End of Year Thoughts: Managing Change

20 de diciembre de 2022

Since I have been working in companies, I have always heard the need for change. I myself have been a promoter of these changes on numerous occasions, convinced that in this way we would improve our day-to-day life and we would all work “better”. Looking back, I recognize that all those projects were fun, stimulating and motivating. But really why do we have to change?. Why do companies promote expensive projects, not exempt from risk and, above all, headed where?. Isn’t it to entertain and please their managers by recognizing and celebrating successes?. Our colleague Jose Luis Navarro, purchasing manager of AERZEN Ibérica, makes us reflect on how to manage the change… of the year?

We ask ourselves the question, before undertaking a change project, what would happen if we don’t do it?. What would happen if we stayed as we are?.Our product, service, process, succeed, why change it? And the best of all, why are we going to change, if it has been done that way ever since?. After nearly 30 years of managing teams and driving change, I quickly come up with thousands of arguments to answer. The earth would still be flat if we had not questioned the status quo of things, we would not have reached the moon if we did not ask ourselves these questions, competition does not sleep, etc..

But is it really the answer or just a cliché? I found the answer again in Drucker: «A company can only exist in an expanding economy… Success becomes obsolete the very moment you achieved it… Managers must convert needs into opportunities for profitable business… It is not necessary for a business to grow to bigger, but it is necessary to grow better… There is only one valid definition for the purpose of a business: to create a customer.»

It is the environment, the innate competitiveness of the human being that promotes society into continuous development. Sooner or later, someone will appear with an innovative idea or a revolutionary product that derails our comfort zone. Who would tell the ice bar vendor that people would produce their own coldness in their refrigerators, the owner of the video store that people would watch movies without having to leave home, the Pony Express, that the telegraph would be faster than their fastest horses, to the supply ports of the Gulf of Guinea that, with the opening of the Suez Canal, would relegate them to irrelevance.

In a world on the move, navel-gazing is not an option. Some time ago, I came across the following matrix, which for years I have applied to plan and evaluate the development of projects.

Vision is necessary to guide the team to where we are going to start rowing. Without a clear and defined focus, the most prepared and motivated team will miss the means and destination of their efforts. As a manager, you will identify the problem as confusion in the team. It’s time to bring them together and refine the vision of the project.

Lacking skills to perform a task will undoubtedly generate anxiety in the person. Either you chose wrongly the team members and tasks or lack of training. It is difficult for anyone to openly recognize that he does not know how to perform the task assigned to him. As a manager, you must differentiate between the anxiety generated by not being prepared for the job and the smokescreen that is usually created in form of frustration due to lack of resources. I could do it if I had more time, I need more staff, I don’t get the budget… Is the frustration real or does it hide an anxiety about not knowing how to move forward?

You also need a coordinated and accepted action plan to avoid getting lost in the race to the finish line. The speed of the group is that of the slowest component. It’s about getting there all at once, not who arrives first. A lack of coordination can give the impression as to seek for medals, but in no case the achievement of the goal. As a manager, it is important to clarify this and execute the actions that run in parallel so that they are not decompensated, orchestrated as a philharmonic symphony.

Oh, and resistance. It seems to be the biggest difficulty in managing change. We’ll see why. Here the manager will apply his own medicine. Do you feel anxiety because you can’t get your team on board or frustration because you don’t get the budget, dates, or staff? Analyze yourself well, because the lack depends on this.

The incentive for team members cannot always be economic in the form of a prize. Telling them that they will work better with the change, sounds like manipulation. Decades of changing, and sales of anxiolytics and stress indices in modern society are at peak values. Argue that without the change, the company can lose the race to the competition and endanger jobs, is a negative motivation that, although effective in the short term, inefficient, and consuming in the medium / long run. So how do we embark the team to participate with body and soul in the project?

Well, how does a volunteer get motivated? By focusing on strengths of each team member, encouraging his or her development. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve first-rate performance to excellence. When someone does something right, he gets motivated and participates by developing his skills. Building on strengths and setting up the team based on them is how we will achieve performance, making weaknesses irrelevant. Everyone wants to do things right because the satisfaction of success is not comparable to anything. And that’s when you must recognize it and celebrate it.