The SamSari Learning Design team spends a lot of their work day thinking about something that most of us try our best to avoid in the workplace – change. We humans are creatures of habit, and we often become attached to the way we approach our work. Consider those times in your own experience when you’ve asked people to move outside of their comfort zones and daily routines. What happened? For many, the initial protective instinct is to ignore or resist calls for change. Reformers are often accused of “rocking the boat”, when in fact they may be the only ones to notice that the “boat” may be sinking. As former statesman Woodrow T. Wilson once put it, “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”
This presents a major obstacle for many organizations hoping to affect changes intended to reduce the needless costs and inefficiency that often characterize the old way of doing things. SamSari has assembled a group of specialists that work at the front lines of the struggle to realize lasting organizational change. The SamSari Learning Design team is charged with developing better models and planning tools to support clients as they work to implement new strategies and ways of working.
FTCA: While all of us here at SamSari work with change, what makes your role as Learning Designer unique?
The Team: Well, we believe that any kind of behavioral change requires not only learning new skills and information, but ‘unlearning’ as well, that is, the process of breaking old habits and mind-sets. And that’s where our focus is – on making sure that the learning process within each change project is effective and keeps people motivated.
FTCA: In your experience, what do you think are some of the biggest obstacles organizations face in making change really “stick”. Can you suggest some specific solutions to addressing these obstacles?
The Team: One of the biggest mistakes is assuming that people will change the way they do things just because you tell them to. That is just not going to happen. Just think back on any change that you’ve tried to make in your personal life that didn’t succeed. Most likely, you didn’t really see and feel the need for that change. And what happens then is that you might make a superficial effort to change, but it doesn’t last and nothing changes in the long run. So the first step in a change process always needs to be a conscious effort to help people understand – and really feel – the need for doing things differently. But it’s not enough to do this in the beginning and hope that the feeling lasts – you have to keep urgency levels up throughout the whole process. This is one of the things we help our clients achieve when they’re going through a change process.
FTCA: What kind of model do you use to address the relationship between the individual and the larger organization?
The Team: Well, we tend to think of an organization going through the change process, but it doesn’t happen that way. What you really get is a bunch of separate individuals at different stages of their own, individual change processes. For example, if at the outset of a large change project, you were to take a “snapshot” of all the different attitudes toward the change within the company, you would end up with a huge range of mindsets. Some might be enthusiastic and ready to go, some (usually the ones who initiated the change) are already working to implement the change, whereas quite a few, usually a majority, don’t see any need for change at all or possibly see a need but aren’t ready to do anything about it. And the only way the organization as a whole can reach the desired new state is if it manages to help all these people, or at least most of them, get to the last stage of living the new behavior. There are tons of theories and models for how this should be done, but we like to use John Kotter’s model eight steps to change, for describing successful organizational change.
FTCA: Who do you think is more responsible for making the change happen, management or the front line workforce?
The Team: Whoever initiates the change has a great responsibility to make others see the need for it, and thereby create the change. Sometimes change initiatives come from the front line workforce, which usually makes implementation easier. But no matter where the initiative comes from, I’d say that management has the main responsibility to drive it further. Although an unwilling workforce can stall any type of change, it is the management that has the power to carefully plan and execute a change process that gains the hearts and minds of the whole organization. And their biggest responsibility in doing that is to really “walk the walk and talk the talk” – i.e. acting and communicating every day in a way that models the behavior that they expect from their employees. If not, distrust will grow among the workforce and the change will fail.
FTCA: We appreciate your sharing with us today, and we look forward to seeing what’s next from the Learning Design Team!
Do you have any questions or comments about SamSari's approach to change management? Feel free to leave a comment, in fact - we want you to!
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