Dissecting the Status Quos
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker, Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change, technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences worldwide, he's also writen monthly columns for CIO Magazine and Computerworld Canada.
His goal is always to question what we think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
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Successful Change Management depends on more than just the ability to move an organization (or an individual) from “here” to “there”, it requires a reliable process for selecting the right “there” out of a blizzard of choice. Ideally, if this were a perfect world, this strategy should generate the same decision for each change situation, regardless of who did the analysis. Unfortunately, because this isn’t a perfect world, such consistency is beyond our reach, but we can set it as our “unreasonable” goal.
Regardless of whether we initiate the Change as a response to a threat, or from a desire to seize an opportunity, all Change has the “from ‘here’ to ‘there’” pattern in common. Our objective is to make sure that the “there” isn’t chosen at random. To select it according to some form of repeatable process.
To put it visually, and all too simply, here’s what all Change is about:
The Possible Alternatives
Here→ Change→ There
Forgetting for the moment everything that goes on inside the stage called “Change”, how
do we, and how should we; select a specific destination from all the possibilities in front of us?
First thing we notice in this particular situation is that “resisting/rejecting change” is going to outweigh “embracing change” by three to one. So much for the belief that “resisting change” is bad. When we are presented with more than one choice, rejection is unavoidable. To think rationally about Change, demands that we throw away all the misleading clichés about Change Management and approach it realistically.
Hopefully there will always be more incorrect choices than correct ones. We must “resist change” in order to embrace the optimal Change for our organization/situation. Which brings us back to where we started from, when faced with the need to Change, how do we select the right course of action? Out of all we
could do… what should we do?
Here’s a quote about destinations that I’m fond of, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”. While this is obviously true, and speaks to the need of having a destination in mind before starting out on a journey, it’s equally important to know where you are, before you even decide that a direction is necessary. So here’s my companion quote for it,
“If you don’t know where you’re starting from, you shouldn’t leave”.
The first step in Change Management is the acquisition of a complete and intimate understanding of your current Status Quo. Trying to move forward, without understanding what we currently value, makes it impossible to decide between future alternatives. It is like trying to select a sweater as a gift, without knowing what colour a person likes.
Obviously it’s also true that we need to know what we don’t like about our current situation before we begin selecting something new. Especially since it’s usually what we don’t like, that we’re attempting to Change.
If this sounds simplistic, it’s only because there’s no crisis attached to our discussion. In real life (that’s the stuff going on in your organization as you invest valuable time to read this article) we’re often in reaction mode. We tend to focus on either what we want to gain or what we want to leave behind, and seldom on the entire picture. Since our emotions, to the exclusion of all logic, often determine what we pay attention to, our decisions regarding what we should do are suspect at best. The way to gain control over this process is to put a discipline/procedure/best practice/methodology (choose the buzzword of your choice) in place to add structure to our thought process.
This doesn’t have to be, and it shouldn’t be, incredibly complex. We must make it as simple as possible if we, and others, are to use it on a regular basis. Since our objective is to select the most suitable change from all the options available, we start by focusing our attention on the current Status Quo.
| Question about what's good. | Answer | Value low 1 - 10 high |
| What do we value most about the current Status Quo? | ||
| What do we value next about the current Status Quo? | ||
| What else do we value about the current Status Quo? | ||
| Question about what's bad. | Answer | Value low 1 - 10 high |
| What must be changed in the current Status Quo? | ||
| What else should be changed in the current Status Quo? | ||
| What else could be changed in the current Status Quo? |
For the sake of simplicity, I’ve kept the number of questions to a minimum for both categories, for a real problem we’d list as many positives and negatives as we can find and rank their importance as best as possible. (We’d also provide more room for our answers!)
By itself this form has some significant value, but it takes on a life of its own, when distributed to an organization (department, team or even two people seeking to change their relationship) and then the results are examined for patterns, clusters, degrees of agreement and cohesiveness.
The next step is to use what we’ve learnt about the current Status Quo, to evaluate all the possible alternatives. We ask one question a number of times and add two additional questions to the mix; we’ll start with the things we like;
| Current Status Quo | Consequences of Alternative "A" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The idea here is to ensure that the benefits and tradeoffs brought about by alternative ‘A’ are recognized in advance. Change inevitably affects what we value, sometimes diminishing it, other times improving it.
| Current Status Quo | Consequences of Alternative "A" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The two additional questions are extremely important. Whenever we change something we run the risk of either negatively affecting something of value, or adding a new problem. On the other hand, a change can not only rid us of a problem, it can add a collateral benefit – sometimes unexpectedly.
We can expand this simple form in a number of directions. We can add a probability column to identify the likelihood of something happening, we can add dollar costs/benefits to both values and issues; we can add an overall difficulty rating to reflect how difficult it might be to implement that particular alternative; we can also add a timeline of responses – filling out “Alternative ‘A’ after 6 months”, “Alternative ‘A’ after 12 months”.
We can extend this to the point where no one uses it, because it’s too much trouble. As it stands, it serves as a simple overview of how the current status quo will change under each alternative. It focuses our attention on what we value. That alone is sufficient benefit to use it before every change.
Important note: Whenever a form generates numbers, there’s an almost overwhelming urge to generate fancy looking formulas which allege insightful information. For example, if the values given to all the items which we think must/should/could be changed total to less than the sum of all positive values, then we’re looking at a ‘good’ status quo.
That type of reasoning is extremely faulty. Usually the values we assign are guidelines, gut feelings, “it feels about right”, nothing more. Of course, the more we justify and rationalize the values we assign, then the greater the temptation to use them as if they really had a numerical relationship to each other.
All I can advise is caution. If we’re considering the implementation of a new accounting system, then the value we assign to “familiarity with existing system” has little if anything to do with the one assigned to “the new system can produce report ‘X’ which we’ve always wanted”.
The reason for providing value estimations in this form is to track how we think these values will change as a result of each alternative course of action. We can also compare, with caution, the differences between one alternative and another.
(c) 2005, Peter de Jager – Guess what? Peter has a passionate, almost obsessive, fascination with this thing called Change and those things which cause it, including Creativity. If you’d like to inject some of his passion and focus to your organization’s change management process… then contact him at Pdejager@technobility.com
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