The 5 Things You Need to Know About Resistance

The 5 things

you need

to know

about

RESISTANCE

@lucgaloppin

Includes

10 tools to analyse

and manage

resistance!

RESISTANCE: THE 5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW page 2

The 5 things you need to know about RESISTANCE

IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER, FORGET IT. LUC GALOPPIN

Dear reader,

Last year I was talking to a project manager who was responsible for the turnaround in a big plant. He reported to someone who was strong on carrots and sticks. In his desperation he told me:

‘Pushing the people with carrots and sticks is like pushing a big bag of water. You know what happens as soon as you release the pressure: the bag will

resume its original position. And you are exhausted.’

He continued:

‘I am forced to ignore the resistance and push all these rules and procedures through their throats. And as long as we are occupying the plant they will

comply. But a soon as we are gone it will all be in vain. This transformation is going to be WITH the people or it will NEVER happen at all.’

Sure enough, the project manager was right: the resistance went underground and as soon as the project team moved on to new roll-outs in other plants, the old habits reappeared.

They refused to make sense of the resistance and to use it as a tool to fuel the change project.

With this e-book I offer an alternative to the way we have been taught to treat resistance. To summarize what this e-book is about:

1. Resistance is a good thing; it’s the energy that fuels change;2. It’s about emotions, and in the first place: your own;3. It’s about relations, first on trust and then on agreement;4. It’s about platforms - a platform for emotions; not a burning platform;5. It is about you - up close and personal.

I hope you will enjoy reading this e-book as much as I did making it.

Luc Galoppin - August 2010

PS: I dedicate this e-book to C and J, who just moved into their new home.



If you would ask me to summarize what I have learned about resistance in 5 points, this collection of SHORT-CUTS would be my answer. It is a collection of ideas that

inspire me.

I use it as a companion to my trainings on Change Management because I don’t do

PowerPoint. I do People instead.

You will find a bricolage (*) of my formal knowledge, real issues I bumped into, solutions that work (and those that

don't), tools and drawings. So in a sense this e-book tells a little bit of who I

am.

Please use it for your own learning and teaching and pass it on.

Here’s the deal:- If you like it, share it.- If you think it can be improved, let me

know.

Happy reading!Luc.

(*) When using the word ‘bricolage’ I refer to the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. He said that

people don’t use an algorithmic and logic approach in their thought process but that our mind works

according to the principle of ‘pick and mix’. A ‘bricoleur’ uses concrete, used materials to create

something new. In that sense, I am a bricoleur.

HOW TO USE THIS E-BOOK

short·cutPronunciation:

\ˈshȯrt-ˌkət also -ˈkət\

Function:

noun

1 :

a route more direct than the

one ordinarily taken

2 :

a method or means of doing

something more directly and

quickly than and often not so

thoroughly as by ordinary

procedure <a shortcut to

success>

ABOUT ME

Luc Galoppin picked up his organizational change skills on projects with different scopes and interim management assignments and blogs on this passion on a weekly basis. He is the co-author with Siegfried Caems of the SAP PRESS book Managing Organizational Change During SAP Implementations. He is managing director of Reply-mc.

YOU CAN CONTACT ME HERE:

[email protected]+32 497 399 880

http://www.reply-mc.com@lucgaloppin


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.reply-mc.com

http://www.reply-mc.com

http://twitter.com/lucgaloppin

http://twitter.com/lucgaloppin


(1) Resistance is a Good Thing

Creativity as a Resistance BusterWhich Platform Shall It Be?Toolbox: Resistance MapThe Resistance Map (advanced)Good LemonadeSometimes it’s Not ResistanceLearning and ResistanceDo I Need To Paint A Picture?

(2) It's About Managing Emotions

Emotions For DummiesDo I Need To Paint A Picture?Revenge, Regret & RescueReact, Respond or Initiate?Suspect Yourself FirstDo I Need To Paint A Picture?Toolbox: Temperature Reading

(3) It's About Managing Relations

It’s the Relationship Stupid!The One Downness of Needing HelpReframing the QuestionDo I Need To Paint A Picture?Don’t Take it PersonalToolbox: Stakeholder MappingToolbox: Impact AnalysisToolbox: Trust AnalysisTrust Analysis - An ExampleTeaching Fire a Lesson

(4) It's About Managing Platforms

Toolbox: Elegant OrganizationDo I Need To Paint A Picture?Toolbox: Intervention TimerIntervention Timer: an ExampleToolbox: Skill-Will MatrixSkill-Will Matrix: An ExampleDo I Need To Paint A Picture?Toolbox: Cascade or Die!Group-thinkReading the Same NewspapersDo I Need To Paint A Picture?Remember the Keys?

(5) It's About You

Do I Need To Paint A Picture?Resistance Yourself!Do I Need To Paint A Picture?The Chameleon LawDo I Need To Paint A Picture?The Suffering Is Built InWho is Responsible?Always Remember Number 6Toolbox: the ‘Board’ CompassDying Before Going Into BattleEpilogue: From Here to the Airport



TABLE OF 5 THINGS


(1)

RESISTANCE

IS A

GOOD

THING

5 things you need to know about RESISTANCE


The enemy is a very good teacher.

The Dalai Lama



The way I approach resistance is influenced by the way I look at organizational change management. I see resistance as a crucial ingredient that is needed to make a change happen. Resistance fuels change. Without it, there is no change.

I get very suspicious whenever I see advertisements for consulting companies or training courses claiming they will help you to reduce or avoid resistance. They create the false expectation that organizational change is a mathematical exercise.

They avoid to make sense of the emotional responses. Instead of seeing them for the fuel and energy they provide, they mistake them for a failure. Then, they move in the opposite direction, as if they were reading a road sign upside down.

Here is what that road sign says: resistance is emotion; and emotion is the ‘motion’ that is needed to move through the dip of change. Of course it is a bumpy road, but it is the only way through.

Creativity as a Resistance Buster

The bottom line is that we need to go through the roller-coaster of our own emotions in order to have the respect and authority to lead others through the organizational change.

The mathematical or linear approach assumes a straight line from the present state to the future state. This line is best described as ‘Analyze – Think – Change’.

Inevitably emotional side tips us and our beliefs into the cycle of change as described by Elisabeth Kübler Ross. Turns out that in times of change motivation is more important than math.

The nature of things is ‘See - Feel - Change’. The feel part, according to Kübler Ross is a roller-coaster taking us through the dip of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Trying to avoid those emotions is like cooking without heat: ingredients won’t fuse.

One example to go forward is by looking at these reactions like Edward De Bono approaches creativity. De Bono discovered that logical, linear and critical thinking has limitations. It is primarily concerned with judging and seeking errors. He calls this black hat thinking. The problem is that it scares us so much that we want to move away from it.

But the opposite it true.

De Bono’s approach is to appreciate the value of this negative thinking, instead of avoiding it. Next, he stimulates the other thinking hats to come to the surface. As a result of respecting the negative thinking and going through, one ends

up with a rich palate fueling a solution for the situation at hand:

★ Negative judgment (black hat) – logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch★ Neutrality (white hat) – considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?★ Feeling (red hat) – instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (without justification)★ Positive Judgment (yellow hat) – logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony★ Creative thinking (green hat) – provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes★ Process control (blue hat) – thinking about thinking

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. (1926 - 2004) was a Swiss-born

psychiatrist and the author of the groundbreaking book On Death

and Dying, where she first discussed what is now known as

the Kübler-Ross model.

Edward de Bono (1933) is a leading authority in the field of

creative thinking. He is the originator of the term lateral thinking and he wrote a best

selling book Six Thinking Hats.


Why is resistance in the context of an organizational change program always negative? At first sight that's obvious because the original Latin word ‘resistere’ signifies ‘to stop’ or ‘to oppose against’.

Also, when we look at what it means in physics, resistance refers to the force that opposes motion. On the other hand, the resistance of a material against an external influence, the resistance of a human body against a disease, and even the resistance in the Second World War are uses of the term that describe quality, health and guts; three terms that I would label as positive.

Wether we see it as positive or negative is entirely up to us. In organizational change there is another important thing about understanding the nature of resistance. According to Peter Block, resistance is a reaction to an emotional process taking place within the client. This view is also supported by Karl Weick, who defines it as:

Resistance is the emotion that occurs when our expectations of ‘the way things are’ are interrupted.

Two words are important in this definition: ★ Emotion: the essence of resistance is that it creates an emotion. That means: not logical, not

rational and most of all: not predictable.★ Expectation: resistance does not only occur when things change, but when our expectations

are interrupted, regardless of whether that makes rational sense.

A common misunderstanding about resistance is that it is a phenomenon that gets in the way, something to avoid, something to prevent, etc. This belief is caused by the fact that the emotion generates an energy which is directed against the change. But in reality we are a prisoner to our own panic and fear.


Which Platform Shall It Be?

Karl Weick (1936) is an American organizational theorist who is noted

for introducing the notions of "Enactment", "loose coupling",

"mindfulness", and "sensemaking" into organizational studies.

It is not change that people resist, it is us. I don’t like the thought that someone else is having a meeting deciding how I ought to be transformed.

Peter Block

Emotion is the only thing containing the energy to move from the current state to the future state. We are faced with a simple choice, but a fundamental one: either we highlight the emotions that occur and create a platform for them, or we scare these emotions away by creating a so-called ‘burning platform’.

This burning platform too is created by an emotion - but one induced from the outside. You can scare people and they’ll execute better and faster. But that’s not true of change situations, where you need to be doing something new. In that case fear is the worst motivator because it makes people work harder at what they did in the past.

Peter Block is the author of several best selling books. The

most widely known being Flawless Consulting.

He writes and talks about how consultants can provide service and

accountability to organizations.


TOOLBOX!IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER, FORGET IT. LUC GALOPPIN

Toolbox: Resistance MapThe number one behavior you come across in the majority of the organizational change programs is never the open ‘in your face’ resistance. In fact, resistance is only 1 out of 4 possible reactions; but it takes a resistance map to see it.

Bear with me, as I will build a diagnostic instrument; a “Resistance Map”. But first, we need a frame of reference to clarify what we are talking about. And it’s a simple one: WHAT I WANT versus WHAT I DO.

In other words, we make a difference between the intention we have inside of us (INTENT - ‘what I want’) and the behavior that we demonstrate on the outside (BEHAVIOR - ‘What I do’).

This is the basic setup: The vertical axis displays intent and the horizontal axis shows the behavior that we demonstrate on the outside. As a result there are four quadrants:

★ Commitment: what happens when your intention is willing and your behavior follows your intentions. Let’s say this is an authentic ‘yes’;

★ Resistance: what happens when your intention is unwilling and when it is in resonance with your behavior. Think about the common types of resistance that are summed up by Peter Block: Need more detail, Giving a lot of detail, Not enough time, Impracticality, Confusion, Silence, Moralizing and Press for solutions. These behaviors demonstrate a ‘no’, but an authentic ‘no’.

★ The Stockholm Syndrome: The Stockholm Syndrome describes the behavior of hostages who become sympathetic to their hostage-takers. The name derives from a 1973 hostage incident in Stockholm, when several victims began to identify with their hostage-takers as a coping strategy. It is the same kind of fear of repercussions that we can find in some organizations. People lose their perspective as if they were in a hostage situation and start to act against their unwilling intent. From the outside they gladly execute, commit to the commandments that were made, so the behavior is a false ‘yes’.

★ The Otis Redding Syndrome: I borrow this one from Bob Sutton, who recalls the line from Otis Redding’s old song: Sitting By the Dock of the Bay, “Can’t do what ten people tell me to do, so I guess I’ll remain the same". Clearly, this describes people with a good intention who are somehow hindered to follow their intention. In this model I will call this a false ‘no’.

Resistance, like commitment, is a rare behavior. It requires people to be open about what they care about, and at the same time it goes against what is generally accepted. It takes courage to figure out what is not important to you and to say ‘no’ to it and vice versa.

The Otis Redding Syndrome is a depressing energy drain, regardless of whether you think people are victim to it or guilty of it. The point is that it is sustained by confusion (I tend to look at confusion as a behavior). Otis Redding’s solution was to “remain the same” because he couldn’t please 10 different people. According to Robert Sutton, that is a rational response to a bad system.

As for the Stockholm Syndrome; it suffices to quote Rita Mae Brown when she says ‘The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself’.

In both, the Otis Redding and the Stockholm syndrome, people are acting opposed to their intentions; which demonstrates the definition of cognitive dissonance.



The Resistance Map (advanced)

Like a geologist who is out to find fossil fuel, you can use the Resistance Map to drill for fuel.

Intent and Behavior can be in sync or out of sync, and that is how you can see the energy: ★ The red axis. When they are in sync (i.e.: ‘I want what I am doing’; or ‘I don’t do what I

dislike’), the behavior is authentic and this generates energy. ★ The blue axis. When they are out of sync (i.e.: ‘I want it, but I am not doing it’; or: ‘I don’t

want it and still I am doing it’) the behavior is a coping behavior and it sucks up the energy.

People are being authentic because you provided a platform for their emotions to turn into energy. That is why, on the Energy Source axis, Resistance and Commitment mean the same:

★ People care about the stuff;★ People are brave enough to tell you they disagree;★ People have a backbone and guts;

As for the syndromes on the Energy Drain axis, there is no platform for emotion, no fuel. Most likely this is the result of creating a ‘burning platform’. Smashed by comprehensive control mechanisms, emotions go underground, reducing trust to the bottom level. This will undo the return on investment of any reengineering effort aimed at delegation of control and power to the lower levels.

Counter resistance with the same respect and openness as you allow commitment to result in creative results. The same goes for the Otis Redding and the Stockholm syndromes. Create a platform where authentic behavior is acceptable. A platform where a ‘problem’ can be a ‘problem’ without being swept under the carpet; where a ‘no’ can be a ‘no’. A platform where you accept the expression of resistance.

Seems like you need to change platforms before you can manage resistance in the first place!

The energy map gives you guidance on how to redirect the energy. First, get on the Energy Source. Then, channel towards Commitment.


When you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that's just flat wrong.

In fact, the opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out.

What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.

Dan Heath & Chip Heath



Good LemonadeThe subject of this short-cut is borrowed from a book with the same title. The 1976 book Good Lemonade by Frank Asch and Marie Zimmerman tells the story of Hank who sells lemonade to his friends.

Throughout the story we learn that the quality of his lemonade is not so terrific and – no matter how hard he tries to sell and repackage the product – the competing lemonade from his friend Howie sells better.

Hank is convinced that bad tasting lemonade can be salvaged. All he needs is a little advertising and promotion. The moral of the story is clear: no matter how good you package and sell your product – if the quality is no good – people will feel betrayed and turn you down. Don’t mistake that reaction for resistance. It is not.

In the context of organizational change projects – be it a process re-engineering, an ERP implementation, a merger or a downsizing operation – you will be selling lemonade as well. Only in this case the lemonade is called ‘future state’.

Resistance to organizational change is the way lemonade buyers come to your market. If your lemonade is of good quality an invisible hand will be there to help you. However, if the opposite is true, no matter how hard you try, people will just see trough your phony slideshows, road shows, posters, advertising, newsletters, training and management speak.

It only takes one extra step to see where indifference comes from. In business bad lemonade is not bought and you go out of market, period. In organizational change we tend to ‘be right’ instead of ‘in relationship’ when the lemonade is bad so we push the initiative so hard that the resistance goes underground.

Unlike customers, employees have no other choice than to buy your bad lemonade. That is where stinking indifference starts – sucking every last drop of energy out of your people.

The moral of this story: don’t abuse change management activities to repackage and advertise bad lemonade. Sometimes it’s not resistance. It’s just bad lemonade.

If the lemonade is bad, be straight about it. Work on the lemonade instead of accusing the buyers.



As Freud once said when he was asked whether the cigar he was

smoking was also a phallic symbol, “Sometimes a cigar is just

a cigar”; sometimes client objections are not resistance.

The client just doesn’t want to do the project.

We can all become paranoid by interpreting every line

manager’s objections as resistance covering some underlying

anxieties. If a manager says directly, “No, I do not choose to

begin this project. I don’t believe in it”, that is not

resistance. There is nothing in that statement that blames the

consultant or presses the responsibility for the difficulties

on the consultant. The manager is taking responsibility for

his or her own organization and has a right to choose. If we

think it is the wrong choice, well that’s life.

We are getting paid to consult, not to manage. If a manager

says to me, “I am too vulnerable a position to begin this

project now”, I feel appreciative of the direct expression. I

know where I stand with that manager. I don’t have to worry

whether I should have done something differently. I also feel

the manager understands the project and knows the risks, and

it turned out that the risks were just too high. I may be

disappointed that the project didn’t go, but the process was

flawless.

Sometimes it’s Not Resistance

Peter Block is the author of several best selling books. The most

widely known being Flawless Consulting.

He writes and talks about how consultants can provide service and

accountability to organizations.

This excerpt is taken from his 1999 book

Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used



Learning and ResistanceA useful way to understand resistance is to see what happens when we learn something new. Learning is a 4-step process which serves as a reliable indicator to predict resistance.

Learning always takes place in 4 stages, as shown on the first drawing: Unconscious Incompetence, Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, Unconscious Competence.

Take for example the first time that you drove a car.

★ Until then you have always been a passenger. You are not aware that you are unskilled because you never tried it. This is unconscious Incompetence: I can’t, but why should I care? There is no itch to scratch.

★ After getting into the driver seat for the first time and trying to start the car and drive, you know enough to realize that you are incompetent at driving a car. You are unable, and your first confrontation with the dashboard, the gearbox, the steering wheel and the pedals made you painfully aware of your incompetence. You are now the second phase of learning: Conscious Incompetence. Your innocent and peaceful worldview falls apart, much like the disappointment that hit you when you found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. This is where most people get in the roller-coaster of change (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).

★ One day, you are ready to do the tests in order to obtain a drivers license. At that point you are most probably in the third learning stage: Conscious Competence. You are skilled at driving the car but it still demands a lot of your attention.

★ Finally, it is only after a long while that you will be able to drive the car as an automatic response, as doing normal checks, turning the keys and driving off. You accomplished the 4th learning phase: Unconscious Competence. The skill has become a habit by now, which requires no extra attention.

People react to change from the moment that they become aware of their own incompetence. What’s even more important is that this resistance is the learning tension that is necessary to absorb knowledge. The frustration of one’s own incompetence is the best motivation acquire new skills and knowledge.

Therefore, when you are introducing a new initiative and you are at the level of instructing people on new things face to face or in a classroom, look at their resistance from a learning perspective. They are incompetent at that moment, painfully aware of it, mostly in the presence of their colleagues and peers. How would you react? I know I would be grumpy! And what would be the best way to overcome that grumpy-ness? A blaming instructor or a caring one?



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?The relationship between SIMPLICITY and RESISTANCE.


(2)

IT’S ABOUT

MANAGINGEMOTIONS



You work and work and work and finally give up.Then, once you have lost hope, if you keep playing,

you’re a pro.

Brad Blanton



Emotions For DummiesFor simplicity’s sake: there are four basic emotions; four basic fuels that contain the energy we need in order to move from one state to another: fear, anger, sadness, and happiness.

Mad, sad, glad and scared are the four basic emotions that can be experienced by every person in any culture. Like salty, bitter, and sour they can be quite good. Whether we like the taste of something is an entirely subjective matter. This is where it gets interesting. There are three things you should know about emotions.

1. Perception is a choice. As a result, whatever feelings we experience are not an outside event but the result of how we choose to perceive a situation. Each day you choose how you are going to act or which "side of the bed" you wake up on. The choice is yours and, the way you act, affects others.

2. Emotions are fuel. Emotions provide the basic energy that is necessary to get anywhere from your current state.

3. Emotions are data. Once you are able to disconnect the intensity and read the valuable information that is hiding behind it, you will soon find out that there is a positive use of these emotions.

Anger—ClarityWhen we are angry, we are often very aware of what we want or don’t want. This leads us to clarity about our objective and the objective of our team. Anger helps us to take decisions, to stay alert, and to stop confusion. There is a thin line between destructive anger and a vision that fuels a change. They both build on the same emotion but with a different sense of responsibility. When you allow frustrated people to find expression for their anger and you genuinely receive their communication, ask them what you could do to improve.

Fear—CourageWhen we are afraid, this means we are approaching unknown territory. New opportunities arise when we have the courage to take that direction. Fear often works as an indicator towards dangers, but also towards new opportunities. Often, the most frightened people are the closest to building the courage to deal with the unknown. Courage builds on the same emotion that can freak us out. Surprisingly, when you allow frightened people to put their anxiety into words, they tend to make room for courage to meet the challenges they are facing.

Sadness—ContactThe essence of each relationship is contact. The measure in which we are in contact depends on the empathy and the self-confidence that we have. Cynicism, for instance, is a hidden form of sadness. Cynical people often are very good at sensing which relations are being left behind in a change project. Again, there is thin line between cynical reactions and emotional intelligence. The underlying emotion is the same. Although cynical people are tough, they also know exactly who is left out. When they see the purpose behind the change, they may even be the best relationship builders.

Clinton Callahan is an American trainer, naturalist and activist

currently living in Germany. His Expand-the-box trainings are about the conscious and unconscious use

of the 4 feelings. These trainings go to the heart of resistance and

are not for the faint of heart.

Valerie Lankford is an American counselor who conducts therapy

workshops and speaks on developments in counseling theories

and approaches. In 1981 she published 'The Four Feelings', a

pamphlet that helps people identify each feeling and the use of them.



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?The relationship between RESISTANCE and QUALITY of your solution.



Revenge, Regret & RescueResistance takes many forms, some of them very subtle. In the course of a project you may encounter a variety of forms. As you begin to deal with it in one form, sometimes it will fade and reappear in another form.

The problem with emotions is not their intensity, but the fact that they always come in disguise. You will almost never hear people say that they are scared, angry, or sad because of a certain change.

People communicate their emotions through “playing games.” The classic result is an emotional competition between people which – regardless of who is the winner –represents a loss for the relationship. The analysis of these games is the domain of Transactional Analysis. Transactional Analysis experts have simple decoder for games like these: it is called the Drama Triangle.

1. Persecutor (prefers Anger)

I am OK – You are not OK

REVENGE

★ Only sees errors, is critical, often in a bad mood.

★ Often feels incapable and is not self-confident.

★ Leadership through threats, orders; disallows flexibility.

★ Can be loud but also calm. ★ A persecutor does not accept ‘no’

for an answer.

2. Rescuer (prefers Fear)

I am OK – You are not OK

RESCUE

★ Always goes that extra mile to ‘help’ others.

★ Is always very busy, tired, sometimes lonely, does not have 5 minutes to himself.

★ Can be loud but also a silent martyr.

★ Deals with feelings of guilt or shame in a very subtle manner.

★ Often a hand of steel in a velvet glove.

★ Helps unasked. ★ A rescuer does not accept ‘no’ for

an answer

3. Victim (prefers Sadness)

I am not OK – You are OK

REGRET

★ Doesn’t answer, doesn’t help, never holds a point of view.

★ I don’t know / I can’t / it’s all the same to me.

★ A master at using feelings of guilt.★ ‘Super-sensitive’. ★ Pretends to be incompetent, but is

not. ★ Irresponsible regarding details that

can be important to others. ★ I give up! This provides me with

the ultimate power. ★ A victim does not accept ‘no’ for an

answer.

As soon as our expectations of ‘the way things are’ are interrupted, a stream of emotions is set in motion. This is feedback. Feedback literally means to feed-back: this is how your message was received. That is when you will need the drama-decoder provided by this triangle.

As the drama plays out, people may suddenly switch roles, or change tactics, and others will often switch unconsciously to match this. In transactional analysis, the drama triangle is recognized in situations such as: Why Don't You/Yes But; If It Weren't For You; Why does this Always Happen to Me?; See What You Made Me Do; You Got Me Into This; Look How Hard I've Tried; and: I'm Only Trying to Help You.

The purpose for each 'player' is to get their unspoken - and often: unconscious - needs met in a justified way, without having to acknowledge the real situation. As such, each player justifies their own position, rather than acting in a responsible way.

You will see Revenge, Rescue and Regret in all its glory. Your job will be to shape the path from here to Responsibility.

Steven Karpman is a psychiatrist and the inventor of the drama

triangle. First published in the late 1960s, the Drama Triangle was the

result of 30 pages of football strategy. Even today the drama

triangle is a valuable analysis tool for any kind of resistance.



The easiest thing is to react.

The second easiest thing is to respond.

But the hardest thing is to initiate.

Reacting, as Zig Ziglar has said, is what your body

does when you take the wrong kind of medicine.

Reacting is what politicians do all the time.

Reacting is intuitive and instinctive and usually

dangerous. Managers react.

Responding is a much better alternative. You

respond to external stimuli with thoughtful action.

Organizations respond to competitive threats.

Individuals respond to colleagues or to

opportunities. Response is always better than

reaction. But both pale in comparison to

initiative.

Initiating is really and truly difficult, and

that’s what leaders do. They see something others

are ignoring and they jump on it. They cause the

events that others have to react to.

They make change.

React, Respond or Initiate?

Seth Godin (1960) is an American author and an

entrepreneur. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing and has published 11 books. His books Tribes and Linchpin are invaluable

must-reads for organizational change managers .


Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us


If you are a breathing human being, you are resistant to change.

Like all your fellow human beings you are incapable of starting with a clean sheet of paper.

Tracy Goss



Suspect Yourself FirstWhether we categorize a certain behavior as good or bad; the difference is in the response we give. It can either be Revenge or Respect. The point is that we choose our responses to the world.



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?A lot of R-words...



Toolbox: Temperature ReadingStraight from my desk, the below drawing is an example of how I tinker with a concept before launching it. A temperature reading has a wide range of applications, but the best and most reliable results are obtained when you conduct it repeatedly over a longer period.


Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.

In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-

evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer


(3)

IT’S ABOUT

MANAGINGRELATIONS




It’s the Relationship Stupid!Resistance occurs when we try to help other people. But needing help and having to ask for it creates an uncomfortable situation that will produce emotional responses.

According to Edgar Shein, every helping relationship is in a state of imbalance. The client is one down and therefore vulnerable, the helper is one up and therefore powerful. Much of what goes wrong in the helping process is the failure to acknowledge this initial imbalance and deal with it:

“The reason the helping relationship has to be built rather than just being assumed is that , although the imbalance is clear, the social economics of how to fix it are not”.

It is when a relationship or team hits a bump, we need a conversation about the conversation. But most of the times we short-cut to the content. In the end we wonder what on earth went wrong... The answer: You failed to take care of the relationship.

Taking care of the relationship is too simple to be true, because the tools at your disposal are as straightforward as a Swiss Armyknife They are:

1. Asking for help: The great Peter Drucker once said: "the leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask". Asking for help opens doors with honesty and is difficult to resist. It allows your counterpart to have a stake in the solution - to ‘win’ - while you are the cause for this situation to occur.

2. Listening: Attention here – listening is a two-way act, as it involves listening AND acknowledging what you have understood. You need to demonstrate that you are totally engaged. Acknowledging is the part that makes people feel understood and connected.

3. Thanking: Gratitude is a skill we can never display too often. And yet for most people it seems like they need to wait for the perfect moment … but it never comes. It is always the right time to say ‘thank you’. Gratitude is not a limited resource and an overdose never harms.

4. Apologizing: Marshall Goldsmith calls this ‘the magic move‘, because an apology is a recognition that mistakes have been made and it contains an intention to change for the better. But most of all, an apology is an emotional contact with the people you care about. It is a closure which lets you move forward.

You will note that these four ways have one thing in common: they require you to be humble and to position yourself ‘one down’ with regards to the person you are talking to. As Goldsmith concludes: "When you declare your dependence on others, they usually agree to help." So your only way out is by putting aside ego. You can only access these tools when you let go of the competition for being right.

Edgar Schein (1928), a professor at the MIT Sloan School of

Management, has made a notable mark on the field of organizational

development in many areas, including career development, group

process consultation, and organizational culture.

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) is the author of What Got You Her Won’t Get

You There. He is a world authority in helping successful leaders get even

better - by achieving positive, lasting change in behavior: for themselves,

their people and their teams.



Emotionally and socially, when you are asking

for help you are putting yourself "one down".

It is a temporary loss of status and self-

esteem not to know what to do next or to be

unable to do it.

It is a loss of independence to have someone

else advise you, heal you, minister you, help

you up, support you, even serve you.

It never ceases to amaze me when I observe

someone stumbling or falling down on the

street how the first thing out of his or her

mouth is invariably "I'm OK." Even when we

are clearly hurt we are reluctant to accept

the suddenly imposed state of dependency. At

the extreme we feel humiliated, as when we

need help with the bedpan in the hospital.

The One Downness of Needing Help


Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help

Edgar Schein (1928), a professor at the MIT Sloan School of

Management, has made a notable mark on the field of organizational

development in many areas, including career development, group

process consultation, and organizational culture.



Reframing the QuestionThe picture below shows two management consultants unwinding at the counter of a downtown bar. Note the subtle difference between the white text balloons and the grey ones:

White = categorized, judging, stuck, isolated, GAME OVER. Grey = puzzled, observing, searching, DIFFERENT GAME.

When we label a person as “resistant,” we stop the conversation and we place ourselves high above it. The point of this cartoon is to offer you an alternative interpretation of resistance: grey text balloons.

Rather than sitting in judgment, get out of your cocoon and seek additional information that would help you understand the person’s reactions.

In one of the discussions on this topic on the Organizational Change Practitioners Group on LinkedIn, a participant stated:

"Resistance is an expression of fears of loss of control and vulnerability. It requires 'peeling the onion' to uncover the roots of the affective reaction. Rather

than being a "bad" thing, I have found that resistance is a signpost indicating a potential problem.”

Another participant continued:"It’s often seen as a negative, however, it turns the light on to areas that really

need attention. Just like the voice of our GPS saying, 'recalculating'"

Yet another participant continued: "We struggle to find a place to put ‘resistance’, so that is doesn’t interfere with the ‘work’ or the outcomes. Seems to me that when we stop fighting it and see it for what

it is (without judgment) we may understand better how to use it as a tool more effectively."


Helpers must be aware of their own emotional makeup and must be prepared to recognize that certain kinds of helper/client relationships may not be possible.

Edgar Schein



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?When resistance occurs, you are the one in the room. It is your doorbell they will be ringing.How will you respond?



Don’t Take it PersonalThe main thing to do in coping successfully with resistance is to not take it personally. Resistance is often the sign that you have touched upon something they care about.

In his book on Flawless Consulting, Peter Block lists some common types of resistance that are abundant during the lifecycle of any organizational change project. Dealing with these behaviors primarily requires allowing, supporting, and acknowledging the complete expression of the resistance. Often this alone can diminish the resistance.

In other cases, when resistance is blocking the process or the decision of the group, there are effective ways to address it, such as the following:

★ Identify the form the resistance has taken;★ Ask a question using neutral language; ★ Be quiet and listen to the response.

Below are some examples and possible responses taken from Peter Block's book.

It is natural to feel that the resistance is aimed at you. It is not. It is not you the client is defending against. Resistant clients defend against the fact that they are going to have to make (expectation) a difficult choice, take an unpopular action, confront some reality that they have emotionally been trying to avoid (emotion).

When people are being defensive, they are defending their own adequacy - a natural thing to defend. This is what resistance is about: defending against a difficult reality and how one has been handling it so far.Consider this ‘radical’ way of looking at resistance: it is the ultimate expression of issues with love and control. (I know, it is very UNconventional to mention ‘love’ in a business context, but that’s the truth.)

"How much do you love me?' and "Who's in charge?" ....these two questions of LOVE and CONTROL undo us ALL, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.

Elisabeth Gilbert



Toolbox: Stakeholder MappingA stakeholders is ‘any party that affects or is affected by an organization and its policies’. In other words, every interested party that has a relationship to your project.

This concept was created in the 1960s and has been filling the bookshelves in libraries ever since. No need to worry because stakeholder mapping is quite straightforward.

If the exercise is carried out well, a discussion will follow in which the different perceptions are tested against one another. A consensus is then reached regarding the list of interested parties, and this is how you arrive at a (surprisingly) more complete picture, than if you had done this exercise individually.

The result can take the form of a stakeholder map and can, for instance, look like the example below.

A stakeholder map is the landscape through which you have to navigate the change. It can look fairly rough in the beginning and it can change over time.

In practice we must remember two things:★ It’s about relationships! An organization is not necessarily a thing per se but a series of

relationships between a wide series of parties.★ Mapping stakeholders is more than making a list. You will soon find out that all the assumptions,

misunderstandings and preconceptions come to the surface. These are harmonized as you start to map, until your team has a common view of its stakeholders.

Eventually, you are drawing the platform for managing resistance. This map represents the relationships you will need to manage during your project.



Toolbox: Impact AnalysisOnce you have reached agreement on who the stakeholders are and the relationships you will need to manage, it is time to prioritize the attention you will invest in each relationship. But how exactly do you prioritize relationships?

Setting priorities to the relationships you will be managing is done according to two dimensions:

★ Importance of the stakeholder in your organization: What is the stakeholder’s organizational power? How can this stakeholder influence, initiate or reinforce initiatives in your organization? This dimension also takes into account informal opinion leaders.

★ Impact of the stakeholder on the implementation: How important is the commitment of this stakeholder for the success of the implementation?

You may end up mapping stakeholders in the top right-hand quadrant of this chart that tend to be out of your attention . For example because they are geographically in another location. At the same time, you may also start to invest less time and devotion than you would normally do to the needs of a department next door, because they appear in the bottom left-hand quadrant of the chart.

In short, this analysis will help you to set priorities in the relationships with all stakeholders. I have facilitated this exercise multiple times and I have found that - roughly speaking, most sponsors will be situated in the top left-hand quadrant, agents in the top right-hand quadrant and targets in the bottom right-hand quadrant.

IMPORTANT: How well is your target group represented in your current team setup? This analysis reveals if your team is able to manage the relationships. The point is to make sure that the composition of your team displays the same complexity as the environment in which you will deploy a change.

As a rule of thumb:★ The top right quadrant has dedicated representatives in your team;★ The top left is involved at each project milestone. ★ The bottom right quadrant are the stakeholders who will be part of your core team for specific

tasks, but not for the full lifecycle of your project.



Toolbox: Trust AnalysisThere is a matrix I often use to categorize stakeholders in terms of their resistance. It is an adapted version from the 1987 model of Peter Block from his book The Empowered Manager: positive political skills at work.

The major insight here is that conflict has two dimensions:★ Trust: Can we rely on the stakeholder’s support or are they avoiding ownership of the program? ★ Agreement: Are we in agreement about the content of the program?

The matrix tells us that we need a healthy mix of:

★ Allies who fuel our vision;★ Opponents who bring out the best in us.

For those stakeholders that are situated low in trust, there are two types you are likely to encounter:

★ Bedfellows (or better even ‘one night stands’): these are the most difficult to get a hold on because they seemingly agree on the surface of face-to-face discussions and meetings. However, as we follow up on their commitments and actions we discover discrepancies. The advice here is to start an individual conversation about what is going on their level of commitment (a conversation about the conversation) in order to bring to the surface whatever is blocking them. It takes courage to start these conversations.

★ Adversaries: Just like bedfellows, they are low in trust, but at least they are straight about it. It is likely that you will run into people of this type, openly declaring that they are against this program. If you do, you should approach them in the same way as bedfellows: a conversation about their commitment.

Two points are important on the diagram above:★ We need to get the most important stakeholders on the right-hand side into a relationship of

trust. ★ Second, disagreement, another word for ‘resistance’, is actually an accelerator, provided

that it happens in a relationship of trust.

Never mistake a lack of agreement for a lack of trust!



Trust Analysis - An ExampleIf this all seems a bit too theoretical for you, let’s have a look at a real life example.

The mapping below is one that we did for the stakeholders of a major ERP implementation for a multinational in the construction equipment industry.

Here is what we learned:

★ First, we mapped the different stakeholders according to the dimensions of trust and agreement.

★ Next we figured out that the conflicts we have with keys users, process owners and business representatives in the project are actually "productive conflicts" (high on trust, low in agreement: they bring out the best in us).

The advice here is to take their feedback with both hands because these people care and they are brave enough to confront you with their findings!!

★ At the same time we discovered that the agreement with suppliers and customers was more of a phony type.

★ Finally, when it came to mapping the support department and end users, we soon discovered that the conflicts were unproductive because we are low on trust with these stakeholders. That’s very alarming because both, the end user and the support department are have a high impact on the outcomes of the project.

The typical trap is to work on more agreement and to fall into a political game of compromises and ambiguous agreements. Working on the agreement side when you lack trust is the nightmare of diplomacy.

The point is to work on the relationship with these stakeholders. Therefore, between now and go-live we will gradually involve both of these stakeholders and to give them a stake / some ownership of the delivery.

Conclusion: Think twice before you categorize, because the essence of stakeholder readiness is trust,

not agreement.



Fire is hot. That’s what it does. If you get burned by

fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry

at the fire doesn’t do you much good. And trying to

teach the fire a lesson so it won’t be hot next time

is certainly not time well spent.

Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it’s

not human. But human beings are similar, in that

they’re not going to change anytime soon either.

Many (most?) people in organizations handle their

interactions as though they are in charge of teaching

people a lesson. We make policies and are vindictive

and focus on the past because we worry that if we

don’t, someone will get away with it.

So when a driver cuts us off, we scream and yell. We

say we’re doing it so he’ll learn and not in danger

the next guy, but of course, he can’t hear you.

There’s a media mogul who stole from me in 1987 and I

haven’t spoken to him since. He doesn’t know I exist,

I bet. So much for teaching him a lesson.

Teaching Fire a Lesson





Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?


Withheld anger destroys relationships by sucking the aliveness out of them.

For aliveness to be restored, both to the relationships and the individual, anger must be

expressed.

Brad Blanton


(4)

IT’S ABOUT

MANAGINGPLATFORMS




Toolbox: Elegant OrganizationThe most powerful tool that I dispose of is something I found out by hitting my head against the wall time after time after time ... The secret is called “Fire - Ready -Aim”

1. FIRE!Your target audience needs to be guided through their change cycle, but at the same time the work needs to get done. The solution then is to combine both and to nudge them with a series of deliverables that people can shoot at, nicely ordered in the same direction: forward.

The dynamic we are after is what Edgar Schein calls Diagnostic Interventions. By asking people for their involvement, you also begin to influence their thinking. For example, once you are conducting a survey, you have influenced the thinking and expectations of the people you are surveying. 2. READY!Then comes a simple trick but no fun. It goes against your intuition and it sets your ego on fire. The point is to organize your deliverables so elegant that they allow full collaboration. The hard part:

★ It means downgrading the built-in look-how-great-I-am-intelligence;★ It requires you to chop your deliverable down in chunks that the customer can swallow;★ It means you have to let the customer tinker with the deliverable, take it apart and move it forward;★ It means your prototype will be improved by the customer;★ Ultimately, it means that you will not be the most intelligent person in the room at the end of the day: the community is!

3. AIM!People make sense of the change as they react to the prototype of your deliverables. This will get their minds in motion and their noses pointed in the direction of the change. Sense making is a process that requires you to build a platform of psychological safety (knowing that it is OK to step out of an old habit and to try something new). So listen,

listen and listen because the cause of major setbacks are due to going faster than the speed of making sense.

In his book What Would Google Do? Jeff Jarvis explains the secrets of the success of Google. The first is to be a platform for other people to express their uniqueness instead of a big-hit-final-destination. Sounds familiar? Don't be the burning platform, but a platform for people to express their needs, make sense of the change and take their destiny in their own hands.

Second, for those of you who would conclude that you can just throw about any unfinished deliverable at people’s heads to provoke a reaction. Try it. You will soon find out that people have bullshit-detector and will only accept the very best of your efforts to accommodate their needs. This is what Jarvis calls elegant organization: you don’t create a community but provide elegant organization and then the community will let you help them.

Jarvis concludes that you don’t own the community, so getting out of the way is a strength. Integrate these principles to your change project and you will see what I mean:

Be a platform and organize your deliverables elegantly, because it is not

about you!

Jeff Jarvis (1954) is an American journalist. He is the former

television critic for TV Guide and People magazine. He is the author of

What Would Google Do? and is a very influential blogger about media

and news at Buzzmachine.com



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?Managing resistance is always a balancing act: you need to nudge - but not too hard; you need to build a sense of urgency - but not a burning platform; you need to be a platform for hosting the emotions - but the deliverables need to be there on time and in budget.

No one said it would be easy...



Toolbox: Intervention TimerBy now you know that human beings in the middle of a change need a safe platform to rely on. The best way to provide this safe place is through involvement. Similar dynamics are at play in consumer behavior, and they pull our attention to the importance of timing.

This brings us to the insight of John Gourville when he says we need to pay attention to the psychological costs when new products force consumers to change their behavior. You need to figure out where the changes for your target audience fall in a matrix with four categories: Easy Sells, Rough Spots, Long Hauls, and Smash Hits.

Each has a different ratio of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) versus behavior change required from the person involved.

If you map each aspect of your change project in this chart, you will be able to estimate which topics need more time to digest or in which order you want to communicate them (I recommend communicating the bad news first). To make things a bit more concrete I have added some typical examples one can encounter during ERP implementations.

★ Rough Spots: Limited WIIFM and significant behavior changes. These changes typically refer to tasks that require more clicking and data entry than before with no visible result for the user. If the communication of such a topic is restricted to the know-how and know-what (i.e. the instructions and the procedure) these users (and their supervisors) may quit on data accuracy and discipline. If you want people to commit to these rough spots, it is going to require a lot of context (know-why) and a good monitoring of the supervisors as agents of change.

★ Long Hauls: Significant WIIFM and significant behavior changes. These are typically the transactions that require a complete different way of thinking, a considerable number of clicks and screens and a lot of parameters to look after at the same time. We really want people to persist in this long period of learning how to work in a totally different way. This will only work when we communicate regularly the know-hows (refreshers course, quick reference cards, coaching on-the-job, etc.), the know-what’s (e.g. feedback about the KPI’s to all the stakeholders) and the know-why’s (context: why are we doing this?).

★ Easy Sells: Limited WIIFM and limited behavior changes. These are the very small changes of very basic actions. For these changes, sticking to the know-how and the know-what may work out fine, although we recommend that you take every opportunity you get to reinforce and link back to the know-why.

★ Smash Hits: Significant WIIFM and limited behavior changes. These are the time savers and visible process improvements compared to the old situation. Most of the times, these are kind of features that users themselves are keen on telling their colleagues about, although initiating them yourself can do no harm.

John Gourville is professor at the Harvard Business School. His

research focuses on consumer decision making. In his current research investigates when and

why innovative new products fail to gain traction in the marketplace.



Intervention Timer: an ExampleI am in the business of shaking up traditional organizations by means of an ERP program.

Most of the times this is regarded as a pure software roll-out: ‘design it, configure it, test it, and roll it out’. That is how most software engineers look at it and that is what traditional managers expect of it.

Only, with an ERP it’s slightly different: it is quite rigid as to which standards, timings, methods and data you should manage from then on. Very soon you will find that it pretty much dictates your way of working – that is – if you want to get things done you better align to the ‘way of the system’.

ERP brings with it a number of changes like: different working methods, different documents, a change in an organizational structure, a change in a procedure or a dramatic change of existing SLA’s (Service Level Agreements). Some of these changes are pretty easy to sell, but others a bit tougher.

So where do you start, and how do you prioritize the communication? That is where the two dimensions of John Gourville (previous page) help me out: degree of behavior change and degree of WIIFM (‘What’s In It For Me’).

★ First, I make a big inventory of changes. There is no structured approach to doing that apart from keeping your ears open and being there when people start to worry about the future. This inventory always comes to the surface when ‘old’ meets ‘new’. Mostly a bunch of consultants and a bunch of dedicated business people work together in blueprinting sessions and design workshops. That is when these conversations happen and that is exactly when you should have your notebook ready. Soon you will have an inventory of changes.

★ Second, it is time to plot them on the Gourville matrix. As a consultant, you should resist the temptation to do this task by yourself. As part of the exercise you should ask the stakeholders (mostly key users or process owners) to map the changes on this matrix. This is what Edgar Schein calls a ‘diagnostic intervention’. Your intervention triggers a change process: people are forced to start thinking about the changes in terms of ‘will we resist or not?’ or ‘do I feel comfortable selling this change in my department?’.

★ Third, when all changes are plotted you are ready to prioritize the communication in terms of timing. ‘Rough spots’ and ‘Long Hauls’ will need a lot of context (i.e. why-communication) to settle in – and this takes time. The reason is simple: you are introducing a foreign element that will shake up the way things are.

People need the time to resist, to say ‘over my dead body’, to bargain and to come to terms with the new reality. Your job is to provide the platform where these reactions can be hosted and channeled towards commitment. Plotting changes on this matrix is one way to do so.



Toolbox: Skill-Will MatrixOne of the tools that I often use is the so-called Skill-Will matrix. I discovered it about 10 years ago in the book ‘The Tao of Coaching’ by Max Landsberg. I use this tool to predict and to plan how often my support is needed.

But it goes further than that. The skill-will matrix allows you to make a distinction between support and supervision.

Landsberg explains how a coach can divide her time with the team she has been assigned to. The easiest anchor point for coaches is found in the combination of motivation and skills. In order to know the type of interventions that is needed, you need to examine the combination of these two ingredients.

★ Supervising: The coach clearly defines the roles and tasks and supervises their execution. Decisions are made by the coach and communication is unidirectional;

★ Coaching: The coach still determines the tasks and roles but also asks the coached person for suggestions. Decisions are made by the coach, but communications are dialogue-based;

★ Support: The coached person accepts the decisions and executes against them. The coach facilitates decision-making but is no longer in the driver’s seat;

★ Delegating: The coach is still involved in problem-solving, but the coached person is in the driver’s seat. The coached person decides when and how the coach is involved.

After a day or two of walking around and helping out people, you should be able to map the people on the Skill-Will Matrix. However, in practice we often find that coaches use this matrix to confirm their prejudices – so be careful with the self fulfilling prophecy that is hidden in these coaching styles. Supervision for instance, will not inspire people to take responsibility and to work independently.

The skill-will balance of a person is not fixed; it evolves as time goes by. Nevertheless, it is a good guideline for estimating your timekeeping as a coach, especially when you are coaching an entire team.

You can map every individual of your team on this matrix and balance your time-keeping as a coach accordingly.

Max Landsberg is an authority on executive coaching. During the last

ten years his books on Coaching, Motivation and Leadership have

sold more than 200,000 copies and have been translated into fourteen

languages.



Skill-Will Matrix: An ExampleIf this all seems a bit too theoretical for you, let’s have a look at a real life example.

The application below is a skills assessment that we did for the users of a major ERP implementation for a multinational in the fast moving consumer goods industry.

It consisted of a two step approach, based on the framework of the skill-will matrix: assessment and measurement.

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One warning though: don’t think that the exercise is done once you have made this assessment.

From now on you know where to start and how you will need to invest your time and attention best. The actions you will take where support is needed are far different compared to the instances when supervision is needed.



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?Everybody needs a platform for their emotions to be turned into contributions.



Toolbox: Cascade or Die!The first sign of resistance in any project: ‘something is wrong with the communication’. The first person they look at: you. So, how to you organize the communication in a large project? Awareness of the strategic objective of each channel is a must. Below is an example portfolio.

1. Monthly (or every three weeks) newsletter★ Strategic objective: create context and communicate decisions★ Type: top down communication; need-to-know★ Method: Push to the recipients per email★ Content: the 4 P's => 1. Pull: an introduction of the sponsor to reinforce the project goals in

respect of the current activities; 2. Progress: what have we achieved so far; 3. Plan: what are the milestones ahead; 4. Push: what are the latest decisions of the steering committee

★ Form: Pictures; Lots of them. And names of real people. Lots of them.

2. Direct letter to stakeholders★ Strategic objective: inform stakeholders on the details of a specific project milestone★ Type: top down communication; must-know & acknowledge receipt★ Method: Push to the recipients per email, indicating precisely to whom it is intended★ Content: I use a specific format with a know-feel-do backbone (i.e.: these elements are the

strict minimum of the letter): KNOW =>‘What is the one thing you want me to know?’ / FEEL => ‘Why is it important?’ / DO => ‘What do you want me to do as a result of your communication?’

★ Form: regularly accompanied by a training document, procedure,etc.

3. Emails one-to-many★ Strategic objective: follow-up and precisions for stakeholders on a specific project milestone★ Type: top down communication; must-know & acknowledge receipt★ Method: Push to the recipients per email, indicating which instructions or corrections apply to

whom★ Content: can be short, but should at least contain 3 sentences: Know-Feel-Do★ Form: factual, no images, can contain links

4. Project blog on the intranet★ Strategic objective: visualize and share what is going on in the field and the showing tangible

outcomes of the project in plain English★ Type: bottom-up communication; nice-to-know (put people really want to know: 'how are we

doing')★ Method: publish regularly on the project blog, clearly indicating the names of all the participants

that are involved in the subject. Upon publication we inform the persons involved that they are now a local celebrity and that they can share this blog item with their colleagues. We found out that this viral.

★ Content: lots of pictures of people implementing 'project things' and sharing their experiences: 'what's in it for me'

★ Form: like a journalist reporting on an event: pictures, people, headlines

5. Specials (outside of your regular communication cycle)★ Customer communications, supplier communications,etc.★ Milestone kickoffs and official sign-offs★ Temperature reading (I recommend to report the results in special issues of the newsletter AND

to be very candid about what is working and what isn’t)

What matters most is that you can run these channels during the X years of your project. Therefore you should arrange them into a CASCADE starting with the conclusions of the steering committee which deliver the topics for the newsletter. These, in turn, are the umbrella for blog topics. Finally: every project member has ears, eyes and ideas for blog topics. They will show you: What’s In It For Me

If you fail to organize the cascade, you are in for a hard job. Cascade is the only way to sustain a communication plan on the long run. That is why you need to cascade or die!



Group-think

Irving Janis (1918 - 1990) was a psychologist at Yale University and a

professor at the University of California, Berkeley most famous for

his theory of "groupthink" which described the systematic errors

made by groups when taking collective decisions.

Clay Shirky (1964) teaches on the social and economic effects

of Internet technologies at New York University. His courses

address the interrelated effects of of social networks, how our

networks shape culture and vice-versa.

We are all quite good at creating and sustaining comfort-zones, because this is what makes life predictable. But when we do that at as a group or an organization, disasters can happen.

Many project teams isolate themselves in their own cocoons, having little contact as possible with what is, for them, outer space. In the past I have called this project cocooning. Recently I have come to think of it as shop floor fear. The truth is that any sign of skepticism puts competent teams at the edge of their comfort zone. The resistance they meet is mostly countered with ... resistance. By virtue of their ‘shared values’ project teams counter feedback with arrogance. That is why large scale projects fail even when all of the measurements, indicators and dashboards in the green zone.

When Irving Janis discovered this mechanism he defined it as group-think. It occurs “when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action." Group cohesion is the comfort zone at stake.

Group-think has led to disasters such as failure to anticipate the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1941); the Bay of Pigs fiasco (1961) when the US administration sought to overthrow Cuban Government of Fidel Castro; and the prosecution of the Vietnam War (1964-67) by President Lyndon Johnson. Lend me your ears and I can top this list with some juicy stories of failed large scale projects.

NYU professor Clay Shirky has a clear view on why group-think exists. According to him, complex solutions (like a company, or an industry) can become so dedicated to the problem they are the solution to, that often they inadvertently perpetuate the problem:

‘Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.’Clay Shirky

Shirky refers to how the media industry is incapable of changing because they are solving the wrong problem. Let’s face it: newspapers are the solution to the problem of ... news gathering and news distribution. AND THAT PROBLEM NO LONGER EXISTS.

Nowadays if we all want news we simply go to Google to get it. Who published it isn't nearly as important to readers any more. Nor is the packaging. There are 3 strategies for newspapers to react to the downturn in their business:

★ NO PROBLEM: This is where most newspapers and magazines are today: Do nothing unless the competition forces you to. Paper is the main business and the internet, well… because we have to.

★ EXTRAPOLATING THE PROBLEM: these companies know that printing will be out of business some day, so they just make the technical switch to a new medium (the internet and e-readers). However, they have fallen in love with the problem that no longer exists: they still view themselves as gatherers and distributers of news (and what sucks even more: they still package the news on these e-readers in ‘pages’ and ‘issues’ - a constraint dating from the printing press!)

★ REINVENTING THE PROBLEM FROM SCRATCH: Today’s problem is an abundance of news and a need to make sense of it all. So the future is to be a platform for sense-making. This will require the newspapers business to let go of their attachment to the producer-consumer model. Only then will they be able to search for new revenues and growth.



It sounds bizarre. But it happens.

I can think of too many times when I’ve nodded

my head for the sake of a quiet life, when I’ve

let myself be argued into agreeing to something

which I know is wrong. A decent humility, you

might say, or a respect for others.

Too often it’s just cowardice, or laziness - the

comfort of group-think.

Organizations are rife with group-think. They

not only read the same newspapers, they wear the

same clothes, tell the same jokes.

They even glory in it, calling it ‘shared

values’.

Shared values are great, of course, if the

values are great.

Reading the Same Newspapers

Charles Handy (1932) is an Irish author/philosopher specializing in

organizational behavior. His career started at Shell International. He was a co-founder of the London

Business School in 1967 and left Shell to teach there in 1972.


Waiting for the Mountain to Move: And Other Reflections on Life



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?Three ways to disagree.Three different results.



Wayne Dyer (1940) Ph.D., is an internationally renowned author and speaker in the field of self-

development. He's the author of 30 books, has created many audio

programs and videos, and has appeared on thousands of

television and radio shows.

Imagine the following scene:

You are in your house. You’ve got your care keys in your hand. The lights go out

because of a power failure. You can’t see a thing. You stumble around in your

living room and you drop your keys.

You look around for a moment and you realize that you are never going to find

them in the dark. But you look outside and you notice that the streetlights are

on. So you say to yourself: "Hmmm … I’m not going to sit around here in the dark

and grope around looking for my keys when there’s a light on outside. I’m going

to go out here – under the street light – and I’m going to look for my keys."

So you are outside, groping around and looking for your keys until your neighbor

comes along. He asks:

- "What happened mate?"

- "I dropped my keys"

-"I’ll help you look for them!"

Now the two of you are looking for your car keys. Finally your neighbor says:

- "Excuse me, but where exactly did you drop your keys?"

- "Well… um …I dropped them in the house"

- "You dropped your keys in the house and you are looking for them here? This

doesn’t make any sense!"

- "Well, it doesn’t make any sense to grope around in the dark when there’s light

out here!"

Isn’t that exactly what we do when we have a difficult problem or a struggle that

is located inside and we are looking for the solution outside of ourselves?

Expecting somebody else to change or something outside of you to get better in

order for you to make your life work, is something you have to take a hard look

at.

You are the one with the difficulties.

Remember the Keys?

This excerpt is taken from a 2008 YouTube video titled:

When you change the way you look at things


(5)

IT’S ABOUT YOU



It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

Edmund Hillary



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?When we struggle against Resistance it isn’t just about working on the relationships. It’s about taking “response-ability.” To follow the heart over the logic of the mind.



Resistance Yourself!

Steven Pressfield (1943) is an American novelist and author of

screenplays, principally of military historical fiction. In his book The

War Of Art, he unveils his warrior code in which the enemy is

identified as self-sabotage that he calls "Resistance".




Coming to terms with the very ‘resistance’ I have been studying and writing about for the last few years: it is all about the same thing. It is all about me, myself and I. And that’s bad news for my ego.

In Mount Analogue, René Daumal describes an expedition to a place that “cannot not exist.” The story is about making something happen that all people around you say is impossible and ridiculous. In this novel, Daumal mentions the chameleon law, which he describes as the inner resonance to influences nearest at hand (“la résonance aux plus proches affimations” if you happen to speak French). The protagonist of this tale is in the vulnerable starting phase of this expedition. He discovers how he is prone to social pressure and how difficult it is to commit to something before knowing how.

Mount Analogue is about inner doubts and how they prevent us from seeing the other 99% of the possibilities. With rational thinking and conventional ‘common sense’ we easily fall prey to the chameleon law. Scratch off the surface of the chameleon and you will find fear driving its actions.

In his latest book Linchpin, Seth Godin refers to the chameleon law as the lizard brain. It is the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise.

He uncovers the lizard brain as the motor of mediocrity and the main responsible for late launches, middle of the road products and procrastination. It is the force that causes you to fit in instead of standing out.

Steven Pressfield uncovers the true nature of the lizard brain, by calling it the Resistance. He asserts: “Resistance seems to come from outside of ourselves. We locate it in our spouses, jobs, bosses, kids.” But in truth, as he continues: “Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.”

Organizational change projects are mostly about creating a situation that does not yet exist. The chameleon law is the biggest enemy during an organizational change project. It is the excuse that prevents you from propelling it into material being.

As you can see from the drawing, the classic way of managing resistance will only get you half way. The last part of the change curve is about fighting the chameleon law from taking over.

An organizational change project is a mountaineering expedition of the inner mind as much as it is about delivering a project according to plan. It is as much a team challenge (Managing resistance as we know it) as it is an inner struggle for fueling our own commitment (Managing resistance inside yourself). The latter part is the hardest. It’s the battle inside our own heads: resistance’s true nature.



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?The anatomy of resistance - THEORETICAL VIEW

Some notes...

Resonance: Some thousands of years ago it was dangerous to stand out. So nature has programmed us to align and fit in with the environment.

Reptile brain – also known as the amygdala – plays a key part in our fight-flight responses to unpleasant sights, sensations, or smells. A great part of our basic instincts such as anger and anxiety are emotions activated by the amygdala.

Rationalisation: the process of constructing a logical justification for a decision that was originally arrived at through a different mental process.

Cognitive dissonance: is described by Wikipedia as an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. Another word is 'overjustification'.



Father Sogol had really convinced me, and while he was talking

to me, I was prepared to follow him in his crazy expedition.

But as I neared home, where I would again find all my old

habits, I imagined my colleagues at the office, the writers I

knew, and my best friends listening to an account of the

conversation I had just had. I could imagine their sarcasm,

their skepticism, and their pity.

I began to suspect myself of naiveté and credulity, so much so

that when I tried to tell my wife about meeting Father Sogol,

I caught myself using expressions like “a funny old fellow,”

“an unfrocked monk,” “a slightly daffy inventor,” “a crazy

idea.”

After all that I was stupefied to hear her say at the end of

my story: “Well, he’s right. I’m going to start packing my

truck tonight. For there are not two of you. There are already

three of us!”

“So you take this all seriously?”

“This is the first serious idea I’ve come across in my life.”

And the force of the chameleon law is so great that I came

back to the thought that Father Sogol’s enterprise was, after

all, entirely reasonable.

The Chameleon Law

René Daumal (1908-1944) was a French spiritual surrealist writer

and poet. His work Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically

Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing is a classic of the early 20th century.

This excerpt is taken from his 1944 novel (published 1952)

Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-

Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing


Rule of Thumb:

The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward

pursuing it.

Steven Pressfield



Do I Need To Paint A Picture?The anatomy of resistance IN PRACTICE: in split second we justify our flight / fight actions.



The Suffering Is Built In

Instead of examining more closely the actual way in

which we operate, which consists of "trying" to get

what we want and then sabotaging our own efforts,

we assume our error is in not trying hard enough,

and redouble both our efforts and our resistance.

We always manage to stay one step ahead of

ourselves, so that we never quite reach our goals.

By focusing on the struggle instead of on the

results, we avoid having to admit that the one who

wants to change and the one who resists change are

one and the same, that we are whole, and that we

really do get what we want—which is struggle,

rather than results.

But until I can experience my own resistance as

"me" just as I experience my desire to change as

"me," I am doomed to be locked in the hopeless

struggle for control.

The above excerpt is quotes from his 1996 book:

‘Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling

the Truth‘

Brad Blanton (1940) is a Gestalt therapist who believes that lying is

the major cause of human stress. He advocates strict truthfulness as the

key to achieving intimacy and calm. He was twice candidate for United

States House of Representatives (2004 and 2006)



Who is Responsible?In a recent workshop I was asked: “Shouldn’t the receiver of a communication be responsible for it? If they don’t want to swallow it – it’s their problem!”

However true and justified this attitude may seem, to the same extent it will not help you any further on an organizational change program.

The only way to bring about change in a setting that is characterized by inertia or plain and simple “let-me-tell-you-why-this-won’t-work“-ism is by being the change you want to see in the world. We always have the choice of becoming the owner or the victim of a situation. William Glasser calls this the Choice Theory. An owner will look for solutions; a victim will search for a persecutor or a rescuer.

So I put the following multiple choice scheme on a napkin. The point here is that responsibility is a choice, not something that happens to you.

Everything becomes clear when we study the English definition for “responsible”: It literally means “able to respond” or “being capable of responding.”

The point is that I cannot solve a problem I don’t own. When people choose to take responsibility in a situation, they start owning it. This insight is fundamental for organizational change management.

In their book ‘The Art of Possibility’ Ben and Ros Zander introduce the practice of ‘Being the Board’. According to them one cannot assign responsibility to someone else. Their practice of being the board is purely an invention and yet it strengthens you at no-one’s expense.

It all starts with the radical declaration: "I am the framework for everything that happens in my life". Then, you take the practice one step further: You ask yourself in regard to the unwanted circumstances: ‘well, how is it that I have become a context for that to occur?’.

You will begin to see the obvious and less obvious contributions of your past actions and thoughts. Being the board is not about turning the blame on yourself, instead it is about access to possibility.

So next time you are tempted to say: “They just won’t listen”, ask yourself: “well, how is it that I have become a context for that to occur?” And always remember rule number 6!

William Glasser (1925) is an American psychiatrist. He is the developer of reality therapy and

choice theory. His focus on personal choice and personal responsibility

instead of classifying psychiatric syndromes is considered

controversial.

Benjamin Zander (1939) is a Jewish American conductor. He is the music director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and a faculty member at

the New England Conservatory. He is known for his interpretations of the

works of Gustav Mahler and his popular pre-concert lectures.



Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs

of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury,

shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The

resident prime minister admonishes him: "Peter," he says,

"kindly remember Rule Number 6," whereupon Peter is instantly

restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws.

The politicians return to their conversation, only to be

interrupted yet again twenty minutes later by an hysterical

woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the

intruder is greeted with the words: "Marie, please remember

Rule Number 6." Complete calm descends once more, and she too

withdraws with a bow and an apology.

When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting

prime minister addresses his colleague: "My dear friend, I’ve

seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable

as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of

Rule Number 6?" "Very simple," replies the resident prime

minister. "Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so damn

seriously."

"Ah," says his visitor, "that is a fine rule." After a moment

of pondering, he inquires, "And what, may I ask, are the other

rules?"

"There aren’t any."

Always Remember Number 6

Benjamin Zander (1939) is a Jewish American conductor. He is the music director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and a faculty member at

the New England Conservatory. He is known for his interpretations of the

works of Gustav Mahler and his popular pre-concert lectures.

The above story is quoted from Ben and Rosamund Zander’s

2002 book:

‘The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional

and Personal Life‘



Toolbox: the ‘Board’ Compass“Don’t take it personal” is easier said than done. At the end of the day you are the one in the room who is taking the punches. Sometimes the punches can make you dizzy and you may lose your sense of direction. Hence, this compass.

This compass is my way to experiment being “the framework for everything that happens in my life” Note that I use the word “experiment” - meaning: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. From the book “The Art of Possibility” by Ben Zander, I have learned that there are three behavioral indications that tell me how I am doing. It comes down to asking yourself three questions:

1. Am I controlling or am I committing?When I blame you for something that goes wrong, I seek to establish that I am in the right. In return I gain control over the situation. However, in as much as I blame you for something that went wrong – to that degree, in exactly that proportion, I lose my power. Life does not turn out the way it should. The only behavior I can control is my own commitment.

2. Am I being in the past, the present or the future?The game of "shoulds and oughts" is a blame game that gives me a sense of control because it puts me in the right. Oddly enough all these conversations either occur in the past or defer my responsibility to the future. But there is no way I can change how I responded in the past, neither can I predict what will happen in the future. I can only control what I do now.

3. Am I being right or am I being in relationship?This is the difference between answering “me” or “not me” to the question ‘Who is responsible?’. When you say “me” apologies are frequent because you have named yourself as ‘the board’. That is because when you look deeply enough into the question "How did that thing that I am having trouble with get on the board that I am?" you will find that at some point you have sacrificed a relationship. When you name yourself as the board your attention turns to repairing a breakdown in relationship.


Responsibility means that whatever you are doing you are willing to experience yourself as the cause.

Brad Blanton



Dying Before Going Into BattleMastering resistance comes down to detaching ourselves from the payoffs we get from the struggle.

Psychotherapist Bert Hellinger says that the reason we suffer from resistance is that the problem of suffering is easier than the solution. this is because maintaining the problem is deeply attached to a feeling of innocence and faithfulness.

It's true: the struggle of resistance is a certainty we can rely on. Detaching ourselves from this certainty is like staring into the abyss of meaninglessness. Nothing is more terrifying than that.

Tracy Goss is an expert on transformational leadership. She

consults to CEOs and top executives of major companies.

She focusses on the dynamics of how to accomplish something so

extraordinary that it currently seems impossible.

Bert Hellinger (1925) is a German psychotherapist who is known for a

therapeutic method called Family Constellations. This is an experiential process that aims to resolve tensions

within and between people. He is a former priest and missionary to the

Zulu in South Africa.

Sometimes when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you.Barney the Purple Dinosaur

Not to mention the payoffs we get from maintaining our "unwanted" condition. In her 1996 book ‘The Last Word on Power’, Tracy Goss distinguishes three categories of payoffs:1. You get to be right. You also get to make somebody else wrong. 2. You get to dominate or avoid being dominated 3. You get to explain the way you are and justify staying that way.

How do we get rid of this attachment? Goss draws our attention to the Japanese Samurai warriors. To remind themselves of the inevitability of loss, they used the phrase “Die before going into battle.”

This practice allowed a warrior to enter an episode of combat without fear of death. He had brought himself through an experience of the acceptance of death ahead of time. His death was a plausible outcome. In this way the warrior was able to fully give himself to his mission without concern for survival. Such freedom made all the difference between defeat and victory.

Freeing yourself from the illusion that you can control life so that it turns out the way it ’should’ means that you accept defeat as a plausible outcome.

Being convinced that the game is over and accepting this outcome, allows you to be relaxed. You forget about scenario A or strategy B because they don’t matter anymore. You are free and you can engage without any distraction.

Accepting that life turns out the way it does is the equivalent of an alcoholic “hitting bottom”. You must go through a life-transforming experience before you can transform your relationship to the addiction and before you can move from denial to acceptance.

One could call this the state of comfortable uncertainty: you base your certainty on the willingness to ‘live in a question’, rather than needing to know the answers. As Goss explains: "There is no hope of life ‘turning out as it should.’ Life turns out as it does."



One of the few television-impressions I remember from my youth is an interview with Jacques Brel on his career and his quest.

I was (and still am) impressed by the throwing-yourself-under-the-bus attitude that Brel exerts. In any song, interview or movie with Brel you cannot help being moved by his fire. The energy approaches you like the outbursts of a volcano: threatening and fascinating at the same time. In this particular interview Brel is asked about his song 'la quête' (the quest). He ends up talking about journeys and changes. He explains that when he goes to Tokyo it is not the travel from Brussels airport to Tokyo that is tough, nor the number of hours of the flight.

"It is leaving my house, getting into the car and going to the airport which is the hardest part. Something within you dies." That is the hard part of change: leaving something known and familiar behind when you have not yet fully embarked upon what is ahead of you. A part of you dies from your house to the airport. And you are vulnerable and numbed by sadness the moment you step on that big airplane.

One of my friends clearly remembers driving to the hospital with his wife to give birth to their second child. They then realized that for their first child life would never be the same anymore. They were saddened by the realization that they would never be the one and only devoted parents for that one and only child. Life is an endless circle of dying and being born again. Sadness. Tears. Letting go.Right before exciting things are about to happen.

It seems like the human condition requires us to open up some valves before letting bigger things in. A kind of widening of the soul. I look back at those openings of sadness with precision and awe - they somehow have enriched and deepened my experience of life.

Epilogue: From Here to the Airport


Even if you are in a minority of one, you aren't necessarily mad.

George Orwell

The 5 Things You Need to Know About Resistance

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Transcript of The 5 Things You Need to Know About Resistance