How do we manage change in our organizations? Not very well, apparently. According to statistics, the success rate for many planned change implementations is low: 37 percent for Total Quality Management; 30 percent for Reengineering and Business Process Reengineering, and a whopping 3% for some software implementations.

Regardless of the industry, situation, levels of people involved, or intended outcome, change seems carry a real possibility of failure:

• Internal partners fail in attempts to promote and elicit proposed initiatives across departments.
• Leaders get blindsided by unknowns, creating more problems or becoming part of the problem when attempting to find a fix.
• Improper, or non-existent, integration between developers and users cause lack of buy-in and resistance.
• The change doesn’t get adopted as conceived, with financial and personal fallout.

Change initiatives can be far more successful if we include systems thinking in our change management models.

THE SYSTEMS ASPECT OF CHANGE

I believe change is a systems problem. But let me start at the beginning with my definitions of change and systems.

CHANGE: Change is an alteration to a system and entails modifying an existing structure that has been working well-enough for some time, accepted by all, and habituated into the daily norms while maintaining balance.

All change must include a way for the elements – the existing behaviors, roles, policies etc. – to buy-in to, and incorporate, new outputs while maintaining the rules and beliefs of the foundational status quo.

SYSTEM: Any connected set of elements that agree to, and are held together by consensual rules and beliefs that generate a unique set of behaviors and exhibit a unique identity. Because change represents risk to the status quo, systems defend themselves by resisting when feeling threatened.

In order to facilitate congruent change, it’s necessary to get agreement from all who will touch the final solution. A good way to encourage this is to not only include everyone involved with the status quo (including front line workers) in the problem definition and brainstorming of possible solutions, but to develop a path forward (There are specific, sequential steps in all change processes.) that is agreeable to all.

When leaders define the problem and solution and then attempt to get agreement, they run the risk of insulting the core Beliefs that are the very foundation of everyone’s jobs.

Too often change is approached with an eye on altering activity without ensuring that the core system maintains balance, thereby putting the system at risk. When we attempt to push behavior change before eliciting core Belief change, we

• cause the system to defend itself (i.e.resistance);
• overlook helping the system design it’s own version of congruent change;
• are left managing the fallout when the stable system is forced to defend itself.

Herein lies the problem: until or unless the full complement of elements that created and maintain the problem and will be affected by the new agrees to change, the system will resist change regardless of the problem that needs fixing. The system is sacrosanct.

Here’s where change agents face problems: In general, outsiders cannot know what norms must be maintained. Change is an inside job.  Congruent, resistance-free change must teach the system how to change itself. My new book How? explores this topic thoroughly.

Sample

ALL CHANGE MUST ADDRESS SYSTEMS

Most influencing professions (leadership, coaching, consulting, sales etc.) begin with a goal to be met, adopt an outside-in approach that uses influence, advice, ‘rational’ scientific ‘facts’, and overlooks the fact that anything new, any push from outside the system, represents disruption.

We put the cart before the horse, attempting to change behaviors and elicit buy in before the system is certain it won’t be compromised. Until the system knows it will remain in balance, whatever problem is being resolved will continue as is – it’s already built into the system:

• The full complement of elements that created the existing problem must be assembled and recognized;
• The risk the system will face when doing anything new;
• Everyone/everything within the system must accept that it’s not possible to fix the problem with known resources;
• All of the elements (people, policies, rules, relationships, etc.) that will be affected by a new solution – i.e. change – must understand, buy-in to the ways they’d be changing to ensure they end up balanced.

Until all above are managed the system will resist change (or buying, or learning, or eating healthy or or) regardless of the need or the efficacy of the solution. Indeed outside influencers actually cause resistance.

But we can actually lead Others through to their own change:

• Maintain Functional Stability. Any change initiative must maintain the foundational balance of the original system. Change is not so simple as shoving in a new Behavior.
• Achieve Buy-In. For a system to be willing to change successfully, to avoid resistance, a system must understand the risk of change; recognize exactly what fallout will occur when anything is added, and how each affected element must modify to maintain the integrity of the system.
• Maintain Underlying Rules and Beliefs. Great data or solutions, important needs or dangerous consequences do not influence change if they run counter to the system’s beliefs and rules, overt or covert. (It’s why your Uncle Vinny still smokes with lung cancer, and why training doesn’t cause new behaviors.)
• Avoid Risk. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work the other way ‘round: when we attempt to push a new behavior – say, asking a heart patient to change her diet or exercise program – before eliciting belief change from the entire system, we will achieve resistance as it may be seen as a threat.

Note: the issues that must be addressed for change without resistance are the same regardless of the problem or number of people of people involved – a company resisting reorganization, a patient refusing meds, a user group resisting new software, a buyer who hasn’t figured out how to buy, or a group not taking direction from company leadership. As outsiders we too often push for our own results and actually cause the resistance that occurs.

It’s possible to use our positions as outside influencers eschew our bias and be real Servant Leaders and teach the system how to manage its own change.

CASE STUDY: SYSTEMS ALIGNMENT

Here is a case study that exhibits how to enable buy-in and change management by facilitating a potential buyer through her unique series of steps to change.

I was with a client in Scotland when he received a call from a long-standing prospect – a Learning and Development manager at a prodigious university with whom he’d been talking for 11 months – to say, “Thanks, but no thanks” for the product purchase. After three product trials that met with acclaim and excitement, an agreed-upon price, and a close relationship developed over the course of a year, what happened? The software was a perfect solution; they were not speaking to any other providers; and price didn’t seem to be a problem.

At my client’s request, I called the L&D manager. Here is the conversation:

SDM: Hi, Linda. Sharon Drew here. Is this a good time to speak? Pete said you’d be waiting for my call around now.

LR: Yes, it’s fine. How can I help? I already told Pete that we wouldn’t be purchasing the software.

SDM: I heard. You must be so sad that you couldn’t purchase it at this time.

LR: I am! I LOVE the technology! It’s PERFECT for us. I’m so disappointed.

SDM: What stopped you from being able to purchase it?

LR: We have this new HR director with whom I share a leadership role. He is so contentious that few people are willing to deal with him. After meeting with him, I get migraines that leave me in bed. I’ve decided to limit my exposure to him, discussing only things that are emergencies. So I’ve put a stop to all communication with him just to keep me sane. He would have been my business partner on this purchase.

SDM: Sounds awful. I hear that because of the extreme personal issues you’ve experience from the relationship, you don’t have a way to get the necessary buy-in from this man to help your employees who might need additional tools to do their jobs better.

LR: Wow. You’re right. That’s exactly what I’ve done. Oh my. I’m going to have to figure that out because I’ve certainly got a responsibility to the employees.

SDM: What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to work through the personal issues and figure out how to be in some sort of a working relationship with the HR director for those times your employees need new tools?

LR: Could you send me some of these great questions you’re asking me so I can figure it out, and maybe use them on him?

I sent her a half dozen Facilitative Questions to facilitate a path to a collaborative partnership with the HR Director. Two weeks later, Linda called back to purchase the solution. What happened?

1. While the university had a need for my products solution, the poor relationship between the HR director and the L&D director created hidden, ongoing dysfunction. The information flow problem could not be resolved while the hidden problem remained in place – details not only hidden from the sales person but used as a deterrent by Linda (who resolved the problem by walking away). So yes, there was a need for the solution and indeed a willing partner, but no, there was no buy-in for change.

2. The only viable route was to help her figure out her own route to a fix.

3. This was not a sales problem but a change management issue. I helped Linda resolve her own problem. Current change management models attempt to rule, govern, constrict, manage, influence, maintain the change, rather than enable the system to recognize and mitigate its own unique (and largely unconscious) drivers and change itself congruently.

Linda was willing to do something different once she knew how to avoid personal risk.

Rule: Until or unless people grasp how a solution will match their underlying criteria/values, and until there is buy-in from the parts that will be effected from the change, no permanent change will happen regardless of the necessity of the change, the size of the need, the origination of the request, or the efficacy of the solution.

Too often change management initiatives assume that a ‘rational’, information/rules-based change request and early client engagement will be enough to inspire change; they forget that until the proposed change meets the foundational values and beliefs of the culture, the status quo prevails.

Rule: Whether it’s sales, leadership, healthcare, coaching or change management, until or unless the folks within the system are willing to adapt to, and adopt, the requested change using their own rules and beliefs, they will either take no action or resist to maintain the system.

Until the elements within the system understand the risks of the proposed change, they cannot agree to it. Too often, outsiders try to push change when it doesn’t match the unspoken rules and beliefs of the system.

Rule: Until the risks that a proposed change are known and agreeable, until it’s understood that the risk of the change is less than the risk of staying the same, no change will occur.

Conclusion

Before introducing any change initiative, give up the need to push the change, listen without bias, and enable Others to traverse their route to discovery:

• what elements created and maintain the status quo,
• who needs to be included (often a larger group than anticipated),
• recognize what would get in the way of success and what needs to happen to mitigate that interference,
• figure out how to manage the workarounds in place that attempt to mitigate the problem,
• notice levels of buy-in and help those who resist shift their personal criteria to become part of the group,
• get agreement, steps, criteria, and Behaviors for an intact, non-resistant, functioning system that welcomes the new initiative. Then introduce the change.

Until now, we’ve assumed that resistance is a normal part of the change process. But we’ve effectively been pushing our own biased needs for change into a hidden system. We’ve forgotten that the change we are suggesting will encounter resistance if it doesn’t match the system of the original culture. It’s possible to get buy-in without resistance. Change really needn’t be hard.

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.