like to see your your thoughts and suggestions in the comments section below - let's see if we can create a dictionary of change nonsense together...

- Mike

The Case Against Goals

Don't let setting goals stop you getting things done.

Those who know me know that I am (in the words of my friend Sam Bodley-Scott) "built for comfort, not for speed." In other words, I carry a certain amount of excess weight.

But for the past 6-8 weeks or so I've been losing weight. A bit of watching what I eat (low carbs, low GI, anyone?) a bit more exercise and getting more sleep. And it's working.

Now I know that I'm supposed to have a goal - a target weight - to which I aspire and which is supposed to motivate me, but quite frankly such goals only make me depressed because they show me that I have a long way to go and it's going to be a lot of hard work to get there. In fact, I need to stop thinking about this right now, or else I'll get so depressed I'll have to cheer myself up with a cream cake (:-))

I am, however, serious about the goal thing. We are told, are we not, by almost every single textbook on change to set a goal and then think about how to get there. But in this case, that doesn't work for me. And in fact, I think it doesn't apply in most cases of change.

What happens when we think about the goal of a change - say an IT project, or an organisation redesign, or even a personal weight loss programme? We spend a lot of time "visioning the end state" We may spend a lot of time arguing or discussing with others how we will measure the goal. We may spend lots of time trying to work out how we will get there. Anything, in fact, instead of getting going. (BTW This is also a great place for consultants to make money. The longer they spin this bit out, the more money they make. And it's easier than actually doing the work...)

And underneath these discussions are a lot of contradictory thoughts, such as: "Damn! That's a stretch! We'll never get there," or "Fine, whatever, we'll forget about it after a few weeks like we always do," or "That is so far away, we'll never be able to do all the work we need to do to get there." As our NLP practitioner friends tell us, negative self-talk is a BAD THING, and so many change initiatives begin handicapped by a serious negative vibe.

So I haven't set a goal except that I want to lose some weight - not so much a goal as a direction. And so I've no excuse not to get started straight away. I just need to get going, see what happens and adjust things as I go. And I have: 16 lbs and counting.

And I can't help thinking that many change initiatives could benefit from a similar policy. Sure, set a direction for where you're going, but then get going. Try it out, see what works, adjust it and do it some more.

Much of the time, you'll know when you get there. And you'll get there faster, and have a happier journey - for nothing settles arguments more than delivery.

- Mike

Where I've been

Just visited the nice people at world66 and they let me create this map. Seems I've been in 26 countries and worked in most of them. That's 11% of the total. Only another 89% to go...



create your own visited country map

Dear John...

Change is matter of action, not words.

In my game, I see a lot of analyses, review many reports, hear frequent recommendations. And I'm sure they are useful, but at the back of my mind, I know...

Analysing what's wrong is easy.

Reporting our findings is easy.

Making recommendations is easy.

They are, all of them, easy. If it wasn't, why would we keep doing these things at home, with our friends, our families?

It's acting on these recommendations, making the necessary change, that is more challenging.

If you don't believe me, cast your mind back to the last time you had a relationship with a 'significant other' - and it had gone wrong. (If you can't remember such a time, either you are too young to be surfing the internet or I would like a glass of whatever you were drinking at the time...)

Remember? Talking about it with your friends and forcing them to listen until they ran out of patience (three weeks for women, three hours for men) and gave you the recommendation you knew was right: 'Dump him / her'.

This is a change that is easy to say - but, for most of us, very hard to do.

And all the nonsense about 'Management of Change' doesn't help. The important thing is not 'change' - it's about making things better: more efficient, more effective, less painful. Change is not something abstract to be taught on a workshop, it's specific, it's personal and it takes time.

And, like breaking up, it's better done cleanly, with good manners and by taking into account the feelings of the other person (people?) involved. And sometime down the line, after the pain is gone (but it never really goes away, does it?) it might be possible to see that yes, things are better; yes, it was the right thing to do.

But no matter how it comes out, we shouldn't be surprised that making change happen is hard, because it's always personal.

- Mike