Are You Stuck?

 

Situation: Your project is a huge change for your organization and you've reached a point where you're faced with a serious challenge.

Projects are just like life.  There are easy parts and rough patches.  Anyone can deal with things when it's easy, but it's how we deal with the tough parts that makes all of the difference.  Daryl Conner  has been advising change leaders for decades, so he has a great deal of experience dealing with the most common challenges, and he's seen some unique ones as well.  Recently he gave us a half hour to talk about getting "unstuck".  "Getting unstuck" is also the focus of his upcoming webinar on May 20th where he will be engaging change leaders live, diagnosing and providing solutions for their change challenges.

Here are some of the insights he offered to us in advance of his webinar.

Q. I guess we are all familiar with the feeling of a project we are responsible for getting “stuck” but what does “stuckness” mean to you?

A change initiative becomes stuck when it loses direction and/or momentum towards its intended result and there is no viable mitigation plan in place. “Stuckness” is a normal phenomenon that occurs on a frequent basis during all major change initiatives, regardless of the implementation approach used.From time to time, even the most accomplished change agents applying the most capable execution methodology not only become stuck, but are unable to find a viable resolution.

There is no pejorative associated with being stuck, provided the blockage is addressed in a timely manner. Becoming unstuck involves recognizing when progress has stopped or is in jeopardy, correctly diagnosing what the contributing factors are, and engaging the proper mitigating actions so progress can once again take place.

Q.  Change management is often undervalued as a discipline.  Perhaps it's because the solutions sound easier to implement than they are in practice.  Often, people don't recognize they need help until they are actually "stuck".  Is getting stuck and the motivation it creates, an important part of the change process?  How "stuck" does one have to be to seek help?

You’re right. Change management, in the sense that we talk about it––orchestrating the human landscape around large-scale initiatives––is typically undervalued and underutilized.  Our firm tends to deal with the more complex endeavors, the sort that are transformational for a company. Projects of this nature have many moving parts. Even well-meaning team leaders get overwhelmed with the immediate challenges and often believe that they can address the human side of change later.

We worked recently with a major corporation that was three years into an SAP implementation and six months away from going live. It was then that things began to fall apart. People weren’t prepared for the SAP express train that was coming at them at full speed. Several factors were hitting all at once. No one had looked at the organization’s true capacity to absorb this set of changes along with the array of other major shifts that were taking place. In addition, the leaders were no longer aligned on what the change meant for their business, if they ever, in fact, were. Although things began to visibly unravel only a few months before we were called in, the underlying symptoms of an implementation disaster had been brewing for a long time. It was stuckness three years in the making.

Or, take another example. A few years ago we worked with a hospital system that planned to open a new intensive care unit (ICU). It incorporated many new ideas in health care––how nurses monitored patients, how care givers worked as teams and how the family was involved. The design and construction took years. Throughout the process there was little attention given to––and no inclusion of—the nursing staff. Less than ninety days from the planned opening, the nurses raised their concerns for patient health in such a new model. The declared their belief that the unit would not open on time and that if it did, they would not work there.

Both of these had good outcomes after we helped to create the proper interventions, but neither situation needed to become as problematic as it did. The common elements in both were implementation teams that were very focused on the technical aspects (hardware, software, construction, and so forth) and who were not paying attention to the fact that for the intended outcomes to take hold, certain key people needed to change.

Most situations brought to us are like these two examples, they are about getting unstuck. Only about 30% of the time we are engaged early and work with implementation teams to properly navigate the change process and avoid getting stuck. This doesn’t mean that they avoid risk or challenges. There is no major change without risk. These teams are prepared for and anticipate most of the problems. They act quickly and avoid getting stuck for extensive periods. The greater portion of our work is with teams and initiatives that have been stuck for some time.

As far as being stuck serving as a motivator, unfortunately, in some respects, it is. Remember, it happens to even the most seasoned change practitioners. The issue isn’t about getting stuck. To some degree, stuckness occurs every day. The point is what takes place when progress is in jeopardy. The most important thing is to recognize risks early and to do something about them.

We have a saying in managing change that when it comes to declaring status, “red is good”. This is counter-cultural in most organizations. People typically treat red as bad and don’t want to report their projects as having problems. This is how you get three years into an SAP implementation and then hit a wall. A “red is good” culture is one where problems are expected and the motivation is to address them as quickly as possible. In this way stuckness doesn’t have to get to a critical level before anyone will ask for help––being stuck at any level is a reason to reach out.

Q.  If you had to name three, what would be the three most common sticking points?  Broadly speaking, how are they addressed?

A. There is a stuckness that everybody reading this will have experienced. It is the most common stuck of all. It’s called getting started. Every project leader has been there. The Irish writer George Bernard Shaw said, “take care to be born well” and it applies to projects as well as people. The project lead that rushes or is too casual about start up will always regret it later. Getting the right elements in the plan and the right people on the team is how you avoid being stuck later. How many projects do you see that have one or more false starts?

Another common sticking point is the alignment of the senior team. The enthusiasm to get started often masks the absence of true clarity about what the change really means. Sometimes it’s not just enthusiasm but a desire to avoid conflict. There is no substitute for getting the right leaders in a room and ensuring that they are clear and aligned on what the change is and what it will really take to accomplished the intended outcomes. This dialog should address the reason for change, the desired state in the future, how success will be determined and some principles that will guide the change. If the senior team is aligned on these, then the change will proceed more smoothly.

Finally, groups and individuals have a finite capacity for change. Many times that upper limit is far greater than anyone imagined. Nonetheless, there are limits to how much disruption people can absorb at any one time. Unfortunately, many organizations act like they can add change on top of change and it will all take hold. Often those driving the change are unaware of all of the other demands being placed on people. This is a dangerous sticking point in that it is usually thought that the change being implemented was the problem when in reality, it was the aggregate of all the projects hitting at once. There are many ways of addressing an organization’s remaining capacity for change, but a simple one is just recognizing and mapping the integration points between the different projects and how many people are at ground zero for multiple initiatives.

Q.  What are the easiest sticking points to resolve? (ones that involve just a minor change in approach)

There are no easy sticking points. That’s why we call it stuckness––it means key aspects of the implementation process aren’t progressing as they should. For that to be true, something important is blocked. Now, that said, there are some blockage points you’d prefer to have if you had to be stuck on something. Not having enough resilient people to staff an important change is not an easy fix, but one that is manageable––train the people you have in how to strengthen their preexisting resilience and/or hire people that are highly resilient to start with. Another one is learning to address the debilitating disenchantment that many people suffer when a change is harder to accomplish than they expected. Teaching people that during significant change, “uninformed optimism” always precedes “informed pessimism” is not an overly difficult task. Once this is done, they usually feel more self confident knowing that it’s normal for people to feel some degree of “buyer’s remorse” after the honeymoon is over and the implementation process gets into the really hard stuff.

Q.  What are the most difficult ones and why?  When do you need outside intervention? 

Some of the more challenging reasons why projects become stuck include:  leaders who say they want dramatic change but are unwilling or unable to apply the resolve, resources, and/or commitment needed to achieve their stated objectives, or endeavors where long-standing cultural norms run counter to what is needed to fully execute the change.

As far as when outside resources should be called on for help…that one is easy. Don’t look beyond the boundaries of your own organization if you have the knowledge, skill and experience to handle the challenges with internal resources. So, the issue is how difficult will it be to unstick your project once it has lost direction and/or momentum, and do you have the people on the inside who can adequately address that level of challenge? This may sound simple enough but many leaders underestimate the degree of implementation difficulty their projects entail. To keep it simple, I’ll offer three questions that can be used to assess the challenge involved in executing an initiative.

• How much change does the initiative represent? (Is it incremental or transformation in its intent?)

• What kind of fulfillment must be reached to deliver on the promises made? (Can you get by with merely installing the change or do you have to fully realize whatever promises were made?)

• How crucial is the success of this initiative relative to all the other major initiatives in place or planned? (Is it a good idea that this project succeeds or is it a business imperative?)

To the degree an initiative is transformational in nature, it must be fully realized and is a business imperative, it will be essential that the leaders and their change agents have the highest level of change-related knowledge, skill and experience. If inside personnel don’t possess the capabilities required, either call on outside resources or accept that the intended outcomes will be less than promised.

 
Q.  What was the most challenging "stuck" moment you've ever been faced with (either yourself or a client you were advising) and how was it resolved?

There have been many. The longer you have been doing this work, the more sticky situations you accumulate. One that comes to mind is some work with a senior team. It was a seasoned and battle hardened group. In their history they had navigated many changes, and yet found themselves faced with one that dwarfed all that had come before. They literally were faced with reinventing their company. What they failed to see was that it also required them to reinvent themselves. They understood intellectually, but when faced with choices they needed to make, consistently they failed to make them. I tried every tool that thirty-five plus years of practice has equipped me with. I went so far as to declare to the leader that I did not have what it required to shift them. I was in the rare situation of having him ask me to stick with it.

The breakthrough came in two meetings with them. At the first meeting, we were willing to be vulnerable enough to put our failings on the table and discuss them openly. It helped that I went first. The second meeting was an exploration of what we were each willing to do about it. A colleague of mine who was with me at this time describes it with the phrase "the darkest time is just before the dawn". That was precisely the experience. Getting past this stuck moment unleashed an energy and a willingness to embrace the change. This illustrates the positive role that being stuck plays. Sometimes, it feels like being stuck is needed to breakthrough to the next level of performance. This is another reason why it cannot be ignored or even taken lightly.

Q.  Can you give us a general approach to getting "unstuck"?  Is there a process people can follow? (aspects of the problem they can look at, etc.)

There is a generic model. The subject is the situation that you find yourself in at any point. The process starts with identification, then interpretation, then planning and finally influence. It is a cycle, as you continue to observe to see if the intervention had the desired effect. We call this model the Intervention Sequence. Key to the model is a set of lenses that are used in observation and interpretation. These lenses highlight the most common sticking points. There are numerous lenses that may be of value. For example, it may help to look through a lens of the roles that people should be playing in the process, or a lens to determine the alignment of the leadership team, etc.

At the event later this month I will apply this approach with two practitioners in real situations. They both have strategic initiatives and they have real challenges. They are stuck. It will be enlightening and, I expect, entertaining to everyone who is attending. I hope that many of your readers will have a chance to join me for it.

Want to hear more?  Sign up for Daryl's webinar on getting "unstuck".