I’ve never ridden an elephant, not even one of those little pygmy ones you see at fairs (probably because I don’t go to fairs, since they are depressing and a bit creepy). Even without this firsthand experience, I can imagine that if I were to ride an elephant, and that elephant and I were to have a difference of opinion, I would end up on the losing end.

Chip & Dan Heath, brothers and co-authors of one of my favourite books “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die”, borrow this metaphor of an elephant and its rider to represent our emotional side, and our rational side respectively. To illustrate this simply: the rider makes the decision that they want to lose 10 pounds, the elephant eats that 20 oz. steak anyway. Change efforts often boil down to short-term payoffs trumping long-term goals, with the elephant playing the role of villain.

The focus of this book, and why it is such an important read, is how to successfully implement change when you don’t have a lot of will power, authority, and/or many resources at your disposal.

Most –if not all– of the time we want to implement change, this is the very situation we are in. On a personal level, we have our own elephants that can help or hinder us, and when dealing with others, many more elephants.

While I would characterize ‘Made to Stick’ as ‘a marketing degree with a psychology minor in a book’, ‘Switch’ would be ‘a degree in organizational behaviour with a side of economics’. It drives home the fundamental concept that behaviour can’t simply be understood by looking at rational self-interest, rather, it is a complex combination of self-interest, perceived identity, social cues, your environment, and emotions thrown in just to make things interesting. Out of this complexity, they derive a clear methodology for implementing change, and illustrate this approach using a wide range of real-world examples:

Conservation: Saving the St. Lucia Parrot
Health Care: Reducing the intern work week from a patient-killing 120-hour works to 80
Public Safety: Creating ‘designated drivers’ 5-seconds at a time
Customer Service: How Rackspace went from bottom to top by getting rid of voicemail
Corporate Culture: Getting paper pushing bureaucrats to care about the customer
Amoung many others…

Fundamental to all these change initiatives is that the vast majority of people would do the right thing given the right context, environment and motivation. Before I close with a brief outline their methodology, I want to recommend that if there is one change-related book you read this year make it this one!

“Switch” methodology:

Direct the Rider
1. Look for existing bright spots and building from what is already working
2. Identify the destination clearly
3. Provide crystal clear black & white behaviours that lead to change
Motivate the Elephant
1. Make your audience feel bigger
2. Make your problem seem smaller
3. Leverage emotion to advance your goals
Shape the Path
1. Change the environment to make the change easier
2. Encourage habits that fit with the change
3. People instinctively want to fit in, use this to assist change

Dan Heath will be speaking October 14th, 2010 at the Shenkman Arts Centre in Ottawa. Register HERE, and join me there!

Respect: Change’s Greatest Enabler

'Bigote' by Daniel Lobo

Ever had to work with –or for– someone you didn’t respect?

What was that relationship like? Do you think you were able to keep that lack-of-respect from coming across?

You don’t have to skip to the end for the answer sheet, or turn this post upside down, the answers are: YES, BAD and NO.

Every organization needs to implement change on a regular basis, and the biggest roadblock to this change is a lack of respect.

I recently weighed in on the mutiny at the RCMP via this blog and a letter to the editor. Unfortunately, my ultimate conclusion on the solution got lost in my overselling of the motivation of the revolt: a play for the top job. A discussion initiated on my personal blog led me to realize what is more likely the root cause of this conflict: a perceived –and potentially prevailing– lack of respect.

Some ideas on where this lack of respect originated:

It is no surprise that Mr. Elliott has faces opposition from the start. He came in as a ‘fixer’ in 2007 when past commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli left the force rocked by scandal and in crisis, and nobody likes to be ‘fixed’. The RCMP has a strong identity, much of it deservedly positive, but this also gives it a strong immune system when it comes to change. I’ve seen a new ‘outside’ CEO come in to a large organization in crisis (Nortel), and the strong reaction that it will illicit from those that want to protect the status quo. – Me

Mr. Elliot has done precious little to alleviate the daily burden of the officers who patrol the streets and try to keep a lid on criminal activity. His appearance at a northern RCMP office in Alberta and his disdain for questions and sincere explanations was so evident, the ranking officers were embarrassed at his display of condescension and rudeness. – “getsomereality” @ SfaUT

To summarize each of these, I would say the RCMP was pre-disposed to question Elliott’s ability and motivation to lead the force (they likely don’t trust or respect him), and you can see in ‘getsome’s comment above that the feeling generated by the Alberta meeting is getting passed along, and the conclusion is ‘Bill doesn’t respect the RCMP‘.

And when it comes to feelings, fact is irrelevant… you can’t argue feelings.

What happens when respect is lost?

Think about a time where you thought someone didn’t respect you. In this situation, did you feel open to constructive criticism, or did you focus your energy on defending yourself? The fact is, justifying yourself is an instinctive reaction to the feeling of disrespect. Spending energy justifying yourself is the antithesis of change.

You will notice that in most situations where a private company brings in an external CEO, it is expected that he/she will bring in some of “their people”. Some may view this as cronyism, but it actually has a lot to do with respect. The new CEO wants to have some of their senior deputies that can hit the ground running, without a lot of one-on-one attention. For those that are retained from the old structure, much energy must be spent going through the usual “Forming – Storming – Norming” before you can get on to “Performing”. During the ‘Storming’, there is a lot of opportunity for respect to be lost, and even more-so when ALL the C-levels aside from the new boss are from the old structure, each requiring this one-on-one attention.

This was certainly the case for the RCMP, where William Elliott was made the new ‘CEO’ but had to retain all of the old C-levels (those reporting to the CEO).

Loss of respect during the ‘storming’ phase is very damaging, as respect is easy to lose, and hard to regain.

So to summarize what may have contributed to an overall lack of respect at the RCMP:

Organization is told that it needs to be fixed (Message: RCMP is incompetent)
RCMP has a strong tradition-based culture (Effect: Attempts to change the force can easily be interpreted as a lack of respect for it.)
New Commissioner (CEO) is put in place, whose background does not represent the tradition of the force (Message: We aren’t capable of fixing ourselves)
New commissioner is given a tight 2-year timeline to implement change (Effect: lets rush the ‘storming’ to get to ‘performing’, resulting in lots of hard feelings)
Commissioner does not bring in ‘his people’ (Effect: instead of being able to focus his change efforts on a subset of leaders while ‘his people’ execute, he has to do work them all at the same time. I can only imagine how hard this must be.)

How to regain respect?

A full treatment of this requires more detail than can be shared here, but I will share one suggestion that may help address a similar situation; while the structure is mine, the idea originates from an anecdote in the book Crucial Conversations, and concerned how to get management and union working together again after a prolonged acrimonious strike.

Identify members on each side of the conflict.
Put key members of each side into separate rooms supplied with a flip-chart or printable white-board.
Randomly select one room and inject poison gas.
Just kidding… ignore #3 skip to 5.
Give each team 20 minutes to write down what their goals for the organization are.
Assemble both sides in one room to review the conclusions of each team.
Identify areas of alignment between the sides.

Even though each side has been arguing, they will inevitably see that they have considerable overlap in their purpose. In the RCMP’s case, I would be very surprised if both sides didn’t want an effective police force that was respected by the public they serve. What this activity does is to start rebuilding respect by having both sides of the conflict realize that they have a common purpose, which is a crucial step to building trust and respect.