The chances are that right now you’re implementing (or planning) a new IT system, an org restructure or a new product introduction (NPI). Or maybe – like one of my clients at the moment – all three. But, as you know, IT systems can haemorrhage cash, org restructures usually tank morale and your NPIs always disrupt you before they disrupt your competition. It’s hard to think of many better ways to upset your investors and staff. So what can you do?
Better project/change management, comms and prioritisation are all good ways to tackle haemorrhaging, tanking and disruption. But why is it that however hard you try, you always seem to face the same amount of resistance with every change initiative? Projects fall behind on day one as a result of inertia that was entirely predictable but not forecast. People’s discretionary effort is redirected into squinting into the future to see if they still have one. And they cling to the evaporating shelf-life of their current product portfolio because it’s paying the mortgage right now.
These types of changes you’re making are good changes. And your solutions to help people adopt them are good solutions. But there's a fundamental but hidden problem in trying to keep the IT project on track by tighter financial control; or trying to coax people through reorgs by talking about reorgs; or trying to reduce disruption by prioritising.
All of that is entirely rational, which is why it makes almost no difference to how people feel. Their resistance specifically generated by your projects is only the tip of the iceberg. But when you’re in project mode, that tip is all you can see and it’s all you have the time and budget to deal with. And that’s the Change Management hamster wheel you keep running round, chasing your tail from project to project, time after time. But below the surface, people’s innate resistance to the generic threat of change – 50,000 years in the making – dwarves the visible as it descends deep beyond the reach of reason.
To make people comfortable with the whole idea of change, you have to deal with their whole iceberg of resistance. Projects can’t do that, and what’s more, it's entirely unreasonable to expect them to do so. They are the most risky, expensive and disruptive activities any organisation will undertake. Project Managers and Change Managers don’t have the time – or the remit – to do anything other than deliver a specific change and move on. Anything more or anything less is a performance management issue. They're too busy changing what the organisation does to even think about changing something as primal and deep-rooted and cultural as people’s relationship with change. Take the time to don your scuba mask and dip your head under water though, and it’s pretty obvious that what you’re looking at is a major behavioural change initiative in its own right.
If your strategy forecasts the need for more change more quickly, and if you’d like to achieve that with less resistance, research shows that adaptability delivers more value to the bottom line than any other driver of behaviour. In an increasingly unpredictable world, there will be those who get the need to develop a more adaptable mindset and culture, who want it and who are prepared to do something about it. And there will be those who don’t. According to research, only 10% are doing something about it. So you get to choose whether to join them on the road to mastering adaptability or to decide it can’t be too much of a problem if no-one else is doing it either.
Rich Alderton specialises in raising adaptability intelligence and delivering executive coaching and mentoring, learn more here.