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 What do cultural integration, change application and execution of skill acquisition all have in common?
The critical step before results: Integration is perhaps the most important stage of any change effort. A post-merger integration study by Merrill Corporation in 2009 reveals that 66% of leaders start addressing post-merger integration issues early on in the M&A process. Why is integration so important?
As Nolan Bushnell once put it: "Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference."
People may know what they should do in order for change to lead to desired results, but if they are not applying it, we haven't done much.
Low success rates: The second commonality here is that we are doing pretty poorly when it comes to integration, application and execution of newly acquired skills. The following section is taken from The Inconvenient Truth About Change Management (Scott Keller and Carolyn Aiken, McKinsey and Company, 2008):
"In 1995, John Kotter published research that revealed only 30 percent of change programs are successful. Fast forward to 2008. A recent McKinsey & Company survey of business executives indicates that the percent of change programs that are a success today is… still 30%. The field of ‘change management,’ it would seem, hasn’t changed a thing."
But something has changed, which leads us to the next factor that integration, application and execution have in common.
Have you ever been to a meeting that discusses execution and application when at least you (if not everyone else in the room) know that things will not be applied? Have you been part of strategic meetings that focus on needed changes that are not translated into execution? Science has finally caught up with desired results. The answer comes from brain science.
Shifting from point A to point B requires a deeper change: Studies show that while 81% of professionals say “yes” to change, only approximately 10% then take action to support it (HRIQ worldwide survey, NRG Publication, 2011). Integration typically requires people to change the way they change. Think about it this way, if people could easily adjust they would only need to understand what they need to change and - boom! - they would be there. Unfortunately, studies show that 90% of people are blocked from making needed changes because, even if they agree with and seem to understand what is expected of them, they still don't implement change.
The bottom line is, people are missing something, without which integration, application and execution of new skills are going to stay out of reach. As tempting as it may be to look at M&As, strategic initiatives, training efforts and other change-related efforts as systemic efforts, we are likely to keep seeing 30% success rates unless we provide people with a new foundation.
Next Week: More about this scientific-based change system that is already turning integration into a science.
 Let's face it, unless people you manage perform their job perfectly and unless they are excellent changers (that accounts for 10% of the population btw), you are likely to need to guide those people to change. Why? Because unless people know how to change, they are not able to make the specific adjustments you need them to make to perform the job well.
Unfortunately, we are educated out of knowing how to change from a very young age.
Children learn (which means developing new abilities and skills) through self initiated experience. The truth is, we all change that way, except, when children are too young, we typically don't expect them to learn any other way. Think of common skills children acquire: eating with a spoon or riding a bike. Could you imagine how long it would take to teach a baby to eat with a spoon if we modeled it? "Here honey, look at mommy...now you do it..."
By the time kids are 8, they are already frequently on their way to losing that ability to change. Simple things that come from understanding how the brain works can help you support getting other people to change:
Natural change patterns: Language in school is still taught in fractions: kids learn grammar, vocabulary, spelling etc. It's much more interactive today than it was 100 years ago but still, teaching is falling behind. Universities such as UC Berkeley, as well as language learning software such as Rosetta Stone, use experience-based training models and are far more effective. For people to acquire change, be it learning a new language or developing a new skill, learning has to be done in the way that is natural for the brain. The more associations and relationships the brain can create, the more examples and case studies the brain identifies with the needed change, the more likely it is to acquire the new skill or behavior. Instead of repeating your expectations from your team, try creating variety and sharing many different examples instead.
Experience based: knowledge in the brain is stored and retrieved as knowledge. Experience, on the other hand, is more readily actionable. Have you ever tried lecturing to an 8-year-old about why what they just did isn't okay? If your speech goes on for more than a very few minutes, you may get a glassy look and a child who tries to figure out what you want to hear so that the speech will be over as soon as possible. When we want a child to learn a new behavior, it is best to get them to practice the new behavior, not to go on talking to them about it. Same principle applies to your team.
Self Initiated: My child attends Science Club, and this year he is competing on the Rock team. In previous years the group's coach recited the names of the rocks and asked the kids to repeat after her: "This is Pumice, it is an igneous rock..." This year the group's coach played the game of "Hangman" with the kids: "Find the rock: _ _ m_ _ e ...is it Metamorphic, Igneous, or Sedimentary?" If you had to make an intuitive guess, which approach do you think worked better in terms of retention and retrieval?
The brain changes in a very specific way. If we follow the brain's "rules of engagement" we can generate new skills that can be acquired and applied in a lasting way. Click here to check out KCI's Acquisition System, following the the five stages the brain follows for acquiring change.
 "Ask any executive or manager if they’ve seen a project, acquisition, startup, etc. come crashing down (or at least significantly underperform) because of people or culture issues. Their answer undoubtedly is , “Absolutely! I see it all the time.” You would think more attention would be paid to people and culture. It’s simply not the case." Lori Dernavich
Trying to merge two very different cultures will result in significant attrition and an increased probability of failure. There's nothing new there. It makes one wonder why companies are not investing more in cultural integration as part of the process?
Unfortunately, decision makers have had good reason to avoid investing in cultural integration. Is cultural integration important? Sure, there are numerous studies proving it is. Is it important to do it as early as the DD stage? Sure, without a doubt.
But I wonder why, if it is that important, don't we see every M&A out there insisting on focusing on cultural integration. There are some pretty brilliant leaders out there after all. Why don't most leaders insist on including this aspect in their decision?
I'd like to propose it's not just ignorance or insufficient foresight on the part of leaders, and that change experts are only now starting to keep up with their side of the deal. Only a few years back, Six Sigma, one of the most reliable tools out there when it comes to assessing processes and cultures, reported a 70% failure rate, attributed directly to the integration stage. I can't begin to tell you how many change efforts, large and small, I have seen fail during the implementation stage. It's only in recent years, now that we better understand what it takes for people to shift from doing X to doing Y in a lasting way, that we are starting to see better success rates when it comes to integration. I firmly believe that, while we used to talk about "culture integration," the systems we had to meet this goal were misrepresented. With the tools we had at the time, we could frequently, at best, target sharing our assessment of the two cultures with the leaders of the M&A, try to tell them on how important it is for them to make needed changes, and then pray they listen. My point is, we didn't have access to the science that supports the "integration" part.
Unfortunately, cultural assessments can be done fairly efficiently, and potential areas of conflict can be identified and mitigation plans recommended fairly early, but without getting people to make needed changes, well intentioned remedies die on the vine, or get pushed out and addressed only after some of the damage has already set in.
As with many technological developments in history, I believe science has finally advanced enough to answer some tough questions. New developments in brain science give us keen insight into what it would really take to address the integration part of change.
- To understand integration, we need to understand change on the individual level: at the end of the day cultures don't change or adjust, people do. For integration to take place, we have to stop treating people en masse and start focusing on how individuals change.
- To understand integration, we need to understand brain change: adopting new values requires reinforcing actual new neural pathways in the brain. To get people to adopt new cultures, we must design change efforts to follow the requirements of creating new neural pathways.
With the right change system, M&As have a much greater chance for success. Instead of trying to force leaders to see the importance of cultural integration as part of M&As, how about designing change systems that are so good that leaders would be insane not to use them?
 Procrastination is like a disease that steals time away from people. The condition is often followed by lack of motivation, which creates a vicious invisible cycle: doing and achieving progress gives people motivation, however the more people procrastinate, the less they do, thereby generating less energy, which further reinforces procrastination responses.
Needless to say, procrastination is not a positive contributing factor in teams. It reduces productivity of individuals and, if accepted, can infect the whole team. It can also lead to unhealthy team dynamics because procrastinators often behave like a volcano: they wait and accumulate stress as a result of constantly thinking about what they are not doing, until suddenly it reaches a boiling point and they respond frantically, wanting to attend to the tasks urgently.
According to Psychology Today, 20% of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators: "For them procrastination is a lifestyle, albeit a maladaptive one. And it cuts across all domains of their life. They don't pay bills on time. They miss opportunities for buying tickets to concerts. They don't cash gift certificates or checks. They file income tax returns late..."
Everyone procrastinates sometimes, but 20% of people admit to chronically avoiding difficult tasks and deliberately looking for distractions. Considering the fact that not all procrastinators acknowledge their time management habits, it's likely you know a procrastinator or two.
Like with any other habits, describing it is helpful only for identifying it. If we wish to support these people to develop new habits, we need to start looking at causes and remedies. The most common are:
Failing to link action-related thought to action: Thirst is an indication you need to take action and drink. If you repeatedly ignore thirst and skip drinking every time you are thirsty, your body will reduce the trigger, and you'll stop being thirsty as frequently. Procrastination behavior is affected by a similar mechanism: people start ignoring action-related thoughts and, if they do that frequently enough regarding little tasks, soon the smaller action-thoughts become less frequent. To stop procrastination, people need to start small, redeveloping the habit of responding to minor daily action-thoughts with action.
Curing the rebellious bug: Not surprisingly, procrastination is a response to a deeper emotional reason. In most cases it is an attempt to be in control of one's life, by not cooperating. It is very common for people who adopt procrastination to be brilliant individuals who are highly responsible and ethical. Typically they are excellent at what they do and they have very high standards, which they expect themselves and others to meet. Procrastination is a rebellion, the light of their hidden need for self-expression to shine above all the shoulds and other self-inflicted expectations. To overcome this need to procrastinate, procrastinators need to be more deliberate about choosing when to respond according to what they believe they should do or according to what they feel and want to do. It often feels counter intuitive to procrastinators, but the more choice and control they actually have over their lives, the less they'll need to rebel, hence, the less they'll procrastinate.
Like with any other change, people who procrastinate have a resistance response, which is why remedial coaching won't work with procrastination behavior (see the third stage in the five-stage acquisition model). As with the acquisition of any change, 90% of people will quickly stop cooperating with the acquisition process and get in their own way. The way to overcome their resistance will depend on the specific way they resist (which is very different for each team and individual). To learn more about resistance styles and how to overcome them, reach out. We'd love to chat with you about your procrastinator...
 At the moment, success rates of change efforts, big and small, are probably not far off from what random success rates would be without any expert change agents leading the way. Sure, there are change agents that do better than others, but with 70% failure rates for major changes and 90% of people admitting they will not execute the things they say they will, it's long overdue to admit what Scott Keller and Carolyn Aiken titled The Inconvenient Truth about Change Management.
Brain science provides many insights that allow us to change these statistics and turn change more into a science (with predictable results and at least a 70% success rate instead of 70% failure rate). Perhaps the most interesting of all is the understanding of the Choice-in-Action principle and its applications to change of any sort.
Is your organization going through a merger and are your people having a hard time adjusting? Are you trying to influence a team to change their dynamics? Is someone you know trying to acquire a skill or make adjustments that will lead to higher productivity? All of these, and many other big and small changes, can only bypass the random success rate if you design change efforts to incorporate the Choice-in-Action principle.
Choice-in-Action is a deliberate choice to DO something despite resistance. Yes, resistance is imperative for this equation. Without it, the choice is not solidified in the brain...go figure. If you want to acquire a new habit (let's say you want to stop smoking or start a diet) the most important thing is for you to keep doing it despite (and in the presence of) your own resistance. Choice-in-Action is so important that it trumps where your motivation comes from. This means that if you choose to change your diet in a lasting way, and you practice a new diet, despite your resistance over and over again, you will be able to adopt the new diet, even if your motivation was fear, anger or other such negative emotions. That is, provided your experience or conclusion about the diet is that it leads to subjective positive results. Force a child to eat broccoli - even though it's for the 'wrong' motivation - and if the child ends up experiencing broccoli as a positive thing, he will adopt the habit of eating broccoli (maybe even liking broccoli).
I know, with everything we are being taught about motivation, this sounds very suspicious. It gets even worse before it gets better: in the workplace, you can force, scare, threaten or use any other form of manipulation to successfully get people to change. If you have a mechanism that will keep them making Choice-in-Action despite their resistance, and if they will end up experiencing the change as a positive thing, they will make needed changes in a lasting way. Imagine getting a team to adjust to a new culture after a merger. What I'm saying is that if you have a mechanism that will force the team to choose to practice the new culture over and over again despite their resistance, they will acquire the new culture quickly and in a lasting way.
Here is where it gets better: it hides in the word "choice." There are two keys for people adopting a change in a lasting way:
- The first is that people make a CHOICE to continue practicing despite their resistance.
- The second is that they conclude that the experience was a positive thing.
You may very well force yourself to diet out of 'bad' motivations. Yet, if you'll end up concluding the diet is a positive thing after making repetitive choices in action, you will sustain it.
What does that mean when it comes to designing change efforts?
- Give people access to their own ability to change: Share with your team that in order to adopt a new ability, adjust to a new culture or sustain new habits, they need to repeatedly make a Choice-in-Action despite their resistance.
- Don't shy away from resistance, you need it: Instead of trying to make resistance disappear, use it to your advantage. People who know how to use their own resistance, can learn how to change, which is the most important building block for excellence.
- Monitor the conclusions people draw from experiences to the greatest possible degree: Talk to people about the conclusions they draw from experience. Give them ample examples that reinforce the conclusion you are trying to get them to adopt. The experience is only as important as the conclusion people draw about it. Talk to your sales people about which conclusions they draw when they meet with rejection; explore with your team which conclusions they draw from how meetings are run; talk to people about the conclusions they assign to things you say. Give people experience-based reference points (things you do and practical examples you can give) that reinforce a new conclusion.
- Be sure to listen: In doing so you won't find yourself trying to reinforce conclusions that make no sense to anyone but yourself.
Creating the right setting for change is not about being nice and hoping that people will follow you because they love you. It's really about building a relationship that will allow you to be in a position to get people to practice Choice-in-Action despite their resistance.
 In 2008, three experts, H. Jorgensen, L. Owen, and A. Neus published a study called Making Change Work. They presented the concern of many CEOs regarding the successful completion of change efforts and projects and found that the “disparity between expecting change and being able to manage it” does not “hinge primarily on technology- instead success depends largely on people.”
It’s objectively hard to lead change today. Getting teams that are often not in the same physical location to execute according to plan, to get people to make adjustments where those are needed, in order to meet objectives and to keep teams invested and engaged, are all challenging and highly consuming. To lead changes, project managers need to have clear strategies and teams have to follow with excellent execution. It helps when leaders are strategic and teams understand the leader’s thinking so they can follow.
What does it take to be strategic?
Different experts will present you with different lists, but most would probably agree on the following:
- Being able to anticipate, detect and respond to ambiguous signals
- Think critically and question everything; challenge basic assumptions and search for root causes
- Identify and interpret patterns
- Make concise decisions
- Understand the agendas and motivations of other people
- Stay open to changing your efforts based on relevant feedback
Do the leaders in your organization have what it takes? What if they are missing one or more of the above? Do we honestly still believe that giving them some reading material or sending them off to a “strategic thinking” workshop will get them to adopt new abilities and become strategic leaders?
Ironically, the very component that is missing in bridging the disparity between expecting change and executing it is getting in the way of leaders developing the abilities to lead change. Both require people to change in order to achieve success and both omit the most important component: a system that will get people to change.
Do we really believe a leaders who isn’t making concise decisions will change without an acquisition system? Do we think giving that leader the formula others use will get him to change? How about leaders who jump to action or leaders who don’t think critically?
To get leaders to change we need to equip them with new thinking patterns AND with a system to integrate new thinking patterns.
Which system for integrating new thinking patterns has your organization provided its leaders with in the past? How do leaders in your organization go about acquiring abilities they are missing? Look closely at that, because if such a system is missing in developing leaders in your organization, it’s also missing when leaders are trying to get their teams to learn and improve.
 In 1997 J. Kouzes and B. Posner wrote an excellent book about what employees need in order to follow leaders. The book, The Leadership Challenge, covers the employee perspective. Recently, Right Management (part of ManPowerGroup) conducted a study to get the management point of view.
The way leaders see it, they believe their leadership success depends on the following:
- Fit with company values and culture 68%
- Interpersonal skills 66%
- Motivation to lead 62%
- Previous experiences 57%
- Lack of derailers 21%
- Educational background 11%
Firstly, it’s nice to see leaders are more aligned today than ever before with what works – or at least they know what the ‘right’ answer is. Employees certainly see interpersonal skills as a critical factor for them to follow leaders. Leaders are obviously in a complex position. Leading is a balance between dictating and listening, and that in itself isn’t easy.
What does it take for a leader to keep that balance?
- Engaging in a leadership simulator: The key isn’t to try to create a recipe for when to listen and when to dictate, it is to get leaders in the habit of constantly choosing when to do what. Leaders who don’t know how to make difficult decisions and provide clear directions can’t lead well, and learning when to direct and when to listen is an art that can be developed quickly with the right practice.
- Developing culture specific flexibility: The types of relationships and leaderships that are required in different organizations are different. I worked for years with military commanders who could not easily adjust to new, nonmilitary cultures. This was not necessarily because they didn’t think relationships were important, but because the way they went about interacting – the same way that got them respect and appreciation in the past – was considered aggressive in another environment. No one way of interacting is superior, but being able to adjust always is.
- Rewiring the brain: Developing flexibility and developing a balanced directing-listening skill set often requires people to develop new fundamental abilities. A leader who is used to thinking there is only one right way to solve a problem, first needs to change this basic programing before he or she can gain access to effective leadership. The same goes for leaders who are too kind (they need to develop a better balance between the need to please and the need to keep people on track), leaders who are too controlling (they need to let go of their one-sided decision-making processes and develop effective ways of getting people to follow). It’s often futile to preach for flexibility and development before this type of rewiring is addressed.
We have certainly come a long way in understanding what employees need in order to follow. It seems to me organizations are certainly picking up the gauntlet, and getting to the point that leadership can finally be considered a profession.
 The topic of changing people who don't want to change has always fascinated me. I think, to a great degree, this fascination was nurtured by success.
We all know the truism. If you ask most people if you can change people who don't want to change, they'll probably say 'no.' But what if you can change people who don't want to change? What if even the biggest assholes can become respectful? I suggest the tools most people are using to try to influence people to change are not working!
KCI is conducting a study to find out what excellent leaders out there are using in order to get people, especially those who don't want to cooperate, to make needed adjustments (let us know if you are interested in taking part in the study or if you wish to get the report!). Until we have some statistics, however, I thought I'd share my personal experience in dealing with assholes.
The best combination I find is to:
- Don't allow the attitude of assholes to affect you: the behavior and, for lack of better definition, the 'energy' of assholes has a strong impact on most people. How do you respond? In my experience, if you are changing who you are, even in the slightest, as a result of interacting with an asshole you will lose the ability to influence them. It's not about being firm or soft, it's more about sending a message that the abusive behavior has no impact on you. This isn't easy for everyone, but there are great Key Strategies you can acquire that will help you be yourself no matter what.
- Avoid trying to be liked: Assholes are highly suspicious. Compliments are an immediate turn off. An attempt to help them is perceived as an attempt to diminish them (they are not weak hence they don't need help). Be very matter-of-fact with them. Unless they directly talk to you, ignoring them is usually a great strategy too. Generally speaking, assholes respect strength and they have their own unique definition for what strength is. Find it and follow it.
- Identify their missing Key Strategy: Assholes are usually in a self-diminishing, minimizing-of-others cycle. Start with supporting them out of their self-diminishing patterns. They won't share these with you directly until they trust you, but you can find examples of other people who either accept themselves as they are or of other people who are self-diminishing too. Just share your perspective and how much you appreciate X's self-acceptance or how you wish Y could see all the wonderful positive things and accept him/her self. Once you see the seeds of your message are bearing fruit (you'll know because he or she will start sharing similar thoughts) you can start highlighting the second Key Strategy.
What works for you when dealing with assholes?
 Over the years I have run into several excellent articles about how to align execution with business goals. You set goals, you set a strategy that is an initial road map to the goals, and if people follow the map and apply needed mid-course corrections, the assumption is you'll reach your destination.
Some articles emphasize the importance of setting goals correctly. Remember the SMART acronym (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound)? We've all been to that workshop, but so very few of us are applying it. As Martin Cobb so beautifully put it:“We know why projects fail; we know how to prevent their failure – so why do they still fail?” Good tools are very important but we need to make an evolutionary leap from developing tools to using them.
Can you enable your employees to follow a strategy? How can you ensure consistency across different touch points in your organization? If and when the strategy needs to be adjusted, is your organization capable of learning and responding with required agility. Let's face it, when teams can effectively learn, plan, interact and execute, setting the right goals is executed. Perhaps even more importantly, if people are "programed" correctly, setting the right goals becomes secondary in importance because an effective team will quickly discover goals that are off-track, responding quickly with needed corrections.
What does it take to align efforts with desired results?
The truth is, every team is different, and so the Key Strategies each team needs in order to be aligned with desired results differ from one team to the next. Here are two of the more common pitfalls and the Key Strategies we most commonly use to help teams overcome them:
- Jumping to a solution before considering the different options: To overcome jumping to conclusions, teams often need to reprogram a default response. Jumping the gun can be a result of a tendency to be creative and innovative when you need to be systematic and methodical (using synthesis thinking mode when you should be using analysis thinking). Some teams just love to innovate, they get excited about new ideas and they want to try them out. This not only leads to haphazard starts, it also makes teams change direction too often and too quickly, making it impossible for efforts to mature.
- Necessary information resides in silos: This can often be the result of people lacking systemic thinking Key Strategies. It happens when the default thinking patterns of leaders and teams are not taking into account system-wide implications and the need for coordination. As a skill, systemic thinking is just another idea that stays in the classroom. As a new imprint in people's brains, it prevents silos.
What gets in your team's way of aligning execution with business goals?
 Is raising awareness to an issue a good trigger for inspiring change no matter what attention you draw?
Late in 2011 the NBA player, Ron Artest, changed his name to Metta World Peace. The declared goal was to inspire and bring youth together all around the world. I'm all about world peace. Coming from Israel, peace has a deep meaning for me, but I'm afraid in this case the name change may have backfired (Metta btw, is a Buddhist term that means loving kindness and friendliness toward others...that alone may have been more inspiring).
What we say is only as inspiring as the meaning others assign to it. If I said you could trust me, but your mindset is suspicious, my statement could be interpreted as insignificant, if not disturbing. Words are inspirational when people assign that value to them and you should always consider the mindset of the people you are trying to change. When managers try to change the behaviors of caring, open, and kind individuals, they can use the equivalent of "world peace" to inspire. When, however, you are talking to people who are manipulative, see things only from their own perspective, are negative and suspicious, you can't use the same words and hope to get the same results.
The way I see it, trying to change people who are easily inspired is great (then they can inspire others), but inspiring people who are not easily inspired, or are resistant to being inspired is even better.
To inspire change in people who are not easily inspired:
1. Figure out why they are so resistant and how to overcome that resistance. I don't mean HOW they resist or WHAT they are resistant to, but what is it about how their brain is wired that blocks them from being inspired. Common reasons are: because people give in to fear, see the negative/what's missing in everything, or often because people don't trust themselves.
2. Supplement the thing that will reverse what's missing. Instead of trying to instruct people to behave differently, give them a system to overcome whatever it is they are missing. For example: if the problem is that they always seem to see only what is missing or only the negative, get them to practice seeing the positive.
Until you can change the way people are wired, your words may not go very far with the people who need to be inspired most. This can be done. Team members are rewiring their brains all around you. Managers just need to make that a priority and focus first on rewiring before focusing on the message.
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