Viewpoint: Resistance to Change

I was recently asked, “What is the single biggest reason people resist change?” Of course, my opinion is not intended to be the definitive final answer. In fact, the best I can hope for are your challenges to my assumptions and opinion liberties. I do hope you have other perceptions, and your responses are both welcomed and encouraged.

For me, understanding the resistance to change is certainly much easier than removing the root cause and components to meaningful, sustainable and continuous change. I believe at the simplest level, fear is the single largest impediment to any form of real change. Our culture has largely been built on the reward/punishment system where mistakes are not tolerated, and in corporate America especially, the consequences can be dramatic, life and career altering.

Organizations ask for change, but punish (loosely translated) failure. It is the classic “carrot and stick” metaphor. People fear the stick over the benefit of the carrot. When individuals perceive they have more to loose than gain in a changing environment, they will resist when possible. Choosing instead, to cling to their perceptual safe zone. The fear of the unknown has been woven into the very fabric of our culture and professional DNA. Simply put, when fear is present, innovation is not. Change is a steep, uphill climb.

So if fear is the problem, what does that mean to managers of change? I would postulate that fear is at the starting gate of change. And, until that gate is unlocked and satisficed to align with the removal of fear and installation of safety, transformational change does not have a realistic chance at achieving long term success.

What is needed is a complete overhaul of corporate culture (albeit, an unrealistic idea). A culture that celebrates mistakes and turns them into learning opportunities becomes opportunistic and gains immensely and continuously. This concept is easier to integrate in a start-up environment, since “fearless” can be baked into the founding culture. Older, larger organizations will have a difficult time switching gears to varying degrees, and some organizations will never be able to make this level of fundamental change. So what is the solution to fear resolution?

A culture and environment accepting failure as a part of the success process is going to produce much stronger results. Maybe we call it “positive failure” to assist in its adoptability and improve its stickiness. The element of failure as a critical element to success, reminds me of a company called IDEO and its Director, David Kelly. One of his quotes resonates with me to my very core, “Fail often, in order to succeed earlier”. In other words, the faster you fail, the faster you can succeed. IDEO is one example of a fearless culture where failure is encouraged, expected and rewarded.

For anyone managing change, whether practicing from the soft sciences or simply a manager tasked with change, I would encourage you to take a look at IDEO for a perspective a good distance from our norms. You can view a terrific video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM

Opinion ends here. I look forward to your feedback, additional discussion and perspectives on the topic.
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 Jeff is currently the Principal Consultant at iBridged Consulting, a sales and sell-through performance management consulting firm. He has of two decades of executive sales leadership experience leading people and companies to reach goals previously thought to be unattainable. Working with and for brand name companies like Apple, HP, Xerox, Microsoft and many others, Jeff understands the complexity and strategic nature of the tools, systems and processes necessary to improve sell-through in any organization.


Jeff serves on the Board of Directors at Bay Area Organization Development Network, leading the organizations' communication strategy and implementation. Jeff holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Management and is currently completing a Masters of Science in Organization Development at the University of San Francisco.

Letter from: BAodn Director of Technology

BAodn’s mission is about supporting a community of organization development practitioners. As Director of Technology & Infrastructure for BAodn, I am focusing on how we can best use technology to forward that mission in two ways. One is making sure our board members and volunteers have access to tools & resources they need to communicate and get work done on behalf of the organization. Second is improving services we provide to members and to the OD community via technologies like our website, our membership directory, e-mail newsletters, the BAodn blog, and social media.

When Paul Konasewich, last year’s president, posted the description for the board position of technology director it said, “In many ways, running BAodn is like running a small company”. This is so true! As an all-volunteer organization, operating primarily in the virtual world, we face particular challenges with coordinating schedules, sharing knowledge, and getting the right information to the right people without inundating folks with e-mails. These are not just technical decisions about what tools to use, but cultural and style decisions that depend on who we are and how we like to get and transmit information. Add to that the fact that we want to maximize efficiency on a small budget. Luckily there is a wealth of choices for online collaboration out there, many of them free such as Google docs and groups.

We are not alone in grappling with these issues. I shared some e-mails recently with Liz Smith, programs coordinator of the Chesapeake Bay Organizational Development Network (CBODN). She was soliciting information from other OD networks about what business systems and collaboration software we all use (She will be sharing her results with us!). Again, one side of the equation is researching what the technologies can do. The second side is what works for us, considering who we are and what we need. What I hope to accomplish is to use technology wisely where it can help, but not change old tech for new just for the sake of modernizing. For some things a regular e-mail to a decision-making group is still the best way to coordinate!

Choices we make about our outward-facing technologies are not straight-forward either. It’s easy enough to say, for example, we should have a Twitter account, or that we should add certain bells and whistles to the website. Sounds great! But what does that mean for implementation? Our current board president Chanterria McGilbra suggested a framework which we used for discussing the launch of the BAodn blog. She asked Alyea Sandovar (blog editor) to present an outline of what needs to happen to get it going, and what we need to do to keep it going. In other words, we want relevance, but we also want sustainability. My approach therefore is to look at efforts around technology in a comprehensive way. I presented five components of my strategy at our board retreat in July and I’ll share them here:

Support the BAodn mission and overall strategic initiatives. This is key, because we want to be developing resources that are relevant to our members and/or to sustaining the life of organization.

Leverage existing tools and resources. No need to reinvent the wheel if we can improve or tweak something we already know and make that better. This is also about being realistic about what our limits are, in budget and in volunteer time.

Balance technology choices with our organizational culture and preferences. This relates to what I said above about internal collaboration, to the degree that outward-facing tools are maintained by the same board and volunteers. Some people thrive around technology, while others may be uninterested or frustrated. We don’t want to introduce technologies that only a specialist can or would want to manage.

Use data. This comes from my training in both web development and OD. Rather than guessing at user needs, let’s look at statistics for some direction. Are there pages on the website that no one goes to? We can see that (with Google analytics) and make adjustments accordingly. Does membership go up when we send out newsletters to our public mailing list? We can use information like that to make decisions about our communication technologies.

Adopt best practices for technology and social media. Again, we are not alone in developing services for a membership-driven, professional association. What can we learn from other groups about creating and supporting online communities? Furthermore, what can we learn from for-profit companies and web experts about things like web usability and social media development?

This is an exciting time to be involved with BAodn as we put our attention on what our members need and on how we can best support OD practitioners. If you would like to help with our technology or social media initiatives please feel free to contact me at technology@baodn.org or e-mail volunteer coordinator Katherine Kott at volunteering@baodn.org. We are currently looking for a webmaster and you can read about it on the BAodn website.

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Pam Davis is a futurist interested in helping organizations align goals, strategy, people, and technology for maximum success. Her diverse background spans education, community organizing, office administration, website programming & analytics, knowledge management, and social media technology. Pam is completing an MA in Organizational Psychology at Alliant International University’s Marshall Goldsmith School of Management.

A Must Read: Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus

On Oct. 27, 2010 BAODN presents a workshop with Ken Ball and Vic Passion based on the new book Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees. This workshop will examine the specific areas of mentoring, a highly effective strategy for sharing knowledge. Click for registration details.

Ken and Vic will offer takeaways and tips for how OD practitioners can more effectively use mentoring, whether for knowledge capture or other strategies for making sure employees are talking and sharing what it is they do and know.

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The Book

Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees by Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill examines the "knowledge vacuum" that is occurring in the business world as Baby Boomers retire or leave the workplace, and take with them, their soft skills an practical wisdom.

Summary

At first glance, this book appears to be about the sea-change that we've heard so much about in the context of social security -- retiring Baby Boomers. The book then quickly takes a deep dive into the specifics of those generational differences, examines different types of knowledge, and looks at the impact on specific industries. A large part of the book outlines on what you need in order to design a program that will effectively help transfer and retain knowledge.

This book is based on both primary research -- talking to people in companies who are dealing with this very issue -- and well-grounded secondary research. There's a special focus on industries such as aerospace, manufacturing, oil, gas and utilities. Some snippets that resonated with me:

• One-third the youngest boomers do not want to be known as Baby Boomers-- in fact, most identify as Gen X.
• Baby Boomers like telling stories, but GenX often wants to approach Boomers in a less "adoring" manner than they would prefer.
• GenX consider themselves "free-agents", often mentor each other, and just want to be left alone to get the job done.
• Younger generations expect exceptions -- they lack patience for a "must do this way" approach to learning.
• Data with interpretation becomes information, and with context and experience becomes knowledge
• Information exchange does not equate to knowledge transfer.

In order to understand the most appropriate methodology for transferring knowledge, you must first understand your audience, and the difference between the types of knowledge. Is it explicit, implicit or tacit, and how do you know the difference? The core challenge of the Boomer Exodus is transferring tacit and implicit knowledge from boomers to younger generations.

Mentoring is one of the key strategies to knowledge transfer. In order to do this effectively, consider the audience, your metrics, and the nature of the job (e.g., sales coach vs. leadership mentoring). Supporting tools may include supply toolkits, worksheets, forums for networking, orientation and training the creating a mentoring program. It can be 1:1 mentoring, or perhaps even the creation of mentoring circles. Additional means of knowledge transfer include using social media, communities of practice, narrative storytelling, and even after-action-reviews.

Why read this book?

If you're looking to establish a knowledge transfer program within your organization this book will help you create a process around a knowledge project. It goes through the specifics of designing, developing and implementing and nurturing a program with mentoring at the cornerstone.

If you're looking to understand differences in generational learning preferences and the characteristics of these generations, this book provides well-researched basics in the subject. It has a textbook feel to its approach.

The authors come from an instructional design perspective and so use the ADDIE process to guide you through the creation of a program. The authors may not be "traditional" OD practitioners, but the process of creating a knowledge transfer program is OD in practice.

In general, practitioners who are faced with the challenge of an aging workforce, retirements that loom large, will find this book to be a useful, practical guide to structuring and implementing a solution.

If you're interested in learning more, come hear Ken Ball speak with his colleague Vic Passion at an upcoming BAODN event on Oct. 27, 2010.

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Rani H. Gill is a learning designer looking at ways to help people learn and organizations change. She speaks, manages, and designs in three languages: technology, education and business. You can find her at her blog (wanderatwill.com), twitter, or Linked-In. She currently an external consultant and the Speaker Series volunteer with BAodn.

A New Focus for The Field of Organization Development

The educational process of the field of organization development has focused on developing consultants (external and internal). These consultants work with organizational leaders toward improving the health and well being of their organizations. Even our OD membership organizations (OD Network, the Organization Development Institute, regional OD networks, NTL, etc.) have been focused on serving practitioners who work with organizational leaders. Academic programs have proliferated in the same vein.

That may be overstated but not by much: In essence, we have created an OD skill-stream that is only adjunctive to where it is most needed—our organizational leaders.

Imagine if our field really focused on developing conscious organizational leaders just as we focus on our own conscious use of self! Imagine if we focused on developing conscious organizations! Imagine if we began to emphasize the need to inculcate OD skills and sensibilities into the entire management cadre of our client organizations!

What would a conscious leader skilled in the perspective and skills of organization development be like? First and foremost the conscious leader understands that the effectiveness of his/her technical and operational systems is dependent of the effectiveness of the human systems that develop, operate, and maintain those systems. Second, the conscious leader would have feedback loops in place regarding the effectiveness and health of the human systems that are commensurate with those for technical and operational systems. Those feedback loops would monitor, for example, communication dynamics, leadership issues, the management of differences and related power dynamics as well as decision-making efficacy. In this manner, corrective action could occur before they begin to impact the technical and operational systems for which they are responsible.

Typical organizations have feedback loops regarding their sales and manufacturing in-puts and outputs that are attended to weekly if not daily. Critical machinery and computers are routinely maintained to assure their continual productivity. Conscious leaders would do the same for the effectiveness and health of their human systems as well. As the human systems go, so go the technical and operational systems. Together they drive overall productivity and fiscal success!

Pictures in this blog are from the event with Edie Seashore on September 23, 2010. Stay tuned to this blog for more about conscious leaders and the ways they impact the power dynamics which can be so harmful or advantageous to organizational dynamics. Your reactions and thoughtful responses would be welcome. Respond to this blog or contact Michael directly at michael@chumans.com. Check-out the “Resources” tab of his web site www.chumans.com as well!