It’s a paradox: The things that make leaders successful every day can make them terrible leaders of change. Project management pros who understand this paradox and can help their leaders understand it have a leg up on the changes they’re managing.
Leaders are good at lots of things. Solving problems. Communications. Subject matter expertise. Maybe a bias for action or a process focus. These things get us into leadership positions and help us stay there.
But—after decades of leading (and failing at and succeeding at) change, and after a quarter century studying organizations going through change—I’ve stumbled on a paradox: The things we’re good at every day, things that got us into our leadership positions, they can fail us during change. They can make us terrible leaders of change.
We wonder why two-thirds of change efforts fail, why we waste more than $2 trillion a year on failed change, not to mention the ruined careers, the weakened organizations, the head-hurting pain.
Turns out, as I’ve discovered, it’s in us…and our mindsets about change.
There’s good news: We can fix this with a different mindset—by setting our minds differently. But it’s not easy. It takes openness to changing ourselves as leaders. To recognizing the errors of our award-winning ways. To changing habits. To altering decades of muscle memory. To rejecting what got us here.
And if project managers can understand this paradox and help us leaders understand it, they will be much more valuable to their organizations, and we’re all much more likely to have successful, enduring changes.
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First, let me share some truths I’ve discovered:
- Organizations don’t change. (They don’t.) People do. If an organization’s people don’t change, there is no change.
- Our people don’t have to change. Yep, we do pay them, but when we wonder why our changes start off great but slow down or don’t hold up, it’s probably because we’ve forgotten that our people can go somewhere else, do other things, especially the good ones. Or they can stay inside and slow us down, especially the bad ones.
- Change is a decision. Neuroscience tells us that humans make decisions using both reason and emotion. We leaders are good at naming the reasons for a change. It takes something altogether different to reach people on an emotional level.
Let’s keep these truths front and center as we consider the paradox ahead.
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What are some things leaders excel at and how do these strengths make us terrible during change? I’ve listed a few below.
Solving Problems. Early in our careers, if we’re the kind of person who says, “Well, that’s a problem. I need my boss to solve it for me,” no one pays much attention to us. But if we’re the kind of person who solves problems, we get pats on the back, promotions. We realize: “Aha. This is key to my success.” Habits form. A mindset is set.
When we get to leadership positions and we come across an opportunity or challenge that will lead to a change, it’s natural for us to—well—solve the problem…and hand it down to everyone else.
So why not solve the problem by ourselves? Why not decide how to take advantage of opportunities on our own?
Because we’re pushing change onto people when we do that. As I’ve learned, forced change gives people cognitive dissonance, the psychological discomfort from having our values countered or challenged. Humans hate cognitive dissonance, so much so that millions of us every night avoid one news channel or the other. We don’t like our values challenged or countered.
And all of us have a value at work that we hold dear: “The way we’ve always done it.” So when leaders do what they’re usually supposed to do—solve the problem—people may smile and nod (and we think we have their agreement), but inside people are likely in denial, or ruminating, or both. We move on to the next initiative. They slow the change down.
We need to set our minds differently during a change: “Change is one problem we don’t solve by ourselves.” When the change is informed by those who will experience it, our people are much more likely to decide to change, and our changes are more likely to be successful.
Subject Matter Expertise. We know the business, the industry, the history. We understand the subject matter. Leaders learn early that to be useful to the leaders above us, we need to know the subject matter deeply. And we take comfort in knowing so much. But this comfort works against us during change.
Turns out, our ideas for a change—even with all our knowledge—are likely naïve. We’re far from where the change is happening. We might decide to save our company millions by only buying Philips screwdrivers, but our people may need to unscrew flathead screws. (OK, we’re probably not that dumb, but you get the picture.)
During a change, it’s best to set our minds differently: “Maybe we don’t know anything.”
Communicating. Growing up, we learn to communicate up. As we move up, we learn to communicate in both directions. We get good at it, and we may eventually have professionals who help us communicate.
And we need lots of communications during a change…we need to constantly remind people of the new way. We use the written word, the spoken word. But we need to set our minds differently during change.
You see, communications during change is 90 percent action, only 10 percent words. People are watching us as they decide whether to change. If our own actions are out of line with the change, game over. And we can use action to carry the change further.
During change, it’s time to set our minds differently: Our actions are many times louder than normal communications. And our actions that further the change are tectonic compared to mere words because they can generate emotional buy-in.
Our Need for Speed and Process. The world’s moving fast, we need a process that gets us to the finish line fast. This is how we impress those above us when we’re junior, and it keeps us in britches as leaders. Funny, though: When I look at the many companies I’ve studied—and reflect on my own work leading changes—those who over-focused on process and speed during change weren’t as successful as those who took the time to prioritize alignment.
Turns out, our hero here isn’t the spread sheet or the early bird. It’s the lowly duck. Before ducks can take flight, they first learn how to paddle in the same direction, walk in the same direction. Those organizations I studied that focused on aligning their people before executing the change, those who understood that people came before process, they eventually passed up their fast-to-decide-and-execute comparator organizations. In fact, alignment, not speed or process, was the hallmark of the successful organizations.
During change, the mindset is about “people before process, alignment before action.”
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What does all this mean for the project manager and for leaders?
Leaders can do themselves—and those working for them on the change—a favor by taking all this in, understanding the transformational differences we need from ourselves if we’re going to transform our organizations. It means listening, pulling our people to the change, walking the talk, aligning our people before executing.
Project managers can use this insight in a couple of ways.
They can choose which leaders to work for (asking questions of their current leaders to see if they understand this, and asking those at the new companies they’re considering joining because the leaders at their current organizations have no hope of understanding this). Where we work and who we work for is a choice…it really is.
And/or they can share this thinking with their open-minded leaders, leaders who want to grow themselves so they can transform their organizations, leaders who value the input. It might not hurt to even share this article with them; you’ll be telling them you think they’re worthy.
About the author: Al Comeaux is a professional speaker and researcher about leadership during change. His book on leading change was named one of the Best Change Management Books of All Time only three years after publication; you can purchase “Change (the) Management: Why We as Leaders Must Change for the Change to Last” wherever you purchase books online.
