The keys to leading through change

My dad was a fierce planner. He used to coordinate hunting and fishing trips throughout the US and Canada, sometimes wrangling up to 50 men on excursions. Though he loved to hunt and fish, I think planning and executing is what really fulfilled him. After each trip, though, he returned perplexed and frustrated. He counted the remaining slices of bread and the amount of butter, pasta, meat, and so forth (he’d tracked this information for years in his spiral-bound notebook). And after each trip, there was too much of something and not enough of another thing left. He adjusted his quantities and yet the same thing continued to happen. My dad was striving for perfection, but he never achieved the perfect trip.

This is exactly what every leader should remember about change: You will never achieve perfection. You need to lead on the perimeter of perfection.    

My dad constantly trying to best his last effort rubbed off on me.  In all my years of supporting change, I also constantly tried to best my last effort.  I would get frustrated, anxious, and even upset when things didn’t go well.  It took me years to get my groove on and understand how to lead through change. 

I’m going to highlight my favorite eight change adoption leadership principles through a substantial change moment scenario in my career: combining technology platforms after a large merger. 

Note: The customers in this example were our colleagues across the newly merged company — the end-users of the combined internal technology platform. 

1) Trust 

Before the new merger & acquisition (M&A), our customers trusted us — my tech team and me. We spent years building processes and practices, earning the right to call them not only our customers but also our allies.  With the merger staring at us, we needed to start the process over, to find technical and cultural alignment with our new teammates.  It’s important to note, in this case, our company was the purchaser (there’s an entirely different feel when you’re from the company being purchased).   

Gaining the trust of humans who are losing their beloved identity isn’t easy. We were coming in to take over their @companyname email addresses and asset management systems (among other things), and we needed their support to get to our goal.  To add to this, we were pushing ourselves to deliver change in just four months. We had a stop-gap solution in place for immediate needs, but we needed to move quickly to help the newly merged company continue to operate effectively. 

How did we move forward? 

To start building trust with our new customers, we gathered a team of change warriors from both companies — folks we felt could stick to the aggressive timeline, power through, and bring everyone else along for the ride.  Together, we set to work building our solution, planning and executing our way through to meet our deadline.  We celebrated both our technical achievement and our newfound allies, and trust was born.  Though the goal was to achieve technology parity, the higher-level objective was to reach cultural balance and earn trust. 

2) Marketing 

Delivering technology change is just like marketing a new product; you must know your customers and deliver with them in mind.  This scenario was no different.  Over the years we had learned strategies to manage change: First, we classified our changes into do something or do nothing categories, based on how our customers would perceive the change: 

• Do something: Delivering features, functions, automation, and tools most customers are excited about or that help them perform their jobs more efficiently

  Example: Rolling out an easy-to-use video conferencing platform 

• Do nothing: Delivering a change your customers didn’t ask for and feel little value receiving 

  Example: An operating system update that takes 4+ hours and multiple reboots to install 

Do something changes are much easier: A percentage of customers are saddled up, ready to ride. They think the change will help them.  Do nothing changes can be a bitter pill to swallow.  Customers don’t immediately see how the change will help them. 

What kind of change was this one? 

Moving our newly acquired customers over to our technology stack was a do nothing change.  It took a passionate marketing campaign to prepare and explain the change (with swag, food, communications, training, handholding, and an over-the-top implementation and post-implementation support strategy) to make it work.         

3) Piloting 

I remember a meeting with our technical team to discuss piloting our change plan.  There was resistance; it would be too difficult.  I posed one question:  If every customer arrives at the office on Monday and their badge doesn’t work (or they can’t print, or there’s some other tech issue), what would you like me to tell the executives?  That we didn’t test our plan first to see if it would work?  That clarity helped us quickly pull together two groups of customers and spin them through our change moment ahead of schedule.  By the time we reached implementation weekend, we had a throng of folks willing to come in on Saturday and Sunday to accept the change early.   

How did we do that?   

We offered incentives (swag and food), and made it easy for them (they could bring their children into the office with them — obviously pre-COVID).  I vividly remember approximately 40 folks hunkered down with their IT allies, getting to the other side of their change moment early. 

Was it painful to arrange the pilot?  Yes.  Was it a lot to ask of the team?  Yes.  Was it worth it?  Oh, yes!  As a result of the pilot, we made significant adjustments to our approach, allowing our substantial change moment to go virtually without error.  Had we not put ourselves through that exercise, day one would have undone all the trust we’d worked so hard to build.   

4) Ring-fencing 

It’s going to happen: You’re going to be asked to leave a group (or several groups) behind during change.  This might be a temporary or permanent request you need to plan for as a leader.   

In this example, we were asked to leave one critical group behind.  Again, there was resistance (rightfully so) from the technical teams since their perspective was that this was an all-or-nothing change.  We worked through the what-if scenario and, though it was ugly and this customer group would lose some functionality, we agreed it was possible and went ahead with a plan to implement their technology change a month later.   

Why was this allowed to happen?   

This customer group wanted up-front confirmation that their processes wouldn’t be negatively affected by the change.  That’s something no technology leader can commit to with a straight face.  Since this group was at a critical point with their own M&A activities, the right answer was to understand their needs and care for them appropriately, even if it meant extra work in real time and later for us and lost functionality in the interim for them.      

5) Organic growth 

With each change, there should be extreme rigor around planning and executing.  If you’re lucky, you have an amazing team of technical and non-technical folks pushing toward common goals, and you have milestones in place to track progress and accountability.  As you start to reach your go-live date, you need to pause.  Pencils down.  Time for organic growth. 

• Organic growth: The stopping point in a project at which you step back, prior to launch, and resist further planning.  It’s time to enter execution mode.     

About a week prior to executing our technology platform change, we stopped planning.  No matter how hard we had worked to reach the perfect implementation, there would be failures.  Own this truth, support the notion of failure to some degree, and make sure your team knows you expect some issues. You can’t plan for what you don’t know.    

What can you do? 

Be prepared for anything.  Have the right people in place, schedule checkpoint meetings in advance, and identify the metrics you’ll use to track trends.  Be ready to turn on a dime and respond to whatever comes your way.   

You’ve set the stage that things will be imperfect, and now you will have organic growth. 

6) Fingers aren’t made for pointing 

During this change example, I received a call in the middle of the night.  “We have a major issue.”  I’m awake!  The engineer walked me through the problem and told me the remediation strategy.  It was indeed a significant miss in our planning, but by the time I got the call, the team had already determined a path forward and were well into executing the fix.  I expressed my gratitude for the heads-up and suggested they carry on; we’d discuss in full at the morning checkpoint.    

At that time, I asked the team to review what happened, breaking down our communication and planning gap.  You could have heard a pin drop.  There was hesitation and a suggestion that they didn’t want to point fingers.  In that instant, I realized two things: First, they were protecting each other; trust had been earned.  Second, though I consider myself a disarming leader, the team thought I was looking to place blame.   

How did you handle that? 

I regrouped and told the team I wasn’t looking to blame anyone; I just wanted to make sure our plan was updated so we could avoid the issue with future M&As.  Everyone exhaled.   

That wasn’t the end of the conversation, though.  I told them how grateful I was for their swift action and their quickly formulated remediation strategy.  As leaders, we need to help our teams navigate through challenges and resist the urge to place blame.  

7) Be out loud 

After the checkpoint call, I asked the technical PM to talk for a few minutes.  As we reviewed the impact of our implementation issue, I suggested we craft a note to our boss and the executive leader of our acquired company, briefing them on what happened.   

Did we really need to be out loud about this issue since the team was already implementing a remediation strategy?   

I’m a fan of being honest and proactively admitting fault.  I’d rather our executive team be armed with facts about the situation than hear about an issue secondhand.  This openness helps to build trust both with your team and with your executives. 

I asked the PM to write and send the note, copying me.  It’s good practice to have your team learn how to summarize an issue for executives, take on the feedback, and answer any follow-up questions. I was there to support and back my team, but I didn’t need to get in the way.   

8) Levity 

Getting through a substantial change moment requires humor.  I feel geeks generally have this characteristic built into their DNA — a need to inject humor into any situation.  During change, don’t forget to channel your inner geek and bring some levity to challenging situations.  When you’re in the thick of change for months, your teams need to laugh together; it alleviates tension that builds over time.  Find ways to nurture humor in a healthy way to ease stress.   

Bringing it all together 

If you find yourself leading through change, you need to go all in.  Make sure your teams and customers know you are the face of the change; don’t shy away from this responsibility.  If the change fails, it’s your failure to own.  If it succeeds, it’s your team's success to own.  

How do you get comfortable when something goes wrong, even if it was out of your control?   

If you’ve followed the principles I’ve highlighted, this should be straightforward.  You planned, you executed, and, remember, you: 

• Earned trust.   

• Marketed the need-to-know info, and even said it might be hard to accept if it’s a do nothing change.   

• Piloted the plan to get to your best possible opportunity for success.   

• Took time to understand your users and ring-fenced critical areas.  

• Set the stage with your team that there’s no blame, you aren’t looking for perfection, you’re in it together, and you’re prepared for (and will get through) anything. 

• Were out loud with challenges and everyone was briefed on what went wrong and how it was being fixed. 

• Laughed, repeatedly, and continue to find reasons to laugh.   

There are countless other factors that are key to a successful change, but they aren’t nearly as exciting as these!  Remember, leadership isn’t about having the perfect number of bread slices; humans will adapt to imperfect situations. It’s about helping humans navigate through the imperfection. 

— Jill P.

My Dad in his element

Contributors:

• Edits by Elyse Goldberg