How Can You Avoid Sabotage in a Change Effort?

Have you ever made a decision you later realized wasn't a good one? Chances are, not long afterward you started finding ways to justify the bad decision to yourself. For example, let's say you are seduced by the prospect of improving your golf game by buying the latest space-age driver that cost as much as a good used car cost when you were a kid and is the size of a pie plate. You try it out and find it's nearly impossible to find the fairway.

Bad decision? Sure. But a couple weeks later, here's what you're telling yourself: "Man, I only hit the fairway about 1 in 5 drives, but when I do I get an extra 20 yards." That tendency to justify our behaviors, even when we know we haven't acted in our best interests, is a normal part of our psychology. It keeps us from constantly feeling depressed about all the mistakes we make. It also helps us deal with changes that we don't like and over which we don't have much control.

The trouble is, that mode of self-justification keeps us from doing our best. We keep playing the wrong driver because we've justified the purchase to ourselves.

At work, we might get into that self-justification mode when we're forced to make changes we don't really believe in. It also happens when we can't see the benefit to ourselves or the business of a change we're asked to make.

And it hurts our performance. Worse, it causes some employees to sabotage your efforts to make an important change in the business. Even if you're trying to do something that you know is going to help every employee, such as starting to encourage your managers to do more coaching, take the time to get it right and avoid the potential for sabotage.

So. If you're planning to make a major change in your business, then you'd be wise to take steps to prevent your employees from getting into that mode of self-justification. And sabotage.

You can do this by following these four recommendations.

1. Give every employee a purpose to believe in.
2. Make sure all reinforcement systems support the change.
3. Provide everyone with the skills needed for the change.
4. Provide consistent role models.

Purpose to Believe In

To get all your employees to go along with a major change, you first need to make sure that you communicate the value of the change. Not just to the business, but to everyone who works in the business. Create a story that paints the picture of the future you want to create with the change. And then tell the story over and over. And find ways for your employees to repeat the story until they embrace it as their own.

Reinforcement Systems Support the Change

Experts generally agree that the whole structure of a company - and this is mostly made up by what I call the people engine - must be consistent with any new behavior that people are asked to adopt before they will do so willingly. Anything less is reason for quiet mutiny. Example: you set a new policy insisting that your managers spend at least half their time helping their employees with developing their skills. But, at the same time, you don't make any change to the managers' compensation plan that is based entirely on sales volume. You can see that the paycheck is going to be a stronger motivating force than any policy regarding training and development. It all has to work together.

Train

Everyone in the Needed Skills

I can't tell you how many times I have seen large, and otherwise successful, organizations decide on a major change and fail. More often than not, the failure happens because the change effort included little or no training in the new behaviors or procedures required by the change. For example, a 100-year old company decides to become "customer-centered" and announces that all employees will be measured on customer service skills. But they don't train any employees in the skills. You can imagine how customer-friendly all those employees were!

To do this right, you have to give your employees time to absorb new information, experiment with using the new information or skills and then fit it in with what they already know about their jobs. It's also important to remember - and use - the fact that people adopt new skills far more readily if they tell others how they will apply what they have learned to their own work. You can make this a part of the training you do as part of your change effort.

Provide Consistent Role Models

In all organizations, no matter the size, people model their behaviors on others they respect, on people who have influence within the organization. Often this is not the boss, except in very small firms. Often, it's a senior technician or salesperson that everyone knows is the best in the place.

To get your change effort to succeed, you have to identify the role models in your business and then get them on board immediately. Make sure they see and believe your vision of the future and know the underlying values that support that vision. Then, once you get the role models to change their behavior in the way you want, you're on the path to success. Now, your role models might each handle their own tasks a bit differently from each other, but it's absolutely essential that they follow the same underlying values. These must be consistent for the role models to have the influence you want and need.

Here are a few more secrets of successful change:

It's natural for people to resist change. But it's also natural to follow one's values. As long as your intended change is in tune with your employees' values and their understanding of the company's mission, then their resistance will not be a permanent stumbling block.

Making a big change in an organization can be an exciting period for many people. You might be surprised to find some employees invigorated by the prospect of change.

Finally, you must remember this: corporate culture is one place where "trickle-down" isn't a theory but a law. It all starts at the top. The sunlight has to light the peak before it can warm the valleys below.

Celebrate your successes. As your change progresses, finding ways to celebrate the progress will give everyone a lift. It recognizes the hard work that change requires, and honors the efforts of those who have worked hard to make the change work.

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