Outcome: Buy-In
As the Leading People Through Change Model shows, the first change leadership strategy, Expand Involvement and Influence, must be used consistently throughout the change process. It’s at the heart of the change leadership strategies.
The core belief of our approach to leading organizational change is that the best way to initiate, implement, and sustain change is to increase the level of influence and involvement from the people being asked to change, surfacing and resolving con- cerns along the way. This was a key strategy in the preceding chapter, when we discussed dealing with the first three reasons why change efforts typically fail. Without this strategy, you can- not achieve the cooperation and buy-in you need from those responsible for making the changes you’ve proposed.
Which of the following are you more likely to commit to:
a decision made by others that is being imposed on you, or a decision you’ve had a chance to provide input into?
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What may seem obvious to you isn’t obvious to many leaders trying to implement organizational changes. They believe changes will be implemented much faster if they make quick decisions, and it is quicker to make decisions with fewer people providing input into the decision-making process. While it is true that decisions can be made faster when fewer people are involved, faster decisions do not usually translate into faster and better execution. The
“top-down, minimal involvement” leadership approach ignores the critical difference between compliance and commitment.
People may comply with the new directive for a short time until the pressure is off and then return to old behavior.
Providing opportunities for involvement and influence pro- duces long-term, sustainable commitment to a new way of doing business, rather than short-term compliance. Keep Figure 12.2 in mind as you think about how much you want to involve people in the change process: Resistance increases the more people sense that they cannot influence what is happening to them.
Perceived Loss of Control
Resistance
Figure 12.2 Perceived Loss of Control Increases Resistance to Change
If people aren’t treated as if they are smart and would reach the same conclusion about the need to change as the change leadership team, they perceive a loss of control. Their world is
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about to change, but they have not been asked to talk about
“what is,” explore options, or consider possibilities. Their infor- mation concerns have not been addressed. Similarly, if personal concerns are not surfaced and acknowledged, people lose a sense of autonomy. They collude with others; they become anxious, and their resistance increases. Then, when T-shirts with a slogan are given out and everyone is sent to “one size fits all” training, people begin to believe that the organization really is out of con- trol. This puts their sense of control in jeopardy, which again increases resistance. The bottom line is that people have to influ- ence the change they are expected to make, or, as Robert Lee said:
“People who are left out of shaping change have a way of reminding us that they are really important.”
Flexibility: Using a Number of Different Change Leadership Strategies to Successfully Lead Change
The eight organizational change leadership strategies on the perimeter of the model proactively address the other twelve Predictable Reasons Why Change Efforts Typically Fail. They also illustrate a sequential process for initiating, implementing, and sustaining change.
To help make the remaining eight change leadership strategies come alive, we offer the following case study involving a problem that has plagued millions in America.
Case Study: Non-Support-Paying Parents
As many as 20 million children in America may have noncustodi- al parents who avoid their child support obligations. According to the Federal Office of Child Support, the total unpaid child support in the U.S. is close to $100 billion; 68 percent of child support cases were in arrears. An overwhelming majority of children—
particularly minorities—residing in single-parent homes, where Strategies for Leading a Change
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In the United States, child support enforcement is a loose con- federation of state and local agencies with different guidelines that answer to the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement.
Getting agencies to work together is the greatest challenge. While legislation exists to enforce child support payments, there is too much bureaucracy and not enough manpower to pursue non- support-paying parents across state lines and take them into cus- tody. As a result, many of these parents have beaten the system.
Up until the 1990s, information on these parents was stored in paper files in clerks’ offices in the county where the parent resided. County clerks were responsible for using this information to try to enforce the collection of child support. Often, as a county clerk got close to tracking down a parent not paying court-ordered child support payments, the parent would move to a different county or even a different state.
With the major challenge of sharing information stored in paper files across county lines or even state lines, it became near- ly impossible to catch the non-support-paying parents. As a result, custodial parents and kids who were due to receive child support ended up losing.
As frustration grew over this situation, the federal government decided to take on the challenge. In the early 1990s, federal leg- islation mandated that each state implement an electronic track- ing system that facilitated the sharing of current information across county and state lines to better enable the tracking of these parents. This may sound like a relatively simple change to make, considering that computers and the Internet are now com- monplace in most businesses. However, many county clerks were in their fifties and sixties, lived in rural areas, had never used a computer, and had been trying to track non-support-paying par- ents with a notepad, pencil, and telephone for decades.
Do you think the county clerks being asked to change had con- cerns about the proposed change? Of course they did. Many of these county clerks had information concerns, such as how having a new computer would improve the situation in their
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county. In counties that were already doing a good job of collect- ing child support, people wondered if they needed to participate, or if they could continue using their paper files as long as they were successful. Counties that had been using a computer system for years to track cases wondered if they needed to use the new computer system, or if they could keep using their current sys- tem. People wondered how long it would take to move the infor- mation from their paper files to the computer.
Many of the county clerks had personal concerns as well.
People said things like “I’ve never used a computer. Will I be taught how? Can I do it? If I can’t learn to use the new computer system, will I still have a job? Besides using the new computer sys- tem, how else is my job changing? This sounds like a lot of extra work. I’m not ready for this.” These questions are typical at this stage.
In addition, the clerks had implementation concerns. They wanted to know when they would be trained on the new comput- er system. They wanted to know who to contact if they needed help after training. Many wondered if any counties were “going live” before they were, and they wondered if they could talk with people in those counties. They also wondered when the whole state would be up and running on the new system. Finally, they wondered what would happen if the computer system went down or was unavailable for a period of time.
Once the change was in motion, some of the clerks brought forwardimpact concerns. For example, they wanted to know if they were catching any non-support-paying parents they would- n’t have caught without the new system. They wanted to know how much more money they were collecting compared to when they were doing things the old way. Many were curious to know if their customers (custodial parents) saw a positive change in how they were working with them and the results they were achieving.
In time, the clerks’ collaboration concernsbegan to surface.
Here are some of their comments: “I’ve seen the success of this Strategies for Leading a Change
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new system firsthand. Is there anybody who is not yet convinced that this is a good idea?”
“I’m so glad I got to be part of the pilot. I can’t wait to go back to my county and share the good news. They are currently pretty skeptical about this new system.”
“The system is working pretty well within the counties around us that have ‘gone live.’ Are there other counties or states we should be working with that we haven’t connected with yet?”
Once the new system was up and running, the clerks brought forward their refinement concerns. While they acknowledged that the new system was an improvement over how things used to be, they suggested areas that might be improved. For example, a question came up about how they could connect their system to other systems (other county and state child support systems, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the new-hire database, the IRS) so that they could better track people and enforce the collection of child support.