Surviving The Transformation

Make an informed choice about becoming actively involved in the transformation process. It is a high-risk, high-stress temporary assignment. Your free choice in assuming the responsibilities is your foundation for survival. The only way to assure the independence necessary to work as a Team Member, Change Agent, Champion or Team Coach is to insist on making a free choice in the beginning.

Back the right change at the right time in the right place. Make the decision to become involved by examining the nature of the change, the commitment of others involved in the transformation and the skills you have to contribute. Look at the mission that's been set forth. Investigate the preparation that's been made for this change and the resources available to it. Be sure you agree to time frames and other expectations. If you find the match is nearly right, consider accepting the assignment. If you believe that you are not the best person to implement this change, if you are concerned that the change process (as designed) will fail or if you are less than fully committed to the mission of the change, you must decline participation. If recruited, you may be able to decline gracefully by recommending someone whom you believe can do a better job and by pledging your personal support for the change. You may have to be blunt and state your reasons for your unwillingness to get involved.

You must be a true volunteer if you are to fill the Change Team, Change Agent, Champion and Team Coach roles because the responsibilities require you to act outside the normal boundaries of a superior/subordinate relationship. You must be able and willing to confront others when they interfere with the implementation of the change. You must be allowed to resign from playing a role in the transformation (without resigning from your job with the company) if you determine that you can no longer be effective.

You can survive as a Team Member, Change Agent, Champion or Team Coach in several ways: You can see the change through to Critical Mass and assume a new, more permanent role in the organization as it stabilizes. You may continue working on another project, perhaps in another company. If you manage your relationships effectively, you may also survive with a job in the company even after resigning from your role.

Major research published through 1995 reports failure in about two-thirds of corporate attempts to transform themselves. ChangeCraft™ practitioners have found that by carefully selecting the change projects we join and by insisting on proper ground work before our acceptance of an assignment, we are able to nearly double the normal success rate. As an insider, you can improve your company's odds of achieving the planned change in the same way: Insist that your role be set up for success rather than for failure.

Be ready to create -- and lose -- important relationships. Organizations don't change the way they do business merely by introducing a new technology or new procedures; transformation results from significant shifts in relationships. A famous insurance company in the midst of planning massive structural change diagrammed their operation in a huge drawing that looked like an organizational chart with boxes connected by lines. They came to the realization that, for the past 50 years, they had devoted all of their energy to perfecting the operations represented by the boxes: sales, underwriting, claims, marketing, administration, etc. They saw that prosperity in the future would depend on how well they managed the lines between the boxes: their internal and external relationships.

The most powerful and important contribution you make is not technical or mechanical, it is redefining and reshaping the relationships of people at work. You must be prepared to form -- and to lose - many relationships in your own work life. This may mean terminating relationships with people you like and respect. It may mean forging alliances with people who have been your adversaries. It may mean working to rehabilitate a relationships you gave up on long ago. It may mean surviving -- even participating in -- the replacement of your boss or supervisor. It certainly means exercising the responsibility to remove yourself when you've lost effectiveness in your role.

Build a special personal support network. No matter what role you play in the change process, you need this network to stay healthy, sane and focused during these turbulent times. You need personal supporters who care more about you than they do about the transformation or even about the company. You must have people in this network who are not directly affected by the company's changes. Not just people outside your company, but people outside your family as well. (You may be surprised at how involved your family becomes in the events that are changing your life at work). As the change progresses, these outsiders in your network will not only help you keep your perspective they will be able to see opportunities and threats invisible to you from the inside.

Don't just assume your friends, family and mentors will serve you in this special role. Ask them individually for special support during your work on the transformation. Ask them to give you honest, candid feedback. Tell them their role is essential to your success. Ask for a commitment of time -- an hour or so a month -- to discuss your challenges. Keep at least four members in this network at all times; more than six will probably require more time than you are willing to invest. If you find that a member's feedback has little value for you, replace that person. You can usually do this without hurting feelings by just failing to make calls for feedback. These people are volunteers, after all.

You'll probably never hold a general meeting with all of your personal supporters. In fact, this network will work better for you if its members don't communicate with each other about the challenges you face. You will benefit from the differences in their perspectives. Do arrange to talk with each person frequently and regularly.

Maintain a careful accounting of your transformation activities. Keep a journal of the actions you take during the transformation and your observations of their results. A disciplined and detailed personal journal can serve many purposes, from improving your skills to positioning yourself for your next assignment.

Just writing about your experience focuses you and clarifies your understanding of what's going on; writing forces you to take a different perspective. As the change progresses and you get some distance from the starting point, rereading early entries in your journal will open your eyes to many lessons that you couldn't see at the time. This awakening will help you avoid mistakes in the future.

The journal is an efficient way to keep your support network up to date. After sending a summary of new entries to your supporters each month or so, you can call each person to ask for feedback. Knowing that you will be "publishing" the journal monthly will add an important measure of discipline: keeping your writing regular and concise.

You'll be surprised how many personal successes you record in your journal. You can use this accounting to position yourself for new assignments in the future. Life on the edge of the frontier is so exciting and all-consuming that it's easy to forget the great things that have been accomplished.

The journal generates a professional perspective. Your doctor and your lawyer probably enjoy doing their work far more than they enjoy keeping records of their activities. They have a professional responsibility to keep these records because they must be able to personally account for their actions. Professionals say that they "practice" their arts or crafts; this implies that they are always learning. It's impossible for us to learn from our own experiences if we can't remember them and see them in context. Your journal will show you what worked and what didn't work far better than your memory ever will.

Don't get the idea that this document will get you out of trouble, though. If the journal is to be of use to you, it must include a full and honest accounting of all your actions, whether they succeeded or failed. Using such a journal for legalistic or political purposes will probably get you into as much trouble as it gets you out of. As a personal tool, the journal can help you improve your abilities. Continual improvement can keep you out of trouble in the future.

Nobody will make you a hero in these jobs. Aside from your personal support network, you'll probably get much less recognition than you deserve for the contribution you make to your company.

People who accept a lot of attention can become the target for hostile fire. If you take credit for successes in transforming people's work, you'll surely be blamed for the pain they experienced along the way and for the surprises and the costs and the breakdowns that occurred. It is often little more than this type of high-profile position that gets some people fired during a transformation process. People who do the work ARE the change and must exercise responsibility for doing their jobs differently. Make a habit of down playing all public credit. Satisfy yourself with your own private journal of personal successes.

Don't be surprised if you run out of steam. The responsibilities of each role are exhausting and the stresses are great. Burnout is a very real possibility that you may not see coming. Listen seriously to feedback from your change colleagues, people at work and your personal network. If you hear a pattern of concern about your energy, your looks, your health or the quality of your decisions, beware. You could be burning yourself out.

There are career risks. As you work, developing relationships and contributing in different ways, you add credibility points to an imaginary personal account. Each time you disappoint people or disrupt their lives, some of these points are deducted from your account. In a stable organization, it's easy to keep increasing your account even if you lose points from time to time. When working in the transformation, your responsibilities require you to create lots of disruptions. You'll inevitably spend more of these points than you are earning, so you must have a sizable account to begin with. You must keep working in your regular job to build your account. When you lose all of your credibility points, you have lost the relationship capital required to work on a Change Initiative, perhaps to stay involved in the transformation effort at all.

Those who are most aggressively resistant to change often get the idea that if they can get you out of the picture, the change will fail. While this rarely works to stop the transformation entirely, it almost always succeeds in getting rid of a person or two.

You can improve your chances of survival by keeping a careful check on the balance in your "credibility account." Ask some of these questions to check how you are doing: What's your ratio of wins to bruises recently? Who is initiating communication between you and the people you depend on for your success? How has the ratio of communication initiations vs. responses changed?

Keep a clear perspective on the excitement of your work. The danger and discovery of leading an organization into new territory is exciting. Because situations are new, few precedents apply. Decisions must be made quickly near the action. Depending on your personality, this can either wear you down or charge you up. Remember that organizational transformations must come to an end, stabilizing the company on a new course. Your responsibilities are a temporary assignment. After you complete your work on the transformation, life will seem much more calm and under control. A welcome relief? Not for everyone.

Change can be an addictive stimulant. Avoid getting hooked on this experience. Most addictions follow the same course. At first you don't like it. But you get used to it. Then you find it makes you feel good. Later you need it to feel good. You know you're hooked when you need it to feel normal. In the final stages, you need it to keep from feeling bad. People who love constant challenge and who have difficulty making commitments are particularly susceptible to this addiction.

We know an elected official who runs a sizable agency of lawyers like a volleyball team. He took office with a vision for radical change in his agency; he wanted to discover and make use of all of his employees' capabilities. But he never brought this major change to an end. Every quarter he announced a rotation of positions, often with a reorganization of the operation: no one knows until the quarterly reorganization meeting what job s/he will have during the next rotation. In practice, such constant change wears people down and burns them out. We suspect this official is a change addict.

No one sets out to become an addict. The condition grows slowly. A central part of any addiction is denial: the addict truly believes s/he is not addicted, that s/he can quit any time. If you suspect that you need major change just to feel good about your job, watch out. If you think about shaking things up or moving to a new job when big changes begin slowing down, it may be too late for you to avoid addiction.

While change addicts can function effectively as outside consultants or in some professional and technical positions inside the organization, they are dangerous as managers. Companies need managers to stabilize systems and constantly improve efficiencies. If you have any hope of occupying a management position after the change, avoid getting addicted to the process.

Don't be "Hoist by Your Own Petard." (That's a very old expression that means blown up -- hoist -- by your own bomb -- petard.)We often have seen associates become casualties of the changes they were implementing. We also have become victims of our own changes. This can happen in several different ways:

The Gorbachev Syndrome. The transformation begins heading in a direction you cannot support. You find yourself fighting to get things back to normal. You become an opponent pushing for the good old change rather than the bad new one. You lose your job.

The Zealous Changer Complex. The transformation achieves Critical Mass and the organization begins stabilizing before your vision is achieved. You keep pushing for more change even though sponsorship is withdrawn. You are seen as a dangerous zealot who would drive the company into the ground with "change for the sake of change." You are removed.

The Catalyst Delusion. You harbor the belief that your are a catalyst who will not be consumed or substantially changed by the processes you set in motion. To resolve an impasse when the forces of change lock into unmovable resistance, you take a central role to break the logjam. Though you may succeed in breaking things loose, you can get (professionally) killed in the process. You spend all of your "credibility points" and must be replaced.

Watch for a soft place to land. It's much easier to know when your role as Change Team Member, Change Agent, Champion or Team Coach begins than to know when it ends. Your job is to help bring the organization's transformation to Critical Mass: the point of no return at which the forces you have set in motion will continue on course even without people working in special change roles. After Critical Mass is achieved, your services in support of the transformation are no longer necessary.

Stay open to learning new skills and to changing professions. Be ready to work yourself out of this job and into a new one. Have a few good ideas about positions in the company you would like to move into. For some reason, many who are extremely involved in change get so busy with the transformation that they forget that they, too, must adapt to the new culture and technologies being implemented. If you fail to adapt yourself to the new organization, you may do more than work yourself out of a job, you may work yourself out of the company.

If you must leave the company, look for a firm that's about to go through a similar change. Your new experience can be of great value to them.

Look beyond your old job. If you have distinguished yourself working in your role as Change Team Member, Change Agent, Champion or Team Coach, you may have an opportunity to move into a position that's more interesting and challenging for you. If you have lost a lot of credibility during the change, you may find your options severely limited. There may be no better time than this for you to make a career change. You are responsible for taking care of your next assignment. Don't ignore this duty.

Bring your personal vision and your ethics to work with you. You may be able to adapt to someone else's change without these assets, but you can't actively help create one without personal conviction. Succeeding requires more than just using mechanical techniques and procedures. You are asking people to give up their security and follow you into the unknown. Your personal vision and your character earn the credibility you need to do this. Assure there is a good match between your vision and values and those the company is pursuing.

Leave the door open to opt out on principle. Major transformations change corporate values. Chances are, your personal beliefs were a good match to the company's traditional values. The new values that emerge may not just be different, they may -- in your view -- be wrong. This is more likely to happen if the change has taken a sharp turn or two since it began. If you lose your faith in your company or its leaders, you must resign from your change role. You can't maintain credibility implementing a change you no longer support. You may even find that you must also leave the company. You must survive with your personal values and ethics.  

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

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