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Harnessing
the Energy of Change Champions
By Jim Clemmer
Peter Drucker
once said "whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I
have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission." That sure squares with my
own consulting experience. When I look back at the hundreds of team or
organization changes I've been involved in during the last three decades, most
successful – and certainly all major ones – were driven by "monomaniacs
with a mission." Sometimes the champion had a powerful organizational
sponsor running interference for the passionate person who was pushing hard for
a change or improvement. Other times, he or she was on their own at first and
built a strong change coalition or team of change champions.
The
change could have been in an accounting or human resource system. It could be a
clinical service, record keeping procedure, training program, or work process.
Sometimes it was a change in the organization structure, key process or
decisions on the core services the organization was providing. Research into
the nature of innovation and organization change clearly shows the key role change
champions play in team and organization change. They are needed to overcome the
bureaucratic response of "we've always done it this way" (which
almost guarantees it's no longer relevant today). Champions push against the
inertia, passive resistance, or outright opposition that resists most changes –
even if they're for the better.
A
good champion is passionate about their cause or change. He or she is a
staunch, zealous fanatic. A great champion is emotional, irrational,
irreverent, impatient, and unreasonable. He or she wants the change – no matter
how big – to happen this week, this month, or certainly by the end of this
quarter. To an impassioned change champion, the sky is often falling and the
situation is desperately urgent.
The
improvement opportunity the change champion is advocating is often presented as
the one and only key to the organization's future. Highly effective change
champions don't just rock the boat, they sometimes capsize it. They want to
disrupt and demolish the status quo. Many of the best champions don't just want
change; they want a revolution.
With
their focus on ordered, controlled, and planned "change management,"
many managers suppress or drive out champions. In an oppressive environment
numerous would-be champions become good little bureaucrats conforming to the
official plans and obediently following "the system." Others
subversively continue to make changes out of sight of management or the
bureaucracy. Some leave to start their own businesses or join a less stifling,
more entrepreneurial organization.
Change
champions are vital learning leaders for an organization. But many are not in
formal leadership roles. We need to harness their energy, ideas, and creativity
today more than ever. But we have to learn how to coordinate their unbounded
and disruptive zeal. Their energy needs to be gently directed toward our larger
goals and improvement process. Change champions have great strengths, but many
also have glaring weaknesses. For example, they may refuse to see or try to understand
the need for a delicate balance between change and stability.
We can't manage change (a true
oxymoron) or champions. Sometimes the best we can do is point them in the right
direction and get out of the way. Then sponsor and protect them from the bureaucracy
when they need it (servant-leadership). Once change champions have found the
new trail, we can pave it over and make it official. Then we can set the
relevant teams or parts of our organization on this new road to higher
performance. Meanwhile – if we have a healthy culture of innovation and
organizational learning – more change champions are getting ready to move us
off this track. Today's solutions are already creating tomorrow's problems.
Let's
Get Practical
Following
are a few approaches that have proven successful in nurturing, harnessing, and
leading change champions to move the organization forward:
- You can't encourage and support
what you don't know is happening. The most interesting and useful local
change and improvement initiatives rarely make it into reports or formal
channels. That may be because they're "illegally" breaking
corporate rules, deviating from the standard process, or failing to follow
the official plan. It may be because local champions or teams (skunk
works) don't realize the significance of their innovation to the rest of
the organization or a potential new market.
- One non-negotiable is that all
improvement activities focus outward. All changes either serve an external
client or partner. Changes that make internal life easier but reduce care,
service, quality, or innovation aren't improvements. Current and potential
clients and/or the partners serving them should be at the center of, or
key members on, the local learning teams. They need to be "mucking
around" to find new and improved ways of producing, delivering, or
supporting your products and services.
- Demonstration or pilot projects
are powerful learning, change, and improvement tools. These can be great
opportunities to set up a "
- A highly effective leader can
have twenty years of rich learning and experience. But many mediocre
performers have one year of experience multiplied twenty times. The same
learning disability afflicts organizations that haven't developed the
systems and practices for transferring and communicating the rich learning
that comes from local initiatives.
- Institute an internal
"best practices and good tries" system, clearinghouse, or network.
You could have intranet sites, frequent meetings, voice or e-mail learning
exchange systems, team visits, project fairs, or other share-and-compare
forums. Measurement systems and feedback loops should make the results
every team is getting highly visible and widely available to everyone.
Your education, training, and communication activities should continuously
keep people throughout your organization in touch what's working and what
isn't.
- Celebrate, publicize,
recognize, honor, thank, applaud, and otherwise encourage champions and
local teams who take initiative to change and improve their part of the
world.
- Look for the existing leaders
and champions who are making improvements and changes. Shape your
improvement plan and process by building on their energy and experience.
Since change champions won't be covering all areas as completely as
possible, they are also the logical starting point for making the changes
and improvements that will better round out and balance your long term
effort.
- Develop change and improvement
momentum by building around the champions who are most likely to make the
effort succeed. They will help to bring the others onto their side. They
are also the ones you and everyone else can learn the most from. But don't
try to impose their successful approaches on others. Ownership and
personalization are the keys to local adaptation of changes and
improvements. Sell, persuade, educate, and communicate.
- Don't automatically label resistance
to change as negative and something to be overcome or beaten back. The
real enemy of organizational change is apathy. "Just tell me what you
want done, boss, so I can get out of this place and on with my real
life" is the attitude that kills change. Resistors often have strong
passion and high energy. They resist because they care. Understand the
roots of their resistance and re-channel it. Get them inside the circle of
wagons shooting out.
- Discuss with your management
team how your successful change champions (some of whom will be present)
have emerged and been supported in the past. What can you learn from those
experiences? How does your bureaucracy suppress or drive out emerging
champions? How can you ensure that change champions get the mentoring,
sponsorship, and management support they need to buck the system? What do
your champions think?
The
single biggest key to leading change and nurturing champions from the middle or
lower levels of an organization is to not dis-empower
yourself. Don't point your finger upward and say most of these points apply to
"them."
If you're not a senior manager, your
organization change and improvement choices are:
- Do nothing but complain and
hope "they" smarten up
- Quit , or
- Make as many changes as you can
in your own area. Help others to change and try to influence the system.
In other words, act like a leader!
Copyright
©2003-2004 The CLEMMER Group. All rights reserved.
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About the author:
Jim
Clemmer is a bestselling author and internationally
acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management team
developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams, and personal
growth. During the last 25 years he has delivered over two thousand customized
keynote presentations, workshops, and retreats. Jim's five international
bestselling books include The VIP Strategy, Firing
on All Cylinders, Pathways
to Performance, Growing the Distance,
and The Leader's Digest. His web site is www.clemmer.net.