Business Change Management

In my last blog I talked about how in these turbulent times, businesses of all shapes and sizes, even non-profits, are finding that their old ways of doing things are just that  — old. They need to change their culture, but they don't know what their current culture is, or how to go about changing it.

I then described how from our earliest childhood, our mind forms a story (which others help us craft) and it doesn't like to deviate from that story, which makes change difficult. I also talked about the workshop I conducted for Eric Buehler's November 2022 Enterprise Agility Global Conference on how to adapt an organization's culture during fast-changing times. You can view the slideshow of my workshop here.

In this blog, I'd like to delve into how change is literally pain but it can be done, and often, must be done.

How can you change your culture if you don't know what your current one is?

Far too often, an HR professional is asked by his/her CEO to help transform their organization's culture. One recent call to us was so typical, and frustrating to the individual who was calling. Without ever having evaluated her company's culture, she could not tell me what culture the company had today or what the CEO wanted for the future.

Last week I wrote a blog entitled Nothing Proves The Importance Of Culture Than When Two Of Them Collide. It was all about my experiences in making a big acquisition and then realizing that words have different meanings to different people, especially when applied to a company’s culture.

In this blog I am going to describe another “culture” experience. This also covers corporate cultures and why success in one organization is not what brings success in another.

I'm very pleased to announce that I will be speaking at the Enterprise Agility World Conference 2022: Where Science Meets Organizational Change. As a culture change expert, my topic is just what I love to talk about — how to build an organizational culture for fast-changing times. The central theme of the conference is enterprise agility and what tools are required today to support a healthy organization. Please come! It's November 5th and 6th, and I'll be speaking at 10:45am ET on Saturday, November 5th.

My section is entitled Organizational Structure and Design for Exponential Growth and my talk is "Building organizational cultures to thrive in fast-changing times." The conference is completely virtual, so you can attend from wherever you are in the world. There are 66 speakers scheduled, speaking in 35 languages, so that the 2000+ participants will be able to hear the messages in their own language. I hope you can join, it will be great!

The gap between what we say and what we do

We know that what we say and what we mean are often far apart. The gap is something that comes from our brains moving far faster thinking than our voices can communicate those thoughts. You might want to take a look at Byron Reese’s new book, Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think: How Humans Learned to See the Future—and Shape It. My wife recently interviewed Byron on her podcast, On the Brink with Andi Simon.

As we have been working with our clients during this pandemic, we're noticing a recurring theme. They are unhappy about not knowing what comes next. They've figured out how to deal with living at home, working at home and being at home. But now they're beginning to be uncomfortable and anxious about what's coming next. It's strange, isn't it, that without a clear vision of the future, it's often impossible to live today. I've recently recorded a podcast talking about this, which you can listen to here.

Martin Seligman's work on homo prospectus tells us a lot about how we need to see the future clearly if we're going to leave today...even if the future is an imagined one, because that's the way our brains work. Now the challenge is how to do our work when we're uncertain about what's going to be the new normal. What's more, we're not sure it's coming back to what it was. And we're not sure what it's going to be next.

During this crisis period filled with uncertainty and disruption, you might pause, step back and turn lemons into lemonade. There probably isn’t much else you can do. If we at SAMC could help you now, it would be to urge you to take some time to use Innovation Games® to bring those big, new ideas to the forefront of your thinking about yourself, your business and your future. In fact, Andy and I recently did an On The Brink podcast about how Innovation Games are a very effective way to not only help you look into the future and rethink where your organization is going, but also figure out how to get there. You can listen to it here.

We often tell our clients that if they need to reignite their business or change their market strategy or create a new business model, they should have a crisis or create one. Well, with the COVID-19 pandemic upon us, the crisis is here, and change is all around us. So what can you do individually and as a business to adapt?

First, don’t panic. Don’t be the proverbial deer in headlights. By being willing to change in big ways and small, you are doing something good to help others and protect yourself. It is ok.

Next, how do you help your folks respond so they too know it is ok? This is a time for exceptional, emotionally intelligent leadership. Keep it simple. You need to lead so others trust your judgments and want to follow you. No one knows exactly what to do right now, so it is a time to learn how to deal with an unknown crisis together.

At SAMC, we are rather passionate about the power of Blue Ocean Strategic thinking. In fact, I recently spoke to the Pennsylvania Petroleum Association on Blue Ocean Strategy, and I was reminded how the theory, methods and tools of this unique business growth approach are so timely for an industry like this. On the one hand, consumers expect vendors to provide them with the services they need when they need them, not when vendors can deliver their home fuel or when fuel trucks can re-fill gas station tanks. On the other hand, the petroleum industry has collapsed over the past decade, shrinking from 12,000 distributors to less than 4,000. Clearly, this consolidation reflects the changing nature of the fuel delivery industry.

But it also reflects the trends that are coming next. WaWa is a perfect example: a gas station with high quality food that also sells gasoline. This dual-service model has enabled WaWa to outsell 7-Eleven stores and even McDonald's. Its secret? WaWa realized that people want quality food fast, but don't necessarily need a drive-up or a place to sit down to eat. By redesigning their operations, WaWa's leadership found their Blue Ocean Strategy and out-performed the rest of the pack, which were still competing over having the best gas prices in the right locations.

What the oil and gas industry is discovering: cars are going to be electric or hybrids, now or soon