Working with People Who Must Change

We each pass through our own stages of change. The commitment and the new abilities of individuals in the organization spell the difference between success and failure of the company's transformation. Critical Mass in organizational transformation is little more than the collective will of the company's people.

The change process for people begins with reason and learning that creates an awakening to possibilities. It continues through trial and experimentation. It ends by integrating new skills and behaviors with the old, so the change feels natural. During this time, the balance in our lives is disrupted; major personal change affects not only relationships at work, but also relationships at home. Each of us must make the journey at our own speed.

Before making a commitment to adapt ourselves, we must understand how this change will affect our work and our lives and why this is necessary. A thoughtful, personal decision to change sustains us through the uncertainty and tough times.

Support others as they do the work of changing their work. To create change in a company, we must learn new skills and begin to develop new kinds of relationships. We must use these new skills on the job, usually interacting with others who are also trying out unfamiliar techniques. In the beginning, breakdowns occur in individuals and in work groups as the ideals learned in training sessions fail the test of real world challenges. To keep the business running during crisis, we revert to the old ways and achieve immediate successes. This experience undermines our will to continue risking failure by practicing the new. We need special support and understanding from each other to keep taking the risks required to make the new ways work.

If your goal is to make a positive contribution as your company is changing, supporting those who are stumbling down this unfamiliar path is the best, most important work you can do. And you don't need to be in a formal leadership role to do this.

People are the solution in organizational change, not the problem. But the change is very often a real problem to people.

As the tide of change rises in our work and in our lives, we must expend increasing portions of our energy adapting ourselves. Pressing work must get done; the organizational machine is still running. So, the energy we need for adaptation is taken from other areas, usually from our personal relationships. In a sense, this advances the change process because we become separated from the personal networks that reinforce old habits. Too many people are lost or drowned in this flood of change, though. You can use the insights offered here to efficiently take care of your own needs first, then to go searching for those who are drifting out to sea. You can make a real difference in the number of casualties this change leaves in its wake.

Prepare to deal with unusual and strong emotions. You will see this in your colleagues who are struggling with their personal adaptation to changes in the organization: People who depend on the past to understand the present and predict the future may feel frightened. People who have succeeded (or survived) by creating strong networks of support in the company may feel angry. People who have worked hard to build the organization that's being changed may feel sad and grieve. People who are certain they know exactly what to do to make this change happen may feel excited and overconfident. If you care a lot about your organization and your career with the company, chances are that you will feel each of these emotions at some time during the change process. You'll see some people get stuck in just one of these feelings, though. They are the ones who need an extra measure of support.

Recognize Fear in Yourself and Others

Some people are frightened at the prospect of change. They understand all too well that their jobs are changing and that new skills will be required. They worry whether they have what it takes to adapt well enough to survive in a changed company.

Fear is a sane reaction to major change. We feel afraid when we look into the future and can't see a clear picture of ourselves being successful and secure. These pictures of the future are a combination of our memories of the past and our understanding of the present. The more experience we have, the more we condense our memories into important lessons. The past actually becomes clearer to us as we move away from it. We use our growing understanding of the past to make sense of present realities. So, as the past becomes clearer and we understand more and more about the present, we begin to believe that the future will unfold in a similar way. We feel secure in the belief that we'll be able to explain each new today in terms of yesterday's lessons. Change disrupts this process.

As the company moves off familiar paths to explore unknown territory, people must shift their footings. You know change has arrived when your past experiences fail to help you understand what's going on in the present. You may begin to wonder which of your lessons from the past will become irrelevant or obsolete. What can you count on? How can you predict?

Transformation creates a discontinuity, a break in the smooth line that connects the past with the future. Those who seem most comfortable with change tend to explain confusing current events in terms of some vision of the future. They seem to discount the importance of the past.

Fear can be a self-reinforcing process. It can become a continuous loop that grows stronger and stronger. Fear can be a trap for us during change if we continue to predict the future in terms of the past. Depending too much on experience impairs our decisions. We make mistakes. And errors erode our confidence in our own judgment. We become confused by rapidly changing expectations. It's more difficult for us to predict the future. We lose confidence in our own skills. We get stuck.

Show people how to succeed in the new order. As we become more frightened, we lose touch with our value to the company and we lose the faith in ourselves that's necessary to engage the risk of change. People who are stuck in this cycle of fear tend to either hide out or run away. They may bury themselves in their work, particularly important work that they have been doing for years. People who have always proved their value by working hard may work harder -- and better -- than ever to prove their work is so valuable it can't be abolished. They may become so overwhelmed by pressures of everyday business that they have no time to learn the new skills they will need to survive in a changed organization. Or they may get extremely involved in outside activities and pay little attention to the changing demands in their jobs. They may cut themselves off from contact with others at work. Some may even actively look for a way to get out of this company and into a safer job, but this poses another risk that many will avoid (even if they should be looking elsewhere).

You can support people who are stuck in this cycle of fear. Remind them of the skills and qualities they now possess that are still highly valued in the company. Show them just what they can do to survive the change safely.

Recognize Anger in Yourself and Others

Some people are angry at what the organization is doing to them. They see the company's changes disrupting their personal networks and the lives of people close to them. They believe many of these moves are unfair. Some believe that the leaders of the change are acting selfishly and callously in their dealings with loyal employees. They feel their own ability to influence events slipping away.

Anger is a normal emotional reaction to an attack on us or those close to us. We feel angry when we're unable to prevent injuries in a dangerous situation. Because change disrupts the relationships we depend on in our organizations and because people are injured by the process, people have ample reason to feel angry. Those who see the company primarily as a web of relationships are most likely to feel angry during a major change.

It's easy to get stuck in anger and to give up any productive role in the change process, often at our own peril. Anger, like fear, can be a self-reinforcing cycle. Our friends are in danger of being injured, so we place ourselves in harm's way to oppose the threat. Sure enough, we get hurt when those who would advance the change treat us as enemies. This experience justifies and reinforces the anger. We take stronger action and get hurt again. We have more justification to pursue our righteous cause. In a curious way, the pain positively reinforces our positions: The more we (or others) are hurt by the change, the greater our anger and the stronger our opposition.

When stuck in the cycle of anger, people tend to attack or sabotage. Their goal may be more than just stopping the change; the anger can generate a sense that the company must pay for its misdeeds. They may take an active leadership role to gather support for their positions. They may research legal remedies that can equalize the unusual power they see the company employing to move them and their friends. They may use their political networks to mobilize powerful resistance to the change, sometimes at the highest levels of the organization. When overwhelmed by the inevitability of change, they may turn to a technique invented years ago by government employees who were not permitted to strike: they "work to rule." They merely do everything that policies and written procedures require of their jobs. This can effectively grind productivity to a halt in an organization with a bureaucratic tradition. It is particularly effective during a change process as people are encouraged to invent new ways of working even while old policies and procedures still exist. Some angry people will never forgive the company for the injuries it has inflicted in the change process. They probably should leave and go to work for an organization they can respect. But too often they stay.

Create a model of acceptance and inclusion. You may not want to offer the support that an angry person needs to get unstuck. You may find yourself dragged into the quicksand with the person, feeling angry and wanting to get even. That's the worst thing you can do. The more pressure you put on a person stuck in anger, the more justified s/he will feel in getting even with you.

You can only be effective with a person trapped in anger if you refrain from judging, arguing and punishing. You can offer support by acknowledging the anger is real and that it is justified; people have been hurt. Ask for alternatives that will allow the change to proceed yet inflict less pain. When you hear unreasonable suggestions, ask the angry person to show you how that approach would work to achieve both goals. Listen. Sift through the attacking and blaming language for viable ideas. Give credit when you find one, then work with the person to implement it. Acknowledge that the person deserves to be a member of the team and that s/he can still take action to assume a productive role. When an angry person does something that calls for punishment, impose the consequences without lectures or personal judgments. Don't underestimate the power possessed by an angry person. Attempt to redirect this power to the positive rather than trying to neutralize it.

Recognize Grief in Yourself and Others.

Some people feel sad, grieving the past. They see the change displacing familiar traditions and abolishing systems or procedures they helped create. To grieve this loss is natural, even healthy. Grieving is a process we use to close emotional wounds and to reintegrate our lives after a loss. The rush of change pushes people into the future and may not give some of us enough time to heal from the losses we have suffered.

When we are grieving, we become fixated on the point where the present joins the past; we get disconnected from possibilities offered by the future. Grieving requires the same kind of adaptive energy demanded by change. The experience of grief is draining. While we go through the motions necessary to survive today, we have little to contribute to efforts that create a new future. Grief is not a disease, though. It is a healing process with a beginning, a middle and an end. It may be impossible to hurry a person through grief. It's hard to know how much time is required to complete this grief process.

Some people get stuck in this emotion. They grieve but seem to make no progress toward reconciling themselves to their losses. This fixation on the past can prevent a person from adapting to the challenges that the future presents.

Give people time and space to work through their losses. You can offer special support to a person who is grieving by accepting that the loss s/he feels is significant and by acknowledging that adjustment will take some time. As soon as you suspect someone is grieving, arrange to talk privately about the nature of the loss s/he's experiencing; don't assume you know the cause of the grief. Ask, "What have you lost?" Don't be surprised -- or alarmed -- at tears. Listen and learn. Continue to expect (even insist on) performance of normal tasks, but understand that, for a while, there may be little energy available to adapt to the change, little interest in embracing the future.

Recognize Optimistic Overconfidence in Yourself and Others.

If a person is certain that this is the right change for the organization, s/he may feel energized about the prospect of moving into the future. This optimism can create a blindness to some of the problems that the change will cause for people. Early advocates -- especially change leaders -- are particularly vulnerable to this type of blindness.

Overconfidence causes us to rush through planning toward a quick implementation of the change. We become impatient with those who would slow down the process by thinking it to death. We're disdainful, even suspicious, of those who dwell on potential problems and barriers they anticipate in moving forward. We tend to surround ourselves with those who advocate the change and isolate others. We can become disconnected from the importance, the strength and the validity of their resistance. As this happens, we lose touch with those whose support we most need to achieve our goals.

When overconfidence turns to aggressiveness, we tend to spark resistance in others, particularly those who are angry. Pushing too hard and too fast for change typically diminishes the effectiveness of those who most want the change to succeed. When aggressive advocates band together -- excluding others who don't share their zeal -- the forces for change can become isolated within the organization. An "us" vs. "them" situation emerges. Battles are inevitable. This kind of conflict can kill the change. People who engage in such destructive advocacy may well be removed from the company to allow the change to proceed along a path more accessible and acceptable to a broad range of people in the organization.

Prepare for the pain and messiness of change. To support overconfident people and assure their effective involvement in the change, talk with strong advocates early in the process. Show them the importance of including as many people as possible in the change. Ask them to accept that people will move at different speeds and must deal with a variety of personal barriers in accepting the change. When you hear excited and overconfident people excluding others with criticism, judgments or discounts of their value, ask what's necessary to get those people on board. Insist that everyone in the company be afforded respect and dignity during the change process.

Survive the emotional challenges in yourself and in others. Even though we all get stuck in an emotion at some point in the change process, most of us break through and help create the Critical Mass that assures continuing success for ourselves and for the company. If people are brought into the planning process early on, they can develop an understanding of how change will affect their work. Much of the emotional impact can occur and be resolved before actual implementation of a change begins. Even so, you must expect a continual and shifting tide of unusual emotions during the process. People must be able and willing to offer each other special support to avoid getting stuck in these emotional traps.

Work with the Casualties of Change

Change hurts. The process of transforming an organization hurts people. You will experience pain during change. If you want to minimize the intensity of the pain, extend the time allowed for adjustment. If you seek to eliminate the pain, you'll have to eliminate change. Most of us lack the power to stop the transformation entirely.

When the process moves too fast for you to deal with your emotional reactions and also learn the new skills necessary for adaptation, you are in danger of becoming a change casualty.

Rather than allowing the wounded to slow down the march of change, leaders typically move them aside. This may mean transferring them to positions less critical to the process. It may mean removing them from the company entirely. The faster the change moves along, the more casualties it creates.

People who are able to sustain the pace of change tend to distance themselves from those who can't keep up. As the pace quickens, falling a few steps behind can doom a person unless special support is offered.

Some people, seeing their survival at stake, will find or develop a burst of energy to move ahead. This is a short-term solution, though, and can increase burnout caused by the change. If the people of the company get the idea that anyone who falls a bit behind will be deserted, more of them will react with fear or anger, and the transformation project will lose momentum. Too many casualties -- too much turnover -- is one of the factors that causes senior leaders to decide that transformation is too expensive to pursue.

Change succeeds with people -- and through them -- not in spite of them. Providing special support to casualties is not just good for people, it's good for the change process as well. If a person knows s/he will not be abandoned when s/he has problems keeping up, s/he is more likely to remain committed and to take the risks necessary to move the change forward. Providing support to those who have become casualties of the transformation can be an investment in your own future as well. Anyone involved in the process is liable to fall behind at some point -- even you. If you have helped to establish the precedent of supporting casualties, you will more likely receive this kind of help when you most need it.

Remember that people create Critical Mass and cause the success of an organization's transformation project. Including them is essential to the mission. Losing too many along the way -- no matter who replaces them -- will kill the change.

Relate Personally to Displaced People. A sad part of major organizational change is that some people who have been your friends won't make it through the process to survive in this company with you. They will go through the same pain you experience. They will face the same personal and career crises you face. They won't adapt. Or won't adapt quickly enough. The company will move on without them.

Those of us who are particularly loyal to our friends and associates in business face a special challenge in this situation. We are inclined to offer too much help to people who -- no matter what -- will be unable to make the transition. Three bad things can happen when we do this. We allow ourselves to fall behind and threaten our own prospects (taking two people out of the change rather than just one). After failing to save someone, we are inclined to become disabled by anger at what's happened or by grief at the loss. And we've delayed the person's move to a different job or company in which s/he can succeed and be valued. It's vital to support people who are having difficulty keeping up with the change. It's just as vital to help them leave the company if they can't -- or won't -- do what's necessary to succeed here. Making this judgment at the right time is really difficult for people who care a lot about others.

When it becomes evident that someone you care about will be displaced by the change, accept the fact and resolve to stay in touch with this person. Initiate frequent and regular contacts for a while. Listen and demonstrate your concern without engaging in fault-finding or "what-iffing." Encourage the person to make the adjustment that's required.

Predict the challenges and be prepared to respond. The more you know about the changing needs and expectations of the people you depend on for your success, the better you can predict potential problems and act to prevent them. Whether you have assumed a leadership role in this change or not, you'll find the people around you need different kinds of support from you during the process. If you effectively offer this support, the change will proceed more smoothly for you, too.

Businesses have traditionally been organized into pyramid-shaped hierarchies with those higher on the ladder responsible for those below them. For this reason, it's easy to ignore lateral relationships with our peers and it's almost natural to take a more passive role in managing relationships with "superiors." This is a dangerous mistake in the change process. Your boss and others up the pyramid from you will have just as much trouble adjusting to the change as you do (maybe more). If your boss is fully indoctrinated into the pyramid point of view, s/he'll not likely ask you for the personal support s/he needs. By actively maintaining all of your working relationships -- including those UP the chain of command -- you can make the transformation easier for everyone involved.

Lest we skirt the issue, YOU may not survive this change. It's easy enough to think and talk and write about the risks in change. It's even easier to ignore the fact that many committed people find the change they are working to implement outgrowing them. One of the world's great examples of this is Mikhail Gorbachev, who was forced to step aside as the transformation he sponsored grew beyond his personal vision.

If you truly believe in this change, the idea that you may become a casualty -- perhaps even lose your job in the process -- is outrageous. The more unreal this seems to you, the more likely you are optimistically overconfident. The sad and ironic part of this situation is that you are almost never able to see the danger before you are consumed by it. If you are lost in the change, you will most likely become a martyr by accident rather than through some well-considered act of heroism.

In the unfamiliar territory of a major transformation, you must not just offer others special support but also assure that you have a support system available for yourself. People who get trapped in the emotions of change are almost always unaware that they are trapped. From your perspective, the emotions you are experiencing seem to be a normal reaction to what's happening in your life. Your reactions seem rational and appropriate. People who care enough to tell you things about yourself that you might not want to hear can open your eyes to the available options. One of our favorite tidbits of bumper sticker wisdom is: "The Truth Will Set You Free (But First It Will Piss You Off)." When you most feel you need a rest from the change, your friends may advise you to get back into the fray and keep pushing. When you are attempting to correct an injustice, your friends may reflect that your anger is in the way, and that you should drop the issue. When you are extremely pressured to meet deadlines in your regular job, your friends may say that you are avoiding personal change with busy work. When you are most sure that it's time to push the opposition and accelerate the change, your friends may see your aggressiveness increasing resistance. While it's crazy to ignore feedback like this, it may be just as crazy to accept it at face value. Consider the source. The views of insiders are skewed by their own experience of the change and the views of outsiders may be blind to important political, social, or technical realities.

In the end, only you can take the action necessary to assure your own survival in this change. Just as you cannot legitimately be held responsible for the fate of your colleagues, they cannot be held responsible for yours. If you can accept this notion of individual responsibility, you are in a strong position to give - and receive -- the special support so essential to people who must change.

© 1993, 1998 ChangeCraft™
Written by Doug Wesley and Kaye Whitefeather
(Heidi Jeanne Hess contributed.)

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