Lessons Learned about How Change Does or Doesn't Happen
I’ll be 78 later this year and more than 60 years of that time has been spent in the workplace. That gives me a lot to reflect on. Quite a few of those years were spent as a
trained, well-paid and (I like to think) “professional” change agent. Much of my work as a change agent tied to surfacing,
identifying, clarifying and making changes in and to organizations on
management’s behalf. (I’ve also opposed
and resisted a change or two – as change agent and as change target.)
As I look back on the constellations of
events that mark my life, I can see clearly some lessons to be learned. Bear with me as I repeat and emphasize a
portion of that statement: Lessons to be learned. In other words, lessons that could have been
learned but weren’t necessarily learned – at least not at the time. And so I’ve decided to cull back through my
experiences, looking for situations where there were lessons to be learned and
to convey them via short, anecdotal stories, coupled with some hindsight commentary. So, let’s begin.
I first began working as a change agent while
serving in the United States Navy. I was
a Chief Petty Officer, a weapons systems technician who had been trained as an
internal organization development (OD) consultant and working at one of the Navy’s
five Human Resources Management Centers.
By all accounts, I was quite good at this
thing we in the Navy called “command development” instead of what civilians
call “organization development.” My apparent
prowess led to me being assigned to work on some high-level issues. In the course of one such effort, the Admiral
for whom I was working at the time had me sit in on a meeting in which two
Commanders, fresh from command at sea and new to our program, were being
briefed on the program and introduced to some of their new colleagues. Somewhere in the course of the session, one
of the new Commanders, clearly puzzled by what he saw as unnecessary
complications regarding the making of organizational changes, remarked that he
didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
He indicated that all he had to do was put what he wanted in the ship’s
Plan of the Day and his chiefs would see to it that what was supposed to happen
happened.
There ensued a brief lull in the conversation,
broken when the Admiral turned to me and said, “Nick, is that how it works?”
As always, which is what I suspect the
Admiral was counting on, I was direct to a fault. I replied, “No, sir, not on any ship I’ve
ever been on.”
“How does it work, Nick?” asked the Admiral.
“Well, sir, I get up before reveille, head
for the Chief’s Mess, grab a cup of coffee and a copy of the Plan of the
Day. I sit down, sip my coffee, and read
over the Plan of the Day. If there’s something
in there like what the Commander mentioned, I have to decide if I’m going to
actively support it or simply go along with the program – or make it look like
I’m going along with the program – or if I have to find some way of ducking the
program or maybe even torpedoing it.”
There next ensued a lively conversation
between me and the Commander who had claimed to see no problems with making
changes. At one point he leaned forward
and said with what I took as a menacing smile, “I’d like to have you on my ship, Chief.”
Grinning back, I replied, “I’d like that,
too, Commander, but I’ll bet you I’d have more fun than you would.”
At that point, the Admiral intervened and
redirected the conversation.
Lessons to be Learned
A couple of obvious lessons to be learned
from the preceding anecdote are that (1) I could probably stand to be a lot
more tactful (some would add “respectful”) and (2) things don’t always work the
way folks at the top think, hope or believe they do.
Another lesson to be learned is the
importance of the view from the bottom; that is, what does a given change look
like as it rolls downhill? It is only
from this latter perspective that the likelihood of adoption and cooperation as
well as opposition can be determined. It
is one thing to lead change, it is quite another to enlist others in support of
it. Change must be managed up as well as
down.
Perhaps the most important lesson to be
learned is that successful change is marked by partnerships and collaborative
relationships that run from the top to the bottom of the organization. Absent these, only the illusion of change
will occur.
