Tag Archives: change management

I’ve got a secret…..

Posted on February 21, 2018 by | Leave a comment

Unless you have a birthday coming up, these are not words you want to hear. Especially at work from your boss. They strike fear and sow mistrust, yet, as leaders, you have information that you cannot share with your people – you have secrets! How do you balance the transparency needed to demonstrate integrity with the confidentiality your position requires?

Karen Seketa, a blogger that I follow, suggested that we think of it as being translucent not completely transparent. Leaders are “not sharing ALL information ALL of the time” but taking “an intentional approach to empowering your employees with the information they need in order to be successful.” When I consult with leaders they get hung up on what they can’t share and they overlook all they can share. Even in the most chaotic and tumultuous times you can share how decisions are being made, how you will keep them informed, how they can be involved and how they can share their concerns with you. People need and want clarity, honesty and how they can be involved. You can share that, even when you can’t share every detail or name or potential option being considered.

Yes, you may have a secret but that doesn’t mean you are hiding things from your people.

Todd Thorsgaard

 

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Posted in building teams, communication, integrity, Leadership, leading authentically

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Greeting the new day

Posted on September 8, 2017 by | Leave a comment

My daughter’s dog, Lucy, frequently visits overnight. She’s enthusiastic and curious, and really fun to have around. But we often have this conversation in the mornings:

Lucy (while jumping all over me):  It’s morning! The sun is up!! That means we can get up and do things!!!

Me (pulling blanket over my head):  But the alarm didn’t go off yet. That means I can sleep 10 more minutes.

It seems like some people greet new beginnings with lots of exclamation points and are genuinely happy to jump in, while other people need to go more slowly. As leaders, we need to respond to both kinds of people.

That might mean having action steps ready for those who want to get started. We need to take advantage of the enthusiasm and channel it towards positive change. Or it might mean providing more information for people who want to consider things, and helping them adapt at their own pace.

Which sort of morning person are you when it comes to new beginnings at work? What has been useful when communicating with the other type?

Dee Anne Bonebright

 

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Don’t forget the endings!

Posted on September 6, 2017 by | Leave a comment

It is tempting to focus on the new beginnings as a leader. We craft messages that highlight the benefits of the new system or the new structure. We glowingly describe the advantages of a new procedure or we document the potential dollars saved “after” the change is implemented. Yet study after study have confirmed that often we never reach the hoped-for Shangri-la.

William Bridges, in the 25th anniversary edition of his ground breaking book,  (Bridges, William. Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. Da Capo Press. 2009.)  counsels leaders to actually meet their people where they are at, the endings they are facing! All new beginnings include something ending or being lost. When we only focus on the new beginnings and ignore that our people are losing something we won’t get to the new beginning as smoothly or successfully as we hope.

Think about it, a new school year also means the end of unstructured summer time. A new leader also means the end of knowing how your previous leader liked to get updates. Or a new house also means not knowing where the closest take-out pizza place is!

It isn’t necessary, or even advisable, to wallow in the losses and endings but it is important to start there to ensure a better transition to the new beginning. Specifically Bridges advises leaders to work with their people and make sure they understand what losses they are experiencing. It may be a loss of:

  • competency
  • comfort
  • status
  • influence
  • routines
  • independence
  • or many others

While many of these losses can and will be replaced or redefined you can help your people understand what is actually ending and what isn’t ending. As an example, the human resource division at Minnesota State is changing to a service center model for HR transactions. Most employee record keeping and status changes will be done by staff at four regional centers. Campus HR staff will clearly feel a loss of direct connection with people on their campus since they won’t be processing the paper work in this new model. It is important for campus HR leaders to acknowledge that loss and also highlight that their staff  will still have have access to employee records. They will be able to answer questions and will still have a personal relationship with the faculty and staff on their campus. Lack of clarity on what is ending and what is staying can lead to the natural tendency to over estimate what is ending!

Yes, the new beginnings are bright and shiny but we need to see and acknowledge that our people are experiencing some losses and endings if we want them to join us on the other side of the change.

Todd Thorsgaard

 

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Posted in change and transition, communication, Leadership, leading authentically

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Leading transitions

Posted on March 16, 2017 by | Leave a comment

William Bridges’ Managing Transitions is a leadership classic. Todd talked about the highlights in this post from a couple of years ago. As you may recall, Bridges proposed that every transition has three stages, each of which requires particular leadership actions.

  1. Ending, losing, and letting go
  2. Neutral zone
  3. New beginning

The Change Factory group created a useful set of checklists for leaders at each stage. It includes questions such as:

  • Am I giving people accurate information, again and again?
  • Have I said thank you to everyone who contributed in the past?
  • Have I made sure that realistic feedback is flowing upward?
  • Am I pushing for certainty where it would be more realistic to live a little longer with uncertainty?
  • Am I being careful not to introduce extra, unrelated changes?

As you can see, these questions require some thought and reflection. When we’re in the middle of major change (which might feel like most of the time), it can be hard to take the time to reflect and plan. The checklists can provide useful reminders. For those who want extra discipline, they are a great starting point for writing in a leadership journal.

Think of a major transition you’re experiencing. Which stage do you think you’re in? Is there a question from the checklist that was particularly useful?

Dee Anne Bonebright

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Missed opportunities

Posted on March 7, 2017 by | Leave a comment

boredMy daughter just started a new job and recently spent a full day in a new employee onboarding program. Since she knows what I do for a living, she called to tell me that I should have been there – so I could tape it and use it as an example of what not to do!

The arrival of a new employee is often one of the greatest missed leadership opportunities. During the period of transition, employees are wondering not just about the nuts and bolts of their jobs, but also about the organization. What kind of team have I joined? What is the culture? How can I fit in?

Last summer I introduced the 4 C’s model of onboarding. Based on work by the Society for Human Resource Management, it identifies four key focus areas:

  1. Compliance: the basic legal and policy requirements of their role.
  2. Clarification: the roles and expectations for the new positions.
  3. Culture: introduction to formal and informal organizational norms
  4. Connection: integrating new employees into the work group.

My daughter’s program focused on compliance. She learned about the laws and policies that govern her new work. She filled out the paperwork to be covered by benefits. But she didn’t hear from organizational leaders about their goals and priorities, and she didn’t have an opportunity to build a connection with the other new employees who were there. She walked away feeling like they had wasted her time on things she could have done from her own desk.

The organizational leaders missed the chance to meet with a group of eager new staff who wanted to hear what they had to say. Even a brief  welcome and greeting could have made them feel like the organization was glad they were there and wanted them to succeed.

Many of our Minnesota State schools are examining their new employee programs and looking for new ways to build culture and connection. How can we as leaders make better use of this important transition?

Dee Anne Bonebright

 

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Posted in change and transition, Engagement, higher education, Leadership

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Get Lean!

Posted on July 13, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Glass-half-empty-half-fullAre you a glass half full or a glass half empty type of person? Do you see great opportunities for making significant change in higher education over the next few years or does it feel like the decrease in funding and financial instability will rob us of our ability to educate our students?

However you answer it is clear that higher education leaders need to be stewards of diminishing resources while providing hope and opportunity to their communities and to our society. This demands that we identify the crucial and eliminate the unnecessary. Or as the old saying goes, “doing more with less.”

While this is a daunting task one concrete place to start is to think LEAN.

Lean thinking asks leaders to fully engage the people on their team and identify how and where they make the greatest contribution to student success and, as importantly, what obstacles or inefficiencies exist in their day-to-day work. It focuses on the work flows and work processes that support higher education and applies a rigorous examination of how valuable each step in the process is and what is getting in the way of your people and making it harder to do their jobs!

A colleague of mine, Theresa Waterbury, wrote a book titled, Educational Lean:Theory and Practice. It provides an introduction to lean thinking and hands-on examples of how to make changes in your workplace. A simple way to start thinking lean is to ask your team the following questions – do this both with your whole team and with individuals:

• What things keep you from doing your work?
• What is something you should not have to do?
• What would make your work easier?
• What would make your work more satisfying?
• What would improve the skills and capabilities of those who work for you?
• What would improve your work environment?
• What would make you more successful in your job?

We can’t magically change the national economy or print more money but leaders can help ensure that the work they are doing and the work of their team is focused and efficient by thinking lean.

Todd Thorsgaard

 

For more information on Lean Thinking in Higher Education check out the following resources:

Constanta Maritime University Annals, Vol. 18, 2012.

www.leaneducation.com/whitepaper-DoingMoreWithLess.pdf

http://www.bobemiliani.com/lean-in-higher-education/

http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Higher-Education-Increasing-Performance/dp/1439814651

 

 

 

 

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Posted in building teams, Engagement, higher education

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Did it work?

Posted on November 24, 2014 by | Leave a comment

“Did it work?” looks like a simple question to answer but when dealing with people and change there are no easy answers. In fact, there is usually more than one answer, and it takes a lot of work to unearth them!  digging-a-hole

Evaluating the overall results of your change effort starts with digging deep to identify and document what each stakeholder group finds important and learn their definition of success. For those of us in higher education success can be defined as increased enrollment, student learning, decreased student debt, program sustainability, fiscal viability, community engagement, graduation rate, student completion, faculty engagement, student engagement, and on and on.

Recently I discovered the work of an international group of experts in the field of evaluation. They can help you focus your evaluation and determine what is most important to all of your stakeholders. Managing the evaluation process provides a set of resources and tools you can use to involve and engage your stakeholders during your evaluation planning, implementation and communication. Stakeholder engagement helps you:

  • provide credible and useful evaluation information
  • collect high quality data
  • understand and interpret evaluation data
  • build knowledge about the value of evaluation
  • facilitate the use and dissemination of your results

You can find more information on their website, Better Evaluation.

Engaging your stakeholders in your evaluation process clarifies what will count as success and helps you answer each stakeholder when they ask you, “did it work?”

Todd Thorsgaard

 

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Posted in Accountability, communication, Engagement, goals, higher education, stakeholders

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Do we really mean it?

Posted on November 19, 2014 by | Leave a comment

I got zapped a few weeks ago! I was facilitating a day long program and I had assurances that my participants could park in the adjoining lot and we would not be tagged. Look what we found on our cars at the end of the day. tickets2Oops, I guess the change in ticketing policy wasn’t backed up by a change in procedure for the parking attendant that was on duty that day. We all did what we thought we were supposed to do but we paid a price, literally!

A powerful way for leaders to evaluate whether a change effort has actually led to successful change is to examine your organizational policies and procedures. Have they been changed to aligned with the new normal? Do they reflect your new values and expected behaviors and reinforce desired performance?  Or do they make it hard for your people to “do the right thing?”

The nuts and bolts of daily activity are guided by the formal infrastructure you create. Your policies, procedures, handbooks, training programs, recognition programs and other guidelines are concrete examples of your culture. While culture can be hard to measure, policies are “black and white” and provide a clear picture of success or failure.

Don’t ticket your people for doing the right thing! Tickets1

Todd Thorsgaard

 

 

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What did we do?

Posted on November 12, 2014 by | 1 comment

35mm-filmMy daughter is taking a photography class at her high school and they are using pin-hole cameras and 35 mm film cameras. She and her friends keep looking at the back of their cameras expecting to see the results of their shots immediately and there is nothing there! During our dinner conversations I have been sharing my memories of waiting for your pictures to be developed after you finished the entire roll of film. The excitement of picking them up, looking at each picture, loving some of them, being depressed at how bad some turned out, and then trying to remember what you did on each shot so the next roll would have all great pictures.

I think that leading change is a lot like using a 35 mm camera. We don’t get to evaluate the overall results until the end of the entire effort but the many small actions taken during the change are what determine success or failure. And it is hard to remember what they were and, more importantly, what you learned that can help you during your next change.

pocket notebookMy father taught me to carry a small notebook, or a “lessons learned log,” when we used to shoot with film. I would record the f-stop, shutter speed and other details for each shot and then refer to it when the entire roll of film was developed – often weeks or months later.

Taking time during your change efforts to document the “lessons” you are learning will both help you evaluate the results and remember what to do and what not to do in future change efforts.

I hope you capture some great shots!

Todd Thorsgaard

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Encouragement from the heart

Posted on October 31, 2014 by | Leave a comment

The fact is, we don’t do our best in isolation. We don’t get extraordinary things done by working alone with no support, encouragement, expressions of confidence, or help from others. –Kouzes & Posner

As Todd mentioned on Wednesday, reinforcing the new normal takes persistence and resiliency. We have to be able to get back up and keep moving forward when things inevitably take a wrong turn. And it works best when we don’t do it alone.

I recently reread Kouzes and Posner’s classic Encouraging the Heart. They described seven essentials for leaders who want to provide genuine encouragement.

  1. Set clear expectations
    – Do your people know what the new normal is supposed to look like?  Do they understand their roles and responsibilities?
    – Does everyone in the organization share a common set of goals, values, and principles?
  2. Expect the best 
    – Do you genuinely believe that your people can achieve the new goals?
    – How do you communicate that belief to them?
  3. Pay attention
    – Do you observe what people are doing and understand the significance of their actions?
    – When you see someone doing something great, what do you do about it?
  4. Personalize recognition
    – How do you provide recognition that is personal and meaningful?
    – How can you reinforce the message that individual efforts can make a difference?
  5. Tell the story
    – How can you demonstrate the benefits of the new normal in ways that are meaningful and memorable?
  6. Celebrate together
    – How can you create public events and ceremonies that will build trust and bring people together around the change?
  7. Set the example
    – How can you demonstrate that you are personally committed to the change?

As leaders, we can easily get caught up in the new business processes and work activities generated by change. This book was a great reminder that our most critical role in leading change is to support and encourage our teams.

Dee Anne Bonebright

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