How To Improve Your Odds for Change Success

Organizational change management is hard – so hard that you’re likely to fail 70% of the time.

However, by focusing on performance, i.e., “what an enterprise does to deliver improved results for its stakeholders” and health, i.e., “how effectively an organization works together in pursuit of a common goal,” the clients they’ve worked with have more than doubled their odds for successful change (Keller & Schaninger, 2019).

The authors assert that their approach is unequivocally superior to others because of the extensive research and scientific rigor behind their recommendations, the comprehensiveness and pragmatism of the tools, and the approach’s ability to be customized for each client. They close their introductory chapter with a passionate plea for better change management.

I agree that change is hard – but what’s the deal with the high failure rate? It’s hard to contest the need for better change management practices, but a 30% success rate doesn’t offer much hope.

Point 1: Change management has never been more critical.

There are multiple types of change – e.g., organizational, political, social – all of which we desperately need. For example, consider that Americans generally do not have an optimistic view of the future. In a recent study by the Pew Research Center (2019), respondents overwhelmingly believed that America would lose its standing globally, implode under the cost of health care, and have a weakened economy by 2050. In addition, about half surveyed have lost confidence in our representative democracy and don’t believe our political leaders are qualified for their jobs. And 40% are worried about the country’s moral values, the climate crisis, and the quality of public schools for our children.

But it’s not because we haven’t tried. Change has been on the agenda for political leaders, globally, for decades. The authors remind us of the political zeal of leaders like France’s Hollande and Macron, America’s attempt to “make itself great again,” and our Canadian neighbors’ belief of “real change” under the dreamy Trudeau. But the odds are stacked against them (Keller & Schaninger, 2019). There’s only a 30% chance of impacting economic inequality, climate change, and an overcrowding planet. If we don’t have better tools for designing and implementing change, we’re going to be in a pickle.

In addition to social changes, there are also changes to how we work – and not just because of COVID. One of these changes is an increasing shift towards projects and away from operations. In fact, we may need to shift our thinking to look at projects as operations.

As Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, former chairman of the Project Management Institute, writes for the Harvard Business Review, “…projects (which involve the changing of organizations) are increasingly driving both short-term performance and long-term value creation—through more-frequent organizational transformations, faster development of new products, quicker adoption of new technologies…” (Nieto-Rodriguez, 2021). Said differently, soon, we’ll all be project managers. And managing that much change can have severe consequences if we don’t know how to do it right.

Point 2: Our odds of success may be higher than we realize.

The authors tout the infamous 70% failure statistic, but I take issue with that. It’s not that change isn’t hard, but the negativity bias implied with this kind of percentage makes it feel like you are bound to fail. Here’s a personal example.

When I was preparing for the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam, my teacher said that only 30% of test-takers passed it on the first try. Even worse, while I was preparing, the test changed, which allegedly cut that success rate in half. How the heck do you stay motivated when there’s an 85% chance you’ll use most of your free time to study and still fail? Naturally, I was nervous, but I stuck with my study approach, and ultimately, I scored above the target in every area.

Perhaps, there’s some cache around passing what some would consider a difficult test – and maybe to elevate the profession, this sort of reputation is good. But in everyday life, if I told you that you had a 70% chance of failing – even with your most excellent intentions and hard work, how often would you try something new? Probably not all that often.

In a seminal work, “Reengineering the Corporation,” two renowned business authorities shared an eye-popping statistic that caught readers’ attention. “Our unscientific estimate is that as many as 50 percent to 70 percent of the organizations that undertake a reengineering effort do not achieve the dramatic results they intended (Champy & Hamper, 1993).” Note the term “unscientific estimate.” Well, after people latched on to that quote, it’s been reverberating in the change atmosphere ever since. A few years after their book was published, the authors even corrected the public, but it was too late. The looming thought of change failure would haunt business professionals for decades.

If we think we’ll fail, we’ll look for signs that we’re failing and use those as proof that we’re doomed. Unfortunately, research done at the University of Chicago shows “we assume that failure is a more likely outcome than success, and, as a result, we wrongly treat successful outcomes as flukes and bad results as irrefutable proof that change is difficult.” Thankfully, research shows that the opposite is true; if we actively look for signs of success, we’ll build momentum that helps us achieve our goals.

So, what’s the upshot here?

Change is hard – for many reasons I’ll unpack in future posts – but we aren’t doomed to fail. Doesn’t it feel bleak to think that there’s a 70% chance in 2050 you’ll be poorer, our kids will be less bright, your health with be worse, and our country will implode? Thankfully, we have change management principles that can help us significantly improve our odds for success. Moreover, we can use these principles to affect professional and social change. Kelly and Schaninger give us the McKinsey approach; you don’t have to use theirs, but I suggest that you use something.

You should not expect any change to be easy. However, “Every time we feel the impulse to say, “change is hard,” we could make a different claim that is every bit as accurate: Adaptation is the rule of human existence, not the exception. (Tasler, 2017).”

Furthermore, we don’t approach each new change effort like a newbie. Instead, we’ve learned how to manage over time, throughout the multitude of changes thrust upon us. It is, quite literally, how we’ve learned to survive. So, start to see your challenges (and yourself) as a change success story. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and your perspective determines which future comes to pass.

Citations

Champy, J.A. & Hamper, M. (1993). Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. Harper Business.

Keller, S. & Schaninger, B. (2019). Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Nieto-Rodriguez, A. (2021, November/December). The Project Economy Has Arrived: Use these skills and tools to make the most of it. Harvard Business Review, 38-45.

Pew Research Center. (2019). Looking to the Future, Public Sees an America in Decline on Many Fronts.https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/03/21/public-sees-an-america-in-decline-on-many-fronts/

Tasler, N. (2017). Stop Using the Excuse “Organizational Change Is Hard”. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2017/07/stop-using-the-excuse-organizational-change-is-hard

Meet My Alter Ego: Change Management Evangelist

When’s the last time you reflected on why you liked what you like?

I heard that you could increase your job satisfaction by finding a job that meets some deep, personal need. As I’ve described on the blog, I have an incessant need to solve problems. I tend to see things as puzzles, but I’ve often become frustrated that I couldn’t solve them.

Change management (CM) and project management (PM) have given me tools to improve my skills in this area, providing some order to this otherwise chaotic, hyperactive brain. This post will provide some background on how I came to appreciate CM/PM and what you can expect from my CM/PM-focused posts.

I spent some time thinking about how I became such an evangelist for change management, and I had to go back through my career. Corporate training was the first job I really liked, and I was good at it. I’d become successful by using my public speaking skills and intuition as a facilitator. But not having an organized, repeatable, and reliable approach to developing courses put me at a disadvantage.

One day, I learned about an instructional design framework called ADDIE (Naji, 2016) – Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation – and it’s hard to describe how much this helped me as a trainer. ADDIE offered a systematic way to solve my training problems, and the best part was that I didn’t lose my creativity. In fact, it allowed my imagination to blossom even more. As a result, I became a much better trainer.

After I moved out of training & development and into organizational effectiveness, I again had the issue of not having proven approaches to make improvements. I could see where my team was and where I wanted it to go, but I didn’t have a good plan to get there. In fact, I didn’t even know what the plan was. I’d look at my inputs – me and all my skill sets, the team and their skillsets, the culture, our morale, what I was learning in school, what other managers were doing, etc. – but I couldn’t get to the other side of making meaningful results. I managed to get on well enough, but it was hard, and I felt like a fraud next to my colleagues.

So, imagine my excitement when I learned about organizational change management (OCM)!. There are dozens of frameworks that all consist of helping to change human behavior with the hope of moving as many people as possible from point A to point B. And after I learned about project management (PM) – the practical tools to move from point A to point B – I felt even more equipped.

OCM helped me with the “what”; PM helped me with the “how.”

I have not solved the world’s biggest problems with my instructional design, change management, or project management skills, but these concepts have given me the tools to approach life with greater confidence. I’ve applied these principles with great success, whether at work or at home. I’ve wanted to share what I’ve learned with the community out of gratitude. In addition, I wanted to share how one could integrate CM and PM into one strategy. I haven’t seen a lot of people tackle these issues together. Probably because it’s damn hard, though, not impossible.

That’s the primary reason I was excited about Beyond Performance 2.0 (Keller & Schaninger, 2019). The authors don’t use the terms the same way I do, but it’s the best and most recent work I’ve read that tries to integrate the concepts of “what” and “how.” I started reading the book some time ago – and with a lot of enthusiasm – but gradually, I took longer breaks in between sessions and ended up losing momentum and forgetting most of what I read. So, I plan to share the highlights of the text on this blog to rekindle the change management flame and crystallize my learnings from the book.

The terms “change management” and “project management” can feel cold and dry. They can feel so corporate. That said, the guidance and tools they offer have contributed to significant positive changes for me, personally and professionally. My goal is to find a way to share CM/PM info that doesn’t put you (or me) to sleep, which helps me test my hypothesis. I believe that change/project management principles are practical at work and can also be applied to improve the quality of your life.

Citations

Naji, C. (2021, November 16). Addie Training Model: Steps, examples, and outdated myths. RSS. Retrieved January 14, 2022, from https://www.eduflow.com/blog/addie-training-model-steps-examples-and-outdated-myths 

Keller, S. & Schaninger, B. (2019) Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Blogging Goals for 2022

I have three blogging goals for 2022:

To finish the year with 100 posts and 50 followers (currently at 56 and 16)
To write for at least 30 minutes a day, five times a week, and
To feel confident about the quality of my posts.

I used a lot of mental horsepower to obsess over details like how long my posts should be and how frequently I should post. How do I make better titles? Better endings? Should I be more personal or keep it professional? And what will attract the most readers?

These, and others, were great questions – but none of them are essential when I think about the blog’s purpose. I remembered that I started the blog to help crystallize learnings and share insights from media – mostly print media – that I’ve consumed. This hobby allows me to be curious; therefore, the focus is on discovery, not predictability. Instead of focusing on engagement, I can find my writing voice.

To that end, these goals are broad enough for me to have room to explore but specific enough to help me improve my craft. My list of blogging prompts is virtually impossible to deplete. And my list of book chapters to review is even longer. So I’ll get a lot of practice and hopefully come out of 2022 a better writer than I started.

Blog Challenge Complete!

I did it! All done.

Reflections on my 30-in-30 Challenge

Tomorrow ends my 30-in-30 challenge. I just scanned my posts, and – boy, were they all over the place! Doesn’t matter, though, as my focus was on production. I wanted to create a writing habit, and I didn’t want fear or perfectionism to stop me. I’ve had about a 1% improvement in writing. I recently signed up for some courses that will help me improve my page and writing abilities. If I had to summarize the biggest lesson I’ve learned in this process, it would be the power of setting achievable goals. For this stage of my life, I need to define achievable as “easy.” That doesn’t mean that I didn’t push myself or that I didn’t care about the results. But I did it in a fun way. This is a hobby, after all. Thank you all for reading, but I’d mostly like to thank myself for FINISHING (tomorrow).

New Month, Same Struggle Pt. 2

I guess what I’m getting at is that PM won’t solve all of your problems. Earlier today I was reflecting on why I felt so “blah.” At least part of it is that I look at life as a puzzle. Or a project. And I think, “if I just follow these rules and figure out the game, it’ll all come together.” But that doesn’t happen. It’s never happened. I can’t approach life as a problem to be solved. That begs the question, then, how does one live life? If it’s not a project or a problem, how do I drop my tendency to approach it like one? How can I “roll with the punches” without feeling like I am relinquishing control?

“Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem.” About a week ago, I reported that my highest theme – perhaps one of my greatest strengths – was my inclination to see situations as problems to be solved. Even without the assessment, I can attest that I view the world as having a set of issues that need to be resolved, though I think everyone feels that way to some extent. The problems I’m facing now, both personally and professionally, are beyond my current set of problem-solving skills. I still don’t know the answer to the question I posed, but I’d guess that part of the solution requires a total shift in judgment.

You could argue that I don’t really have control anyway, that it is an illusion. But seriously, though, how can I move through life without the nagging feeling that I’m screwing up or that I’m missing some big important piece of information? How do I let go?

I think I posed this question a few days ago, and I still don’t know the answer.

There is a part of me that is an organizer and a planner. I like for everything to be in its place and there to be no surprises. I want to be in control. That part of me is so exhausted from trying to be three steps ahead of life. I know that I do it to try to protect myself. It’s well-intentioned, but ultimately it just makes things more difficult.

Just reading this sentence gets me annoyed all over again. Maybe there’ll be a breakthrough if I just give up.

Maybe the blog’s goal can still be about project management, focusing on your life as the project. But maybe there’s a need to be less focused on “managing” and more focused on “living.” I legitimately do not know how to do this. But maybe I can use this blog to stumble on it.

This blog doesn’t have a specific goal yet or a target audience. I’m writing my ideas as they come. I know you need to “know your audience,” but trying to accommodate a specific group of people – at my current skill level – stunts my creativity, and it adds more pressure. Also, this is a hobby, and I don’t want it to add more stress to my life.

New Month, Same Struggle

I started writing the blog post below Wednesday, June 30, 2021, and posted it 11 days later. I was struggling at the time.

The past few days have been difficult for me. I felt a sense of depression coming on. I started back at work from a pretty long vacation, and coming back to work after vacation often helps me see things in a different light. This time, however, I came back and I felt de-motivated. I have these processes and reports I’m responsible for at work, and for almost the past year, I’ve constantly tweaked and tried to improve the report. I’ve tried to be more efficient. Faster. More effective. I keep thinking, “if I just get this right” or “if I just figure out this one thing”. But even when I do, something else pops up and then I start this whole painful and seemingly unrewarding process all over again.

Whew! Not much has changed here. I don’t want to use the term “depressed,” but I still feel “deflated.” I’m still tweaking this report (and others), and it is a real uphill battle. Since June, I have met individually with the report’s stakeholders and got some helpful feedback. It turns out that what I was doing when I first started was what they found most beneficial. Over time, I made enhancements that forced me to work more but didn’t add value for them. I don’t want to say I wasted my time, but…

I started this blog because I like project management and I was aware of my naïveté around using PM to solve all of my problems, but I thought I’d try anyway. But sometimes my focus on optimization – and really, perfectionism – gets to be a lot to handle. I get in a funk and I don’t feel like doing anything. I’m afraid to try new things. I just want to start over.

I feel compassion for the guy who wrote this. Unfortunately, his drive for optimization caused him to second-guess everything he did. That amount of mental turmoil can drain the life out of you.

I did this today. I was working on a report and thought starting over would be easier. So I deleted the whole thing. This is “classic Bruce”. I’m afraid of changing course so I drop the course and start a new one. Sometimes I can’t see where the course is leading and when I can’t control the path I get nervous. Funny thing is, I had no idea that paths I was on would lead me here. Even with all of my might, trying to control outcomes, I still got to where I am today without knowing this is where I would end up.

Reading your writing after some time has passed is interesting. I remember how I felt. I remember being so frustrated with this project. Again, I feel compassion, but I am proud that I came to an interesting realization. There have been times in my life when I accomplished concrete goals. Other times, I’ve had unexpected accomplishments that weren’t on my radar. If you do have a specific plan, though, how hard should you try to finish it? How do you know when you should give up? Isn’t there a chance that after 33 more attempts, you’ll have a breakthrough? When do you bend your will to that of the universe (or, for some, God)? And how do you live in such a way that allows you to work towards a goal and be adept enough to recognize when it’s time to move on?

I’ve got no answers, but we’ll explore the rest of this post tomorrow.

Reflecting On My Sunday Scaries

I’m nearing the end of my 30-in-30 blog challenge, and I thought it would be good to close the gap between the final posts on my last blog and the rebirth of my current one. Here’s the fourth and final post from my former blog. It was first published Sunday, July 18, 2021.

It’s Sunday afternoon and you’re starting to realize you didn’t get much done this weekend. You’d planned to be productive and you were regularly refining the list of the tasks/errands you wanted to tackle. But, as you reflect, it feels like your to-do list is growing faster than you can manage. For every one thing that you check off, it feels like three more get added. This is the OPPOSITE of progress, you think, and just the thought of adding more to your list stresses you TF out.

I don’t quite feel this way re: tasks. However, I do feel like I have a lot of ideas I want to develop and that I won’t have time to do them.

Week after week, stuff just piles up. You get stuck in this place of perpetually feeling like an overwhelmed under-performer. You’re ready to give up, but that’s not really an option. If you give up, the work just piles up even faster. Between the ever-growing list and your tendency to procrastinate (because sometimes you don’t even know where to start), you just feel exhausted.

I feel differently now, I think, because I’m intentionally trying to do less.

You, too? Bruh, this is me every week. And I decided to put my theory to the test and find a way to use project management principles to help me manage my life. I’m still testing out the solution, but so far, it’s been helpful. In the next series of posts, I’ll explain how I’m using agile project management to help me manage my stress, increase my focus, and ultimately get more done.

I like the idea of using project management principles on appropriate life tasks, but that doesn’t solve the problem. The challenge is learning how to do less.

This is not a “recipe for success”, but rather my attempts at designing a solution that works for me. I hope it gives you some ideas on tools you can tailor for your own usage. Until then, good luck with your to-do lists. Don’t be too hard on yourself and realize that you can’t – and won’t – get everything done…and that’s okay.

I still agree with this. 🙂

Unpacking My Themes for 2022

The 34 CliftonStrengths themes are divided into four categories

Executing – Making things happen
Influencing – Taking charge, speaking up, and making sure others are heard
Relationship Building – Building strong relationships that hold a team together and make it greater than the sum of its parts
Strategic Thinking – Absorbing and analyzing information that informs better decisions

Of my top 10 themes:

2 are in Executing (1-Restorative, 3-Deliberative)
4 are in Relationship Building (4-Connectedness, 7-Relator, 9-Individualization, 10-Empathy)
4 are in Strategic Thinking (2-Futuristic, 5-Intellection, 6-Input, 8-Learner)
0 are in Influencing

At first glance, these seem accurate. I don’t rely on influence or execution for success, though I could stand to get better at them. I consider myself a strategic thinker, but I think I have a different approach to relationship building. My relationships are based on my curiosity about other people and their uniqueness. I don’t think I build relationships to widen my circle of friends. Instead, I value close, deep relationships that create safe spaces for all of us.