The Little Black Book of Change

The 7 Fundamental Shifts for Change Management that Delivers

Paul Adams, Mike Straw

• Publisher: Capstone
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781119209317
• eBook ISBN: 9781119208532
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Your go-to-guide to delivering effective and transformative change that lasts

All too often, change efforts fail to deliver on their promise. However it is possible to turn an organization around quickly to create a new future — one where people think and behave differently and deliver extraordinary results together. Whether you are the chairman, a board director or an aspiring senior executive, The Little Black Book of Change provides a practical, concise and insightful guide to understanding your organization and inventing something extraordinary. It is not about 'run of the mill' change programmes. It is about delivering extraordinary results — something that is not at all predictable. It will be your insight into creating significant shifts in the way people think and behave which can be applied in any area you wish; from improving service levels to cost reductions, innovation or increasing market share.

• Demystifies organisational transformation in 7 practical steps
• Based on real business case studies
• Grounded and accessible, rather than purely from theoretical models or processes
• The authors have 25 years' experience of implementing and facilitating transformations change
• Visit http://www.littleblackbookofchange.com/

Shift 1
LETTING GO OF THE PAST

In the book The Merlin Factor, Charles E. Smith warned that one of the greatest obstacles to performance breakthroughs in organizations was peoples’ beliefs. These beliefs are “logical” (to them) and self-limiting about what’s possible for them to achieve – and they’re purely based on the past.

Lead from the future

Basing today’s actions on past experiences seems to make sense; after all, your decisions in the past enabled you to succeed this far. However, using your past as a point of reference binds you to only those possibilities that lie inside the boundaries of that which you know. We refer to this as the gravity of history.

“Using your past as a point of reference binds you to only those possibilities that lie inside the boundaries of that which you know.”

There is an alternative. Instead of leading from the past, you can lead from the future. In order to lead from the future, you need to define a future achievement that would normally be considered impossible at the time of commitment given the existing ways of working, historical performance and current evidence – and then you make an absolute commitment to it. If you look at all the major innovations and breakthroughs in the world, the common element is that they did not seem possible at the time they were conceived. For example, when Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook he thought 1 million users or being a $1billion market capitalized company would be cool. This goal was definitely not possible in most people’s reality or Mark’s at that time. Now they have just reached 1 billion users!

“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially, I consider it an impossibility.”

Lee de Forest (inventor of vacuum tube/electronic valve), 1926.

These and similar breakthroughs required a commitment to a seemingly distant possibility.

An organization that becomes committed to an “impossible” future achievement will produce extraordinary results in the present. This concept is at the heart of delivering something extraordinary in your organization.

Avoid normalizing

In organizations where people typically hold on to the past, leaders face the challenge of normalizing. Human beings crave certainty and so we seek to keep the status quo. We try to ensure that uncertainty is kept at bay through our organizational habits and behaviours. This often shows up when people are:

• Looking for solutions within the existing environment.
• Rationalizing and justifying.
• Going for something bold, only to revert to wherever the previous bar was set.
• Being driven by poor assumptions.
• Carefully managing risk.
• Making excuses and reverting to their old ways.
• Finding it hard to resolve problems/setbacks.

“IT’S ALWAYS LIKE THIS; IT HAPPENS EVERY YEAR”

An everyday example of normalizing: consider a typical case of someone making a New Year’s resolution to get fit. In January they push themselves to visit the gym at least three times a week, yet by the end of March they are struggling to work out once a week, and the new gym kit has been relegated to the bottom drawer!

The situation has “normalized”, i.e. this person has reverted to their old ways.

Normalization occurs when poor situations are allowed to exist, poor service becomes “the norm” and the way things are done becomes accepted. If this is the starting point in an organization, it can present a huge challenge to any change programme.

Recognizing and understanding the normalization paradigm within an organization will help you to generate a new context for change and successfully make any necessary transitions to a new state. Failure to do so can often result in failure to implement change.

How to let go of the past

To enable this shift to occur, it’s necessary to adopt new ways of thinking and acting – ones that will enable your people and your organization to pass through the transition. At every stage there is a possible conventional way to react, but we have offered some suggestions for ways to respond as a transformational leader.

Traditional Leaders:	Transformational Leaders:
Being self-assured and complacent. Believing their own version of events. Accepting and rationalizing organizational myths. Justifying actions. Having no sense of urgency.	Listening and adapting. Progressing and thriving on challenge. Being open to new ways of thinking and challenging viewpoints. Resolving setbacks and identifying missing factors. Acting with urgency.

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Creating a vision “free” of the past

The challenge

This organization’s cost base was no longer competitive, and they needed to reduce the cost of goods by a dramatic 50%. The primary way to reduce costs sufficiently was to close the manufacturing sites in Europe and move them to China. Senior management wanted to award the contract to their supplier in China; however, there was a four-year history of poor relations between the European site and the Chinese supplier, with a negative cycle of both parties finding fault and complaining about each other. The situation had come to a point where the Europeans didn’t believe anything could change, and so they didn’t try to make things change. At peak times, this European manufacturing company employed up to 800 staff. The local board of directors, including the chairman and managing director, was not aligned to this change. Over the previous years, whenever a review of company or manufacturing location arose, their rationale for the status quo was so thorough that decision was either delayed or stopped. Data was presented to provide reasons why not.

Progress was continually hampered, and the decision to relocate kept being postponed. The anticipated risks concerned the quality of goods made in China and claims that the relocation could put 80% of the company’s sales revenue at risk (multi £ million).

The perceived risk of poor quality in China was driven by pure assumption. The fact was that the existing site in Europe had experienced several years of poor quality production, and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Epigraph
• Title page
• Copyright
• A NOTE FROM THE AUTHORS
• INTRODUCTION
• Shift 1 LETTING GO OF THE PAST
• Shift 2 DEVELOPING BREAKTHROUGH AMBITION
• Shift 3 CREATING A BOLD NEW VISION OF THE FUTURE
• Shift 4 ENGAGING THE PLAYERS IN THE BOLD NEW FUTURE
• Shift 5 CUT TING THROUGH THE DNA
• Shift 6 KEEPING THE ORGANIZATION FUTURE-FOCUSED
• Shift 7 GAINING ENERGY FROM SETBACKS
• SUMMARY
• FINAL THOUGHTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• THE EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE CLUB …
• EULA