Leading Change Without Authority: Practical Tools and Techniques

Leading Change
Without Authority
ASQ's 4th Annual SoCal Quality Conference (SCQC)
15 October 2011
Rick Hefner
Director, Process Effectiveness
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Rick.Hefner@ngc.com

Background
• Successful change requires the right combination of strategy,
structure, and support
• Your chances of success depend on your current culture, the
desired end state, the resources available, the past response to
change , and your ability to recognize and address resistance
• This workshop will provide practical approaches, tools, and
techniques for introducing and sustaining change in your
organization
2
This presentation reproduces the “IDEAL Model Graphic” copyright 1997-2009 by Carnegie Mellon University, with special permission from its Software
Engineering Institute.
ANY MATERIAL OF CARNIEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY AND/OR ITS SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INSTITUTE CONTAINED HERIN IS FURNISHED ON AN “AS-IS”
BASIS. CARNIEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRSSED OR IMPLIED, AS TO ANY MATTER INCLUDING, BUT
NOT LIMITED TO, WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR PURPOSE OR MECHANTABILITY, EXCLUSIVITY, OR RESULTS OBTAINED FROM USE OF THE MATERIAL.
CARNIEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY DOES NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTY OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO FREEDOM FROM PATENT, TRADEMARK, OR
COPYRIGHT IMFRINGEMENT.
This presentation has not been reviewed nor is it endorsed by Carnegie Mellon University or its Software Engineering Institute.
IDEAL is a service mark of Carnegie Mellon University.
Leading Change Without Authority - Rick Hefner

The IDEALSM Model
Source: “IDEAL: A Users Guide for Software Process Improvement”,
Robert McFeeley, CMU/SEI-96-HB-001, Feb 1996, used with permission
3 Leading Change Without Authority - Rick Hefner

The Non-IDEAL Model
4
Change agent
develops plans
and schedules
Management
sets a goal of
achieving “Level
x by date Y”
Change agent
assigned the
task with a
fixed budget
The projects listen politely
(perhaps) to the change
agent’s plans and
schedules, but either ignore
the requests for action or
provide a minimal response

Topics
• Necessary ingredients for change
– Why people resist change
– Effective strategies for addressing resistance
• Assessing your organization’s capability to change
• Keys to leading the change
– Management support
– Influence without authority
• Keys to sustaining the change

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Opportunities for innovation and
creativity, learning and creating
Recognition from others, prestige
and status
Being part of a group, identification
with a team
Economic security, freedom from
threats
Physical survival needs: food, water,
shelter, etc.

Why Do People Resist Change?
I want to stay where I am because…
…my needs are already met here
…I have invested heavily here
...I am in the middle of something important
I do not want to change because…
…the destination looks worse than where I am now
…there is nothing to attract me forwards
…I do not know which way to move
…the journey there looks painful
...the destination or journey is somehow bad or wrong
…I do not trust those who are asking me to change
I am not going to change because…
…I am able to ignore the change
…I have the power to obstruct the change

Why Do People Resist Change?
Perceived Loss of Personal Power
Here’s the new
practices you need
to start
implementing.
If these are
essential industry
best practices…
and I haven’t been
performing them….
then I’ve been
wrong….
so they must not be
essential industry
best practices!

Reaction to Change Perceived as Negative:
Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle
9
Immobilization: Initial paralysis at hearing the bad news
Denial: Trying to avoid the change
Anger: Frustration, outpouring of bottled-up emotion
Bargaining: Seeking for a way out
Depression: Final realization of the inevitable
Testing: Seeking realistic solutions
Acceptance: Finally finding the way forward

Reaction to Change Perceived as Positive

Willingness to Change
• Early adopters are motivated by perceived benefits
• Late adopters are motivated by avoiding pain
Source: Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm, 1999, used with permission

Assessing your Change Targets
• Beliefs - Basic drivers of thought and behavior
– What beliefs do they have - about themselves? Their work?
– How strongly do they hold these beliefs?
– What beliefs do they have - that led them to oppose the change?
– What beliefs do they have - that could be used to help convert them?
• Values - Guides for what is good/bad, important/unimportant
– Are any of their values being violated by change actions?
– What are their stress values? Are these being violated?
– What values can you appeal to, to persuade them to change?
• Goals - Objectives we set to satisfy values and needs
– What are they on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
– Career goals? Social goals? Other goals?
– How are their goals affected by the change?

Assessing your Change Targets (continued)
• Perceptions – Their personal reality
– What do they think will happen because of the change?
– What are their perceptions of those implementing the change? Do they
think the change agents will be fair? Do they think they are competent?
• Potential - What they can and are likely do to oppose the change
– What power do they have? Source of that power? (position, expertise,
social, etc.)
– How might they use that power? (blocking, persuading others, etc.)
• Triggers - Those events that would tip them into action
– What would cause them to use their power? (events, actions, etc.)
– What would inhibit them beforehand? (involvement, listening, etc.)
– What would inhibit them after they resist? (listening, threats, etc.)
– Who do they listen to? (friends, social leaders, senior people, etc.)

Stakeholder Analysis
• Identify key stakeholders
• Plot stakeholders current feelings (X) regarding desired change
• Plot stakeholder feelings needed (O) in order to successfully
accomplish desired change
• Identify actions for closing gaps
Name Strongly
Against
Moderately
Against
Neutral Moderately
Supportive
Strongly
Supportive
Action Steps
Senior Mgmt X O Xxxxxxx xxxx
PMs X O Xxxxxxx xxxx
Engineers X O Xxxxxxx xxxx
Customers X O Xxxxxxx xxxx

Exercise: Stakeholder Analysis
• Identify key stakeholders
• Plot current (X) and desired (O) feelings regarding change
• Identify grief state
• Identify willingness to change state
Name SA MA N MS SS Grief/Joy Cycle Willingness
to Change
Action Plan
Senior Mgmt
PMs
Engineers
Customers

Topics

Different Approaches for Different States

Address the Underlying Beliefs
• Sponsors and performers must have a strong vision of the desired
culture
– What are my roles and responsibilities?
– What changes in behavior are required?
– What are the underlying beliefs and values?
– How do I benefit – WIIFM?
Culture
Ethics Values Norms
Attitudes Beliefs Priorities
Opinions Behavior Conduct Do & Don’ts
Covert level
Intermediate level
Overt level

Communicate the Key Messages
• The change is driven by proven, industry best-practices
– Adoption is about learning how to apply these practices
to our work
– The practices may feel awkward and have limited value
until we learn them
– It’s OK to make mistakes – we will get better over time
• Improvement involves short-term investment for long-term gain
– Improving is essential to meeting our business goals
• These improvements are an enabler (not a guarantee) of success
– Other aspects (people, technology, customer relationship, etc.) are equally
important
• When the entire organization is improves, everyone’s job becomes
easier
• Continuous improvement is a way of life

Address Fear of Failure
• The risk of change may be seen as greater
than the risk of standing still
– Making a change requires a leap of faith
• The perceived loss of personal power
– I’m seen as competent now, but in a new culture…
Effective Strategies
• Clearly describe why the situation favors change
– Business goals, WIIFM
• Make it clear initial mistakes are expected and will be tolerated
– Create forums for asking and answering questions
• Show people how they can be effective in the changed
environment

Encourage and Support
• Practitioners may feel they don’t have time
to learn new ideas
• Practitioners may need role models
– Most change agents don’t need role models,
because they easily imagine new situations
• Ensure adequate resources during the learning curve
• Search out and publicize good examples and successes
– Set up pilot programs that model the change
• Encourage the next step in the change process
• Ensure management takes accountability for action
– Must change short term priorities to achieve long term results

Ensure Accountability
• Adopting and sustaining improvements
is about each practitioner learning and
performing the new behaviors
• The role of management in cultural change
is to hold people accountable for the new
behaviors and conduct
• Change agents can enable management by:
– Helping them have a clear vision of the new culture
– Identifying inappropriate behavior
– Providing tangible, objective measures of adoption/sustainment

Help Them Accept Change
• Healthy skeptics may improve an idea
• People may fear hidden agendas
– Late adopters often look for messages
in how resistance is handled
• Set up mechanisms for obtaining feedback
– Some will prompt genuine improvements
– Some will be based more on fear and anger than substance
• Be honest about setbacks and negative impacts
• Management must be willing to enforce change in the face of
objections
– Consensus will almost never be reached
– Communicate that objections and uncertainty does not eliminate the need
for change - "The dogs may bark, but the caravan goes on."

When Faced with Unexpected Resistance
Stop
• The natural tendency of many people
is to respond immediately, with an
authoritarian or angry response
• This may generate sympathy for the resisters,
galvanize the resistance, and/or make it covert
Look
• Pause, assess the situation, and diffuse the emotion
• What is the person’s emotional state?
Listen
• Is this a misunderstanding or a legitimate concern?
• What does their message say about their underlying beliefs, values,
goals, perceptions, potential, triggers?

Exercise: Action Plan
• Revisit the stakeholder analysis and determine an action plan for
each of the stakeholders
Name SA MA N MS SS Grief/Joy Cycle Willingness
to Change
Action Plan
Senior Mgmt
PMs
Engineers
Customers

Topics

A Typical Interchange
• “You’re not doing practice X.”
• “You must do that practice
to satisfy our initiative.”
• “Practice X adds value.”
• “Well, it’s in the initiative,
so it must be important.”
• “Well…, you have to do the
practice or… you’ll fail the
initiative!”
• “So.”
• “The customer didn’t say
we have to do practice X.”
• “How?”
• “Practice X doesn’t make sense
for us – we’re special.”
• “$^&*&%!!!!!”
Change Agent Change “Target”

Barriers to Seeing the Value
“Sometimes you have to believe it to see it.”
• Practitioners may not have worked in an environment where the
practice was performed
• Practitioners may have worked in an environment where the
practice was performed poorly or in a non-value-added manner
• The practice may run counter to a long-held belief
• Believing the practice is an improvement may require an action the
practitioner is not willing to take
– Awkwardness of doing something new
– Admit they’ve been doing it wrong
– Loss of personal power when perceived to be an expert in the current
approach

Willingness to Change
• Early adopters are motivated by perceived benefits
• Late adopters are motivated by avoiding pain
Source: Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm, 1999, used with permission

Management Support
Management must:
• Understand the key messages
• Be willing to take actions to reinforce them
• Provide resources to support/sustain process improvement efforts
• Set expectations that essential project functions will be funded
and processes will be followed
– Project planning, estimation, tailoring, CM, QA, etc.
• Support process improvement and sustainment, rather than
passing appraisals
• Reward mature processes development and sustainment rather
than individual heroics
– Tell me how you will reward me, and I’ll tell how I will behave

Principles of Influence
• All interpersonal behavior involves exchange
– “Paying” others for what we request; being paid for what we do
– You have influence, insofar as you can give others what they need, in
exchange for what you need
• To have influence, you must:
– See the other person as a potential ally
– Clarify your goals & priorities
– Diagnose your ally’s goals & priorities
– Possess resources to help your ally
– Negotiate the exchange

Possible “Currencies” to Exchange
Inspiration
• Vision
• Excellence
• Moral/ethical
correctness
Task
• Resources
• Challenge/learning
• Assistance
• Organizational support
• Rapid response
• Information
Position
• Recognition
• Visibility
• Reputation
• Importance
• Contacts
Relationship
• Acceptance
• Understanding
Personal
• Gratitude
• Self-concept
• Comfort

Five Dimensions of Work
• Skill variety - The degree to which the work
requires you to exercise a variety of skills
• Task identity - The degree to which the work
requires you to complete a whole,
identifiable piece of work
• Task significance - The degree to which your
work affects others and contributes to social
welfare
• Autonomy - The degree to which you have
control over the means and methods you use
to perform your work
• Job feedback - The degree to which carrying
out the work itself provides you with direct
and clear information about how effective
you are.
Source: Richard Hackman & Greg Oldham, Work Redesign, 2004, used with permission

Exercise: Determine Possible Exchanges for
Each Key Stakeholder

Topics

Deep vs. Shallow Commitment
Deep - characterized by:
• A good understanding of the logic
and other reasons
• Alignment of the commitment
with personal beliefs, values and
motivations
• Strong emotional buy-in
• A personal attachment to the
person doing the persuading
• Little questioning or doubt about
what needs doing
• Timely actions and persistence in
the face of adversity
Shallow - characterized by:
• Limited understanding of the
logic of the argument
• Misalignment with one or more of
beliefs, values and motivations.
• Low emotional buy-in
• Limited trust or liking of the
person doing the persuading.
• Wait-and-see, detached attitude
• Internal justification for limited
actions

Organizational Culture
• A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it
solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration,
that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore,
to be taught to new members as the correct way you perceive,
think, and feel in relation to those problems.
• Artifacts
– The practices that can be observed in such areas as dress code,
leadership style, communication processes
• Espoused values
– The elements the organization says it believes in, the factors that it
says influence the practices in which it engages
• Basic underlying assumptions
– Unstated beliefs the organization has come to accept and abide by
37
Source: Edgar H Schein, Organizational Culture & Leadership, 2004, used with permission

Why Institutionalization Fails
• Few engineers or managers are trained in organizational
psychology
• Improvement efforts implement the generic practices (i.e., change
the artifacts) without understanding or addressing lower level
contributors to culture
Culture
Ethics Values Norms
Covert level
Intermediate level
Overt level

Addressing the Underlying Beliefs
• Sponsors and performers must have a strong vision of the desired
culture
– What are my roles and responsibilities?
– What changes in behavior are required?
– What are the underlying beliefs and values?
– How do I benefit – WIIFM?
Culture
Ethics Values Norms
Covert level
Intermediate level
Overt level

Effective Use of Audits and Appraisals
• Process and product audits provide tangible, objective
measures of adoption/sustainment
– Policies, processes, and standards must reflect the desired behaviors
• Appraisals evaluate the effectiveness of the audit program
– Standardized tools, approaches, and methods
– Consistency of appraisers – if they understand the way we are
structured and operate, there is less time required to understand what
we are doing.
– Pre-appraisal activities to prepare projects for the appraisal process
• The frequency of audits and appraisals, and the sampling, must
reflect the progress of the cultural change
– As the culture begins the change, more frequent and more in-depth
audits/appraisals are required
– Later, the amount of audits/appraisal may decrease, if the culture has
truly changed

Summary
• Successful change requires the right combination of strategy,
structure, and support
• Your chances of success depend on your current culture, the
desired end state, the resources available, the past response to
change , and your ability to recognize and address resistance

Leading Change Without Authority: Practical Tools and Techniques

Leading Change Without Authority: Practical Tools and Techniques

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