Change by alexlc13, on Flickr
In February I’m giving a talk to medical librarians that explores these questions:
- How do we know when and what to let go?
- What are the ingredients to effective change management?
- How do we inspire buy-in from those we work with and from our key stakeholders?
I would add this final point that has arisen In Light Of Recent Events:
- How do we recognize and respond to strategic moments?
This is one of those cases where I feel the audacity of addressing these questions. Do I really know the answers, even in part? I have led change from time to time, but have I done it well, and and have I learned from the experiences, particularly the bad ones?
Then it occurred to me that change is like eating: everyone does it. So I turn back to you, gentle readers. What do you say?
(Yes, it has occurred to me that I have had recent experience with a kerfuffle that was almost entirely about change management from every possible angle. For the wisest observations and best roundup of other posts, see Michael Golrick, and no, I’m not just sending you there because he liked my post–he raised the “strategic moment” issue that needs greater attention and that I didn’t address.)
By the way, Brad, I’m really hoping you chip in with some observations on Evergreen.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Tiptoe through the Tech Trends - 2013
- The Conference Begins - 2005
- LII New This Week via RSS - 2004
- Anime Councilor - 2004
- Shameless begging - 2004
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by K.G. Schneider, Library Feed. Library Feed said: Change Management Ideas Solicited http://bit.ly/eh9bo1 […]
Some things I would recommend in response to your second bullet re: elements of effective change management:
1. Help people realize the difference between true resistance and fear of loss of the known. William Bridges wrote eloquently about the fact that people don’t so much resist change as they fear loss – loss of competence, loss of familiarity, loss of security, loss of proximity (as when you move people’s offices! or even desks!), etc. So encourage compassion within the organization and help people develop respectful language in reference to each other.
2. To focus on incompetence for a moment: In my experience adults are not comfortable at all with feeling incompetent (or unknowledgeable). In fact, I would go so far as to say that the educational systems we all experience are almost universally designed to create this inability to accept incompetence even though it is the condition of learning. Hence in a period of change when, in fact, we may not know what we are doing just yet, we may feel somewhat incompetent. This is highly anxiety producing. So, lower the demand for high productivity and expertise and raise the expectation for experimentation and a reasonable tolerance and latitude for messing up while learning and/or creating new systems.
3. Help people understand what is changing and what isn’t. I find that when we talk about change in organizations it is in very broad sweeping terms which disallow the specificity that would help people understand exactly what it is that is changing and why – and what roles they can play in helping. Not everyone has to be a change agent or junkie to play an effective role in helping the organization change: we also need pragmatists and people I call “tradition-bearers” who can remind us to not forget our core values. As part of being specific it is also useful to describe the rationale for the change – the purpose of it.
4. Help people understand the difference between solving problems and balancing dichotomies. Sometimes there is not a solution to something – we just need to balance the existing tensions of a dichotomy. This is a hard thing to learn to analyze but well worth it.
5. Finally help people discover and articulate the things that make them resilient as a group and as individuals.
Good luck with your talk!
Nice input, Kathryn. Your comments are excellent for understanding change management within an institution, but they apply also to change and our user base, too. (Sometimes in library talks people get so caught up in the library-staff angle that they forget the bottom line to any decision, which is better public service.)
I’m pondering change failure moments — Levi’s logo, New Coke — and change successes, such as Coke Zero.
I’d very much echo Kathryn’s second point: I think people hate feeling incompetent more than just about anything, especially at work.
I also always sort of wonder about the phrase change management and whether it means instigating change or whether it means managing changes that are already taking place. If you think of it as instigating change, I think the first thing you have to do is organize, in the labor movement sense of the word, and that’s how you get buy-in: you let the people create it themselves.
If you mean the latter, that’s both more interesting and more complicated, and I’d have to think about it more.
Laura, I think it means both. Some change comes from outside, after all. And instigating change incurs a responsibility to manage it humanely and sustainably.
Laura, a very long time ago (like 30 years ago), I had a beat up second hand copy of Alinksi’s Rules for Radicals. I didn’t even realize what it was, or who he was, until just recently, when it has popped up again in the media. That copy is probably in a dumpster somewhere, but I should go find it. It might make my job of Web Services Librarian easier.
[…] We may move backwards in time, returning to network television for entertainment. Online course reserves could be pricier for the university than those old print custom course packages. We might actually revive the fax machine?!? Why would a country want to push its population back in time, when the rest of the world is jetting ahead with innovative multimedia content and new delivery systems? Hard to say. Just dumb policy-making? The cynic in my says it could be that those making the policy stand to benefit from old media technologies and fear the threat of the new. However we may drag our feet and try to slow things down within national borders, change and innovation are going to happen – if they need to happen elsewhere first, that will happen. Maybe the CRTC needs to attend Karen Schneider’s talk at MLA? […]
[…] week or so ago Karen Schneider asked for thoughts on a future presentation she will be doing which will include the subject of […]
Kathryn – at the risk of being thrown in plagiarists’ prison, I wanted to share that I have been liberally sharing your post with the leaderhship in my organization. Your observations are spot on and have been very well received. Thanks for sharing!
Kotter’s Leading Change is the defining work in this field. His Eight Steps To Transforming Your Organization is the best by far. I’ve been in the change business for 20+ years (disruptive technologies) and just switched to technology at a small independent school. I have been supporting the library and find so many similarities facing librarians today as what occurs when disruptive technologies are placed in business organizations.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bestofhbr.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/8-steps.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.bestofhbr.com/leading-change-why-transformation-efforts-fail/&h=800&w=585&sz=47&tbnid=zjxIbI0N1e3fsM:&tbnh=143&tbnw=105&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dleading%2Bchange&zoom=1&q=leading+change&usg=__-9yGqqTrMfxpZ3sz6yzZHj1Z6A4=&sa=X&ei=EbxITbzKF8Gp8Aa2oKipBg&ved=0CEkQ9QEwBQ