Strategic innovation is not possible without the ability to manage a major change initiative. Before managers can address a transformation, they must first recognize a few key points:
- Success or failure relies on their respective organizations.
- All organizations are made up of humans who have natural and somewhat universal reactions to change.
- Anticipating those reactions and helping to turn them into positive forces for change is critical to success.
We will begin by identifying those reactions and the principles of change management that address them.
The range of reactions by an organization is somewhat a function of the degree of change. In this blog, we are mostly focused on major change, which is characterized as:
- Large in scale (affecting all or most of the organization)
- Significant in magnitude (requiring significant change to existing ways of doing things)
- Extensive in duration
- Of strategic importance
We begin with a statement that change begins and ends with people. The challenge is that 80% of the population views change as negative, as Ed Oakley and Doug Krug detailed in their book, Enlightened Leadership. We find that people generally prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know.
Members of an organization tend to be either reactive to change or proactive to change. Most of the time, they will be reactive to change because they perceive they are being forced to change in some way. They will be proactive to change when they perceive that the change will move them (and the organization) to a better place or position.
Reactive Responses
If not managed well, members of an organization slip into WWHTM mode. “What will happen to me?”
When this happens, they experience anxiety and even fear. This is because, when people don’t know what is coming, they ALWAYS fear the worst, even though, in almost every case, their fear is much worse than reality. To put it simply: uncertainty creates anxiety. The less control you feel you have regarding the future, the more you fear the future.
For this reason, the three most critical aspects of a major change initiative are:
- Communication
- Communication
- Communication
Every major change initiative needs an in-depth communication plan. That communication plan should be defined around each stakeholder group, including each organizational group. The key messages need to be well-defined. The plan should include:
- The communications channels that will be used
- The timing
- Who is responsible for them
- The mechanisms are in place to receive feedback
It should also anticipate the different phases of communication that will be needed as the transformation progresses.
We have heard experienced CEOs describe how they have learned that they needed to communicate repeatedly and continuously. One such CEO said that when he reached a point where he didn’t think he could communicate it one more time, he discovered that the organization had finally gotten it. We observe that senior leaders are surprised when the rest of the organization doesn’t immediately grasp something, forgetting that they personally have spent hours and hours thinking about it and developing it while it is brand new to the organization.
We once experienced a situation where a large company was acquiring two smaller companies that were competitors to each other, intending to combine them into a new division for the parent company. The president of one of the two smaller companies immediately set up a company-wide communications session every week.
After a time, he moved it to every two weeks. He eventually moved it to once a month because it became apparent that the members of the organization felt they knew exactly what was coming and stopped attending because their concerns were minimal or had been addressed.
The president of the other company did just the opposite. He kept everything close to the vest and did little to communicate with his organization. His organization reached a near panic state, and members started calling members of the other organization to find out what they had heard.
To put it mildly, the two communication “plans” were in stark contrast to each other and produced very different results.
Proactive Responses
We spoke earlier about organizations that experience a proactive response to a transformation. We said it is when they perceive that the change will move them (and the organization) to a better place or position.
It starts with a clear sense of purpose for the organization. We have discussed how a strong sense of purpose helps instill intrinsic motivation within its members. As managers shift their management approach from oversight and control to direction setting and alignment, defining a clear sense of purpose becomes even more important. In the process, members of the organization feel that they are part of something bigger than just themselves.
When they feel a part of something bigger, they are more likely to embrace change that promises to advance and elevate that purpose to new levels. This is the essence of strategic innovation.
When an organization has a clear sense of purpose, they are in a much better position to grasp and embrace a new, compelling vision that promises to take the organization to a higher level of success. The ability to create and communicate a vision of a better future is what true leadership is all about.
It can take various forms, but it is usually connected to what your “superpower” is or can be and how you can better serve your customers. An innovation transformation initiative is about continuing to create one’s best self, one that is firmly grounded in one’s ultimate purpose.