Last time, we talked about how gathering input from the organization prior to a change is crucial to success.  But how, exactly, can you gather input without having to sit down with each individual employee?

Here are 5 ways to get accurate input without spending months on one-to-ones:

1. Focus groups:  Set up a series of focus groups across the organization.  Include all departments which will be affected by the change (even if it’s only tangentially), all levels (juniors often have valuable insights), and all roles (IT types might be less gregarious than the salespeople, but they often know more about the organization than you think)
2. Deputize managers to gather feedback:  Bring managers from the relevant departments together and show them how to facilitate an input-gathering session with their direct reports.  Provide them with some standardized, structured questions so you get consistent responses across the various departments
3. Host a ‘town hall’ meeting:  Bring everyone together in an auditorium or other large space, present the change strategy, and then ask for questions from the audience.  This won’t work in every situation (it depends on the size and structure of the organization) but it has the added advantage of providing employees with information about the change, and this can build both enthusiasm and teamwork
4. Try a pilot project:  Try a 4-6 month pilot in a specific department or area (much like McDonalds will try out a new menu item in a limited geographical region before rolling it out to all restaurants).  The feedback and insights you gain can be used to tweak the change strategy when you apply it to the rest of the organization.  This won’t be feasible for all change initiatives, but works well for new products, new marketing systems, new customer service processes, etc.
5. Set up an online forum:  Create an online bulletin board within the company intranet and invite employees to offer input, insights or even questions.  You may find that a normally reserved employee has a lot to offer when s/he has the opportunity to express their thoughts in writing without feeling as exposed as s/he would if required to do so in person.

As I mentioned before, sometimes it’s not appropriate to do too much internal input-gathering prior to a change.  However, it’s important to remember that when you ask for input, you’re helping your stakeholders to feel personally invested in the change - and that’s the first step to ensuring they respond positively and enthusiastically when it comes time for implementation.

Reading this article about organizational culture in the Harvard Business Review the other day, I was reminded of my long-standing belief that the term 'organizational culture' shouldn't just be a noun that describes a 'thing', but also a verb which describes an action - the action of creating and maintaining a culture.

The notion that organizational culture exists has been around for a long time, though the term itself wasn't yet popular - I can remember having conversations in the 1990s about whether so-and-so was a 'good fit' for this or that organziation.  We might have used terms like 'corporate environment' or even 'company vibe' to describe the way a particular organization operated, but what we really meant was 'culture'.

Then the dot-com era arrived, along with Herman Miller furniture, free snacks in the lunchroom and super-cool offices in converted downtown warehouses, and suddenly 'culture' was a big selling point for fast-growing companies who were competing for top talent.

The problem is that you can't just give people Aeron chairs and unlimited free diet Coke and assume that will create a culture.  'Culture' may be a noun, but creating and sustaining organizational culture is an ongoing activity which isn't top-down or bottom-up - it's more like a scatter graph with arrows and squiggles and dotted lines connecting everyone in the organization, and even lots of people outside the organization, to each other.

Culture isn't a static thing; it's constantly in flux.  And it's not just imposed on an organization on a Monday at 9am via a memo entitled "Our New Culture".  It's created through individual activities over an extended period of time.  That's why when I was writing my doctoral thesis, back in 2000, I coined the term 'culturing' - using a verb rather than a noun is a good way to remember that it's a process, not an event or a finite state.

Organizational culture is really all about relationships:  The relationship the organization has to its employees, the relationships those employees have to the organization and to each other, and the relationships the organization - and its individual employees - have with outside stakeholders like clients and suppliers.  Relationships are the product of a series of interactions over time:  When the interactions are positive, the relationship deepens and is lasting; when the interactions are negative, the relationship deteriorates and finally ends.

But it's more than that.  The nature of individual relationships is a product of the nature of the interactions, too:  When your interactions with person A consist mainly of weekly golf games, and your interactions with person B consist mainly of romantic dates, you naturally end up having a different relationship with person A than you do with person B.

With that in mind, 'culturing' is the term I use to describe actively creating specific interactions designed to build the organizational culture you want.  It's not enough to hand people a list of "Our Core Values" and then hope for the best.  Culturing is about helping the individuals within an organization - from the senior leadership team right down to the junior interns - to apply those values to their day-to-day activities.  It could be as simple as reminding people that since one of the organization's core values is 'responsiveness', on a day-to-day basis they should be making an effort to respond to phone calls and emails as promptly as possible, or it could be as complex as ensuring that 'responsiveness' is reflected in a commitment to a nimble supply chain functino.

And here's the thing:  When you start thinking about culturing rather than culture, you'll end up getting the culture you want, faster - and more effectively.

So you've just spent the past 12 months working on your change initiative:  First there were weeks of requirements gathering, followed by a lengthy strategic planning process, then systems setup and training - it's been a long, involved year.  But now it's the official launch date, and you can finally relax - right?

Well...not really.  As the kids say, it's about to get real up in here.

Even the best laid plans...

Sustaining a change can sometimes prove elusive.  Once a business initiative is implemented, project teams cease to meet regularly, feedback loops dry up and everyone gets back to business as usual.  Except that the old 'business as usual' doesn't exist any more, and confusion ensues.

It's important to remember that while you've been working with this change for months, it's still relatively new to almost everyone else affected by it.  Employees may have been through training and other types of preparation, but the changed environment isn't second nature to them yet.  And make no mistake:  To sustain a change, whatever you're asking people to do must become second nature to them.

Change is happening all the time

No company is static, no matter what business it's in.  In addition to the 'official changes' encompassed a change initiative, the business and the marketplace continue to evolve independently.  It's important for the project team - and for those departments which are involved in sustaining the official change mandate - to demonstrate how the new ways continue to align with the business.  This may involve weaving changes into new market information, reflecting them in new marketing materials and sales processes, or demonstrating how the changes will continue to positively impact customer service.  Actively creating these connections will help people transition from 'previous state' to 'present state' while maintaining continuity.

Respect the past

The last thing people want to hear during a change launch is that everything they've been doing up to now has been a waste of time.  As you move into the implementation phase, avoid trashing or discounting the previous way of doing things - it will only create morale issues that will adversely affect employees' enthusiasm for the change.

A better approach is to show how the changes are necessary building blocks for the future of the organization, and how they will deliver great outcomes for both the company and for the individuals involved.

Demonstrate progress

People will always get more excited about a change - and do a better job of sustaining it - when you can demonstrate that you are moving towards your goals.  It's imperative to build key metrics into your change management project plan, and keep them updated both as you approach the implementation and well afterwards.

The most obvious metric is the impact of the change on the bottom line, but there should also be a range of other metrics that you can point to:  It may be the successful launch of a new product, an expansion into a new area, an advance over the competition - whatever makes the most sense to your organization and the change mandate.  Keeping employees updated on progress well into the implementation phase will help maintain motivation.

Giving it all some closure

As we've discussed, implementation day isn't the end of the change initiative.  However, there is value in taking the time to recognize that a change has been successful - that the new ways of doing business have become second nature and are delivering results.  By recognizing this 'closure', and communicating it to employees, you're giving everyone permission to feel good about what they've accomplished and acknowledging their hard work.

You may not be able to set a calendar date for this closure - it may make more sense to time it to a sales goal or compliance target - but it should be set at the beginning of the change initiative, and clearly communicated to the organization.  It's a good way to draw a line under the initiative, which will make it easier to move on to the next one (because there's always a next one!).

When a business needs to change dramatically, in order to stay in business or stay competitive in a changing marketplace, it can wreak havoc on employees.  Even the best top performers can find themselves struggling to keep pace with the change and return to a state of equilibrium.  However, the quicker that employees can return to that equilibrium, the quicker the organization will see the positive results of the change.

Many people think that the best way to encourage employees to return to business as usual is to ignore the 'feelings' around a dramatic change and focus strictly on the tasks at hand.  In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.  Change always raises emotional issues, whether in our professional or personal lives, and companies which acknowledge this will find employees much more receptive to - and better equipped to deal with - even the most dramatic changes.

By injecting change efforts with a little empathy for employees, leaders have an opportunity to positively influence the movement of individuals through the change process.  In their book, Aftershock, Harry Woodward and Steve Buchholz present an effective 3-part model for helping individuals through change:  Clarify; Share; Engage.

Clarify:  The first step toward empthy is to Clarify the issues and concerns an individual may have with the changes taking place.  It starts with listening - both to what's said and what's not said.  At this stage, it's not about refuting concerns, but to clarify that you understand them.  Most people's concerns about change stem from a fear of the unknown, and simply listening and clarifying those concerns by using active listening questions like "What do you fear losing?" and "What would you like to gain?" can help them move past their fears.  This is the beginning of empathy: When you engage in active listening and demonstrate you've heard and understand their concerns, individuals begin to feel they're not alone - which makes it easier for them to move forward into unknown or changing territory.

Share:  In the second stage of this model, you can focus on sharing your understanding of what's happening with the organization.  The key is to relate what you're sharing back to the concerns expressed in the 'Clarify' stage - don't just repeat the company 'party line' about the changes in a generic way, but make it specific and personal.  Even if you can't directly dispel every individual concern (you may not be able to guarantee their job, position or responsibilities), the fact that you're being honest and straightforward will make a big difference.

Engage:  Once you've clarified and shared - and hopefully calmed some of the individual's worst fears by demonstrating empathy for them - you're in a position to gain their commitment to move forward with you (and the organization) through the changes.  Engagement is the root of ownership:  when an individual engages in the process, they can take ownership of their role in the success of the change - and this helps them feel more in control of the process.  Ask them for ideas on how to successfully implement change; create an individual action plan, together; come up with ways to implement their ideas.  The more the individual feels like a valued, crucial part of the change, the more they can focus on what they'll gain rather than what they'll lose.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that business change management has to start with weekly therapy sessions for employees in order to be successful.  However, providing a little empathy - especially at the beginning of the change process - can significantly reduce change resistance while encouraging rapid adoption of change.  In fact, in my experience empathy can actually reduce implementation time and cost by as much as 25% over the change cycle.  And that's a 'business result' everyone can appreciate.

Sometimes, memos just aren't enough

The supply chain department in a global healthcare organization was given a clear directive:  Cut $50 millin in costs in the next 12 months or there are going to be serious cutbacks, and this department won't be immune.

Mid-level supply chain manager Adam was both ambitious and smart, and had all kinds of ideas for saving $50 million.  In weekly meeting after weekly meeting, he presented his ideas using carefully prepared PowerPoint slides.  Everyone around the table murmured appreciatively, but nothing ever seemed to happen.

In his researches, Adam had discovered that the company purchased latex gloves in all 22 countries in which it operated, and it always purchased the same brand.  The problem was that the prices from country to country varied widely:  Gloves that cost 10 cents a pair in, say, Canada, were costing as much as 40 cents a pair in other countries.

With a total spend of more than $250 million in latex gloves every year, Adam figured the company could easily save $50 million just by reducing the number of suppliers they used around the world, and established a consistent pricing structure.

However, knowing that another memo or PowerPoint deck would fall on deaf ears, Adam tried a different approach.

He contacted all 22 of the company's offices around the world, and asked them to send him a pair of gloves and the price they were paying per pair.  In the next weekly meeting, he bypassed the PowerPoint presentation and instead laid out all 22 pairs of gloves on the table.  To each pair of gloves was attached a price tag indicating the cost of the pair in the country in which they'd been purchased.  Then he wrote '$50 million' on the whiteboard at the front of the room.

As other staff members filed in, they looked at the gloves on the table, looked at the whiteboard, and started to ask questions.

The result?  Adam had approval to move forward on his glove purchasing rationalization plan within 10 minutes, after weeks of geting nowhere.

Why?  Because his 'display' was more engaging than yet another email, memo or PowerPoint presentation; because it didn't require his co-workers to read through paragraphs of text to understand; and because most people realize that any concept which can be explained that simply is probably a good one.  He'd hit all the right notes:  He'd increased engagement, reduced effort and generated in-the-moment consensus.

The lesson for change management professionals - and, indeed, for anyone who wants to effect change in their organization but is meeting roadblocks - is that it's easier to engage people when you can demonstrate your point in a more compelling way, and engagement is the first step to effective change implementation.