Government Executive - Authors - Victoria Grady

3 Tips to Make Change ‘Stick” In Your Organization

Victoria Grady — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:00:00 -0400

Government is challenged by the increasing need to embrace organizational change. All types of change. Organizational change that includes attracting (and retaining) new talent at your agency, creating (and managing) new strategy to optimize performance/maximize effectiveness, weeding out duplicative programs and, maybe the most pressing current challenge, navigating (and surviving) the repercussions of sequestration and furloughs.

Leadership is well aware of the need for change in government, but ironically, often doesn’t recognize the change success prerequisite—proactively managing throughout the change process.

Typical change initiatives are initiated like this, with a leader saying (or even worse, thinking): “We probably don’t need to give this presentation on [insert looming change], we’ll just tell employees the change is coming. They need to be ready to ‘deal’ with the change and adjust accordingly.”

Does that careless line of thinking sound familiar? This is, needless to say, not a successful approach to change management. So, how do you manage change? Here are a few suggestions to get started:

1. Define the Challenge

Change is hard. Take a deep dive to more comprehensively understand the needs of an organization adapting to constant change. Fantastic tools are available to initiate the deep dive that can include assessments, interviews, and surveys. This information is accumulated to form the foundation of a process that will not only support the organization, but also enhance the success potential of each project. The critical component to this suggestion is each project. Each change project is unique and should be proactively managed.

2. Create a Change Management Team

Change is not a “one man band.” Create a transformation team representative of the organization to champion the organizational change. The most detailed change process will not help anyone in the organization without an implementation team. Create a Transition Management Team (TMT). The focus of the TMT is to gather information, define the methodology, and guide the strategy from start to finish. The change team can be voluntary or appointed, but it must be representative of the entire organization to be effective.

3. Implement a Strategic Anchor

Make it stick. Institutionalize a series of steps that define the process for each change initiative that is rooted in the current mission/vision as well as strategic goals for the future. Aligning internal processes with currently defined values and norms will familiarize staff with the process and remove elements of ambiguity that are often associated with organizational change.

Organizational change needs to be managed. The steps should be defined to meet the distinctive needs of the organization and the unique nature of each change initiative.

How have you seen leaders help organizations adapt to change?

Image via Madlen/Shutterstock.com

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Change Management vs. Change Leadership: What’s the Difference?

Victoria Grady — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:55:00 -0400

Organizational change is widespread in the federal government and requires both change leaders and change managers to be successful. Unfortunately, the terms change management and change leadership are often used synonymously. The lack of distinction can muddle your strategy and increase the likelihood your change initiative will fail.

So what should you do?

1. Define them: Start with the definitions.

According to GAO, change management is defined as:

Activities involved in (1) defining and instilling new values, attitudes, norms, and behaviors within an organization that support new ways of doing work and overcome resistance to change; (2) building consensus among customers and stakeholders on specific changes designed to better meet their needs; and (3) planning, testing, and implementing all aspects of the transition from one organizational structure or business process to another.

On the other hand, a comprehensive definition of change leadership is more elusive. Here, combining definitions from management expert John Kotter and BusinessDictionary.com, is a more succinct take on what it means: Change leadership (1) concerns the driving forces, visions and processes that fuel large scale transformation or (2) is a “style of leadership in which the leader identifies the needed change, creates the vision to guide through inspiration, and executes the change with the commitment of the members of the group.”

2. Distinguish them: They are not the same.

Many definitions you’ll find when you Google “change management” and “change leadership” will make you think they’re the same thing. As noted above, they are not. Beware of this flaw in many definitions. Change management is task oriented and focused on managing the process, tools, and techniques. Change leadership is the vision for change.

3. Delegate: The same people are not necessarily good at both.

Just as managers and leaders need different skills, so do change managers and change leaders. While there is small percent of the population that can do both, most of us excel at one or the other. Know your skills and more importantly, spend time understanding the skills of your employees. Allocating the right roles to the right people on your change team is critical to change success.

Be proactive, include change managers and change leaders as prescriptive components in the change strategy for your organization.

Thank you to my students--Bianca, Rachel, Patrick, Graham, and Halley for asking the question.

Image via Phloxii/Shutterstock.com

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Consider the Stress You Cause Employees Before Changing Everything

Victoria Grady — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 07:00:00 -0400

The federal government is a fantastic example of a diverse and complicated organization challenged by the daunting task of constant change. This change carries consequences that are misunderstood and, worse, often ignored. How do you cope?

Go to the source. Deeply rooted in our instinctual behavior is a predisposition to “attach to” or “lean on” objects both tangible (like an office space) and intangible (like a business process) that provide support and security. This natural instinct begins at birth and never goes away. The objects we “attach to” or “lean on” evolve as we grow older. As adults, the objects are often related to our workplace and might include a specific technology, a unique leadership style or an organizational structure. This can be any object in your work environment that enables individual employee to successfully and efficiently complete daily tasks.

Monitor the disruption. Organizational change often disrupts our relationship with and dependence on these objects, resulting in an instinctual response. If an alternate support mechanism is not introduced to the individual or group during a period of transition, the result is heightened organizational dysfunction. This will increase the probability of failure for the change initiative and, ultimately, decrease the collective performance of the organization.

A few years ago I was working with a client on integrating a new technology. The change strategy failed to consider the individual loss of security caused by retiring the old system and implementing the new one. Employees were unsettled, suddenly absent a key system used to carry out daily tasks. We discovered the failure, which was a foundational failure of our implementation strategy, a few weeks later and implemented a new education/training program that included more involvement by senior leadership.

Implement a mitigation strategy. In the example above, the reactive mitigation techniques reassured the employees, redefined the application and retroactively provided the level of training and leadership involvement that was required to efficiently manage the technology transition. Although integration took slightly longer than expected, the overall project was successful because the change strategy was adjusted mid-course to account for the unique needs of that organization’s individual employees. Imagine how smooth the process could be if consideration for the individual employee’s behavioral response is implemented proactively at the beginning of the change initiative.

Individual employees in organizations require customized support and a well-defined strategy to successfully transition through change. Given the current fiscal environment and the likelihood that we are seeing the beginning of a new normal, a heightened appreciation and preemptive consideration for individual instincts will increase potential for organizational change success.

Image via Moshimochi/Shutterstock.com

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3 Must-Follow Tips For Successfully Implementing New Tech Initiatives

Victoria Grady — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:00:00 -0400

How do organizations encourage and sustain innovation in an environment plagued with words like sequestration, furlough, hiring freeze, debt default, government shutdown? Often that innovation takes the form of forcing adoption of new technologies across the organization. Which isn’t bad, but it does create a monstrous challenge in the form of confused, overwhelmed and oftentimes resistant employees struggling to grasp these new technologies. New tech initiatives often result in mixed messages from management to employees, significant increase in absenteeism among employees and failure to implement the technology change initiative itself.

The pace of change in technology is dynamic and can be volatile. Your approach to implementation will most likely lack a “right” answer. Do we upgrade or wait for the next release? Is it time for a new communication system? Would a biometric identification system be more efficient? What percentage of weekly telework will maximize productivity and enhance employee flexibility?

What to do? Acknowledge the challenge and create a strategy to define the path ahead with basic concepts—concepts that may seem obvious but are so often overlooked:

Walk the walk--talking the talk is not enough: Good or bad, employee perception of organizational change is critical. With a change in technology, the role of employee perception is a significant factor in success or failure of the implementation. Consider, for example, the implementation of a new travel expense reimbursement system that applies only to employees at the GS-13 level and below.

If you innovate, don’t forget to educate: Innovation can embrace a “push” or respond to a “pull” implementation strategy. “Push” innovation refers to the introduction of a technology that we didn’t know we needed, like the iPad in 2010. “Pull” innovation refers to the introduction of new technology based on an identified need in the market from which innovation evolves. Both innovation strategies require education and training for employees, especially the lack of familiarity inherent to “push” innovations.

The end user has an opinion—ask for it: Technology implementation strategies often follow either best practice guidelines or “this is what we think you need programs.” Both are dangerous. The end users work with technology regularly. Soliciting direct input from the end users can be the difference between success and failure of the implementation strategy.

Change is hard. Technology change (for some) can be even harder. In an environment plagued with uncertainty, the innovation challenge becomes a careful balance between an interesting concept that is absent practical application or the inadvertent dismissal of a tool that can be critical in the organization’s evolution. The strategic integration of innovation supports employees with an eye toward growth.

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As Sequestration Looms, How to Handle Survivor’s Guilt

Victoria Grady — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:14:00 -0500

Furlough, retention, sequestration, hiring freeze—terms synonymous with what seems like never-ending workforce uncertainty and the frightening prospect of unwelcome change.

In light of all this, “how do you keep employees motivated?” asked a reader in a recent Ask EIG column. The question came from “Anonymous” and I found myself curious: What motivated him/her to ask the question? Why remain anonymous? What was the origin of the concern—was it colleagues, subordinates or personal? My focus quickly wandered from the question itself to the motivation behind the question, or what I often refer to as “beneath the organizational surface.”

What lies beneath the organizational surface is the most important element of understanding an office or agency as a whole. It reminded me of a book focused on occupational survivors syndrome by David Noer called, “Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations.” While most aren’t “overcoming the trauma” of layoffs, many are coping with an undeniably volatile and highly uncertain environment. The realization that as Baby Boomers retire they may not be replaced leaves those behind in an increasingly tight spot. The long term effect of this trend will have direct implications on motivation and pose long-term challenges for morale, productivity, and team building.

Knowing this, how can you help your team cope? There are three places to start:

Understand the concept of survivor’s guilt:

Leaders/Managers/Supervisors often inadvertently focus attention on challenges external to the control of the organization. When in reality workforce uncertainty might be more efficiently addressed from an internal perspective. Take for example the remnants of an organizational environment taunted with the uncertainty of furlough, retention, sequestration, and now a hiring freeze. How has this left the employees? Jaded or suspicious (maybe), unmotivated (probably). Similar to the analogy Noer references in his book, the emotional baggage of those who remain is often more significant than what is lost. Those left behind need to know they are there for a reason and that the mission continues.

Identify the beneath the surface challenge:

Focus on your team. Decreased motivation from employees who are constantly looking “over their shoulder” or waiting for the next “ball to drop” should be anticipated if not expected. The manifestation will be unique from organization to organization. Create an environment that encourages dialogue. Transparency will help ease people’s tension and build trust.

Strengthen and support the workforce:

Integrate a support structure. I often hear leaders say things like “it could be worse.” While that may be true, it should not be assumed that feeling is universal. For some, the guilt or pressure of remaining behind is far worse than being let go. Consider implementing focus groups, work teams or coffee cliques that are assembled to provide a representative voice for the organization and a safe outlet to vent and express concern. Don’t let the challenges before you rip your team apart, use this time of uncertainty to bind your team together.

Shift the focus, understand your employees, validate concerns, create and manage support. When so much is unknown, these are the things that remain firmly in your control.

Image via Phil Holmes/Shutterstock.com

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4 Ways to Help Your Team Deal with Change

Victoria Grady — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:00:00 -0500

It’s Round? NO. It’s Square? NO. It’s Green? NO. It’s Purple? The wily parrotfish is like an actor playing multiple parts in a single play…constantly changing shape, color, even gender throughout life. This revolving door of identities has long stumped scientists.

As confounding as this creature is, wouldn’t it be great if employees were like parrotfish? When an organizational change was announced, people would begin changing color, shape and size in accordance with their needs. Those who need education and training? Suddenly a brilliant blue. Those who need additional support from the leadership team? Now a deep hue of red. Those who just need to be informed but not burdened with too much detail? Those folks are now orange. If only that psychedelic fantasy were real…it’d make being a manager a heck of a lot easier (and more visually stimulating!).

Unfortunately, employees don’t change colors or physical attributes in response to upcoming reorganization (though some may get red in the face). In lieu of that, how do you, as a change agent, understand the unique needs of your individual employees so that your change strategy is successful?

Recognize Needs: Start by identifying the objects employees “lean on” for support to complete daily work tasks. Those objects may include a boss, a computer, a piece of equipment, a software program, an office space, a process, procedure, or tradition—it could even be the time and place of their coffee break. Whatever it is, when these objects are threatened (or eliminated), it disrupts a person's ability to successfully complete daily tasks. Recognize these needs, acknowledge their importance and help people find new norms to embrace.
Offer Support: Above all else, you need to validate the change by offering support during the transition. All change implementation strategies should include the identification of unique ways to support employees as they make a transition to new ways of doing things. Be clear that your door is really, truly open. Resistance to change stems from fear of it. Address fears by initiating an open dialogue.
Stop Avoiding: Avoidance is a strategy employed by those facing change and those implementing it. Employees avoid news about it and managers avoid talking open and honestly about it. If you’re struggling to look your people in the eye, snap out of it. Get out in front of these behaviors. Schedule a one-on-one interview with employees that focuses on understanding how the change impacts them. Give them tools to think critically (propose they do both a SWOT and risk analysis) and ask them questions to help orient their thinking (e.g. “What can you do about this situation?” or “What skills of yours will help support the change?”)
Empower Employees: Invite input and feedback as changes take place. Establish a small task force of different employees to think through recommendations that will help an organizational change take root. Identify those who are “change agents”—active supporters of the new initiative—and elevate them as positive examples. Cut those who aren’t team players off at the knees by making it clear that resistance is ineffective and that supporting change helps everyone—including them.

You might say you can’t afford to do this because of the time required, but I say, how can you afford not to? We don’t display our response to change with colors or shapes. It’s important that effective leaders reach out to help employees navigate the changes taking place around them. If you don’t, you’ve chosen to walk a path that breeds cultural toxicity and wasteful resistance. The choice, as always, is yours.

Image via Cigdem Sean Cooper/Shutterstock.com

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Understanding How We Understand

Victoria Grady — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:00:00 -0500

Business Dictionary.com defines Mental Models “…as beliefs, ideas, images, and verbal descriptions that we consciously or unconsciously form from our experiences and which (when formed) guide our thoughts and actions within narrow channels.” Wikipedia.com defines the Mental Model “…as an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person's intuitive perception about his or her own acts and their consequences. These representations of perceived reality explain cause and effect to us, and lead us to expect certain results, give meaning to events, and predispose us to behave in certain ways.”

Think of a mental model as a schema (or map) for how an individual (and in the case of an organization, an individual employee) will process and interpret information. This schema is the roadmap for the unique reality of that individual in that organization. When our mental models are disrupted, even slightly, our internal GPS will detour and recalculate.

Leaders, managers, supervisors—this can be really important. It means that how employees understand their work is constantly in flux. Add-in the anticipated disruption of organizationally planned change initiatives— and the lackluster results of the Best Places to Work index make perfect sense.

What should you do?

Recognize that mental models are hard to shift. Current events cause many of us to question our foundation or the perspectives we are accustomed to “believing in” or “leaning on” in both our daily work and personal lives.
Validate the shift. Create an environment that will embrace the dynamic mental model and reward the employee teams that develop unique transitional processes as a guide.
Integrate an external advisor or an internal team for support. The support should be to assist the individual employees with the mental model recalculation caused by change and if necessary, help navigate in a new direction.

Mental maps are the foundation of our global navigation systems and they are dynamic. The dynamic nature of “shift” can be positive or negative. It can make our daily work tasks less complicated or more cumbersome. If we define an adaptation process that will recognize, validate, and integrate the “shift”…maybe those elusive little topographic lines will become a little easier to understand.

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Best Practices Do Not Work

Victoria Grady — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:00:00 -0500

Many government agencies are challenged by broken change implementation processes. In a desperate attempt to add some form of structure, we grab the cookie cutter and start pressing.

The problem? "Best practices" do not always fit--and many times they simply won't stick.

What does the change methodology look like for your organization? If you use a “cookie cutter—one size fits all” approach in your methodology for change implementation you might want to reconsider. Instead, use an existing methodology as a guide, but create a strategy that is uniquely customized to your organization. This will maximize resource allocation and minimize costs.

So where do you start?

Employees are the organization--use them.

Over the last 20 years we have experienced the onset of a technological revolution, the rise of the information economy and the increased value of knowledge workers. This dynamic environment created more individual employees with more unique, valuable knowledge than ever before. Use the contributions of these knowledge workers--build their experience into your change strategy.

Factor in organizational culture.

We often talk about organizational culture as a key component to understanding an organization. But we often fail to factor culture into our change strategies. Choose a change strategy that will accommodate the nuance of your organizational culture and maximize the overall effectiveness of the implementation.

Evaluate (and then re-evaluate) the progress during and after.

The change process should support a real-time “vector check” to see if the strategy is working (as planned) or if it needs adjustment. Change methodologies include various combinations of steps, milestones, stages, and phases. It does not matter how many and in what order. What matters is verifying that the process is working. This will support managing budgets and timelines.

There are tens, if not hundreds, of steps, processes, and methodologies to assist organizations with change. The challenge that comes before the change even begins is to carefully select and integrate a unique change strategy that will meet the needs of your organization.

In the absence of a customized change strategy that is unique to your organization, the potential success of the best planned change process remains uncertain. Whatever you do, don’t grab the cookie cutter!

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Drive Change Using the Lurk and Listen Method

Victoria Grady — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:00:00 -0500

Combine the crisis de jour (fiscal cliff, political scandal, merging agencies, etc.) with the uncertainty common to organization’s experiencing change and it’s clear leaders, managers, supervisors and employees in federal government organizations are definitely challenged. In light of the accelerated pace of change in federal institutions, it is no longer enough to understand the organization at the surface. We must go “beneath the surface” as well. What does that mean? Defining what is ‘beneath the surface” begins with understanding the organization’s culture.

Organizational culture is arguably one of the single most important factors overlooked by the change process. The culture of the organization defines vision, communication, relationships, structure, process, behavior, and strategy. Culture can be elusive, hard to describe and even harder to define.

How Do You Categorize Culture?

Organizational culture is a wild card in the mix of determining the response to change. What is the culture in your organization? Is it a trusting and accepting culture, or is it suspicious and resentful? Is it a culture of tolerance or intolerance? Is it a culture that is concerned for the welfare of its employees, or is it distant and/or aloof to its employees? Or is the culture somewhere in between those extremes? How do you know the answers to those questions?

Response—it’s complicated. The answers to those questions will determine the nature of the culture in your organization. But, determining the best way to answer those questions can be tricky. The obvious place to begin is to ask questions and interview employees—employees from the mailroom to the boardroom. Then observe.

Lurk and Listen

I like to call it lurking. Lurk in the break room, go to lunch with employees, have a coffee with a colleague, and hang out near the copier—lurk and listen. Listen to what people say and how they say it. There are aspects to culture that are not written down anywhere. These are often the aspects of culture that are critical to successful change implementation. These are aspects of behavior that have become so ingrained in the completion of day-to-day work tasks that if ignored (or unintentionally unrecognized) will derail the best planned change initiative.

Understand culture and integrate the unique cultural nuances (especially those elusive characteristics that “lurk” beneath the organizational surface) of your organization into the comprehensive change process. The culture within the organization will influence the intensity of your employees’ behavioral reaction to the change and how fast they recover. The result—we can’t necessarily minimize the uncertainty, but we can calm the storm.

(Image via BelleMedia/Shutterstock.com)

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3 Simple Steps to Manage Change and Transition

Victoria Grady — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:00:00 -0500

Thriving in Transition

> Webcast

> Surviving Cuts

Regardless of the unique culture of your organization, change can be hard and often unwelcome—even if the result is supposed to be positive. As change agents, either internal or external to the organization, we are challenged with the task of implementing successful change initiatives.

The change literature is filled with suggestions: “do XYZ” and your change will be successful or “do ABC” and you will achieve change success. These are often empty promises that do not deliver results. So what do you do?

Define Resistance

Starting at the beginning---accurately define the origin of the term resistance. “Resistance to change” is a misused phrase. The reality is, most of us are resistant to the inconvenience or instability that change brings about, not necessarily the change itself. Define resistance before you begin.

Support Your People

Support your people while implementing the change. In other words, while the organization is implementing the change in technology, leadership, budget, job security, sequestration, etc., you must spend at least an equal amount of time and resources focused on supporting the individuals in the organization through the change…If not, the successful implementation might never happen. The people (the individual employees) are collectively the organization.

Evaluate the Process

The most efficient way to support your people is to first understand them. This can be accomplished qualitatively, quantitatively or both. Focus on analytic diagnostic tools that answer the questions:

Can you support the individual employees in the organization?
How do I define optimal support for the employees in the organization?
What if they (the employees) don’t even know they need support?

Understanding ALL the individuals in your organization is potentially impossible. However, change agents (internal or external) can utilize analytic diagnostic tools to assess and then formulate a perspective that is based on the unique individuals who are collectively the organization. Examples of diagnostic tools that provide valuable information to the strategic change implementation process are:

Behavioral Analysis—LOE (Loss of Effectiveness) Index: A quantitative analytical tool that bridges the change gap between the employees and the organization.
Social Network Analysis—Yammer: An enterprise social network that brings together employees, content, conversations, and business data in a single location.
Performance Analysis—Gap Analysis: A tool that helps compare actual performance with potential performance for an organization.

What does all this mean? Maximize the value of your results to recognize the unique challenges for your organization with diagnostic tools that will support the people and constantly evaluate the process to insure that the information gathered is reflective of the response. If it is, fantastic. If not, access and reallocate to optimize the use of your resources.

For more in depth advice from Dr. Grady on managing change, watch Excellence in Government's recent webcast "Embracing the Season of Change: How Your Agency Can Thrive in a Time of Transition."

(Image via Tspider/Shutterstock.com)

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