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Playing the change game
A game with a message
Calling the group up to the front of the room, I identify one person as leader and hand them a juggling ball. I explain that the object of the exercise is to ensure that the ball passes through the hands of each group member before being returned once more to the leader. I will time the interval from when the ball leaves the leaders hands to when it returns. The only other rule they need to be aware of is that the ball must not pass through the hands of adjacent people.
The have sixty seconds to plan their strategy before the timing commences.
After a hasty discussion, the group forms a close circle and the ball is passed rapidly between them like a hot potato, following an erratic course dictated by the adjacency rule.
The ball is returned to the leaders hands. The clock stops. Eight and a half seconds. Not bad.
I congratulate the team on having executed this simulated business process with speed and efficiency. As with any business process, however, they can not rest on their laurels. They must constantly improve and refine the process in order to keep ahead of the competition.
So, once again, they have sixty seconds to consider reengineering their process.
After another hasty discussion, the group forms an even closes circle, pass the ball with more urgency and purpose, and the time comes down to five seconds. This is a huge improvement for just a second iteration.
I ask the group to recognise the extent of their achievement, over forty percent efficiency gain. I recommend they bask in the rosy glow of their success in a way we rarely give ourselves permission to do. I then tell them that the industry average time is point six of a second. And that is the sort of time they need to achieve just to be a bit player in this market.
Now what?
Many participants quickly recognise that they are in a familiar place. They have been doing the best they can within their reading of the rules of the game, but they are now required to make a step change in performance just to stay in contention.
This is a challenge that organisations increasingly face and respond to in a variety of ways. To help them address this challenge, I start by drawing a four box model on the flipchart. After all, we know that all strategy and leadership models worth their salt are of the four box variety.
On the vertical axis I write “What”, with a plus at the bottom and a minus at the top. On the horizontal axis I write “How”, with a plus to the left and a minus to the right.
These four boxes represent the changing nature of the challenges that both individuals and organisations face as time progresses.
Box one
Here what we need to achieve, the desired outcome, the strategic intent, is clear. Equally, usually due to a long period of prior education and training, we have the necessary tools to do the job. Hence, dealing with any challenge that falls within this box is simply a case of applying a known solution to a known problem.
Box two
Challenges fitting within this box are those where there is clarity of desired outcome, but uncertainty as to which are the most appropriate tools to apply. The means by which we must address the challenge is, therefore, different. Normally, the search for the most appropriate solution to a known difficulty takes the form of some form of brainstorm. An appropriate solution is then chosen from the ones listed and is applied.
Box three
Now things start to complicate a little. Because we are highly professional, educated and trained individuals, we have an extensive range of tools in our toolkit, but there is now more ambiguity about what precisely it is that we are required to achieve. There is evidently a difficulty that needs to be addressed, but we are unclear as to what specifically the desired outcome is. The first job is to fully understand the challenge and the outputs required from having successfully addressed it. Normally this is achieve by some sort of symptoms and causes analysis. Once we fully understand the challenge and the desired outcomes, we know we have the necessary tools to address it.
The challenges that fit into boxes one, two and three are all what Paul Watzlawick (Change, 1974 – click here to be taken to a summary of the book) calls “difficulties”. That is, they can be solved through common sense action and the application of linear logic. A change can be achieved within the existing pattern and rules.
Box four
Box four problems are different. These are the class of problems we discover when attempting to lead amidst uncertainty and ambiguity. The challenges we are facing are unclear, the desired outcomes to say the least ambiguous, and the tools that served us in the past are no longer appropriate or up to the job.
Boxes one, two and three are the stuff of management. Box four is the domain of strategic leadership and change management.
Watzlawick calls box four challenges “problems” or “paradoxes”. We have reached an “impasse”, a “deadlock” whereby we are in danger of getting stuck in the box. If we try to apply the solutions that worked in boxes one, two and three, we are in danger of failing, badly.
Back to the game
This is exactly the sort of problem we left our ball game group with a few paragraphs ago. They know that they can not go from five seconds to point five of a second or less by continuing to act as they have done. Even the most Herculean effort is unlikely to get them below three seconds at best.
In looking at how they can solve this box four problem, I invite them to revisit what they know and have learned about business acumen. Brainstorming together we remind ourselves that, among other things, business acumen means:
Applying intense mental activity and agility to frame and assess challenging situations
Knowing when to apply the handbrake and give yourself thinking time
Linking insightful assessments and identifying tipping points
Asking challenging questions
Confronting norms, habits and routines
What specifically? How specifically?
So they start by asking challenging questions, especially about any assumptions they have made or habits that may have got stuck in. Going back to my initial instruction, they ask me what specifically my instructions were. I repeat that: “On leaving the leaders hands, the ball must pass through the hands of each team member … “. They stop me. They are starting to get the hang of this way of thinking. “Pass through” how specifically someone asks insightfully. And immediately another team member has got it: “It just has to pass through our hands, it does not have to touch them. Also, the ball does not have to travel horizontally, it could drop vertically with the aid of gravity.”
She gets all the team members to group together, cupping their hands to form a vertical tube. Then, making sure that the hands of adjacent people are not next to each other in the rapidly constructed tube, the leader drops the ball in at the top and catches it with the other hand at the bottom.
The time taken is point three of a second. They have halved the industry average.
Leading amidst ambiguity and uncertainty
In doing so, they confirm what we know about how to most effectively lead amidst ambiguity and uncertainty.
Effectively, it required leaders to adopt an inquiring approach where they ask challenging questions and then listen. It also requires intense and sustained thought, dialogue and discussion. It is when the conversations that people have with each other change that, as was the case with the ball puzzle, organisations start to change. This can not be forced, it requires connection, commitment and interpersonal engagement.
It also requires learning that the way we traditionally think often starts to become part of the problem. The more we try to change, the more we stay the same.
This group learned to challenge the givens and the rules. They reframed the problem and adopted what is often called a “second order change” approach by asking themselves: “What is being done here and now to perpetuate the problem and what can be done here and now to effect change.”
Like Watzlawick, they recognised that the necessary alternative to linear approaches is mental flexibility and the capacity to be able to constantly reframe problems. He points out that, in complex organisations, reality is just what a sufficiently large number of people have agreed to call real. He commends the mental fluidity required to be able to frame problems and situations in different ways and the capacity to hold at least two contradictory ideas in mind at the same time. Successful organisations are generally those that give themselves the most choices. In other words, apply second order change; change the rules from outside the existing pattern.
Finally, he proposes a refreshingly simple and practical four step model for change. These steps are:
Start with a clear and specific understanding of the current situation, without searching unnecessarily for past causes. Ask a lot of questions starting with “what” and none starting with “why”.
Fully investigate the solutions attempted so far. They are likely to be a large part of what is maintaining the problem.
Do nothing until a clear definition of the concrete change to be achieved is agreed. Ask “what specifically?”
Formulate and implement a plan to produce change.
Such simple, clear and pragmatic advice. How often, however, do organisational change initiatives impeccably follow such a process.
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