Change Management.

When you think of LinkedIn what comes to mind? Once upon a time, I immediately thought of job postings, self-promotion, and professional networking. Sure, career advancement and networking are still the big benefits of LinkedIn membership, but it’s also a social network and a robust venue for professional development.

One way to stay in touch with your industry peers is, of course, to connect to them. Another way is to follow them. Following someone on LinkedIn gets you access to any articles they write, and you’ll also see that person’s engagement with other LinkedIn users. So, if you pick the people you follow carefully, you’ll be tapped in to some of the best thinking in your field.

Let’s say you are following President of Top of the Line Company in your industry. Whenever President comments on something or shares a post that he thinks is interesting, it will appear on your newsfeed. Simple! Following a LinkedIn user who is a thought leader in your industry gives you the latest thinking, professional development insights, and an opportunity to join the conversation.

No matter what the industry, there’s an influencer for you to follow.

Four Behavior Change Experts to Follow on LinkedIn

Trish Emerson – Emerson Human Capital

Okay, I’ll admit I’m a little biased, but the founder of Emerson Human Capital is the reason I became interested in change management. With more than 25 years’ experience helping organizations with major transformations, Trish is truly a behavior change guru. She routinely posts practical ideas for enabling big change through human behavior.

Eric Barker – Blogger and Author

One of my favorite bloggers is also an avid LinkedIn participant. His blog focuses on scientific ways “to be awesome at life.” (Eric’s words, though we wholeheartedly agree!) In other words, he talks about ways to change behavior and be more successful. Following him on LinkedIn gives me easy access to his prolific library of blog posts and LinkedIn activity to – hopefully – make my life better.

Nancy Duarte – Duarte, Inc.

Effective communication is essential to behavior change. One of the best of the best communicators is Nancy Duarte. Duarte calls herself a persuasion specialist. Her firm focuses on developing influential visual messages. She produces monthly blog posts and she’s a frequent participant on LinkedIn.

Kathy Caprino – Ellia Communications

I am a new LinkedIn follower of Kathy’s. She is a self-described women’s career and personal growth coach, writer, speaker and leadership developer. Most of her messages resonate with anyone looking to change. Many of her regular blog posts give suggestions to better oneself by altering (you guessed it) behavior.

Following these behavior change influencers on LinkedIn is as easy as clicking a button on their profiles. It takes no time to produce a steady stream of influential content – targeted directly to your professional interests.

A dear friend of mine is Chief Learning Officer of a prominent, widely admired company whose lawyers asked us to mask his identity. We’ve worked together since 2003, so he was naturally one of the first people I interviewed when I decided to write a leadership book. In fact, as a direct result of his interview, I hired an EA (yay, Michele!), applied his system for reducing my email inbox to zero (here’s to you Sally McGhee!) and prioritized ways to create the life I want.

One of the questions I asked him was, “What advice would have prepped you better had you received it early in your career?” This is what he shared wtih me.

Five Leadership Insights

1. 1. Be clear about your strengths. As an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs, I’m naturally reflective rather than reactive. I need to process and come back. I learned to create a window of opportunity to do that, to be aware in the moment and say, “I’ll get back to you.” If I had learned that as a younger person, I would have made better decisions.
   2. Face the thing you don’t want to do. If you don’t, it will only harm you. There was a colleague I worked with years ago who was smart, extroverted and, frankly, we didn’t get along. I began to avoid that person. Our lack of communication escalated to the point that it actually contributed to a job change. Recently, I had a similar situation, but by then I had learned to face the hard work. My reaction? I scheduled regular meetings with my coworker. Getting to know each other has made things easier. We might not be best friends, but I have learned to focus on this person’s strengths and use our complimentary styles to create good work together.
   3. Don’t overschedule. So many people allow the day to control them. If you start the day fully booked, you are in trouble. You have no bandwidth to assess, respond, and shift priorities. Twenty-five percent of the day should be unplanned. The more senior you are, the more unplanned your day should be.
   4. Understand the power of a great admin. The right assistant is someone you can trust and someone who knows you well enough to help focus you on your goals. My admin helps me be successful, with ease. She reminds, reschedules, and facilitates. She puts both contracts and birthday cards on my desk to be signed. She helps bring my intent to reality.
   5. Over time, increase bandwidth or capacity. How are you aligning others around you to magnify your impact? As the years go by, it’s less about what I do and more about how much I accomplish through others. If I can get more done while maintaining expectations and standards of excellence, I feel I’m growing my company and myself.

There’s a thread through my friend’s observations that we can learn from. For me, it means challenging myself before taking on a task and asking, “Will this investment of time result in something that expands or does its effect end when I stop doing it?” It’s a true-north question that helps prioritize. As leaders, our common limitation is time. Our effectiveness is directly related to how we shape our time to create the ripple we want.

You probably don’t know his name, but I bet you would recognize him. I also bet you could tell me what company he worked for several years ago, and what company he works for now. What if I say these five words: “Can you hear me now?” Does that give you the clue you need?

His name is Paul Marcarelli, and he is the ubiquitous cellular service provider “test man,” roaming around the city testing his network with the words “Can you hear me now?” Paul, in his gray Verizon branded jacket, made these five words a household phrase until 2011. Now, Sprint is leveraging that brand recognition for themselves. Paul now walks around in a yellow Sprint jacket referring to his switch from one network to the next and saying those same five words.

Why is it that you remember the phrase? Or that you remember the color of his jacket? Maybe even his horn-rimmed glasses? It’s all about repetition.

The advertising community has said the average consumer sees between 3,000 and 20,000 messages a day. That’s a lot of messages traveling through our busy minds. However, seeing is different than absorbing. To make a message resonate, we typically need to hear it or see it seven to 15 times.

Change communications that drive behavioral change are no different. For an employee to adopt a message, it takes repetition – multiple times across multiple channels. In The Change Book, we talk about the different stages of absorbing a message: Exposure, Awareness, Attention, Retention, and Action. Then, we recommend layering it across multiple vehicles, helping others share the message, and testing it to ensure you’re on track.

That’s how we make messages resonate with people. Messages lead to changes in behaviors, which ultimately become habits. The more you hear it, visualize it, and think it, the more it “sticks.”

Can you hear me now?

Most leadership literature is, frankly, useless. It’s loaded with generalities like “Great leaders need to be decisive, strong communicators, cool in a crisis, build agile teams, hire wisely, work toward their values, define markets…” Who wouldn’t agree? When I asked my friends, colleagues and professional contacts, “Has the leadership literature helped you?” their answer was “No.”

Their experiences are grittier than anything the leadership literature addresses. For example:

• Those who managed VC-based companies discovered each was a horse in the stable, employed to solve a particular problem: the executive who can build a team, the one who can grow a market, get the IP protected, or raise capital. Once they achieved their outcomes, they were fired. Each was devastated. But soon they were hired to perform that trick again for another company in the portfolio. Effectively, this type of person became a career executive for that particular problem, for that investment group.
• Executives who acquired a company realized that while they were personally excellent in sales, finance or engineering, they had to learn what it meant to be “strategic.” One had to redefine how he spent his time, what to do, in order to be strategic; another found herself managing a partner who disagreed on how company money should be spent; a third dealt with the anxiety of being personally accountable for mountainous debt; another exec grappled with the sense that, now that he was committed, he couldn’t just quit.
• Leaders who operated within a traditional company had other challenges. One had to create a dynamic personal brand; another had to find a balance between leading and being authentically himself; one felt she had to sometimes choose between being liked with being respected; another had to figure out how to lead while the previous CEO was still with the company, on the board as a co-CEO.

Despite the wide variety of situations, we identified common threads during our conversations.

• The job is filled with worry and stunning levels of stress, even when it’s fun.
• You have to maintain energy and “mojo” and not just focus on problems.
• The nature of your business has its nuances, which affect how you lead.
• Managing time – and those who demand your time – is a critical skill.

The stories from these authentic and accomplished people are superior to anything I’ve gleaned in school, and it’s time to pay it forward. Mary Stewart & I are putting them together as book and, as the work takes shape, I’ll be sharing elements of our interviews in a blog. Stay tuned!

What is your purpose? If your organization disappeared tomorrow, what would customers miss? If your organization’s purpose is not fulfilled, you might as well be gone. Customer relationships are threatened. Living a diminished version of yourself puts you at risk in the marketplace and emboldens the competition.

Purpose is different from values, Values are behaviors that orient the organization to deliver the purpose. They are the “how.” Purpose is the “why.” Values look inward, Purpose looks outward.

Living your purpose requires attention. It shouldn’t be a line on a poster or a PowerPoint slide. It is an intentional set of activities by leadership, management and employees. The organization’s founders know this better than anyone – they certainly knew why they created the company. But, as the organization grows and scales, it’s hard to maintain attention on the activities that make purpose real. Don’t make that mistake.

Five Ways to Activate and Maintain a Purpose-Driven Organization

1. Harmonize it. Make sure your purpose and values agree and reinforce each other.
2. Lead it. Leaders should live the purpose. They should use it to filter decisions and messages to the company.
3. Orchestrate it. Hold purpose-driven events; create reinforcing rituals and symbols.
4. Model it. Identify key behaviors for executives and managers to demonstrate purpose. Tap high-potential champions who can cascade purpose-based activities through the organization.
5. Align it. Make sure organization design, performance management, incentives and recognition support purpose-driven activities.

Delivering a consistent purpose will drive your performance in the marketplace.

A great chef might tell you that the key to a success in cooking is confidence. But belief in your success comes with experience. Before you get out the blender for the first time, you need a recipe and a vision for the finished dish.

The same applies to getting great results for your organization. Humans are more likely to feel optimistic and get on board if we understand where we’re going and what it will take to get there.

Regardless of the end result, successful change has some essential ingredients. Here’s a quick recipe to give you the confidence to jump-start your next project!

1. Combine at least one strong sponsor and a shared vision; mix until smooth. Slowly fold in strategy and pour into a message frame.
2. Chop business knowledge and expertise with project oversight and spread across the top.
3. Sprinkle on another pack of communication.
4. Whisk together training, practice, and shared values. Spread over employees, and drizzle with inspiration.
5. Gently heat employees until you see desired behaviors.
6. Season with recognition.

Most importantly, allow enough time for preparation. Your organization will love the results.

So many of us have experienced bad news at work. It’s bound to happen at some point, right? Sitting here today I can remember more than one layoff, company sale, significant process or system change, firing…the list goes on. Interestingly, the only negative memories I have come from bad news that was not addressed by leadership openly, honestly and early.

I certainly understand the tendency to keep bad news under wraps. When my stepson was young, my husband and I would hide the bad news from him until the last possible moment. We cared so much that we wanted to shelter him. After all, he had already been through so much: a divorce and new step parents. But we noticed early on that it was so much worse when we didn’t share bad news in the moment, or when he learned the news from someone else. He became quiet, unproductive and frustrated. We learned that he needed time to let the news soak in and talk through his concerns.

The more open we became, the less drama we all faced and the more patient he was with us during transitions. More importantly, he got to celebrate the good news that came with the bad!

When I was a young manager, I had that same fear of telling people about difficult changes. I thought for sure everyone would stop working to complain or gossip. It took me only a couple of times to realize that good communication can stop the gossip altogether! I also became more comfortable with letting people feel uncomfortable. Discomfort is a catalyst for change.

Besides, there is nearly always good news with the bad. A new system to learn means efficiencies. A reorganization improves the bottom line. When a new leader is hired, there is innovation. You get the idea. People may not like change, but they really like growth!

Here are a few things to think about when it’s time to share bad news with your organization.

• Your team is capable of understanding. Armed with knowledge, your team is more likely support the change than resist it.
• Well-informed people make better decisions. OK, we know that well-informed people don’t always make good decisions, but good decisions almost always start with well-informed people.
• Credibility builds trust. Leaders who have gained their employees’ trust are more likely to have an engaged and motivated workforce.
• Accurate information stops rumors in their tracks. Even if you don’t have all the answers yet, sharing news sooner than later minimizes misinformation and distraction.
• It is the right thing to do. For so many people, change is unbearable. Give them time and enough information to adjust and prepare for what lies ahead.

“I’ve been delving into neuroscience and behavioral psychology. I’ve had day’s long sessions with both of those groups. The first thing I’ve learned is you have to keep those groups apart.” Vice President Al Gore presented at the Commonwealth Club of California in late July, and showed up relaxed, authentic and funny. And while he is on a mission to save our world, he is also clearly a colleague in behavior change.

His new book and movie An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power focuses on three questions change practitioners examine daily:

• Must we change?
• Can we change?
• Will we change?

Al Gore and Panel Illustrate Principles of Behavior Change

• Remember: Facts do not change behavior. We cull our experiences to support the viewpoint we’ve already established. Scientists call this selective perception, and we all do it. John Cook’s formula (p. 208 An Inconvenient Sequel) provides an alternative to debating facts: target the undecided majority, boil down key points to their “simple and sticky” essence, and “inoculate against misinformation.”
• Show how the current system is broken. Mr. Gore tells the stories of John Leonard Chan, Catherine Flowers and Ivy Chipasha, giving names and faces to climate change impact. He equates the climate crisis to the moral imperative of the civil and gay rights movements. In our work, we often present only the vision for where we are going. But we must demonstrate that the current situation is unacceptable or people will not act.
• Provide a way out for entrenched nay-sayers. Mr. Gore described the experience of Jerry Taylor, who spent 20 years as a senior fellow with the Cato Institute denying climate change. Now as a founder at the Niskanen Center, he regularly speaks with conservative Republicans who would like to support the climate agenda, but worry about negative consequences.Professor Dana Carney talks about this from another angle. Once a person takes a public stand, even if it’s based on an impression, it’s unlikely they will change their view.We can address this in two ways: 1) Focus our efforts on people who are naturally open to changing their mind. These early adopters make it safe for others who are entrenched. 2) Look for ways to break a big change into very small steps. Research shows that progress reinforces momentum.
• Make your case visual and emotional. Our brains crave it; pictures and emotions appeal to our most primitive brain and they are easier to encode and interpret. Look at Mr. Gore’s book. He uses infographics and hero stories that are visually rich, varied and compelling. The book’s images focus our attention. It highlights data simply. It illustrates drama and trauma. It shows faces of climate heroes, and allows us to see how we can become one.
• Balance fear and hope. Ms. Cohen described Mr. Gore’s reference to a “hope bucket,” that provides people with enough hope that they will be willing to act, rather than be paralyzed by despair with the problem. “…please remember how important it is to guard against feelings of despair. Despair, after all, is simply another form of denial, and can serve to paralyze the will we need to fight…” (p. 13)Throughout his conversation, Mr. Gore repeats a common cadence within the same breath: problem/progress; scare/inspire. He juxtaposes President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement with California Governor Jerry Brown’s commitment to it. He describes how we’ve had 11 devastating “once-in-1,000 year events” in the last seven years, then describes how developing countries are taking the lead in adopting non-carbon technologies because they require little infrastructure, and are cheaper than the alternative. He holds that the sustainability revolution is as big as the industrial revolution coupled with the speed of the technology revolution.
• Define concrete actions. The entire second half of Mr. Gore’s book is devoted to concrete actions people can take to make a difference. The guidance is simple, concrete, specific. He provides examples, and alternatives. It’s compelling. In business, many people are open to changing, but we fail to tell them specifically what we want them to do. We fail to provide alternatives so individuals can choose what resonates with them. It takes effort to break a generalization (Use the new system! Function as one team! Don’t work in silos!) into a tangible action. But this effort on design is important, and the impact is profound.

In climate change, Mr. Gore addresses our existential crisis employing principles about human behavior. While we deal in comparatively mundane matters, we can learn from a master.

By Emerson Consultant, Kelley Egre

I became a change manager for one reason: I genuinely care about people and I want everyone to succeed. In today’s highly competitive global marketplace, success isn’t possible without a commitment to change. And, although we all know it’s necessary, constant change is one of the biggest challenges businesses face. Every big change strikes fear in the hearts of employees. If you ignore that fear, you can end up with widespread dissatisfaction, lack of focus, and lagging business performance. Just what you don’t need!

Despite those consequences leaders often choose to wait until they know every detail before announcing a big change to the organization. Understandable, but naïve – rumors spread quickly. Pretty soon, leadership has lost the chance to get ahead of the story.

In 20 years managing communications for large national and global brands, I’ve supported thousands of employees through transformative change. I’ve seen many initiatives up close. I can attest that clear, thoughtful and empathetic communication – early and often – builds trust and takes the momentum out of rumors and dissatisfaction.

Five Tips for Getting Ahead of Big Change

• Tailor all of your messages by audience. And, don’t just tell them what the change is. Tell them what’s in it for them and what you will share with them next.
• Say it and address questions. Then say it again and again. People need to hear the same message seven to ten times to really get it. And the more you can deliver those messages in person, the better.
• Use multiple messengers. Make sure it’s not always the same person talking. Information should come from leadership, first-line supervisors, peers, and third-party experts. Choose the messengers based on their influence and credibility.
• Share examples that motivate. Human examples and real numbers are memorable and build positive momentum for your change.

And, my most important tip for communicating big change…

• Tell the truth. Trust is critical to your success. Employees would rather hear “I don’t know that answer yet” than to find out you lied. It’s scary sometimes, but your honesty can help you come through the toughest change with a stronger organization.

We resist change at work because we fear loss – specifically, loss of competence. It’s justified. One day we’re good at our jobs and feeling safe and sound. The next day some benign-sounding initiative ending with “transformation,” “migration” or (heaven forbid) “rationalization” shows up and shuffles the deck. Suddenly, we realize that so much will be different: how we work, how we fit into our teams, how we’re evaluated and rewarded, how we get to that feeling of personal strength and success.

Resistance based on fear and uncertainty is natural and it’s going to happen. A leader’s role is to position change so our teams see the path forward – so they understand how to move past the trauma and recapture their confidence.

Change Management Positioning Techniques

The Monster in the Closet

When my son was four, we moved into a new house and he moved into a new bedroom. On the first night, he woke up and screamed at the top of his lungs that there was a monster in his closet.

I sprang into action with the time-tested Monster Consolation Protocol: turn on the light, present the monster-less closet, give the “no such thing as monsters” speech, and lie down with him until he falls back to sleep.

I was on the last step of the process – he was just about to doze off – when something completely unexpected happened. (No, there wasn’t actually a monster in the closet.) My wife, back in our bedroom, began frantically screaming, “There’s a ghost in the bed!” Don’t judge; my wife grew up in a part of the world where people often believe in ghosts. That part wasn’t up for debate. To be fair, we did discover that the previous owner had died in the house.

Now I had a terrified four-year old and a screaming wife! I jumped up, looked at my son and asked him whether he wanted to come with me to check on his mom. He looked at me like I was completely out of my mind and yelled, “No way!” I could see his point – “I might have a monster in my closet, but somebody in the other room has a ghost in her bed! I’ll stay put and take my chances.”

So what’s the lesson? If our change project is a monster in the closet, then we need to position the status quo as a ghost in the bed. What we are moving away from must be scarier than what we are moving toward.

Tell people that the change is happening for a reason. Sticking with the current way of doing business will have dire consequences. Describe those consequences early on, and in vivid terms. For example, “We’re migrating to a shared services model because, if we don’t, we’ll have to shut down entire business units. We might even go out of business altogether. We must do this and do it now.”

Sugarcoating or avoiding negative consequences of the status quo stymies the change.

Burning Bridges

The phrase has negative connotations today. When it was originally coined by the Romans, it symbolized strength and commitment. When invading foreign lands, it was common practice for the Roman army to burn the bridges behind them so that retreat was impossible. They had to fight or die. It was a harsh but effective strategy – the Romans didn’t lose many battles.

Fortunately, most of our projects aren’t matters of life and death, but the principle still works: the path forward is easier to follow when all other options have been removed.

One way to do this is to make your desired outcome the default. Think of the many ways this works in our day-to-day lives. When we subscribe to a cable TV package, we don’t get to pick and choose every channel we want. We can purchase Package A, Package B, or Package C. Like the cable company, we must lay out the “givens” of the change and the choices people have within that framework.

An even faster path to transformation is to take a switch-over approach, where the choice is binary: change and move forward or come to a full stop. There are lots of ways to learn a new language, but most people agree that immersion is fastest. When we put ourselves in a place where nobody speaks our language, there is no alternative but to learn theirs…and so we do. For our change projects, this means shutting off the old system or making the old way working impossible. Switchover Approach Safety Tip: the new system or process must be 100% reliable! Make sure you thoroughly pilot, test, and then test again.

Positioning change is about reducing the psychological barriers that prevent teams from moving forward. Changing behavior often requires us to both push and pull: Push the team away from a comfortable, yet failing, current state while pulling them towards a clear and unobstructed view of the goal. When we do it right, we use a balanced and thoughtful process. We can present a stark view of the present, as long as we also provide an optimistic and obtainable future.