Are you tired of cheesy advice about change?

 

Really—do you need 20 great quotes, 10 tips, or 8 more guidelines?  Implementing strategy is hard work that can’t be distilled to a few pithy quotes. 

You don’t need shallow platitudes. You need deep insight and sober resolve from battle-scarred resources.

Want your kids to grow up? “Stop cooking with cheese!”

There is a fantastic commercial that suggests kids live at home into their forties because the cooking is just too good.  Check it out here http://www.tvspots.tv/video/41104/DAIRY-FARMERS-OF-CANADA--BEDROOM

Feel the pain

In the commercial, the only ones who feel the pain and are prepared to make a change are the parents.  They go to extreme lengths to send their “kid” the message?to create some pain for him.  The strategy is consistent with best practices in change management?the change target needs to understand the logic and needs painful consequences. In the commercial, whether the kid gets the message or not, the pain threshold for him is not high enough. 

Find insight and resolve

This is not the same thing as attempting to create fear.  Many cheesy renditions of the “burning platform” suggest that you need to make people afraid in order to drive them into change. The original intention of that catchy phrase was to convey that what one needs is “resolve.” (The kind of resolve you see dawning on the parents.) Check out the original thought leadership here “The Real Story of the Burning Platform” (http://www.connerpartners.com/series/the-burning-platform).  

And by the way, when you go deeper, to more fully understand change, you can appreciate that there are actually four different types of burning platforms and different approaches for executing successfully. Imagine how much more effective you can be with that kind of insight.

Find Hope

So are you feeling the pain of inadequate change management? Are cross-silo leaders paying lip service to objectives? Getting compliance but not commitment? (Or worse, malicious compliance?) Seeing entrenched resistance?  

Stop cooking with that fattening, feel-good, cheesy advice. 

Resources and related posts:

Some places where experienced practitioners hang out:

• Organizational Change Practitioners Group on LinkedIn (at last count the largest community of OCM practitioners, at 31K)
• The Association of Change Management Professionals (http://www.acmpglobal.org/default.asp? )
• The Change Management Institute (https://www.change-management-institute.com/)

Other related posts:

• “What’s missing in Strategy Execution?” and the Strategy Execution Methodologies (http://gailseverini.com/2012/03/02/securing-roi-in-break-out-strategy-a-review-of-execution-methodologies-post-1-overview/)
• Change Management Conferences 2013 (http://gailseverini.com/2012/10/13/change-management-conferences-2013/)

And, in case you still like cheesy lists, here are a few more from me:

• Top 10 Competencies of Change Leaders (http://gailseverini.com/2012/08/30/top-10-competencies-for-change-leaders/)
• Top 10 Competencies of Change Agents (http://gailseverini.com/2012/09/13/top-10-competencies-for-change-agents/)