Approaching the end of 2009, it is a bit of a shock to realise that this newsletter has also been going nearly a year now! Also, the milestone of finishing my doctoral degree two years ago is starting to retreat into becoming part of the “recent” past rather than the “immediate recent” past.

This year I have learnt a lot from six new clients I’ve not worked with before. Here are eight things I have learnt or had confirmed this year, in no particular order.

1. There are multiple perspectives on any issue. Many times the people involved don’t know what the other perspectives are. Sensitive topics are often discussed only “in the shadows,” i.e. in private settings with certain trusted others. People see the shouting which has a great impact (“unprofessional”), but not the reason for the shouting (e.g. frustration built up over time). They see colleagues seemingly getting away with things, but don’t see the often laborious performance management processes happening (necessarily) in the background. Making these different perspectives known more widely can help people see the situation differently and thus respond differently. This allows the possibility for people to move out of “ruts,” deeply habitual or “stuck” patterns of relating. I have seen many examples this year of how people’s view of the “facts” can change, with discussion, some time to reflect, and further discussion. It seems important to me in organisational change not to close off the opportunity for further discussion, even with someone who seems entrenched, vocal and angry about an issue.
    
2. Misunderstandings often occur – people will make mistakes, including me and including you. When this happens, the sooner you spot the mistake, apologise and clear the air, and provide correct information, the sooner you can move on in some sort of working relationship. The other person may not “get over it” straight away, but in many business settings people are willing to give you another shot if you clean up any mess you make as you go along. Especially if you can demonstrate what your intent was and that you have acted as soon as you recognised there was a problem.
    
3. Power is not an absolute. Even the most powerful and feared of managers cannot “decree” that all problems will be fixed. It is how people respond to these decrees (or intentions of the manager) that determines how effective these intentions (instructions) will be. This means managers have to take the time to negotiate with their people, what their intentions mean. I have seen a number of examples this year where managers have not spent time discussing genuinely with their people how the desired changes will impact on them. There is a tendency for the power of the position to lead the manager to say “here’s what needs to happen” and then expect their people to adapt. Doing this, the managers dissociate themselves from any potentially unsavoury consequences of these actions. For example, it is much easier to say to a team leader that they should change the schedules of their team than it is to listen carefully to the team manager and help them to work out how to change the schedules without upsetting everyone. After all, what if the manager cannot work out how to do it?
    
4. Power is a function of the relative need that each party has for the other. This relative need is in balance and shifts over time. At some times, e.g. when it comes to performance reviews, the team member might feel a greater need for the manager. By contrast, at times of staff shortage or additional workload, the manager might feel more need for the team member. Power is not so much a matter of one person holding absolute power over another. This means you have to be thinking about the relative need people have for each other when you are in a change situation. It is valuable to take the time to analyse the effects of power relating in your organisation – where has the balance of power been in the past, and what direction is it moving in now?
    
5. Communications processes are often considered as “what the most powerful want to tell the others.” This is often encapsulated in the idea of “key messages” that is so seductive to communications professionals and project teams. By default this approach ends up being one way communication. After all, in the term “key messages” there is no concept of “key responses.” As the manager of a change initiative of whatever scale, provide opportunities for people to tell you what they really think. Make sure you listen to them. And make sure there aren’t any inadvertent punishments (from their point of view) that will be incurred if they tell you their real thoughts. For example, if they tell you that they have doubts about the effectiveness of the issue, don’t write them off as “resistant” and then avoid giving them interesting projects that you would have previously given them. After all, the alternative is that they will tell others what they really think, and not you. Believe me, it’s much better for you, if they tell you. So seek to understand and explore with them those things that appear as resistance.
    
6. Things done poorly by predecessors or others in the past can leave legacies of mistrust. Sometimes, people can say things that make you wonder “where did that come from?” I’ve had two projects this year in which people have attributed to current managers (“management”) sins that were actually related to past managers, rather than the incumbents. People sometimes do not seem to separate out past wrongs done to them by managers who are no longer around, especially if they feel that somehow you have done something that is unfair to them. If you are a manager with a predecessor who has left a legacy of unfulfilled promises, then you have to work much harder with your people to create the kind of mutual trust you desire.
    
7. I hope that you have not been in a workplace where accusations of workplace bullying occur. I have consulted to several such workplaces now. Where people are in deep seated conflict, then the situations are often accompanied by each party accusing the other of bullying them. My perspective is that organisational politics consists of the daily exercise of power, involving people negotiating, discussing, being polite or impolite to each other, revealing, concealing, pulling rank, delegating and so on. This is how humans in organisations negotiate what they are doing together. When these day to day negotiations break down and it becomes apparent to one party that they cannot go on together, this is experienced as violent. Hence the accusations of bullying that accompany intense organisational conflict. These political processes enable organisations to flourish and get things done. The breakdown of these political negotiations is experienced as violent. When bullying accusations arise in deep seated or long standing conflict situations, the challenge is to find ways for the parties to continue to work together. This is an area where services such as mediation or EAP can really add value, if they are seen in this way. But the challenge is nevertheless a political one. It’s not a matter of attempting to “rise above” politics, which is simply not possible.
    
8. As well as my usual experience of goodwill from managers and staff in the projects I’ve been involved in, I’ve also found myself in situations this year where people have been very upset by organisational proposals, addressing their managers or me with varying degrees of hostility, often in open forums, but sometimes one on one. Misunderstanding and personal threat are behind such reactions. It can be quite challenging when this happens, so it’s no wonder so many consultation processes for restructures or other contentious proposals omit any requirement for face to face discussion and rely on written proposals and written feedback to say they have fulfilled the requirements for “consultation.” This written approach is much more comfortable for the “coalition of the powerful” and the project teams and HR people they hire. Nevertheless, I have found that fronting up to staff about contentious proposals or issues and being calm when others are not is very powerful. Remaining calm, rather than becoming activated by the emotions of others, and continuing to discuss the issues raised rather than reacting to attack has had great results. I’ve later had feedback from people who initially shouted or attacked me or the ideas I represent saying how they can now see what was intended, but couldn’t at the time. This confirms for me that people’s feelings change over time, as their perspectives change. Therefore it makes sense to work with the range of different perspectives of issues. And believe me, with any complex issues, there will be a range of perspectives you can work with.

As a final thought, there are often situations where people are questioning your change proposal, sometimes in very sharp terms. While it appears they may be trying to undermine or challenge your proposal, this is not necessarily the case, even if they seem highly critical, are angry or divert discussion to seemingly irrelevant issues.

They may also be genuinely thinking about how they will take up the proposal, how it will affect them and what they will have to do with their teams to maintain their relationships and get the desired results. And it might seem quite difficult or even impossible to them, at that moment, to see how the change proposal could be successful.

I faced several of these situations this year, where people were upset and seemed unable to address the issues I was raising on behalf of my sponsor in the organisation. It has been confirmed for me that it works best to assume that questions about your desired change are genuine enquiries into the change, and to respond accordingly. This has enabled me to respond graciously and facilitatively to what could be seen as personal attacks. If you treat such questions as resistance and respond as such, then you are assuming that the other party is damaged, that there is something wrong with them. You immediately appear defensive and it then becomes very hard to work together with the other parties to achieve your organisational change objectives. Again, it becomes apparent that there is value in remaining calm while others around are not.

In my consulting work I often find that clients who tell me of a problem or issue they want to resolve, often have great difficulty explaining what is going on and what it is that they see as the problem. They know that there is a problem and they know roughly what it is – they definitely know who is involved. It’s just so darned hard to articulate the multitude of factors and the complexity of the problem(s)

The challenge seems to be in explaining the situation to someone who is not intimately involved. At one point I used to think that this meant that the person must be not very competent if they couldn’t describe what’s happening. But then a colleague graciously pointed out that I have the same difficulty in explaining my own practice. I had to admit that there are so many nuances that are difficult to explain, and I started to appreciate that explaining our practice is difficult for everyone. You end up repeating yourself, skirting around the issue and providing a picture that is not very coherent. It becomes like an onion where you are trying to unravel the layers and it makes you cry while you’re doing it, if you’re not careful.

It can be just as hard for your people to explain to you what is going on in their work situations, especially if you are not intimately involved in their work and lives. Their efforts to explain can seem bumbling and incompetent.

Why is it so hard for people to explain what is going on in their everyday experience?

The attempt to explain what is going on to a non-judgemental listener can be helpfully therapeutic for the person doing the explaining; after all, providing a forum for people to explain what is going on in their internal world is the idea on which the whole world of therapy is based! But here I want to concentrate on why it is that it is so difficult to explain what is going on and why this is important for managers.

I turn to the insights of social researchers, who spend their time asking questions to try to find out what is going on in various aspects of social and organisational life. Managers and consultants have a lot in common with social researchers, who are also asking questions, and using the answers to help make sense of the world.

The main difference is that as a manager you have to act in your organisation based on the sense you make of what is going on. Social researchers have as a first priority the necessity to write about what they learn, rather than act to influence and change what is going on. But both are seeking to understand what are primarily social processes.

By the way, the sense you make of what is going on is based on what you observe, what others tell you, and your own experience. These are all accounts of what is going on. They are not really objective reality, even though they can seem very compelling. How good are you at distinguishing between interpretation and “the facts?” Helping your people to make this distinction can be a very powerful act of leadership.

But I digress. Back to the question of why it is so hard to articulate what is going on.

Anthropologist and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has something to offer here. He says that for Western social researchers asking questions about a group of people, for example, a group of African tribespeople, there is a lot that is taken for granted in the answers given, a lot that is not said by the tribespeople. The tacit assumptions, taken-for-granted ways of thinking and "models" that the tribespeople use are important, but are left unsaid.

In other words, for the tribespeople, when talking about their customs and practices, they are talking about things that are so familiar that they do not really notice them any more. The tribespeople are not able to talk about them because they do not notice them, and so important assumptions are left unsaid. I suppose it’s a bit like the fish that does not notice the water it’s swimming in. Or like the air that we breathe that we do not notice from moment to moment, unless it’s not there (e.g. asthma).

Managers are in the same boat, as are leadership researchers and consultants. When leaders are asked about their leadership, and when staff are asked questions by their managers, they find themselves in a world of familiarity, and hence a lot gets left unsaid. This is by necessity, not by design. After all, you couldn’t spend days and days explaining every single nuance. But, also, you often are not aware of the nuances until you are in a situation where the nuances become important – for example when you find out that one of your managers has given their people an incorrect view of the changes you are instigating because there was an important detail or nuance that you took for granted and left out of your briefing to them. You can’t predict every eventuality.

Or perhaps when a staff member seems slightly out of sorts but you can’t pin your finger on why, so you let it go just like you have other times, only this time the situation erupts into a conflict.

I was talking to a senior manager the other day about how I could help in a situation of deep seated, long-lived conflict in a group he had just started managing. He explained some of the difficulties he was experiencing and how, when attempting to address the issue, he had to be careful not to inflame it into open warfare. He wanted to get to the bottom of the situation and resolve it. But a direct approach was not possible without destroying what fragile relationships currently exist. The total situation and a mix of direct and indirect approaches had to be considered.

I think that often these tacit assumptions are addressed either in a mechanical way (e.g. "n-step" change processes) or ways that are overly structured in order to handle the fear that these could erupt into open conflict. For example, it is tempting, as the person trying to find out what is going on, to ask a set of structured questions. This has the appeal of directing the conversation the way you want it to go. You can then appear to keep a conversation "on track." It also has the risk that the participants can feel manipulated.

In my consulting work, I’ve had to get good at finding out quickly what is going on, in complex situations. Experience of similar situations in the past is helpful, and over time this has moved me away from the structured questions approach. I’ll never forget being a “user representative” for a potential Customer Relationship Management system in one place where I worked. I was invited to participate in an interview where the project team were talking to users to try to specify the requirements for the system. They asked me so many closed questions based on their predetermined options that we both got frustrated with each other because where I wanted to go didn’t fit into any of the alternatives they were exploring.

I resolved not to fall into that trap myself when I was seeking information from others. But the answer is not simply to stay away from closed questions.

Managers need to understand that it is difficult for people to explain the world in which they live, because it is so familiar that the everyday assumptions under which they operate become invisible until they are needed for a specific situation. Structured questioning then will not work in the sense that it will identify these “unthought-of” assumptions – structured questioning will not help you as a manager make sense of the world of those in your team.

Instead, seek to enter into joint enquiry with others. Seek to encourage them to talk about their reality and realise that they will usually talk about it in a round about way, because they have no choice due to the unspoken assumptions that are invisible like the air they breathe. Then probe into areas of what they have said that are different from your perspective. Perhaps there are things they say that are not clear, or that seem to have holes or discrepancies from your point of view, or where you identify potentially fruitful possibilities based on your perspective.

That way, your perspective will be able to help the other person to become aware of previously taken-for-granted assumptions, and you also might become aware of some of your own assumptions. If so, you will be able to create a new joint understanding from which something new will emerge. This is the essence of organisational change.

June’s newsletter is now available – click here to view. The theme this month is Benefiting from Diversity.

Past editions or the newsletter are available here.

Informal communications – for example gossip over coffee – are what make or break change efforts. A rumour or a concern can so easily be fanned through informal communication into a wildfire of suspicion and resistance. And yet change leaders often concentrate on formal communications (e.g. written) at the expense of informal channels of communications.

My scientific survey tells me that 75% of projects concentrate on formal communications and ignore informal. 75% of change efforts are reputed to fail. You do the maths.

I really think that sponsors of change projects, project managers of change projects, those involved in change project teams and business unit managers have a big problem on their hands.

Even though you may plan the project well, sign off on the risk and issues registers, conduct steering group meetings that are efficient and get through everything on the agenda, deliver the deliverables on time and within budget, and give progress reports to line managers, these are all inputs, not outcomes.

Of most importance to you as a sponsor of a change project are the outcomes. Line managers are most concerned about the impact of the project on their operations and what they will have to do to make it work (i.e. outcomes for their business unit). Project managers and their teams, by contrast, become more concerned about deliverables, which are inputs. Project management structure and planning drives them in this direction – to have all the papers ready for a steering group meeting, for example.

Immediately you can see the dilemma of inputs versus outcomes. Deliverables (a concept invented as a way of measuring progress towards the desired outcomes, i.e. to measure progress of inputs, especially useful for long term projects) include things like project plans, reports on progress, strategy documents, databases, people recruited, leases secured, and equipment purchased. Unfortunately, success in these things is then taken to equate to the success of the project overall.

Project sponsors, through their close alliances with project managers and their teams, also run the risk of being seduced into prioritising deliverables at the expense of outcomes. By contrast, line managers are seldom influenced this way, perhaps because they often don’t develop the same close associations with these project teams.

From a project sponsor’s point of view however, outcomes can only be measured after the change project is implemented. At the same time, project sponsors play a pivotal part in whether the outcomes of the project are achieved or not. They are the ones with relationships with their senior level peers, who secure and commit resources and who provide real world guidance to their project, programme managers and steering groups.

Your project management effectiveness is one component of the solution. And you surely do need good project management, make no mistake. You also need the right mix of technical skills on the team. But good project management and good technical skills are often seen as the whole story. In reality they are only part of the mix. In order to achieve the outcomes you desire, you also need to make sure that the right range of views have been incorporated into the decision making, and that the shadow conversations have been taken into account.

So one thing that you can do as sponsor of a change project is to keep in touch (perhaps informally, and definitely with an open mind) with the line managers. Project managers would also do well to adopt the same approach.

The grave danger I am warning you of, is that initiatives live or die in the shadow conversations – over the coffee machines, in the smoking rooms, in the cafeteria, in the corridors, at staff drinks, around the water cooler. And project sponsors, project managers, project teams, and human resources people, typically do not spend their time in those places. Blinding flash of the obvious – if informal communications are so critical to the success of change initiatives, why are all the communications efforts concentrated solely on the formal communications channels?

No wonder the failure rate for change projects is reputed to be so high.

As a manager, your business is important to you. You want to make change without your team flipping out. To be effective in making changes to your business, it is important to have effective ways of thinking about your business. No doubt you already consider your targets and goals, staff, budgets, important stakeholders such as customers and funders, and those you yourself report to.

Your business or organisation has certain legal rights like those of a person – the right to own property and other assets, and to enter into contractual commitments. In addition to this, your business is constantly changing. So it is tempting to think of the business as a thing that exists, perhaps a living being, with a heart (or soul) to express the essence of the business (that would be team spirit and cooperation), a brain that thinks for the business (no doubt that would be you, the manager) and hands to get things done (that would be your team).

While your business has these legal rights, it is actually composed of people who have to relate to each other in specific roles that are defined to a greater or lesser degree. And people are not like the heart or brain or hands of a person. Unlike your heart or your hands, people have their own choices, intentions and consciousness, all interacting with the others in your organisation and with customers and other important people like suppliers.

As you will be well aware, you cannot control the people and their interactions in the way that the brain of a person controls the hands, or the way the forces of mechanics control whether a building will stay upright or not. You cannot press a lever and manoeuvre all the people into place like a machine. In reality, it is not actually that helpful to think of your organisation as a thing, a mechanism or a living system. Instead, think of it as patterns of relationships –amongst your staff, customers, suppliers, shareholders, partners and yourself.

These myriad interactions cannot be controlled by any one person and yet they are not random – they have patterns. You cannot play god and design the future interactions that will take place in your organisation. As a human being, even as a powerful senior manager, you can only participate in conversations with others. With this in mind, what is the best way to foster the change you want? Here are three ideas which may seem counter-intuitive.

• Be involved enough to have a great feel for your business so that you are influencing communication – with stakeholders such as customers, funders, suppliers and others. Make sure your managers are doing the same.
   
• At the same time, be detached enough so that you can observe your situation in ways that are congruent with reality. If you are too involved you will miss vital aspects of the world around you. You must be involved and detached at the same time. Your goals and intentions for the future will always guide your participation with others.
   
• Pay attention to how people are responding to you and how they are responding to each other. Discuss what you are noticing with your most trusted team members. It sounds simple, but this is powerful!

The key to change in your organisation is for you to develop your own changed perspectives and insights. The key to changing your own perspective and gaining new insights is listening to your people. And the key to listening is to notice how others are responding to you and how you in turn, are responding to them. Reflect on what you are noticing, and, when you have the opportunity, discuss this with your team and your own boss.  

Picture is Millbrook Resort in Queenstown in Autumn – the changing of the seasons