Reading Deep: From Good to Great
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.
If you'd like permission to reprint any of Peter's articles, please contact him directly.
You can contact him at
pdejager@technobility.com
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From time to time a book comes along which is worthy of the hype we wrap around it, Jim Collin’s “Good to Great” is such a book. A million best seller already, it certainly doesn’t require another raving book review, so I’ll attempt to explore it a bit differently. Specifically we’re going to focus on two of his findings and relate them back to the primary focus of
www.technobility.com, which is Change Management.
If you’re that single individual who doesn’t know anything about the book, here’s what it’s all about. Jim Collins defined in advance, the specific characteristics of
companies which went from ‘good’ to ‘great’ and maintained that ‘great’ status for at least 15 years. He then, along with a cadre of adventurous researchers, went on a great quest to discover what unique attributes these companies might have had in common.
His book recounts his search for the companies and what made them go from good-to-great. The premise being, that we can, and should, learn something from what and how they did it.
On page 175 (1st Edition - Harper Business Books) Collins relates a peculiar incident from the research process. In his words;
At a pivotal point in the study, members of the research team nearly revolted. Throwing their interview notes on the table, they asked, “Do we have to keep asking that stupid question?”
“What stupid question?” I asked.
“The one about commitment, alignment, and how they managed change.”
“That’s not a stupid question,” I replied. “It’s one of the most important.”
“Well,” said one team member, “a lot of the executives who made the transition – well, they think it’s a stupid question. Some don’t even understand the question!”
“Yes, we need to keep asking it,” I said. “We need to be consistent across the interviews. And, besides, it’s even more interesting that they don’t understand the question. So, keep probing. We’ve got to understand how they overcame resistance to change and got people lined up.” (Italics mine)
Collin’s explained this puzzle as follows,
Clearly good-to-great companies did get incredible commitment and alignment – they artfully managed change – but they never really spent much time thinking about it. It was utterly transparent to them. We learned that under the right conditions, the problem of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change just melt away. They largely take care of themselves.
Collin’s directive, “We’ve got to understand how they overcame resistance to change and got people lined up,” neatly sums up the challenge of every organization. We must master the secret of Change Management, otherwise progress
is difficult, and stagnation inevitable.
That some groups of managers are demonstrably able to effortlessly transform their organization without encountering resistance, destroys a swath of beliefs about change.
You can’t ‘manage’ Change; it’s destined to be difficult, if not impossible.
“Change Management” is an oxymoron.
With Great Change comes Great Resistance. (Sorry Spidey)
You can’t get everyone in a large organization on board a new idea.
The only way to implement change is to force it onto the organization.
Change must be top down.
All these beliefs, and more, are totally invalidated by Collin’s findings. In some companies, Change happens naturally, without conscious effort. In some companies, the question “How did you overcome resistance to change?” literally has no meaning.
If this is possible in some companies, it is possible in all companies.
The big question is “How?” Why do most companies encounter resistance
to change? And how do a handful of companies, get to the point where the concept of
“resistance to change” has no meaning?
In a way, Collin’s entire book is an attempt to provide an answer to this question, but there’s one
of his findings in particular which I think points most forcefully towards the answer. On page 79 Collins, within the context of a tiny section titled
“Lead with questions, not answers” writes;
Leading from good-to-great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.
This flies in the face of the whole notion of “buy-in”. Everything about the term “buy-in” screams that
management has the answer, management and only management knows the correct path,
management know what’s best for the company and if only the employees would buy
management’s solution, then all management’s problems would go away.
Here’s a test… a series of situations - pretend they apply to your organization and pay attention to what happens inside your head as you read them.
The corporate accounting system is no longer capable of handling the increasing number of sales transactions. What do you think we should do?
Sales in our eastern region are down because of a number of recent resignations. What do you think we should do?
Our product is lagging behind our competitor’s product in several features. What do you think we should do?
Admittedly these are fictitious situations, completely lacking in details and specifics, yet I’m certain that as you read them, you started to provide answers, or you came up with a collection of questions you’d like to ask so that you could start solving the problem.
To put it simply, just by asking questions I caused you to slip effortlessly into that supposedly elusive state of “involvement”. Read any book on change, listen to any change management consultant and we hear time and time again that the secret to good
change is “involvement.” The message is simple, loud and clear:
The more involvement, the less resistance to change expressed by the target audience.
Involvement is supposed to be incredibly difficult to achieve. It isn’t. All you need do is ask someone how they would respond to a problem, and
if they believe that the problem is indeed a problem, they
inevitably respond… “We need to solve this… we need to change.”
I believe that asking questions, and avoiding as much as possible, the particularly bad habit of having all the answers, is
the primary management practice that enabled Collin's good-to-great
companies to side-step this thing called “resistance to change” as they went from good-to-great.
© 2005 Peter de Jager – Peter is interested in all things related to Management, but especially Change Management.
Contact him at
Pdejager@technobility.com
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