a) approvers
1. qualified people who share solution idea (they understand the change and see the solution in many ways)
2. profiteers: people who want promotion and see change as a chance for that (without thinking too much about the idea; they understand the change, not solution). They destroy your language!
What to do with them?
-engage them in the process of change, make them aware
-redirect the energy to the company
b) resistors. The most important people in the company, cause they care about the company and their resist can help. Don’t share the problem because they have diff.experience. When you meet resistors, the question should me: What did I wrong? Don’t criminalize the silence! If people resist you should find different approach!
(I don’t want to be on focus; I will be in trouble if I share)
1. honest people repressed who say nothing:
-honest conversation
-create informal env., make them talk
-choose one of the colleague, ask him to go to people and listen to them attentively
2. lazy people
-pressure
-open a dialogue
-motivate
-establish concrete goals and timeless for the employee
-make him work with purpose
-set up times for regular performance reviews with the employee 3. people feeling reduced to an „object“ (no feedback possible)
-acknowledgement,
-respect,
-politeness…treating as humans
-show them their importance in the company (keep your office door open, schedule regular one’-to-time with individual employees, involve employees in decision-making and planning
-motivate them
4. don't share the problem view
-manipulation
-share time and joint analysis !
-make groups of people and ask them to find out problems of the company. You will have 6 various aspects of the company’s problem
5. don’t share the solution
-share time and joint analysis !
-create a culture of openness and employee engagement
6. just fear to lose position and investment
-compensate
-show how to win
7. just fear to not make the career they intended to
- show them new opportunities
c) neutrals
1. not interested, passive, thinks only about salary, “just have a job”
2. cynical “I don’t care!”
-make employees your most important customer
-ask and listen
-teamwork
-show a visible future
About Change and Risk: Lessons From Carly Fiorina
Risk-taking is an important part of entrepreneurship. Instead of trying to write a blog-post on this, I will quote Carly Fiorina, an American businesswoman and a former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. She has talked a lot about the importance of change, risk-taking and fear, as well as their complicated interactions.
“So, what do I know about change. The first thing I know is that everybody is afraid of something. Everybody is afraid of something. (..) What distinguishes people who are successful in life from the ones who are not is what you do with your fear. Some people are held back by their fear and some people chose to move ahead despite of their fear. Courage is not the absence of fear – courage is acting in spite of fear. But, because everybody is afraid, what most of the time people are afraid of, is something new.
The essence of entrepreneurship is risk taking; the essence of business is risk taking. Taking a risk is all about trying something new. And yet, as people go on in their lives they become afraid about trying something new. And so, change is always resisted – always. (..)
Even though often what people have is not satisfying to them, people are afraid to venture into the unknown. And that holds them back from change. And if you are trying to drive a company, and organization your family to change you have to know that they are afraid. And, you have to know that the only way you can help get people over their fear is to give them a vision of something that’s worth striving for, that’s worth taking a risk for.
But, the other reason change is always resisted is because the natural momentum, the natural instinct of any institution (..) is to preserve the status quo. Why? Because people who have positions of power and influence want to keep them. And so they invest their energy to keep their positions of power and influence. This isn’t because people are bad – it’s just human nature.
So, (..) if you are focused on risk-taking you have to understand that the momentum that works against you is the power of the status quo and it is always there. That’s why change is hard.
The other force that pushes against change is fear – basic human fear. And so, change has to have enough power: the power of the vision of what can be different; it has to have enough force and enough energy to overcome people’s fears and to overcome the power of the status quo.”