Managing organizational change: keeping the right people in the loop

When organizations make a decision to reorganize or restructure the way they work, it usually starts with strategic organizational goals: Improving flow of information, adapting to a changing marketplace, change in organizational priorities, and so on. Most of the thinking tends to be around organizational units of like teams or departments, and how they connect and relate to one another.

When it comes to the individuals - Organizations tend to put a lot of attention on the top leadership and management level. However, a lot of the energy related to most other employees is directed toward more bureaucratic and mundane tasks like headcount calculations, or who would report to whom in which team. In many cases, companies neglect to invest enough energy (if at all) in the thing that makes everything tick - THE PEOPLE.

M. C. Escher,  Sky & Water I, woodcut,  1938

Ideally, the organization should make the effort to engage every single one of its members, and involve them before, during, and after the process. At the minimum - get their thoughts and feedback at the end of the process so you know where they stand. However, there are not always sufficient resources or time for this. In this these cases, it is important to prioritize who to talk to, and when. Even when you do have resources to involve everyone, the order of engaging the organization's members might matter. Specifically, there are two tiers that leadership and change-drivers should consider and address:

1) The future leaders 
Leadership has usually already identified those individuals who would assume key roles in the future, at both team and organizational levels. Companies usually spend significant resources to find and nurture its future leaders for the near term as well as for medium and longer terms. Organizations make efforts to ensure sure these people are happy and will remain in the company. In times of organizational changes, the importance of communicating the process and status to the future leaders might sometime be overlooked due to the chaos of change.

Such periods of organizational change could be confusing times for everyone, and key people might not feel secure enough. They might start looking for alternative roles that seem more stable. It is critical to keep lines of communication open and give sufficient attention to those individuals. Especially in times of organizational challenge and instability, companies need to address the tier of future leadership. Make sure they understand what is going on, and why. What the goals of the specific change are. The drivers of change and organizational leaders would be wise to reassure the future leaders. It is good to listen to their thoughts and goals. It is especially important listen and respond to their concerns, before they turn into fears. 

2) The social hubs
Every network of people is characterized by a few central people, not necessarily in terms of their role but in the sense of the way that they are perceived by others. These are the people who are well connected with others within the organization. They are the ones that everyone goes to for advice, or to chat with when there's gossip, because they always know first when things are happening. Office admins could be an example for people who are well networked across the organization, and know what's happening above as well as underneath the surface.

These central people are crucial in situations of change, as they basically control the tone of information that flows informally within the organization. It could be wise to identify those social hubs, and popular/vocal members of the organization, and bring those central people on board. It could even be as simple as communicating the current process and the rationale behind it to them. Making them involved partners could help spread the right message across the organization. Even when the plan is to talk with every employee in person, this process takes time. Starting with those central employees could help spread the positive change throughout the organization until the individual conversations are complete. 

Planning the communication messaging as well as the order in which to communicate organizational changes is an important component of the change management strategy. This grows in importance for larger organizations or more radical changes. It is especially important for change processes that cannot be accomplished swiftly but stretch over a period of time - like the merging of business units or acquisition related integrations. 

Formal channels and hierarchies of communications are not enough - we also have to consider the informal and interpersonal channels of communication that might affect the organization just as much as the formal channels, if not more. Successful implementation of the internal communication strategy can help mitigate risks, reduce fears and resistance, and increase confidence in the organization and its leaders.

Nietzsche's take on who is an artist

Another interesting post by Jonah Lehrer's, as always filled with fascinating references. This time he writes about identifing good ideas. My favorite quote, remindes me of architecture school when I was pondering on how to know whether someone is a real artist.

This is Nietzsche's take on this:

"Artists have a vested interest in our believing in the flash of revelation, the so-called inspiration … shining down from heavens as a ray of grace. In reality, the imagination of the good artist or thinker produces continuously good, mediocre or bad things, but his judgment, trained and sharpened to a fine point, rejects, selects, connects…. All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing, but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming, ordering."

The beautiful image is by design context blog

Link to the full post on Wired:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/how-do-we-identifiy-good-ideas/

Body Language

An article by Adam Dachis has a few interesting points about body language.

It includes some ideas on the way that we carry ourselves and the way it is interpreted by others. There is a lot of research (and also a consulting company, Sociometric Solutions, that I happen to work for :)) that leverage technology in order to learn from human gestures and its interpretation. When discussing body language, it is very important to be aware of cultural differences that effect the way that we perceive behavior. For example, some gestures could be considered insulting in certain cultures and not significant at all in other cultures.

I apologize if the image offends anyone 

Here are a few ideas and a few quotes from the article. I will include a link to the full article at the end of this post

1. "We lie a lot" (House says it better) If you believe this, you will find it helpful to know a thing or two about body signals. 
2. Eye contact is good! 
3. Intuition. In contrast to what the article suggests, I think that our intuition is something we can improve and develop so that it can assist us in estimating situations. 
4. "Some people are just awkward" Remember to take all the "How to..." guides with a grain of salt. Especially when it comes to describing or deciphering people's intentions. Every human being is different, it is really difficult to generalize and to expect it to fit accurately to everyone. 
5. "We tend to mimic the behavior of others to some extent" I admit that I usually get uncomfortable when people talk about mimicry.  I do believe however, that we have some influence on the person we are interacting with. We can send "vibes" that can catch on to the other person and somewhat effect the interaction
6. "Remember: Body Language Is Only Part of the Picture"

Link to the full article:
How to Read Body Language to Reveal the Underlying Truth in Almost Any Situation, BY ADAM DACHIS

Santiago, thanks for sharing the article!

How employees with bad attitude affect your organization

An interesting read at The Wall Street Journal, by Robert Sutton.
Click the link to see the article: 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203499704576622550325233260.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet

(Doug, thanks for sharing!)

Mind Wandering.....................

I am always fascinated with brain processes that are mysterious (or at least unknown to me) and their affect on our behavior. According to yet another brilliant article by Jonah Lehrer from WIERED (oh yeah, I am definitely becoming a groupie), it is OK to just let the mind wander.
Furthermore, Not only that it is NOT unproductive, it actually makes us be MORE CREATIVE!

Fun fact: Did you know that the brain consumes more energy during daydreaming than it does during periods in which we are focused?!

This image is a detail taken from a beautiful Mercedes Benz add: called "Left Brain Right Brain" 

(Advertising Agency: Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv, Israel)

 A research from Schooler lab, mentioned in the article, demonstrated that "people who consistently engage in more mind-wandering [...] score significantly higher on various measures of creativity". 

Before you start gazing at the screen and let your mind wander, you should know that there are different types of mind-wandering, and not in all of them patients exhibited increased creativity (you'll have to read the article to know the distinction ). Click HERE to link to the full article.

Interesting read about what makes us learn better

Do you hate to be wrong? What is your reaction when you make a mistake?

According to a new paper by Moser at Michigan State University there are two distinct mindsets: a fixed one and a growth one. Having one or the other has an impact on our ability to learn from our mistakes and to improve our performances. 

This interesting article by Jonah Lehrer touches on the difference between feedback that is given on effort versus feedback that is granted for intelligence. Apparently there is a different impact based on the subject of feedback (praise on effort or praise on intelligence as part of an experiment done with children by Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford). 

Should we avoid the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong? 

The article answers this question and others:
Why Do Some People Learn Faster? By Jonah Lehrer, Wired Magazine

Snobs, meritocracy and why tragedy is useful

This wonderful 15 minute talk touches on issues that have been occupying my mind for some time: what is success? Are the goals that motivate us are truly ours? Can we really avoid prior assumptions? Alain De Botton examines ideas of success and failure (via swissmiss and Brain pickings).

De Botton mentions a scenario in which we strive to a certain measure of success only to find out (in some cases) that it is not "our success" but a success measure defined by someone else (by our mother, significant others, trends etc.) This could lead to frustration.

The way I look at it, as we are social creatures, by definition we are affected by others: we learn, improve, and also generate ideas and thoughts as a result of our interactions with other individuals in our environment. However, many times, without noticing it, people simply repeat what they heard by others without necessarily filtering it, or providing an original line of thought. 

In my opinion, the best way for us to make sure the goals/thoughts/ideas we have are really ours and not a repetition of others is to metaphorically melt the ready-made input that we received by others, break it up, look at it in a critical way, and then reconstruct it to fit us - pick and chose the concepts that fit our "truth" and synthesize it with our perspective and original ideas. It will ensure that what we are striving for, the success that we believe in, is ours and not just a reflection of others. It is difficult but crucial to generate an individual voice, needs, desires and beliefs in order to make sure that we really OWN our thoughts. If after the reconstruction we end up with the same idea as the one we started with - it means we actually believe in it!

Mean What You Say and Say What You Mean

This time I wanted to write about three communication issues. These might be related to cultural differences or to the way we were brought up. No matter what the cause is, I think it is worth thinking about these behaviors:

 
How are you.
And continuing to walk without really caring about the response.
This is one of the things that annoyed me the most when I moved to the US: People walk by you, saying “hi, how are you” (note that there’s no question mark!) and just continue to walk without really stopping by to hear your answer. I thought that it is very rude, why do people ask if they don’t care about my answer??? Well, of course people do not intend to insult. This is how people greet each other here, and it took me a while to understand it and not to be personally offended. However, I would like to suggest an alternative: if we are in such a hurry, and don’t have time to hear how people are doing, just say “Hi, good to see you”.

I think that we should care about other people and how they are doing, conversation is important and good, asking “how are you?” is great, but if you ask it, do be kind enough to pause and hear the response. Or just don’t ask at all.


DIS-honest-signals.
Professor Sandy Pentland of the MIT Media Lab wrote an entire book on Honest Signals. Here is a quote I took from the Signaling Theory wikipedia page: “Biological signals, like warning calls or resplendent tail feathers, are considered honest if they are correlated with, or reliably predict, something useful to the receiver. In this usage, honesty is a useful correlation between the signal trait (which economists call ”public information” because it is readily apparent) and the unobservable thing of value to the receiver”

In the name of politeness people are signaling DIS-honest signals. Many explain that they don’t want to hurt feelings of the person that they are speaking with and therefore mask it with smiles and kind words. How are we supposed to interpret body language and words that are masked?! For example, people who have a bad interview but receive positive feedback just so they don't feel bad, do not have a clue that they really did badly, and they cannot improve. Wouldn’t it be better to be honest? I am not suggesting to be rude by all means (!) but I think that we can and should know how to handle honest feedback, and it could help us improve.


Direct = Aggressive (?!)
Last week I was speaking with a few people who explained to me how direct communication can be perceived as aggressiveness. I refuse to play the “pretend” game. I want people to be clear and direct with me in the way we communicate, without masks. I am trying to be honest and direct too. I think it will remove a lot of noise and confusion if we all just be honest and direct with each other. We will not have to invest so much energy in rephrasing every word and painting everything with shiny colors. It’s not about aggressiveness, which I don't promote, but I perceive indirect loop-arounds and masks of fake-politeness as unnecessary overhead that weighs-down communication and could distract from the actual content being communicated.

 
And that's my bottom line. Mean what you say, and say what you mean.

Work/Life separation. Really?

I noticed that many people emphasize and take pride in their ability to separate their work and non-work time (some call it having a “personal life”). I realize that this is a charged issue. I can understand it but not agree with it. There are so many seminars, workshops, and books that teach us how to separate between life/work and such. 

I agree there are many advantages to such a separation, especially in times of stress and pressure at work, however, this time I wanted to challenge this idea and question it: 
Is it really necessary to separate the two? Is it even possible?

Here are three thoughts that may paint the separation between work and “personal life” in grayish colors:

1. EVERYTHING is personal.
   For years, I believed (and still do partially) that things that happen to us in life are a direct result of who we are. There are philosophers and psychology researchers who developed theories that explain that there is no reality but the reality as WE perceived it- the subjective reality (e.g. Thomas Nagel) . If we follow that line of logic, we cannot really separate between our personal and professional aspects since both are a result of how we perceive the world.
   
   
2. Humans are complete systems.
   (I am using the word systems as an attempt to avoid the word “holistic” that I would have really wanted to use here, since I realize the risk of losing some of you by sounding too fluffy...)
   
   We present different identities in different situations, we reveille certain aspects of our personality with friends and family (e.g. we might chose to act goofy and foolishly since we know we are in a safe environment), with colleagues at work (we might chose to act in a very focused and serious manner), etc.
   
   Even if we chose to behave completely different in certain scenarios,  we are still the same person and therefore it does not seem possible, sustainable, or effective to turn certain “parts” of ourselves ON and OFF
   (or do you think we are all suffering from a split personality syndrome?)
   
   
3. Passion.
   - People who are passionate about what they do, want to do it all the time and can’t help but think, talk, and act about the things that they are passionate about.
   - Lucky people are passionate about their job.
   Should I draw the conclusion that people who insist of separating their lives are just not passionate about what they do? 

Maybe instead of trying to separate the two we can focus on 
how to balance them.

The Importance of Being Earnest (about Feedback)

In psychology, BioFeedback was found to be meaningful in terms of improving health and personal performance. I have never tried it but I am fascinated by the concept that we are able to view our behaviors (to be more accurate our physiological responses) and to affect them (manipulate). Another example is the work of several research groups at the MIT Media Lab are developing devices that sense behavior (examples: here, here and here) and provide social and behavioral feedback to the tested individual, and there are companies that are doing incredible work on measurement of behavior in attempt to be able to affect it.

Some day we will be walking with sensors on and around us all the time, and be able to measure and improve ourselves on the fly. This day is getting closer and closer whether we want to or not... (read: Smartphones). Until then, I think that we'd better remember the importance of interpersonal feedback as a tool for improvement of ourselves and our peers.

Feedback is so important! It is a tool that enables us to change and improve our behavior, when done correctly.Why is it so hard to provide and to receive feedback?

Many people treat feedback as criticism - it shouldn't be this way! One way to do this right is to focus the feedback on specific behaviors and patterns, rather than to personality traits which are harder to change. There is a higher chance that the receiver of the feedback will be able to improve or adjust behavior, compared to changing their personality. Another challenge is timing. Feedback should be provided close to the observed behavior, similarly to any reinforcement-based learning activity. Lastly, you need to know HOW TO provide and receive feedback (practice helps!) 

Last week I facilitated a workshop that dealt with feedback. No matter how you decide to approach it, people always feel as if feedback is something that you just know (or don't know) how to do, and can’t be taught. Well, this is not true. Not everyone knows how to do it well from the get-go, and there is a lot we can do to improve. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to practice feedback in a sterile environment, since, as in any simulation, it is “not the real thing” and does not represent actual real-life challenges.

In general, feedback serves two purposes:

1. Reinforcement of desirable behaviors
   (which as a byproduct builds self-confidence)
2. Improvement of behaviors which are not desirable.

Would you rather be told that you are doing something wrong in your work, with all the discomfort that might involve, or would you rather wait around for a promotion that will never come? Would you rather hear from a potential employer or recommender what you are doing wrong, so that you can improve, or to get a polite and bland response that wouldn't make you feel so bad but would leave you in the same place you were beforehand?

I would rather get earnest feedback, targeted at what I can do to improve, with all the difficulty that might come with that. What would you prefer?

Seek feedback, and deliver it whenever possible!