Don't Change Just to Change

 One of my pet peeves is the self help movement. Someone is always selling something and while I admire people who want to change for the better - too much change is just too much.

What are we supposed to do now?

I live in a state where our state leadership is giving everyone whiplash. Every couple of years, they change how schools test. The result is - we have no idea if our schools are improving - or not. Why? Because we keep changing what we are testing and how we are testing. The only people who benefit from this are the companies that win the latest testing contract. 

A change in mandated testing in a state, takes a long time to implement. A change in the standards in what it being tested for in a state takes a long time to implement. The result is teachers are constantly having to redo everything. Students aren't getting consistent instruction and everyone is always in a state of - what are we supposed to do now? 

Flashy Business Bandwagons 

The same thing happens in businesses. It's admirable that leaders want to lead well. But if a leader jumps on a new bandwagon every few months and encourages their employees to jump on the same new flashy bandwagon every few months, nothing actually improves.

In fact, employees start to get whiplash and confused.  Are they supposed to be decluttering? Are they supposed to be maximizing influence?  Are they supposed to be manifesting something?  Who knows? All they know is every month or so their leader demands something new of them that is completely unrelated to the actual work they need to be doing. 

Most of these initiatives just make things more difficult. And forget about trying to advance if you don't know what the latest buzzwords for your bosses latest leadership obsession is.

Please Stop Doing This

Leadership isn't actually all that difficult. Just - help your employees. What do your employees need to get their job done better and more efficiently?  If you don't know - ask them. 

The job of a leader is to help a team accomplish their collective objectives. That's it.  Help set the direction and help your team get there.  It's like sailing a boat.  The captain is responsible for setting the direction and the crew's job is to set up the ship to actually go where the captain wants it to.

If you keep changing direction every few weeks or months and you keep changing the destination, you will never get anywhere.  You will just be sailing around in circles wondering why your crew is so frustrated with you.

Don't keep jumping on the latest leadership bandwagon. And please please please don't keep insisting your staff join you in your latest folly. 

What actually does help? 

There is a reason flash in the pan leadership trends flash in and out of fashion so quickly.  And reasons why these things aren't helpful to leading teams. 

1) Most leadership trends are just snake oil that someone is selling.  Or they are just repacked existing leadership skills rebranded to seem new.

2) Changing buzzwords and approaches too often means no one particular direction can get established.

If your team is struggling, it's probably because you are struggling. When people struggle, they do tend to grasp for anything they think might help them.  This pattern is a vicious cycle.

So, what will work?  Honestly - just be a good honest person trying to help the team accomplish their objective.  To do that, you need to be clear on what the objective is and you need to know what your team needs to accomplish that objective. It's not that hard. For the majority of organizations, this is enough. 

But what about if major change is needed?

Sometimes real change is needed in an organization. If things really aren't working than a leader may need to actually lead a change effort. Constantly changing the objectives is counter productive to real change from taking root.

My suggestion is - if you have major structural and cultural changes you need to make in your organization - learn what works to make change happen. Stop grasping at straws and the latest fad.  Learn what works according to science.

And what works is - repeated reinforcement of objectives and new cultural norms. That's it. Again - not rocket science.

If you want to learn this - check out my course/book Why is Change so Hard?  Whether you’re looking to improve your personal habits or manage change within your organization, understanding the science behind behavior change can be a game-changer. This course will teach you how to use behavioral science to manage change and achieve lasting transformation.

https://humanistlearning.com/change1/

We have the ability and therefore the responsibility to create change

Whatever it is you don’t like that is going on in your professional or personal life – you can change it.

The ability to choose your response is a core humanist idea. In fact, human agency is key to the entire philosophy.

Humanists believe we not only have the ability to choose our responses, we have a responsibility to do so.  How you choose to respond, can create positive change in your life, and your circumstances. You don't have to accept the status quo, if the status quo - sucks. 

The challenge is choosing responses that will work. For that, we need critical thinking and science. The more your choice align with good ethics and the more they are based in reality and not on assumptions, the more successful you will be.

As I wrote this, I realize it sounds a LOT like - positive thinking, but it is not like that at all. For a Humanist, there are no guarantees in life. You can do everything right and still get bad results.  All choosing wisely does is increase the odds of good things happening to you.

There is no magic solution to fixing problems. You have to analyze them, figure out what will really work to fix your real problem and then do the actual work required to actually fix your real problem.  That is all any of us can do.

Does this work? Most of the time. It is certainly better than leaving things to fate, though, sometimes that is exactly what you should do.

Confused yet?  There are no hard and fast rules in life. Humanism is a situational ethic. Meaning, the situation we are in dictates what an ideal response should be. Sometimes, it's best to take a wait and see approach. Sometimes it is best to take action. Wisdom is knowing when to take which approach.

But I digress. The purpose of this post was to encourage you to not accept things you cannot accept and to do the work required to change it.  To learn more about how Humanists tackle the eternal problem of - how to fix our problems I have a few courses that might help. They are available as online courses, streaming videos and books.

The first is Planning for Personal Success. - This course will help you learn how to live your values fully, using critical thinking to improve your odds of success and to remove the fears that overwhelm you.

The 2nd is Reality Based Decision Making for Effective Strategy Development.  - This program will help you learn how to answer the three most important questions for any strategy. What is your real problem? What is really causing it and what will really work to solve it?

If you want to learn about how to create change in yourself and others, I have a program called, Why is Change so Hard? - which will teach you how to utilize behavioral psychology techniques to help overcome resistance to change in yourself and in others.

And finally, if you want a Humanist Life Skills course for your personal development - there is my Living Made Simpler program -  If you want to learn more about how to be happy and how to think more effectively about the choices you make, this program will help.

Creating Change in Your Life

Whatever it is you don’t like that is going on in your professional or personal life – you can change it. Things don’t have to be the way they are. We can change things and make the world a better place for everyone to live if we take responsibility to do it and approach our problems using a combination of love, compassion science and reason. 

Most people have a list of things they don't like about themselves and others. Even if we like our job and the people around us, there are still things that annoy us and that we would like to change.

Half of the struggle in creating change is just deciding, it's your responsibility. Stop waiting for others to create change, and start - doing it yourself.

Do you have to do it alone? No. And you shouldn't do it yourself. But ... you do have to take personal responsbility to do your part.

And often that means, starting with us. What do we need to learn? What do we need to do differently for ourselves? How do we want to be in relationship to others? All of these are matters of personal responsibility.

So - start with yourself. Start by defining for yourself what it is you truly value. Decide what sort of person you want to be and then start practicing your values in real life. When you need to make a decision think - how would I do this if I lived by my values. That pause to think before acting can make a world of difference. 

 Once you start acting according to your ethics, the next challenge is how to be more effective. For this, you will need to learn how to be a more critical thinking and you will need to become scientifically literate so that you start working on problems that a) are real problems and b) so that you can find solutions to your real problems that will really work. 

Finally, you need to find balance. All work and no play makes for bad outcomes for yourself and others. If what you want is more balance, implement that for yourself. You will find it easier to understand that balance between work and play helps you be more effective at work. 

I have found that I am at my best when I combine moral philosophy, critical thinking, and science together. I think you will benefit from this approach too - which is why I teach this. Visit my website to find books and courses that can help you be a more moral, effective and capable person. https://humanistlearning.com/ 

And yes, I do have a course on the science and ethics of why change is so hard and how to overcome the resistance to change in yourself and others. https://humanistlearning.com/change1/

Changing Yourself

How to utilize behavioral psychology techniques to help overcome resistance to change in yourself and in other with Jennifer Hancock.

This video is part of the Why is Change so Hard? program offered at Humanist Learning Systems. https://humanistlearning.com/change1/

This course is approved through HRCI (E-Learning Business credit) and through SHRM (Self Paced E-Learning). You can select a HRCI, SHRM and/or a general certificate.

Has there been any research showing that when an alternate reward is provided it is effective in helping to break the drive for the original reward/desire ?

Someone taking my Why is Change so Hard? course, had a question.  That question - is kind of geeky - and involves understanding rewards, alternate rewards and so forth. That's why I'm posting it here. 

Yes - that's actually pretty standard protocol and it does make eliminating the old behavior easier.  Basically - you stop rewarding the old behavior and simultaneously reward the desired new behavior.  You still have the resistance, but it's less.

An example would be - if you had a rat that pressed a lever to get a treat.  If you simply make the lever not work - the rat will escalate and blow out.  If you give them an alternate way to get a treat, they will experience less stress and it will make the transition more smooth.

Another example - if you have a cat that is scratching furniture - unless you give them a scratching post - you aren't going to eliminate the scratching behavior - because it's something that they NEED to do. So - you reward them positively for scratching in the appropriate place.

With humans - it works the same.  Positively reward the alternate behavior, and remove the reward for the unwanted behavior.

Here is a link to google scholar on rewarding alternate behavior.  The 2nd citation is about rats. LOL https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,10&qsp=2&q=reinforcement+of+alternative+behavior&qst=br

Here is an example of relevant research 

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1975-20693-001

Examined the course of extinction of 1 behavior as a function of the presence and subsequent absence of reinforcement for alternative behavior. 4 experiments were conducted, using a total of 102 male hooded rats in 3 experiments and 30 adult White Carneaux pigeons in the 4th. Major findings are: (a) Topography and reinforcement schedule for alternative behavior had little differential effect. (b) High-frequency reinforcement of alternative behavior increased suppressive effects of extinction, and low-frequency reinforcement did not. (c) Reinforced alternative behavior maintained for a relatively long period decreased subsequent recovery of the original response programed for extinction, resulting in a substantial saving in total number of extinction responses. (d) Temporary reinforcement of alternative behavior produced more permanent suppression in the context of simple extinction than in the context of SD (change in stimulus) periods in discrimination learning. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Take the course - or get the book and learn more

https://humanistlearning.com/change1/

https://amzn.to/2VYVMLN 

How to Successfully Manage Cultural Change in the Workplace

At my first job, I was tasked with changing the culture of a nonprofit organization specifically with regards to the volunteers we had. When I started, staff volunteer relations were horrible. We had 10 volunteers who thought their job was to spy on staff and report them for bad behavior. Within 3 years, we have 100s of volunteers and a waiting list to join our volunteer corps and every department was using volunteers successfully.   What I created was not just a volunteer program – but a cultural shift within the organization so that all contributions were valued and the work that was being done, regardless of who did it – was professionalized.

1.    What are some challenges you've faced when attempting to change company culture and how did you overcome them?

Because cultural change requires changing people’s beliefs about how things work, it is probably the hardest type of change to create within a work group. You have to nurture people and encourage a shift in how they think about themselves and their co-workers.  It is not simply a matter of implementing new policies or creating a new system for people to use. You have to change hearts and minds.  Behaviors are fairly easy to change, changing minds is much much harder.

 

2.    What are some universal principles that every company should abide by when it comes to culture change?

People want to do good and be good, so you can harness people’s innate sense of self and morality to help create the culture you want.  Human morality – is pretty universal regardless of location and or religion or lack of religion. Most people value compassion, responsibility, justice and fairness. You can use those moral constants to help encourage people to not only rise to the challenge of being a good person, but how to implement that within their interpersonal work relationships. 

A great way to do this is – appreciative inquiry – where you focus on what is working and build upon that.  It helps people see the good in each other and get past some of – the problems they were focused on before. And it helps bring everyone together into a single tribe so that they can work on improving the culture together.

 

3.    What motivated or caused a shift in company culture at your business?

At my first real job out of college, I was hired to create a cultural shift with the volunteer staff.  There was a desire at the top levels of the organization to fix things and things were really quite toxic when I arrived.  I create that change by professionalizing the work and making explicit what the responsibilities were at all levels and between people, so they would know what to expect and what their roles were in relationship to one another. Again, most cultural problems are a result of bad interpersonal dynamics and these tend to self-reinforce. By creating clarity of responsibilities and chains of command, I was able to help bring some reliability to people’s expectations so that they could work together productively and deal with any disagreements professionally instead of floundering. Over a very short period of time, as people learned they could in fact trust each other, the culture shifted dramatically.

 

4.    How do you motivate employees to actively accept a company's culture?

A friend of mine, Manuel Guillen, Founder and Director of the Institute for Ethics in Communication and in Organizations, says – you can’t force people to accept a company’s ethical culture. All you can do is create the environment so that ethical culture can flourish and that people who want to be ethical, have the space and support to be ethical. Morality is very motivating and people who are motivated by it – will be motivated by it. But not everyone will be and really, it’s not worth worrying about. At a certain point, cultural change within an organization is self-reinforcing. People join the new culture when it is right for them and they see the benefit it in. Some people never do and so will leave the organization. That is fine.  The key is to protect the first wave of culture change ambassadors so that they have space to be the ethical people you want them to be and any pushback by people who are used to controlling dynamics through aggression or whatever other behaviors and mindsets they have – are not able to dominate any more.

I want to emphasize a couple of things. First, cultural change is almost always motivated by ethics. There is something unethical or amiss about the existing ethical culture of an organization and we want to fix it to make it more ethical. Cultural change is entirely about ethics and to not talk about ethics or make it central to the change process is a mistake. If there wasn’t a need to be more ethical, change would not be required. So make the ethics of what you are trying to do and why you are trying to do it – explicit.

Second, because you are looking to create an ethical cultural shift, you need to recognize, identify and eliminate individuals whose ethical basis is NOT consistent with the new norms you want to create.   My friend Adam Cox, at the London School of Economics, said that corporate culture is determined by the last person promoted.  If you promote unethical people, your culture will become unethical. If you want to create a more ethical culture, you need to get rid of the unethical people in your organization and promote and celebrate ethical people.

If you want to learn more about how to approach cultural change within an organization from both a scientific and ethical perspective - contact me or take one of my courses. https://humanistlearning.com/

I am the founder of Humanist Learning Systems and teach behavior-based approaches to change management, cultural change and humanistic business management

Fostering Diversity: Why is diversity so hard?

I teach humanist management and how to use behavioral science to stop things like harassment. Both are at play when we are dealing with diversity issues.

First question: Ways for a leader to foster diversity, inclusion, and acceptance within their unit/department/organization.

Leaders and teams need a variety of inter-related skills to help ensure diversity is achieved.

1. Understanding the value that diversity brings to the team (which is better problem solving)  REALLY  - BETTER PROBLEM SOLVING!!!!!
2. Philosophic understand of how to cope and change their thinking about other people so that they don’t respond negatively – or if they do – they can work through it.
3. Mission focused and intentional integration of viewpoints.  As long as the team is focused on collaborative problem solving, issues with disagreements can be resolved rationally and not devolve into tribal conflicts which then use harassment and bullying to socially exclude a rival idea.
4. Behavior based approaches to bullying and harassment that actually fix the problem. It isn’t enough to say – it’s illegal – don’t do it. It’s not enough to give people culture sensitivity trainings. Aggressive behavior happens and it’s used to socially exclude people to gain power over a group and to control a group. That a) kills diversity as the diverse viewpoints are targeted. And b) it leads to incredibly bad decisions being made.  To fix this – requires a behavioral understanding of how to get unwanted behaviors to stop and how to reward the pro-social behaviors you do want and most importantly – how to handle the  people who resist!!!!!!

Which is why the 2nd question is so important:

 2. How to add diversity to a homogeneous team that is also resistant to change.

First – everyone is resistant to change. Even people who want to change resist change. We can’t help it. Resistance is instinctual.  It’s not a sign of people not wanting to change. It’s just – the process people go through to change.  The point is – to help people with change – you have to understand the behavioral dynamic playing out – that is causing the resistance and how to help the team move through the change process quickly and how to identity those most resistant and isolate their – freak out – so it doesn’t impact the rest of the team.   I said this last bit in lay language. In science language – it means – understanding that when you stop rewarding an old behavior – the behavior escalates as the organism tries to get their reward back. As they continue to not get their reward – their resistance escalates until their behavior – explodes – which is called an extinction burst – or blow out. This is predicted to occur. How bad it gets is the variable. Most people – it’s not too bad. Some people – it’s really really really bad.  A cultural change process – to be effective – is going to take all this science based knowledge into account and help the not bad people adjust quickly and identify the really truly resistant so that the really truly resistant aren’t allowed to prevent the rest of the team from making progress.   And again, this is not about value judgements – it’s just – the process that plays out – every. Time. You. Change. Something.

The major way that people resist diversity is through harassment and bullying. So – that’s where pro-active effort has to be taken – to protect those who are going to be targeted are protected and nurtured so they a) stay and so that b) the resistance to their presence is unsuccessful.   Yes – this takes effort. Pro-active effort. Conscientious effort. Time and effort.. Which is why – most leaders – even well-meaning leaders – fail.

For those truly dedicated to the project – it can be done – but to give yourself the best chance at succeeding – you need to get training on behavioral modification techniques as they apply to organizational dynamics – paying special attention to how behavioral unlearning manifests in bullying and harassment situations.

And yes – I have training on all of this. https://humanistlearning.com/jennifer-hancock/

How to: Diversity

I teach humanist management and how to use behavioral science to stop things like harassment. Both are at play when we are dealing with diversity issues.  I was recently asked about ways leaders can foster diversity and help teams adjust to change.

First question: Ways for a leader to foster diversity, inclusion, and acceptance within their unit/department/organization. 

Leaders and teams need a variety of inter-related skills to help ensure diversity is achieved.

1. Understanding the value that diversity brings to the team (which is better problem solving)  REALLY  - BETTER PROBLEM SOLVING!!!!!
2. Philosophic understand of how to cope and change their thinking about other people so that they don’t respond negatively – or if they do – they can work through it.
3. Mission focused and intentional integration of viewpoints.  As long as the team is focused on collaborative problem solving, issues with disagreements can be resolved rationally and not devolve into tribal conflicts which then use harassment and bullying to socially exclude a rival idea.
4. Behavior based approaches to bullying and harassment that actually fix the problem. It isn’t enough to say – it’s illegal – don’t do it. It’s not enough to give people culture sensitivity trainings. Aggressive behavior happens and it’s used to socially exclude people to gain power over a group and to control a group. That a) kills diversity as the diverse viewpoints are targeted. And b) it leads to incredibly bad decisions being made.  To fix this – requires a behavioral understanding of how to get unwanted behaviors to stop and how to reward the pro-social behaviors you do want and most importantly – how to handle the  people who resist!!!!!!

Which is why the 2nd question is so important:

2. How to add diversity to a homogeneous team that is also resistant to change.

First – everyone is resistant to change. Even people who want to change resist change. We can’t help it. Resistance is instinctual.  It’s not a sign of people not wanting to change. It’s just – the process people go through to change.  The point is – to help people with change – you have to understand the behavioral dynamic playing out – that is causing the resistance and how to help the team move through the change process quickly and how to identity those most resistant and isolate their – freak out – so it doesn’t impact the rest of the team.   I said this last bit in lay language. In science language – it means – understanding that when you stop rewarding an old behavior – the behavior escalates as the organism tries to get their reward back. As they continue to not get their reward – their resistance escalates until their behavior – explodes – which is called an extinction burst – or blow out. This is predicted to occur. How bad it gets is the variable. Most people – it’s not too bad. Some people – it’s really really really bad.  A cultural change process – to be effective – is going to take all this science based knowledge into account and help the not bad people adjust quickly and identify the really truly resistant so that the really truly resistant aren’t allowed to prevent the rest of the team from making progress.   And again, this is not about value judgements – it’s just – the process that plays out – every. Time. You. Change. Something.

The major way that people resist diversity is through harassment and bullying. So – that’s where pro-active effort has to be taken – to protect those who are going to be targeted are protected and nurtured so they a) stay and so that b) the resistance to their presence is unsuccessful.   Yes – this takes effort. Pro-active effort. Conscientious effort. Time and effort. Which is why – most leaders – even well-meaning leaders – fail.


For those truly dedicated to the project – it can be done – but to give yourself the best chance at succeeding – you need to get training on behavioral modification techniques as they apply to organizational dynamics – paying special attention to how behavioral unlearning manifests in bullying and harassment situations.

And yes – I have training on all of this. https://humanistlearning.com/programsoffered/

Problems with Change Management

There are reasons why people resist change and techniques to help them adjust. Science really can help us be more successful.

I have helped organizations – both non-profit and for profit – through change processes. I’ve helped nonprofit with toxic volunteer employee relations build a thriving volunteer program spanning several departments. I’ve helped redesign business processes for a 1/2 billion dollar company so that our acquisition team could close 8 deals a week instead of the 2 per month we had been doing. And, I’ve got a background in behavioral psychology to understand why people resist change and how to help them overcome it.

Here are 3 reasons why change processes fail and how to fix them.

1. Not understanding that change requires unlearning and unlearning follows a very predictable process.  If we are going to change something, it means that we are doing something now and we want to do it differently. That means giving up the old way and adopting the new way. For a behaviorist – this means – unlearning. All unlearning follows a pattern. Understand what that pattern is and how to trigger it  - and you can more easily control the process.

2. Not understanding that resistance to change doesn’t mean rejection of change.  Resistance to change is instinctual. We are asking people to unlearn habits and habits are hard to change, even for people who want to change. The resistance that occurs isn’t necessarily a rejection of the new processes. It’s really just an instinctual inability to let go of old habits. This manifests as all sorts of cranky behavior by the team, but it’s predicted to occur so there is no reason to get worked up about it.

3. Taking the resistance to change personally. The number of managers I’ve heard blame the employees for not understanding the brilliant ideas behind the change request  is stunning. People insert a LOT of ego into their efforts and take it personally when they experience resistance. Good managers understand how to help employees through that and the ones that succeed – get their egos out of the way and focus on helping their staff cope with the stress that is – change.

Hope this helps. I teach an online course on this. Why is Change so Hard https://humanistlearning.com/change1/ – which discusses the behavioral dynamic playing out and how behaviorists trigger and control the process.

Problems with Implementation Planning

A little bit ago I posted an article about how to avoid change management failures. (see: https://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2017/12/change-management-failures.html) Today I want to talk more about the implementation and planning process so that you don't have failures.

This comes from an interview I did for a reporter.

1. Given your past working on organizational planning, how do you describe the difference between it and implementation planning? Additionally, what is the relationship among strategy, implementation, and execution?

Organizational planning is the structure of the organization. What work needs to be done? How does it related to the other work that needs to be done? Who is responsible for getting it done? How are the parts of the organization going to work together to accomplish shared objectives?

Implementation planning has to do with specific project and processes. For instance organization may have an HR department – that is organizational planning. Implementation is when the HR department  rolls out a new set of benefits or a new health care plan.

In order to successfully roll out a new product or process you should have a strategy as to how you plan to implement it and then – the execution is actually implementing it. So the strategy is the plan.

2. Why is implementation crucial to project success? What are the main benefits?

If you don’t implement your plan – you don’t get anything done. So – implementation is crucial. If you have the best plan in the world it’s totally irrelevant if you don’t put the plan into action.

3. What are your tips for implementation planning best practices, or for writing an implementation plan?

Make sure your plan is reality based. You need to know what problem you really should be solving so that you don’t end up solving proxy problems (problems you think are your problem but really aren’t – an example of this is praying for rain when your real problem is you need water on your field.

You need to know what is really going to impact your problem so that you don’t pray for rain which doesn’t affect anything.

And finally you need to know what you really need to do to get the work done. What resources do you need? Do you have the resources you need? Can you get the resources you need or not? If not- your plan won’t work.

4. How can software tools aid in implementation planning? Do you have experience using any tools, and how did they benefit your initiative?

To be honest – I’ve used programs of my own design to get work done – but I’ve never used it for planning purposes.

5. If you have any examples from your own career where implementation planning greatly improved your success, please also share!

When I was in acquisition and mergers we had to coordinate 5 departments into one acquisition process. We had people who had to work with the lawyers and hold the sellers hands. We had people looking at the financials. We had people looking to make sure we had title. We had people looking at the equipment to make sure it was working and we had our buyers.  We creating a software tracking system to allow us to coordinate and track each deal to make sure everyone was on the same page.  The process involved us getting together to narrow down our focus into what really mattered so we weren’t wasting time on tasks that didn’t. We then had to figure out how best to make sure each segment was able to track their unique work needs while integrating into the whole. And it had to be user friendly so that staff would actually populate the system with information.  We did organizational planning – moved on to process planning and then used that information to create a custom software system we could use that would work. Then we had to implement it and get staff using it. This last bit was tricky because departments have a tendency to hoard their information as information is power and we wanted them to share.  We did this through collective rewards – Even though there were 5 departments – we are were all on the same team and rewarded based on how many deals we closed and how good the deals were.

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The best course you can take to help you with your planning processes is Reality Based Decision Making for Effective Strategy Development. It really will help you understand how to ask the right question so your strategy has the best chance of success.

https://humanistlearning.com/realitybaseddecisionmaking/

Change Management Failures

It seems like my entire career has been about managing change in some form or another.  I have been involved in several start ups and have transformed volunteer systems and business systems.

For instance, When I started at the LASPCA I inherited10 volunteers whose job was to spy on staff. In three years I grew the program to over 500 volunteers donating 20,000 hours a year in every department in our agency.

In business, I helped take an acquisition department doing 2 deals a month and helped turned it into a half billion dollar company completing 8 acquisitions a week because we changed our processes successfully. We used to get wannabee consultants come in – and when we asked them how many deals they could close – most said 2 a month. We were doing 8 a week – the average price of the deal was $250k. At one point I calculated that my team was generating $12k in new revenue for our company every hour.  I’m good at this.

I was recently approached by a reporter who wanted to know more about my experiences with change management Here are her questions and my answers.

1) What is the worst change management failure you have witnessed?

Every attempt to stop harassment in the workplace ever. Seriously – every major company does training and it doesn’t change anyone’s behavior. We are doing this on a national level. We have laws to do this. And … it has totally failed to create any meaningful behavioral change. We even doing online training now – still doesn’t work.  And yet – we still do the same thing over and over again – despite it not working.

Why do most attempts at change fail? Because the people leading the effort don’t understand the process of how behaviors are learned and more importantly unlearned. They plan for the best – roll out the new product or system and it’s not adopted.   There are several reasons for this.

First: Failure to understand the needs of the customers.  My father – Christopher Shaw, editor of the Sigplan Notices, once said – “design a system even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.” If the system doesn’t work right for the real people using the system no one will use it.  Failure to do your research and build a better system means failure. Before you even start – you need to make sure what you are asking people to do makes sense.  I have literally had people come to me to propose systems that don’t work. At all. Not even during the showcase. I have no idea what they were thinking, but … if your system doesn’t work better than my existing system and you don’t even know that your system doesn’t work – you are an idiot.  (*Sorry – pet peeve – I once had a team come in to pitch a GIS analysis system and the maps they showed me were brown. Like – a brown screen. Not a map – just – big brown rectangle with no distinguishing features – just – brown. I had to ask them to create differentiations between the layers just to see if what they were telling me their system could do, it could do. Not surprisingly – it couldn’t.)

Second: Failure to treat your humans as humans. This may come as a shock – but humans aren’t robots. You can’t just – reprogram them.  They have insecurities, prior knowledge base and most importantly habits. Habits are hard to break and we resist changing them unless we absolutely must. The reason people are still using XP is because the cost of changing is greater than the reward.  Microsoft had to stop supporting the software and people still didn’t change.  It doesn’t matter that 10 is a pretty cool operating system. People are only changing when their computers stop working.  In order to get people to adopt change you have to a) stop allowing the old thing to work and b) make the rewards for the new thing great enough to overcome the cost of doing things the old way.

Third: Repetition matters.  There is a saying in marketing and sales – you have to expose your customer to something 10 times before they even start to pay attention. The same is true with habit formation and change management is ALL about habit formation.  When you are helping people transition from one system to another – you have to provide repetition for people to learn what you want them to learn. Some examples of this. My sister works at a hitech firm out in LA. Large – 10,000+ employees. They changed their email system and for 3 months, the training department sent out reminder emails with information about what the new system could do and encouraged people to try out the new features. This repetition worked.  I am currently using Windows 10. I don’t browse in Edge though and every time I open up Chrome – Windows reminds me to try Edge. This repetition is a way to encourage me to use their system. It hasn’t worked yet – mostly because they disabled flash apps and there are things I can’t do in it. So – system failure.  A final example of repetition in tech adoptions. I have been playing Breathe of the Wild on Nintendo Switch. Whenever a screen change occurs we get “tips” about how to use the system better. How to fight bad guys better. Customers can’t be expected to remember all the whistles and bells put into a good system, so these built in reminders help. Eventually – I try out these things and add them into my repertoire of knowledge on how to use the system.

 2) What is a "low hanging fruit" / easy win that companies often miss in change management?

There are early adopters and laggers in any change management process. The low hanging fruit are the people with the least invested in the old system. People willing to try something new. These will give you the first chance to see how the system works in the real world with real people and give you feed back so you can tweak it and make it better for the next set of adopters. One of the mistakes companies make is they roll it out – hoping everyone will adopt it and don’t bother to do early testing with real people. Your low hanging fruit of early adopters are great beta testers and are usually kinder to you when the system needs tweaking.

Even with behavioral change – I roll it out in stages.

3) For tech leaders/executives, what is the most significant blindspot/misunderstanding of change management?

Humans aren’t robots. You can’t just reprogram us. We resist change. This doesn’t mean we are bad people or stupid. It just means we are instinctually programmed to resist change and there are number of behavioral reasons why change is hard for us. Understanding that resistance is a normal part of the process helps leaders view what is happening when staff resist as normal and not something to worry about. It’s something to work through. Plan for it. And if you don’t understand the science of why people resist change and what that looks like in real life – learn it.

4) What is an "early warning sign" that change management is likely to fail or produce poor results?

Arrogant managers who don’t bother to get input from various people to even know that what they are proposing is stupid. For people to adopt change  - the new way has to be significantly better than the old way and it has to solve a real problem that the old way has.  If you are too arrogant to find out you may be an idiot – you will set yourself up for failure. Good managers understand that they don’t know everything and seek out input so that their decisions are informed by real people and reality and not just their inflated ego.

Arrogant managers also fail to understand why resistance is happening. They tend to take the resistance personally – when that’s not what is happening at all. Humble managers understand that resistance is normal and something that has to be worked through. Arrogant managers throw their hands up – decide everyone else is an idiot and give up.

For me – the angrier and more arrogant a manager is about the change process – the more likely the change process is going to fail.

When I know for sure it’s going to fail is not from the “backlash” the change creates, but from how the managers are responding to that backlash. Again, the backlash is normal. Good managers and leaders help their teams work through it. Bad ones – get angry and give up. And that’s when I know it’s going to fail. Backlashes in behavioral science terms are called extinction bursts or blow outs. They are akin to an explosion. They can get really bad and really nasty. And all of this is normal. It’s part of the change process. It’s what change looks like – always. People who don’t understand that – fail.

If you want to learn more about change management from a behavioral perspective - take my course Why is Change So Hard which discusses how to get old behaviors to stop so that new behaviors can be adopted.

 https://humanistlearning.com/change1/

Creating Learning Programs that Actually Have an Impact

I was recently asked to weigh in on some questions about learning and development and whether or not they are worth the effort. My answer? It depends.

Q: How can learning and development support corporate KPI's (Key Performance Indicators)?

It depends on what you teach and why. Some training programs provide no improvement to KPI, others provide a lot. The challenge, as always, is to find programs that will actually help create changes in your staff’s performance.

Some are obvious – like learning new technology. Others are softer, like leadership skills and communication programs.  The hard skills often give you the most return on your educational investment because the employees need those skills to do their jobs.   The soft skills training are important too and can have a tremendous impact on output, but not all trainers provide trainings that work as this is a much more subjective area to measure.

Q: How will future trends in learning affect workplace skills development?

Obviously – people are moving to technology and online learning because It’s a cost-effective way to deliver training for most employers. For instance, I was just asked to bid on a job for a company with 7,000 employees spread out over 55 locations around the country. If we trained a location a day every day it would take us almost 2 months to complete that training. It would be a logistical nightmare to provide training for everyone that way. Online we can do it in a few days.  We also save on travel expenses, down time for employees and more. And we don’t have to worry about retake training if someone was absent the day of a live training.

You can also gauge learning through online tests to ensure comprehension of what is learned and record keeping for the training is easier online because the nature of how the training is conducted. This is important for mandatory trainings like harassment training.  However, online learning is not appropriate for every learning task or in every situation.

That 7,000 employee company I mentioned above is a manufacturing company. Only about 1/3 of their employees have access to computers. The rest work on a manufacturing floor. To get their employees trained, they have no choice but to do in person trainings or to arrange for online training in shifts for those workers which presents it’s own challenges. My point is that the solution will necessarily be a hybrid solution which is quite common. Most of my clients combine online learning with live Q&A sessions so that staff has an opportunity to dive deeper into the material and discuss real life applications of the soft skills training I just provided.

Q: Why should you use learning and development in your organization?

Training employees on how to do their job well is essential to every single job and employment situation.  At a minimum, companies need onboarding training for orientation purposes.  Ongoing training is helpful as it helps keep skills fresh, and to re-orient and refocus staff from time to time. It’s like reminding people of what they already know but why it’s important. Anytime you have a change in technology, you need to provide training on that new technology. Finally, there are some mandatory trainings that are done for liability purposes but that should be also be done to improve soft skills development.

For instance, harassment training. Most companies over a certain size provide harassment training. In some jurisdictions like CA, CT, ME and Canada – it’s mandatory to do this training.  Just doing this training reduces an employer’s liability should a harassment situation arise and they are sued.  The problem is most trainings don’t actually create any measurable change in behavior or value to the company aside from reduced liability.  This is because most of these trainings with few exceptions, don’t teach anything useful. They can be summed up in on sentence. Harassment is illegal so don’t do it.

But …. What if the training, in addition to saying it’s illegal so don’t do it also taught victims how to get it to stop?  That’s a training that is immediately valuable to the participants. It’s something they actually want to learn and are eager to learn and it will be put into practice immediately. When I do these sorts of trainings, my clients report an immediate change in how their offices function because every person is now applying what they learned.

Q: Why don't most training programs work?

Why don’t most soft skills training improve KPI?  It’s because what is being taught isn't useful. No amount of technology is going to change that. I once was asked in a learning and development discussion board about how people humanize their online learning programs. I was the only person who responded by talking about the needs of the learner. Everyone else was trying to humanize the trainer. The trainer doesn’t matter, the learned does!

The reason my trainings are so effective is because I use the self-interest of the learner to teach them what they want to know.  In harassment people already know it’s illegal. What they don’t know is what works to get it to stop. Almost all harassment training is focused on the harasser to try and get them to stop. It doesn’t work. It has never worked and it will never work. Why? Because harassers don’t want to stop. What they do works for them. No matter how many times you tell them "it’s illegal so don’t do that" you won't change their behavior. What works to change their behavior is to remove their reward. And you can’t remove their reward in a training.

This is why my training focuses on teaching the victims what they need to know. How exactly do you stop rewarding someone who is harassing you? How exactly do you document what is happening so you can get HR to assist you more effectively? In short, how do you retrain an obnoxious person to be less – obnoxious.  Everyone wants to learn that and that information is immediately useful to pretty much everyone, including people who bully, which is why after my trainings, they all implement what they have learned. 

To have an effective training, you don’t focus on what you want them to learn, you focus on what they want to learn and through that teach them what you want them to learn.

For instance, I have a course called How to Win Arguments Without Arguing: Socratic Jujitsu. It’s very popular as a personal development program. The first people who took it told me I had titled it wrong. It’s really a training on how to have discussions instead of arguments. But no one would take that course. I’m teaching people how to win arguments which people want to learn for their own selfish ego reasons. What they learn is a skill that they can immediately apply and get immediate positive results with by not arguing at all. It’s about teaching them to change their own behavior to change the behavior of others. Same thing with my harassment training – teaching people how to train other people to behave better, by changing your own behavior first. People really want to learn this and implement this knowledge immediately. If I focused on telling them they need to change, no one would want to learn it.

Focus on training the right people and provide them with the right motivation to learn and your training will be successful.

People who are motivated to learn will learn the content regardless of the format. If they are motivated to learn they will learn from books, audio books, videos and from live trainings. If they aren’t motivated to learn then it doesn't matter how good the training is, they probably won’t learn much.

Our focus as leaders and trainers and coaches should be on ensuring that what we teach is actually useful to the people we are teaching it to.  I provide my trainings in written form, video form, audio book form and live and in person. Why, because different people like to learn in different ways. It’s not up to me to dictate to them the learning format. What is important is what is learned.

Q: What analytics are important in measuring learning impact?

This is really 2 questions in 1. First, did they learn the material This can be done with a test to gauge comprehension of concepts.  The impact of learning though is often softer. Did it change anyone’s behavior?  With hard skill training, this is easy to gauge.  For instance, a safety training’s effectiveness can be gauged by its impact on the accident rate. I used to do a safety training for volunteers at an animal welfare shelter in Los Angeles. We reduced our accident rate so much we got a refund on our liability insurance. That’s a successful training, but that isn't surprising because it was a hard skills training.

Soft skills training are harder to measure but it can still be done. Did the training positively impact your employee turnover rate? Employee satisfaction?  Customer satisfaction surveys and more can all help you gauge whether the training helped.  For instance, if you were to do an effective implicit bias training, you would expect to see more diversity in hiring, less harassment complaints and more satisfaction with employees and customers.  All of that is measurable.

Why is a Learning Experience Platform the solution for corporate training in 2018?

It is a quick efficient way to deliver training to your employees.  Especially with onboarding and orientation. You can bring your new hire in, sit them at a computer and let them receive important safety training and corporate orientation training right there on the computer.  You can also use it to re-up training. Provide ongoing training and more. Is it cost effective?  Probably not for smaller companies, but for bigger companies with a lot of people working at computers already – yes.  For big companies that are manufacturing with a lot of people working on an assembly line? Not so much. It all depends on the company and their unique situation.

To learn more about the programs I offer, check out:

https://humanistlearning.com/programsoffered/

And yes - you can license my content for in house use on your corporate LMS.

Why do employees resist change?

They resist change because we all resist change. Every animal and plant on the planet resists change.

It’s instinctual, not really under our control. There are, however, ways to help encourage change and work past the resistance compassionately using well understood behavioral science techniques.

The task is to simultaneous eliminate the old behavior while training up the new one. This is a process that is done over time and has to be nurtured and supported. You can’t just do a training and expect everyone to change. That is not how it works.

The best advice to help managers succeed in a change management process is to not freak out at the resistance. Even people who want to change, resist it. Instead, plan for the resistance. Understand it’s not a rebellion, it’s just a necessary part of the transition and continue to put positive pressure toward change and to positively reward the people who do adopt the change.  Positive re-enforcement works better than negative – in all cases.

Depending on the size of the organization, one of the ways to ensure success is to stage the transition using the people most likely to adapt to the new changes first so that you essentially have a proof of concept. You work to make sure the new way of doing things is well established before bringing in the next group.

For example, one of my first jobs was that of a volunteer manager. I had 10 volunteers at a non-profit who thought their job was to spy on staff. The staff/volunteer relationships were toxic. I started out small. Found 3 employees who were willing to experiment with the volunteers. We trained the volunteers on the new job we were asking them to do. Those that didn’t want to do it were let go.  I worked carefully with both staff and volunteers for about 2 months making sure the staff felt supported so that they could establish good working relationships with the volunteers. It was a learning experience for both groups. Once those 3 staff members had volunteers they were working well with, other staff members started asking me to get them volunteers to help them with their work.

I had proved the concept and people started wanting to adopt. Was it easy? No – each new staff volunteer relationship needed to be nurtured and supported to be established right.  Only then could I move on to the next group. Within a few years I had 500+ volunteers donating 20,000+ hours per year in every department of our organization.

Cultural change on a large scale is possible, if you know what you are doing and aren’t afraid of the resistance.

You must work with and around the resistance. Don’t fight it. Resistance is normal. Make space for it within the change management process.

To learn more take my online course: Why is Change so Hard.

Examples of Change Management & Employee Engagement in Action

Last week I wrote about how to use science to successfully manage change processes. Today, I want to give you an example of how this works from my personal experience.

My first real job out of college was as a volunteer manager. I was brought in to fix a toxic volunteer staff relationship at a rather large non-profit. Toxic is an understatement.  We had 10 volunteers who thought it was their job to spy on the staff and report them being bad. For obvious reasons, staff didn’t want anything to do with the volunteers and were refusing to work with them.

The first thing I did was I talked to staff to find out what they hoped volunteers could do that would be helpful.  I didn’t assume I knew the answer, I found out, from the people who were open to the idea that volunteers could be helpful what they wanted volunteers to do and more importantly would allow volunteers to do. I didn’t force the issue. I just said – if you have a volunteer that actually wanted to help, what would you ask them to do?

I had 3 staff members who were willing to experiment with volunteers in a limited capacity. We agreed that volunteers could do 1 thing for them that would actually be helpful if it was done. We wrote a job description for this work so it was clear what a volunteer’s responsibilities were and who they reported to and why.  I created a new volunteer intake process that involved an application and screening process and training on the work we wanted them to do and we put all our existing volunteers through the process. 8 of the existing 10 volunteers agreed to go through this process and most confided that they had hated the old system because it was very negative and they had volunteered because they wanted to be helpful.

At this point, I only had a few staff members who were willing to work with the volunteers, but we assigned volunteers to them, gave them training and I worked closely with the staff to encourage them and help them mediate any problems with their volunteers. Basically, I had to train both the staff and the volunteers how to work productively together. This process took a couple of months.  Once those few staff members were working productively with their volunteers and their relationships had improved, other staff starting asking if they could have volunteers to help them too.
With every new request for volunteers, we wrote up a job description, created a training and recruited people into the system, worked closely with the staff and volunteers for the first few months to ensure that the system was running the way we wanted it to and that the relationships were positive and helpful.

We eventually grew the program to 500+ volunteers donating over 20,000 hours per year in every department in the agency.

This doesn’t mean it was smooth sailing. One of our pre-existing volunteers had a major blowout (which is a behavioral dynamic that occurs as part of the change process. Most times this is mild, but in some cases, it can be a – blowout).  This woman was the ringleader of the “old guard” spying project. She stayed on, but then continued to be horrid. I had to fire her 2 months into the transition as she was refusing to do the work we were asking volunteers to do. She launched an attack on me to try and get me fired. But by this time, I had allies in the organization that REALLY liked how things had changed, so the attempt to get me fired failed and after that – it was smooth sailing.

Our volunteers corp grew to include youth volunteers, law enforcement volunteers, adults with dual diagnosis and more. And we did all that while reducing our accident rate to the point our insurance company gave us a refund.

To recap the process, I used:

I started small and proved the concept by nurturing and promoting it over time. This is the key to effective change management.  Well, that and not being freaked out by the resistance. Plan for it. In advance. I didn’t fire the problem volunteer right away even though I knew exactly who she was and why she was a problem. I gave her an opportunity to change and gave her the benefit of the doubt. Only once the new system was in place and working well and she was an outlier, did I move against her. And honestly – firing was not my first choice; I had really hoped she would get with the new program.

Change is a well-studied phenomenon. Behavioral scientists know how to create change and what will happen when change is introduced to a group or an individual. If you want to be effective at it, use science, it works.

To learn more – check out this course: Why is Change so Hard

Employee Engagement and Change Management

Using science to help navigate the change process

I teach behavioral science applied to change management. Specifically, what we know about how learning and unlearning occurs and how that impacts change management processes.  I teach a course – Why is Change So Hard? that explores this.

What can organizations do to understand and manage employee engagement during times of change?

Organizations, if they want to be successful at creating change, need to learn how exactly people adapt to change and learn and unlearned new work habits. If you don’t have a good grounding in the science, a lot of what happens will catch you off guard. For instance, resistance to change is predicted to occur and is a natural part of the process that should not freak anyone out. Plan for it instead. Give employees time to adjust and adapt to the change. This is mostly about the mindset of the managers in charge of the change process and their expectations and how they deal with the resistance, which again, is normal and predicted.

What happens to Employee Engagement during different types of change?

Whenever change occurs, what we are really discussing is the removal of reward. So one way of doing things worked, now it doesn’t anymore. This can occur when you change your operating system for instance or your email system. People will resist and get upset and complain. What is happening is like a grief process. There is resistance to the new reality, and eventually people accept the new reality because they have no choice. This is normal. Not something to be upset about if you are the manager in charge. Treat it like grief. Commiserate and keep gently encouraging people to adapt. No – we can’t go back.

Another type of change occurs where the old way still works. This is much harder to change because it means people can refuse to change. And if they can refuse to change, they will refuse.  This happens when you try to change the culture of an organization, or you try to get a harassment situation to stop, or you are asking people to use a new form but the can still use the old form and still get things done. What happens is that people resist, not because they are being jerks, but because – that’s just part of the change process. There are ways to help employees adjust. You can enable and empower early adopters, support them and use them to create a new norm. But mostly, you just have to stay calm and patient during the rebellion to change and let it play out while exerting pressure to change.

What really helps is to adjust your training so that instead of having a 1 time training and expecting change, you roll out your training over time.  For instance, my sister works at a company that changed their email system. They were given an initial training, then over the period of 2 months, the training department sent out daily reminders about the new system and how to use it and nudges etc. This was a brilliant way to address the change, because it took into account the fact that people had to unlearn the old system and learn the new system and that is inevitably a process that takes a month or so. So plan accordingly.  You are building a habit and that takes a month or so of repetition.

What influences Employee Engagement during periods of change?

The attitude of the managers is key. If managers view the resistance in negative terms, meaning they take it personally or ascribe motivation to the resistance that has nothing to do with what is actually happening, they can make the process way more unpleasant that it really needs to be.   If managers view the resistance not as an attack on themselves, but as a normal part of the change process, they can be a lot more compassionate to the staff who are resisting and this makes the whole process easier and helps with how they go about motivating employees.  Managers who take resistance personally tend to try and bully employees into change. Managers who take a compassionate approach are supportive. Most employees prefer supportive approaches to bullying approaches.

What types of companies are doing this well? 

I think one of the best examples is Morgan Stanley – a couple of years ago they changed their corporate culture successfully - http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2015/06/can-bankers-change.html  Details at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/can-bankers-behave/389558/

What could companies be doing differently? 

When planning for change, they should take into account the natural resistance and plan for it. They should also understand that this is a marathon not a sprint. You can’t just do a training and have things be different. You have to manage the change process over time to be successful.

How do you implement a change management program that supports Employee Engagement?

 If the change is largely cultural, I recommend implementing the change in stages. Do a proof of concept with a smaller group and then fold in the rest in stages, building upon success. What you are trying to do is ensure that the change you want is solidified in the least resistant group and then using that group to help drive the social adoption which does require social validation. Each group brought in is given enough time to adapt and solidify the new behaviors before bringing in the next group.

If the change is structural, then you organize your training to take place over a period of two months and build in a LOT of repetition so that the new habits become – habits.

To learn more – consider taking my course – why is change so hard or have me do a training for your team.

The Hows and Whys of Unlearning

Not a lot of time is spent on unlearning. Most of us are focused on what we want to learn, not what we need to unlearn.

The problem is, if we want to grow and change, we usually need to unlearn old habits first.  The good news is there is a science to that. No really, it’s called behavioral psychology and it’s the study of how we learn and unlearn behaviors. Researchers have been studying this topic of about 70 years now.

The good news is that we do know how to create unlearning, or to put it in simpler language, we know what it takes to break a bad habit.  The bad news is that it isn’t easy to do. Which is why so many people who try to change, fail.  The good news is that if you have failed before, it’s not really your fault. It really has very little to do with willpower and strength. It has to do with how you are conditioned and rewarded (both for the old unwanted behavior and the new behavior).

I teach several courses that integrate the science of how and why unlearning happens into the course content. It’s relevant to how to stop bullying, harassment and retaliation. It’s relevant to change management processes. It’s relevant to helping teams adopt new behaviors despite all their fussing and whining about it (which is predicted to occur).

The simplest way to describe this process is this: if you want to stop a behavior, you have to stop rewarding it. And yes, I realize that that statement is incredibly unhelpful. How exactly you do that is the challenge. And unfortunately, each behavior is different because how it is being rewarded is different.

What you really need to learn is the science. There are 3 types of responses, positive (reward), negative (punishment) and neutral (which is when nothing happens).  Most people think if you want to stop a behavior you need to punish it. But actually that just reinforces it. Negative reinforcement is still – reinforcement. Not rewarding it at all is what actually works AND you have to do that consistently to get the behavior to stop.

If this is knowledge you think would be helpful get my book, take one of my online courses and learn it.

The Bully Vaccine

Why is Change so Hard?

How to End Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace