Jan 3

Written by: John Quereto
1/3/2011 6:38 PM 

I recently took one of my children on a road trip to look at colleges.  It was a bittersweet time for me as a parent.  My daughter's enthusiasm evoked in me both an excitement and a melancholy.  Excitement as I considered the great things that were ahead for her and melancholy at the thought of not having her at home.  This upcoming change is not unlike other changes that we are faced with in life.

Effective change is really about endings and beginnings or another way of thinking about it is to say it is about embracing and letting go.  Those who have change done to them invoke the "wing walker's rule," which is to not let go of one thing until you firmly have a hold of something else.  The challenge of motivating people to change is to convince others to "let go" of the old way of doing things so that they can embrace the new way.  This has been mentioned in the literature for years.  Connor, in his book, Managing at the Speed of Change, talks about the need for a "burning platform" for change.  The idea that nobody will worry about the challenges of jumping from a offshore oil rig if the platform is on fire.  It is easier to get somebody to let go of the old if they are convinced that they new way will make their life better.  The age old expressions, "my way or the highway" also comes to mind, meaning, that if you want to hang on to your job you'll do exactly what I say.  While this is effective in the short term, over the long term it has a tendency to jeopardize the organization's productivity and overall latent capacity to respond to future challenges.  Whatever your approach to change, may I offer some suggestions for facilitating organizations through the process of letting go.

1.  Celebrate and honor the past.  This might mean honoring the former leader of an organization, having a symbolic burial of past icons, recognize those who have kept an old system or process going despite its challenges, or it may simply mean getting people together for a "town hall" to celebrate and signal a transition.

2.  Create compelling case for change - make the benefits to the individual and organization real and tangible.  What will this do for the organization and for the individuals?  This has to be clear, believable and sincere to convince someone to let go of what they have in exchange for a promise of something yet to be realized.

3.  Eliminate competing initiatives and priorities.  So often companies devise a new strategy but do not "let go" of all the activities that they had previously.  The rationale?  "It is an 'and' world!"  However, organization members often see this as management's inability to prioritize or worse yet, a ploy to get them to do more with less.  Role model the "let go" and the embrace.

4.  Put Yourself At Risk - Demonstrate your personal willingness to let go of something secure and put yourself at risk with the change.  Lead the charge, share the risk.  Often changes in organizations are initiated on one side of the firewall, but the actual change takes place on the other side of the firewall.  If the change fails, those who initiated it are secure, but those responsible for execution are at risk.  Let go of your personal security so that others might as well.

To be sure, to embrace change is critical to success, but before we can begin to embrace, we must "let go" of that which holds us back.