”Let’s set the stage, Jaded Julie. Our middle manager is faced with guiding her team through a period of change. We assume the change isn’t too sudden or traumatic—perhaps a Lean transformation—and we also give her some good leadership skills. How should she handle it?”
“I’ve got it, Curmudge! A new big word, rapport, which for once you didn’t spring on me first. ‘A relationship of mutual trust’ that she has with her team. She needs that to lead her team through the change. Fortunately, she knows the First Law of Leadership: ‘If you don’t believe in the messenger, you won’t believe the message.’ I’m surprised that the books don’t mention rapport more often.”
“Rapport (the ‘t’ is silent) between manager and team is certainly critical in change leadership. She will need that as she follows Affinity’s Model for Managing Change. In the first step, Vision, she will have to clarify the employees’ roles in the vision already articulated by the CEO and the management team. Then she must describe the Skills and Resources necessary to achieve the vision. In a Lean culture these will include Lean tools, such as 5S, that she will teach.”
“From our earlier discussions, Curmudge, we know that enumerating the Incentives for change to a Lean culture is pretty easy. Waste reduction and respect for people should help make the future more appealing than the present.”
“Finally, developing the Action Plan will be straightforward, because with Lean, the team members themselves will do it.”
“What could go wrong? This sounds pretty easy.”
“It shouldn’t be difficult, Julie, but remember our discussion back on October 29, 2007 about things that can go wrong in a Lean transformation.”
“I guess it won’t be a slam-dunk. Are there other issues that our change leader must consider?”
“Here are some reminders for the change leader that I picked from the documents that we referenced last time:
· Organizations don’t change. People do…or they don’t. People react differently to change, and we must treat a transformation as a physical, mental, and emotional process.
· Help the employees understand that today’s workplace is changing from paternalism to a partnership. With Lean, employees are treated with respect and are regarded as the local experts in the work that they do. In return, they are expected to participate in personal growth, contribute to problem-solving, and develop ideas for improving the efficiency and quality of their work.”
“Curmudge, I hope this means that ‘involvement breeds commitment,’ as I read in one of the papers.”
“Exactly. It’s quite natural for people to support a process that they have designed or improved. Here’s a related expression: Quality times Acceptance equals Effectiveness (Q x A = E). If people are involved in developing a good idea, their acceptance of it, and thus its effectiveness, are certain to be high.”
“Those are great insights, Curmudge. Too bad they’re not original. At least you know the right books and web sites to read.”
“Although there are many other change-management reminders out there, here is a final one that we mustn’t forget: Don’t let up. Transformations are fragile, so the manager must continue to lead, encourage, and coach her people in doing things the new way. Without continuous pressure, people will backslide into their old habits.”
“I’m confident that our middle managers will put your suggestions to use. By the way, Curmudge, you were a middle manager in your career back in an earlier century. Did you practice all of the things that you are telling us to do?”
“My answer, Julie, is to point out that I am the poster boy for the old German saying, ‘We get so soon old and so late smart.’ We’ll talk more about the personal side of change in a few days.”
Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Change Leadership for Middle Managers
“I read Kotter’s book, Curmudge. The eight stages of creating a major change are: Establishing a Sense of Urgency, the three we discussed last time (Guiding Coalition, Vision, and Communication), Empowering Broad-Based Action, Generating Short-Term Wins, Consolidating Gains, and Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture.”
“You are the consummate student, Jaded Julie. I’ll give you a gold star for last week. Let’s see…they are here in my desk somewhere...”
“(Consummate? I guess if that didn’t mean really good, I wouldn’t be getting a gold star.) So, Curmudge, we’ve gotten the CEO squared away. Do we move on to the senior leadership and middle managers?”
“Right. But before we proceed, let’s make some simplifying assumptions. If our transition is to a Lean culture, it can be treated as a gradual change rather than a the-sky-is-falling crisis. That should make the change leader’s job easier. Second, let’s endow our managers with leadership qualities; then we can consider middle managers to be, effectively, ‘middle leaders’.”
“Good idea, Curmudge. Remember also that with Lean’s inverted organizational pyramid, the changes will give the workers in gemba more responsibility. Unfortunately, middle managers may find change to a Lean culture somewhat traumatic if their authority is reduced.”
“The role of a senior leader should not be very different from that of the CEO, especially if he or she is a member of the guiding coalition. He shouldn’t stop reading here, however, because he may have to guide his direct report middle managers through some stressful times.”
“I presume that a middle manager must play a dual role. She communicates the new vision from top management down to gemba, and she must also coach the workers on new ways of doing things.”
“Julie, these tasks will be easier for the middle manager if she has acquired leadership skills to accompany her change management tools. Because of their joint dependency, we’ll discuss leadership after we finish with change management.”
“If I were a middle manager, I would first have to come to grips with the effects of the change on my own position. I couldn’t be a tower of strength for my direct reports if I felt like a bowl of Jell-O inside.”
“Find out from the most authoritative sources how your job will change. ‘Don’t cry before you are hurt.’ You may have to accept some ambiguity, but don’t let it paralyze you. This may provide the opportunity for you to redesign your position into something you have always wanted. Make your personal action plan and try to implement it.”
“So, now that the middle manager has her head on straight, how can she help the troops?”
“Julie, if I were coaching a manager faced with guiding her people through an organizational change, my first advice would be, ‘Don’t try to wing it.’ It’s not too different from a bone marrow biopsy; don’t try to do it until you have learned the technique. That’s something that the patient—and your coworkers—will appreciate.”
“(I sense a teaching moment coming up—probably with a reading assignment.)”
“Although people insist that they don’t have time to read, it’s really not too difficult to click on a URL and scan a few paragraphs. Here are some that should be very helpful to someone faced with leading or managing change:
Leading change management involves some simple, but too often forgotten rules. By C. Worley and Y. Vick. http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/052/change.html
The biggest mistakes in managing change. By C. Goman
http://www.winstonbrill.com/bril001/html/article_index/articles/501-550/article506_body.html
Seven dynamics of change. By R. Bacal http://www.work911.com/articles/change7.htm
Managing change to a continuously improving culture. By S. Hajec
http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c080107a.asp
Making the journey toward cultural change in healthcare. By A. Yelton
http://healthcare.isixsigma.com/library/content/c050302a.asp
And for Affinity employees, here’s a link to the Affinity Learning Center:
http://alc.affinityhealth.org/object/leadership-changemodel.html
Finally, for someone who does have time to look at another book in addition to the one by Kotter, there is: Change Management By J. Hiatt and T. Creasey.”
“I expect, Curmudge, that next time we get together you are going to share some words of wisdom from the documents you listed.”
“Of course Julie. You know me; I am an inveterate teacher.”
“An invet…? What kind of teacher? Oh well, Curmudge. I understand that using long words is just a habit that you have had for a long time.”
Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon
“You are the consummate student, Jaded Julie. I’ll give you a gold star for last week. Let’s see…they are here in my desk somewhere...”
“(Consummate? I guess if that didn’t mean really good, I wouldn’t be getting a gold star.) So, Curmudge, we’ve gotten the CEO squared away. Do we move on to the senior leadership and middle managers?”
“Right. But before we proceed, let’s make some simplifying assumptions. If our transition is to a Lean culture, it can be treated as a gradual change rather than a the-sky-is-falling crisis. That should make the change leader’s job easier. Second, let’s endow our managers with leadership qualities; then we can consider middle managers to be, effectively, ‘middle leaders’.”
“Good idea, Curmudge. Remember also that with Lean’s inverted organizational pyramid, the changes will give the workers in gemba more responsibility. Unfortunately, middle managers may find change to a Lean culture somewhat traumatic if their authority is reduced.”
“The role of a senior leader should not be very different from that of the CEO, especially if he or she is a member of the guiding coalition. He shouldn’t stop reading here, however, because he may have to guide his direct report middle managers through some stressful times.”
“I presume that a middle manager must play a dual role. She communicates the new vision from top management down to gemba, and she must also coach the workers on new ways of doing things.”
“Julie, these tasks will be easier for the middle manager if she has acquired leadership skills to accompany her change management tools. Because of their joint dependency, we’ll discuss leadership after we finish with change management.”
“If I were a middle manager, I would first have to come to grips with the effects of the change on my own position. I couldn’t be a tower of strength for my direct reports if I felt like a bowl of Jell-O inside.”
“Find out from the most authoritative sources how your job will change. ‘Don’t cry before you are hurt.’ You may have to accept some ambiguity, but don’t let it paralyze you. This may provide the opportunity for you to redesign your position into something you have always wanted. Make your personal action plan and try to implement it.”
“So, now that the middle manager has her head on straight, how can she help the troops?”
“Julie, if I were coaching a manager faced with guiding her people through an organizational change, my first advice would be, ‘Don’t try to wing it.’ It’s not too different from a bone marrow biopsy; don’t try to do it until you have learned the technique. That’s something that the patient—and your coworkers—will appreciate.”
“(I sense a teaching moment coming up—probably with a reading assignment.)”
“Although people insist that they don’t have time to read, it’s really not too difficult to click on a URL and scan a few paragraphs. Here are some that should be very helpful to someone faced with leading or managing change:
Leading change management involves some simple, but too often forgotten rules. By C. Worley and Y. Vick. http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/052/change.html
The biggest mistakes in managing change. By C. Goman
http://www.winstonbrill.com/bril001/html/article_index/articles/501-550/article506_body.html
Seven dynamics of change. By R. Bacal http://www.work911.com/articles/change7.htm
Managing change to a continuously improving culture. By S. Hajec
http://www.isixsigma.com/library/content/c080107a.asp
Making the journey toward cultural change in healthcare. By A. Yelton
http://healthcare.isixsigma.com/library/content/c050302a.asp
And for Affinity employees, here’s a link to the Affinity Learning Center:
http://alc.affinityhealth.org/object/leadership-changemodel.html
Finally, for someone who does have time to look at another book in addition to the one by Kotter, there is: Change Management By J. Hiatt and T. Creasey.”
“I expect, Curmudge, that next time we get together you are going to share some words of wisdom from the documents you listed.”
“Of course Julie. You know me; I am an inveterate teacher.”
“An invet…? What kind of teacher? Oh well, Curmudge. I understand that using long words is just a habit that you have had for a long time.”
Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Jaded Julie Learns about Change Leadership
“Where have you been, Curmudge? We haven’t had a conversation in a couple of weeks. Were you on spring break?”
“I wasn’t gone, Julie. This time of year I like to pause and let the snow melt off my brain.”
“That isn’t snow, Curmudge. It’s white hair, and most of it has melted away. So let’s continue our conversation from last time. You promised to tell how a CEO gets the flywheel to accelerate and move the organization toward excellence.”
“Effective change leadership is a big part of it, Julie. An organization with big problems that doesn’t change remains an organization with big problems. For a CEO, bringing about a major change in the culture of his corporation—especially a change like Lean that must endure—may be the toughest challenge of his career.”
“Sounds like a job for a Level 5 leader. So how does the CEO do it?”
“It’s not just the CEO. Managerial personnel at every level will need to facilitate change at some point in their career. Some might even be CEOs-in-training.”
“Maybe even me. Right, Curmudge? Where do we start? Are there good books and articles, or must I depend on your curmudgeonly wisdom?”
“There’s a ton of stuff out there. To me, some of it deals with changing an organization, and other publications focus on aiding individuals in accepting change.”
“But isn’t successful corporate change just the aggregate change of the individual employees?”
“It sure is, Julie. But the biggest immediate issue for a CEO is building his team and aligning their efforts to initiate the transition. At the moment, he is less concerned over how to allay Mary Smith’s anxiety over doing her job differently. So let’s begin by looking at change from the CEO’s global perspective. My favorite book on this is John Kotter’s Leading Change. When I was reading it, Mrs. Curmudgeon thought the book that I couldn’t put down was Ken Follett’s World Without End.”
“If Kotter’s book is that good, please tell me more.”
“I knew you would ask. Kotter describes an ‘Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change.’ We don’t have time to discuss all of the stages, so let’s address some of those that are most important. As our flywheel showed, changing the direction of a corporation is too much for the CEO alone. Thus one of the first steps is the Creation of a Guiding Coalition. Members of the guiding coalition must possess and exhibit position power, expertise, credibility, and leadership. Essential team characteristics are trust and a common goal, so ‘snakes’ and those with big egos must be excluded.”
“Snakes! One would hope that those ‘trust-killers’ had been kicked off the bus several weeks ago.”
“The next stage is Developing a Vision. It must be brief, compelling, and capture the passion of the employees. Creating the vision usually requires that the CEO and the guiding coalition think, dream, and draw deeply on their collective reservoir of talents. Hopefully, the vision will address what, when, and how the organization will fulfill its mission.”
“Then what, Curmudge? Do we shout our vision from the rooftops?”
“Almost. Despite all of the high-powered mental exercise that went into it, the vision must be straightforward enough to be understood and adopted by everyone. Remember, we want the vision to guide the employees’ hands, head, heart, and emotions for the next several years. That’s why the next stage is Communicating the Vision, although probably not by shouting it from the top of the parking ramp.”
“Several months ago we talked about the importance of the CEO’s communications about Lean. I’m sure that applies here, too.”
“Exactly. Communications by the CEO and his team members must be simple, completely candid, without ‘spin’, consistent, and repeated again and again.”
“Hey Curmudge, Kotter described an eight-stage process, but you have only touched on three. What about the rest?”
“Now Julie, this is a blog, not an encyclopedia. Like any good student, you’ll have to go to the literature to learn the whole story.”
“Curmudge, even though you covered only three stages, that’s really valuable advice. I’ll certainly use it when I become a CEO. But actually, the kind of change I had hoped to learn about was how to change my husband from being a couch potato.”
“Don’t complain, Julie. At least you know where he is when you are working the night shift.”
Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon
“I wasn’t gone, Julie. This time of year I like to pause and let the snow melt off my brain.”
“That isn’t snow, Curmudge. It’s white hair, and most of it has melted away. So let’s continue our conversation from last time. You promised to tell how a CEO gets the flywheel to accelerate and move the organization toward excellence.”
“Effective change leadership is a big part of it, Julie. An organization with big problems that doesn’t change remains an organization with big problems. For a CEO, bringing about a major change in the culture of his corporation—especially a change like Lean that must endure—may be the toughest challenge of his career.”
“Sounds like a job for a Level 5 leader. So how does the CEO do it?”
“It’s not just the CEO. Managerial personnel at every level will need to facilitate change at some point in their career. Some might even be CEOs-in-training.”
“Maybe even me. Right, Curmudge? Where do we start? Are there good books and articles, or must I depend on your curmudgeonly wisdom?”
“There’s a ton of stuff out there. To me, some of it deals with changing an organization, and other publications focus on aiding individuals in accepting change.”
“But isn’t successful corporate change just the aggregate change of the individual employees?”
“It sure is, Julie. But the biggest immediate issue for a CEO is building his team and aligning their efforts to initiate the transition. At the moment, he is less concerned over how to allay Mary Smith’s anxiety over doing her job differently. So let’s begin by looking at change from the CEO’s global perspective. My favorite book on this is John Kotter’s Leading Change. When I was reading it, Mrs. Curmudgeon thought the book that I couldn’t put down was Ken Follett’s World Without End.”
“If Kotter’s book is that good, please tell me more.”
“I knew you would ask. Kotter describes an ‘Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change.’ We don’t have time to discuss all of the stages, so let’s address some of those that are most important. As our flywheel showed, changing the direction of a corporation is too much for the CEO alone. Thus one of the first steps is the Creation of a Guiding Coalition. Members of the guiding coalition must possess and exhibit position power, expertise, credibility, and leadership. Essential team characteristics are trust and a common goal, so ‘snakes’ and those with big egos must be excluded.”
“Snakes! One would hope that those ‘trust-killers’ had been kicked off the bus several weeks ago.”
“The next stage is Developing a Vision. It must be brief, compelling, and capture the passion of the employees. Creating the vision usually requires that the CEO and the guiding coalition think, dream, and draw deeply on their collective reservoir of talents. Hopefully, the vision will address what, when, and how the organization will fulfill its mission.”
“Then what, Curmudge? Do we shout our vision from the rooftops?”
“Almost. Despite all of the high-powered mental exercise that went into it, the vision must be straightforward enough to be understood and adopted by everyone. Remember, we want the vision to guide the employees’ hands, head, heart, and emotions for the next several years. That’s why the next stage is Communicating the Vision, although probably not by shouting it from the top of the parking ramp.”
“Several months ago we talked about the importance of the CEO’s communications about Lean. I’m sure that applies here, too.”
“Exactly. Communications by the CEO and his team members must be simple, completely candid, without ‘spin’, consistent, and repeated again and again.”
“Hey Curmudge, Kotter described an eight-stage process, but you have only touched on three. What about the rest?”
“Now Julie, this is a blog, not an encyclopedia. Like any good student, you’ll have to go to the literature to learn the whole story.”
“Curmudge, even though you covered only three stages, that’s really valuable advice. I’ll certainly use it when I become a CEO. But actually, the kind of change I had hoped to learn about was how to change my husband from being a couch potato.”
“Don’t complain, Julie. At least you know where he is when you are working the night shift.”
Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon
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