Who does the change begin with?

I usually use a particular ice-breaker activity when delivering corporate training workshops regardless of the content to teach one of the most powerful leadership lessons I have learned that provides an answer to the question – “who does change begin with”. I will usually have participants stand, do some finger, hand and wrist exercises, to relax after lots of writing. Then I instruct them to “use your index finger to touch your cheek”. While doing so, I stand right in front of them and place my index finger on my chin. Almost 99% of the time more than 95% of the class points their index fingers to their chins not on their cheeks as I have instructed. The lesson – “chins are easier to point to than cheeks?” Definitely not, it’s much deeper than that.

It’s obvious and most participants understand my trickery after thinking about it for a while, and the point I was trying to make – that people actually always do what they see their leaders doing and do not necessarily do as their leaders say. The lesson – leaders not only drive change by communicating the change vision to a factor or 10 (like John Kotter of Harvard Business School recommends), but can achieve even more by being visible partakers and exemplars of the change itself. Example is therefore the more potent driver of change alongside powerful communication and engagement regarding change. So, when leaders tell their people to cut costs; use a new software or change their consumption or spending habits, such talk must be immediately backed up with exemplary action or evidence of exemplary action that they have likewise taken.

With all of the economic uncertainty, business and organizational leaders are focusing a lot of creative and innovative ways of weathering the storm. It means that there will be many new projects, products, policies and procedures aimed at cutting cost, reducing wastage and improving productivity and efficiency. These new projects will mean that things will change – from how they used to be, to how they ought to be. With change often comes resistance – active or passive: your employees, customers, shareholders, regulators and everyone else in your ecosystem has a natural inclination to be slow to accept change, usually at varying degrees. Some will be early adopters and others will be late or even active resistors to the change. It is therefore the very important role of leaders to “lead the change” and not from the rear, but right from the front, by focusing on two critical things that my icebreaker activity reveals – communicating the change vision powerfully and clearly; and leading the change through your own actions and examples. Some people are of the school of thought that “ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS”, I believe that the combination of the right actions and words creates change and that actually the right words laced with exemplary leadership INSPIRES ACTION.

As a veteran of a plethora of change projects myself over the last 17 years of my professional life, including leading change projects in my home, family, Church and other social groups as well as teaching the subject to thousands of people over the last 10 years, I have come to the conclusion that a number of things are critical to ensuring that this formula of words + exemplary action = TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE. They include having a focused change management strategy/plan and implementing it pari-passu with the actual project itself. So, often organizations execute projects using the discipline of project management – time, resources, people, efforts and results, and ignore to pay similar attention to the soft side of projects, the people side. If you are implementing a new software, or changing your procurement policy or on a larger national-scale trying to promote “made in Nigeria” or “invest in Nigeria”, then you should not just run the project plan that focuses on the core deliverables, you must also run the change plan that focuses on getting the people to embrace the change. Without the people – the multifarious stakeholders buying into the project, you can execute from A-Z but in reality not get beyond “E”. To really move your project from A-Z, you really need to move the people from A-Z, and beyond the formula of words and exemplary action, I strongly recommend that you ADKAR the change. The mnemonic comes from the Prosci Institute and Change Management Learning Center in the United States and challenges us to do five things 1) Create AWARENESS about the need for change: this involves powerful communication/exemplary action about the current state and what makes it undesirable; 2) Fueling DESIRE to change: by using your create words and exemplary action to sell the WIIFM (What’s in it for Me) to the stakeholders impacted by the change; 3) Building KNOWLEDGE, and 4) ABILITY: equipping people with the skills and resources that they need to actually implement the change; and 5) providing REINFORCEMENT to support the change: this is achieved by the combination of leadership commitment and performance management that aligns the change with the organization or society’s culture.

Are there lessons here for everyone: yes there are: beyond the obvious one for our political leaders who are currently driving a number of change projects and the philosophy of “change”, this is also relevant to the hundreds of thousands of business and organizational leaders who are going to be trying to do things differently over the next few months to weather the economic storm and survive. Remember the powerful formula: TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE = Inspiring Words + Exemplary Leadership delivered via the conduit of ADKAR! So, back to our question: who should change begin with: clearly with the leader – with powerful words and even more powerful exemplary actions. In my world as a leader, the change begins with ME! How about you?

Omagbitse Barrow, FCA