7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change

Micro Shifts, Macro Results

Esther Derby

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781523085811
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Change is difficult but essential—Esther Derby offers seven guidelines for change by attraction, an approach that draws people into the process so that instead of resisting change, they embrace it. Even if you don't have change management in your job description, your job involves change. Change is a given as modern organizations respond to market and technology advances, make improvements, and evolve practices to meet new challenges. This is not a simple process on any level. Often, there is no indisputable right answer, and responding requirestrial and error, learning and unlearning. Whatever you choose to do, it will interactwith existing policies and structures in unpredictable ways. And there is, quite simply, a natural human resistance to being told to change.
Rather than creating more rigorous preconceived plans or imposing change by decree, Agile software developer turned organizational change expert Esther Derby offers change by attraction, an approach that is adaptive and responsive and engages people in learning, evolving, and owning the new way. She presents asetof seven heuristics—guides to problem-solving—that empower people to achieve outcomes within broad constraints using their personal ingenuity and creativity.
When you work by attraction, you give space and support for people to feel the loss that comes with change and help them see what is valuable about the future you propose. Resistance fades because people feel there is nothing to push against—only something they want to move toward. Derby's approach clears the fog to provide a new way forward that honors people and creates safety for change. Rather than creating more rigorous preconceived plans or imposing change by decree, Agile software developer turned organizational change expert Esther Derby offers change by attraction, an approach that is adaptive and responsive and engages people in learning, evolving, and owning the new way. She presents asetof seven heuristics—guides to problem-solving—that empower people to achieve outcomes within broad constraints using their personal ingenuity and creativity. When you work by attraction, you give space and support for people to feel the loss that comes with change and help them see what is valuable about the future you propose. Resistance fades because people feel there is nothing to push against—only something they want to move toward. Derby's approach clears the fog to provide a new way forward that honors people and creates safety for change.

CHAPTER 1

Change by Attraction

People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.

—Peter Senge

WHEN I WORK WITH GROUPS, I SOMETIMES ASK THEM TO draw a time line depicting their experiences with change in organizations they’ve worked for, showing the high points above a middle line and the low points below. People draw jagged lines, with dramatic ups and downs. SEE 1.1 Then I ask them to write a word or phrase that describes what was present for the highs and lows. I’ve led this exercise dozens of times. Consistent themes emerge on both sides of the line.

Above the line, people describe the changes they experienced in this way:

“My opinion mattered.”

“I had some control.”

“I felt balanced.”

“I had a choice.”

“I had an opportunity for learning and growth.”

“The change proved out.”

“I felt personal agency.”

Below the line, some of responses are exact opposites, for example, “no control” and “no choice.” Other descriptors reveal more about their experiences:

“I was blamed.”

“There was unhealthy conflict.”

“There was no support system.”

“There were no transforming ideas.”

1.1 A change experience time line shows positive and negative experiences of organizational change.

“There was no time to integrate new ideas.”

“I was overloaded.”

“The change didn’t fit the context.”

“I had no voice.”

I have probed these responses to understand what was behind the experiences and to get a glimpse of the theory of change at work. Distinctly different approaches to change surfaced.

Above the line, people felt empowered to achieve outcomes within explicit constraints. They knew enough about the requested change and the context to make good decisions. They were guided by people who understood the larger context. They were engaged and creative.

Below the line, responses are associated with highly directive changes, where people were told what do and how to do it. They may or may not have known the reasons and the thinking behind the change, but they had little latitude with implementation at the local level.

From the CEO to a frontline new hire, no one is immune to change. Most people, whatever their position in the organization, would prefer that their experience of change be “above the line,” where they have a choice, they learn and grow, and they have a sense of control and of personal agency. It is also true that people don’t always have complete choice in matters of change. Financial and market performance, customer feedback, and competitor moves—all demand a response. Within those givens are a host of approaches for responding to events and making changes within an organization. Even if there is no choice but to change, there is almost always room for people to participate, shape, and influence what happens within their sphere.

I work on changing change so that the experience stays above the line, both when people choose change at work and when circumstances and decisions beyond their control prompt an organizational shift.

A willingness to let people get their fingerprints on a change orients an organization toward not so much the specific change but rather a comfort with uncertainty and complexity. Obviously, individuals within an organization may be perfectly comfortable with both; but policies, systems, and procedures shape individual behavior and determine which direction a given organization tilts.

Complex Change

Let me give you an example of change that does not fit my definition of complex. In this example the change involved decisions made by top leaders and was presented to the organization as a directive. This example was discussed as a case study in change management at an event for women in leadership.

In an oak-paneled dining room, 12 women sat around the table as Ann, the administrator of a big hospital, presented a case study involving a mandatory flu shot program in her organization.

“We worked our change management process by the book,” Ann declared. “We tied it to our mission—Serving our patients is our highest priority—and we did a big awareness campaign on the risks of flu exposure in hospital settings. Then we held vaccination clinics for our employees during work hours. There were a few holdouts, of course, and we put them on administrative leave and docked them three days’ pay. If they didn’t vaccinate after that, they were out of a job.

“This,” she concluded, “is the key to successful change: relentless execution of a rigorous change methodology.”

By my definition, persuading hospital workers to get flu shots is not a complex change. It was a matter of persuasion and removing barriers, making it easy for people to get a flu shot. There were many moving parts in this program, which required expertise and coordination; however, immunization is an obvious best practice in a hospital setting, and there are many examples of persuasion programs of this type. The program did not change structures, processes, or practices or how people approached their jobs within the hospital. (Note that they relied primarily on positional power; the sanction, involving suspension and loss of pay, is coercive power.) Unfortunately, the processes that support this sort of change often aren’t helpful in complex change and may make it much harder.

By complex change, I mean situations in which there is no indisputable right answer and where causation is seldom a single line or a straight one. Linear cause and effect may exist, but it isn’t the major paradigm. Any given factor may be both cause and effect. Circular causation creates virtuous and vicious cycles. It is the difference between “a Ferrari and the Brazilian rainforest” (as explained in the introduction). It is common for people to talk about organizations as if they were machines, but really they are much more like forests: more than the sum of their parts, only partially knowable, and grown, not manufactured.

The irony is, people live in complexity and engage in complex changes all the time. They learn things, consciously and unconsciously, that change the way they do their jobs, interact with family and coworkers, and think about the world. Planning a family outing is a complex endeavor with the potential for randomness, no matter how much one might want to control it. People marry, have kids, and move across town or across oceans. They change jobs, make new friends, and take up new hobbies. All of these life changes are to a greater or lesser extent a leap into the unknown.

No matter how much you prepare, how many people you talk to, and how many books you read, there is stuff you cannot anticipate or understand at the start. People know that it is impossible to anticipate every variation, every twist and turn. They know there will be both delightful and devastating surprises, problems to solve, and wonders that they could not have imagined. We are all experienced at living with uncertainty and managing complexity.

Until ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Change by Attraction
• Chapter 2. Strive for Congruence
• Chapter 3. Honor the Past, Present, and People
• Chapter 4. Assess What Is
• Chapter 5. Attend to Networks
• Chapter 6. Experiment
• Chapter 7. Guide, and Allow for Variation
• Chapter 8. Use Your Self
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author