The Joys of Being a Change Agent

The Demon

There’s a demon out there in your business. It hides inside the algorithms of analysts and the balance sheets of accountants. The demon lurks in the hearts not only of entrenched employees who see diminishing possibilities and little future growth but also of ambitious employees who see emerging possibilities but struggle to find purchase from which to launch their careers.

That demon is the fear of change.

For the employee trying to make their mark, change can disturb what seems like the fragile base from which they wish to advance their career. For the employee well- entrenched in their position, change can destroy the foundation upon which they have created their future. For the leader of these employees and others, understanding how to lead their team past the demon is necessary to create a growing, vibrant team and business.

“Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”

― Daniel H. Pink

In the Joy Research we began this year, there is a consistent theme of struggling to manage change. In a previous post, The Perils of Declaring: “I’m a Change Agent,” we described the first three research findings. You don’t need to know those to understand this post but you can find it here to read later. Related to the idea of a leader declaring “I’m a change agent” is the balance that leaders strike between creating change and keeping the status quo. The question is essentially this: “How much change can your organization take?” Relatively quickly we get to the kernel of our first finding, an imbalance.

Research Finding #1

• Leaders who wish to advance their organizations to some stated vision generally want more change (on average) than what the people in their organization want.
• Joy at Work is decreased if leaders push more change than their employees can handle.

This research implies that leaders in these situations will generally want more change, more often, and at higher amounts than their employees. Their mentality is that if they race ahead, their teams will naturally follow. This is significant because it means that the people actually executing the change (implementing the new software or the new procedures or new policies) are less inclined to take on the change than the senior leader or CEO. They show resistance to the change. The popular literature and conference presentations on Change Management are rife with mentions of employee resistance. Resistance often is described as being expected. These writers and speakers declare that resistance to change is somehow imbued in employees, a normative statement. To these writers and speakers, employees regularly show a frustrating intransigence that must be overcome. Our research has found something else.

Research Finding #2

• People are not usually upset by what is changing. Where people get upset is how the change is handled. This often is first manifest in how the change is communicated.
• Joy at Work is increased when employees understand the change.

What drives the resistance seems to be not so much an inherent dislike for change but an inherent dislike of being kept in the dark as to the reasons for a change. It is telling that CEOs and senior leaders, who describe moving through change as “something we just get through,” also are the ones who, when asked how they communicate the change to their people, will go into detail about what the change is but relatively little as to why the change is happening. This does not seem to be a purposeful omission. These leaders think that they are being clear by describing the benefits of the change and how the organization will benefit. What they omit is the purpose of the change, and this leads us to the next research finding.

Research Finding #3

• Employees are looking for meaning at work, sometimes expressed as purpose.
• Joy at Work is increased when employees find meaning at work.

This is not a new finding. In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Dan Pink lays out the considerable research showing that a sense of purpose is important to employee retention. We find it unsurprising that the same sense of purpose drives Joy at Work. Where CEOs can have an impact is in explaining why a change is coming with respect to the purpose or mission of the organization. This takes us back to the first research finding, which qualified the leaders as those “who wish to advance their organizations to some stated vision.” If employees know and adopt the vision of the organization, then they can become motivated if they see a change that helps the organization toward that vision. The movement toward the vision provides purpose and seems to grow Joy at Work. Skimp on communicating so that employees are in the dark or simply confused, and the Joy at Work will wither, no matter the value or nobility of intentions.

The Opportunity

These findings are a reminder of the distinction between Leader and Manager, which is described here. The gist of the post is that leaders are needed to guide a successful change. Managers can optimize and improve but they don’t make a step change. In the kind of change that we explore in the Joy Research interview, a leader is needed; in particular, a leader who can communicate why the change is necessary to achieve the vision of the organization.

One way someone can step beyond management and into leadership is through the communication of change. This is rarely easy. This makes change communication an important skill for a change leader. develop that skill in the Savvy Change Leader Series, which you can learn more about here.

Finally, the Joy Research points to significant sensitivity to the engagement level of the communication channel used. Repeatedly in the Joy Research interview, the broadcast email (low engagement) was significantly less effective at driving engagement while a team meeting with the leader answering questions (high engagement) was much more effective at communicating why the change was useful in driving to the vision of the organization. The action for leaders is straightforward:

Define a vision and then describe how all change initiatives are driving the organization toward that vision. The demon will be defeated and the leader will grow Joy at Work.