Thursday 25 June 2009

The Change Time Machine

If we concentrate more on working differently and less on thinking about "the change" then we reduce the prospect of resistance and make the chances of success significantly easier.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - one of the biggest barriers to business change is the term 'change' itself. I have been struck by this as I do some work for a very successful web services company. Here, the work environment is geared to giving people freedom to deliver in whatever ways they think works best and significant amounts of change are happening in this company all the time. But because change is the stuff of work - it is part of what they do round here - it's not a big deal. They don't get hung up on the term. So stuff gets done faster, in practical terms, than in many other places.

That's not to say that things are perfect - every now and then some structure is needed (which is why I'm here) simply to ease the friction and make sure that people can work together more effectively. But the fascinating game as far as I am concerned is that I'm giving them some ideas and then working with them to help them understand how these ideas work best in their environment. It's challenging work - but great fun.

And one of the best things we are working on is using structure by stealth - to use these new ideas by asking relevant questions at the right times - but not to tell anyone that they are using a method or a tool. In this way, the people they work with just focus on the question, not on the method, and the process simply works.

This is why I despair sometimes of so many of the management fads to which companies succumb periodically - six sigma, lean, BPR, TQM, ERP and the like - because before you can get any work done, you have to sell people on the method and the language and the concepts and before long you have a six-month rollout programme to give people a 'positive orientation' to the process of change before you start to see anything improve.

The most successful programmes that I have seen begin instead by getting some people to do something different - something real that makes a visible difference. When others ask "how did you do that?" - then you're into the real change game...

It's like putting 'standard' change in a time machine and running it backwards - make the change happen, then let people know about it.

Mike

(Photo credit: Rodolfo Clix / www.sxc.hu)