Gail SeveriniGail Severini

Symphini Change Management Inc

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Did your organization adapt well last year? Ready for 2021? Let’s go!

“Do the best you can until you know better. 

When you know better, do better.”

Maya Angelou

To read press releases, many leaders are satisfied with their organization’s accomplishments last year. If you are satisfied, bravo!  This post is not for you.

2020 was the year that tested all of us on every level – at our rawest, most human core.  And, let’s not kid ourselves, despite our most desperate hopes, 2021 and beyond will bring more challenges (both opportunities and threats).

Can we do better? Yes! Most organizations are still using approaches that are 10-20-30 years old. How can we do better? In PRACTICAL terms and in ways that compound and build capability and drive results?  How can we navigate such VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) situations with more personal grace, integrity and effective leadership?

It is a multi-variable equation. First, we must lead ourselves. Then we must support our colleagues across all our communities (families, work, civic and national).  And we must build the flywheel of our organizations.

We must apply this to how we treat each other (eg racial justice),  how we operate in our organizations, communities and economies (from day-to-day operations standards, strategy execution, corporate policies, re-organizations to diversity standards, policy and legislation, police reform, education reform and economic policy), and how we treat our environment (think climate change).

Maya Angelou was a seer – an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist – a writer with extraordinary moral and spiritual insight.  She showed us how to lead change through her life.  There are few better role models for inspiration.

Practical suggestions follow.

Breathe in validation and engagement

Leading ourselves begins with validation of the past and current work. Efforts and results, however imperfect, represent the best we could accomplish under the circumstances in 2020.

And it is critical to acknowledge the incredible contributions and sacrifices of our healthcare professionals, essential workers and, yes, even our government representatives.  Maybe we don’t actually have to agree with every word and decision but we must stay engaged in the process.

To those who stayed engaged, we are indebted … in ways that we can never re-pay and yet we must … and we continue to depend on them still.

To pay our debt we must pull our weight – as individuals, as leaders and as colleagues.

Breathe out loss

Next we must acknowledge the pain of reality. We have lost a lot.  Many losses are incalculable.  Lost lives – in unimaginably difficult ways … through COVID, through police brutality.  Lost freedoms – lock downs, masks.  Lost innocence.  Lost time. Lost hopes. Grieving continues as it must and healing will be slow and tenuous.

While we must allow time to process and heal, our focus cannot flag.  Healing must unfold in the small spaces between sprints of progress.

Breathe in resilience

We persevere.  I am inspired by the voice and experience of Maya Angelou “And still I rise”.  We must rise and we must reach our hands out to each other to rise together.

There is much work to be done across so many domains.  And there is on-going hope in the human spirit and vaccines on the horizon. Stay engaged.

Resilience is going to be a hot topic this year.  Keep in mind it is not new – so don’t go to new experts – go to those who have been working in this field for years and who have incorporated new learning from neuroscience.

A few notes:

  • Resilience may not be what you think it is. “Resilience is the ability to deal effectively with adversity.” Linda Hoopes.  Resilience is not about ‘grind’ or stoically muscling through.  We are all in a marathon of sprints – no one can grind it out for two years.  Resilience is a set of skills that can be developed.
  • An understanding of Change Saturation and Change Fatigue must also be factored in.
  • Many leaders actually want to combine this with other mindsets perhaps grace, perhaps radical optimism. Every leader and every organization will have to consider context for application. What have we been through? Where is the trauma? Where is the trust? What is the level of capacity to learn new things? How do we manage this limited capacity?

Breathe out stress

This energy must be optimized.  Let go of the stresses of 2020.

Begin anew.  What would that look like? How can we align the interests and aptitudes of our Colleagues?

As we pause to reflect, re-group and re-set it is an opportunity to do more of what worked and to iterate in new experiments to strive for better outcomes.

Breathe in experimentation

The multi-variable equation for each organization will be different due to starting considerations, contextual opportunities and challenges and strategic objectives. However, some of the key areas of focus might include:

  • Lead Yourself – Individual grace, integrity and capability
  • Lead Your Team – Proactive, flexible and forward-thinking change leadership
  • Lead the Organizational Engine – Organizational systems and structures optimized for iterative improvement

Here are a few high-level and some practical tactics that I have incorporated into my work as examples of what can be done. Ready to challenge yourself? Let’s go!

  1. Lead Yourself
  • CONTINUE to refine the key principles you need to focus on. In April I produced a COVID Leader Discussion Guide based on the science of Change Management. “Sure,” I can hear you say, “who has time to read a Leader Guide?!”  Well, we didn’t “read it” – we discussed it, debated it, we applied it- as groups and in individual conversations.
    • The guide is a reference tool and, if I say so myself, it held up pretty well.  There were one-pagers of best practices and practical tips on critical topics related to Crisis Change Management:
      • You are also disrupted – Lead yourself first
      • Acknowledge stress and fear – Help the team process them
      • Change is distracting – Practice focus and prioritization
      • Positivity is powerful – Amplify appreciation
      • Connection is key – Embrace it
      • The “Messy Middle” or “New Normal”
      • The role of leadership in “holding space”
  • START: in 2021 I think we need to shift gears. The basic principles will continue to be important AND we need to address the on-going nature of the crisis where we cannot let down our guard AND we can concurrently prepare for re-openings (with the vaccines).
    • There will continue to be ambiguity and fog – local dynamics will be different, timing will be speculative.  Planning will have to be anticipatory and flexible.
  • START looking for new models and frameworks to think about change:
    • The Agile Model ® offers mindsets and capabilities take this on for individuals, teams and organizations. More here.
      • Five domains and five capabilities available in a book, assessment tools, workshops, audits and coaching.
      • I find this a very practical approach.  When I have delivered these workshops, we incorporate 25-40% case application and exercises to make it real.
  1. Lead Your Team
  • STOP underestimating the basics:
    • CONTINUE – Be present – schedule and KEEP team meetings and 1:1s
    • CONTINUE Role model change.
      • Think that’s working? START a reverse mentoring relationship with a millennial in your team and ask them.
    • START ‘skip meetings”. Schedule ad hoc meetings with insightful people in your team particularly if they don’t report to you directly.  Ask them “What’s working / not working?” and “What should I know?” and “How can I help?”
  • START taking pages from Agile principles
    • Iterative improvement is exponentially beneficial – consider frequent and fast Retrospectives:
      • What went well? How can we do more of that?
      • What did not go well? What can we do instead?
      • What are we not doing that we might consider?
  1. Lead the Organizational Engine

A direct call to leaders: stop being transactional and short sighted about change.  It’s here to stay – build a strategic, long term capability. Whether you are a Chief HR Officer, a VP Transformation, head of a PMO or leader of your own mission there are many better ways to do change. How do I know? Street smarts and book smarts … a 40-year career implementing change in over 15 organizations; networking and coaching with more Change Leaders and Change Agents than I can count.  But it really doesn’t matter what I know – it’s about what you will do.

Here are some ‘tip of the iceberg’ considerations to develop and foster agility:

  • STOP arguing over who “owns” Change Management … is it HR or the PMO? Or others?
    • START thinking bigger! It’s all of the above.
      • Change is about more than Change Management methodologies and project processes. If you are talking about which methodology to use or which training certification to endorse then you are having the wrong conversation (welcome to the Kindergarten of the 1990s). Pro tips: think principles; think modular; think contextual.  No need to lock down on a single approach when there are so many that work…and that your people are already familiar with…leverage that.
      • Change is also about mindsets, capabilities and behaviours – Hello HR? This is your sweet spot – the culture of change – Are you playing in the deep end? Can you translate these essential but abstract concepts into practical applications? Pro tips:
        • Double down on change in your Leader Competencies. Think you already checked the box? Raise the bar!
        • Double down on interactive training AND follow on coaching. Don’t kill the momentum with over analysing evaluations and sustainment – think Progress over Perfection – lean into iterating as you go. True story: last year, a former colleague confessed and apologized for sand bagging my recommendations for resilience training … which they acknowledge now, would have dearly paid off.
        • Are you role modeling? Check around…that’s not the word on the street. What would that look like? Pro tip: follow the yellow brick road of engagement – what is yours like? Oh and on that … is your Engagement Survey really factoring in the level of agility required to deliver on your organizational strategy? You might be measuring at Industrial Age agility levels.
      • STOP silo-ing change capabilities – START leveraging the adjacencies
        • Organization Development and Change Management are cousins – descended from the same DNA principles and evolving along different paths – yet they are unrecognizable to each other. What a lost opportunity.
        • For the past several years I have advocated for uniting Change Management and Organizational Development – building both individual, team and organizational processes and capabilities in more effective ways
        • In 2015 I had the opportunity to advance this work in a chapter for a Wiley text book with Tim Creasey (Chief Innovation Officer, Prosci Learning Inc), Dr. William (Bill) Rothwell (then lead for a Masters and a Doctoral program in Training and Development/Human Resources at Penn State University) and Dr. Dave Jamieson (then Professor & Director, Doctorate in OD and Change, University of St. Thomas) – ie all esteemed and published professionals. More here.
        • This opportunity is still ripe in most organizations today.
      • STOP isolated and cryptic Organizational Re-organizations (which, more often than not, erode trust, loyalty and confidence). And, for the love of God, STOP making staff re-apply for their jobs – you are driving a stake into the heart of momentum.
        • STOP jumping from solution to implementation. Your solution is just that … yours … it’s not our solution.  Invest more time in alignment. Take input on HOW to tweak and how to implement.  You were smart enough to hire smart people right? Be smart enough to leverage their wisdom…make sure they believe you.
        • START (double down) engaging people in solutioning. No, not on all challenges but definitely on those that are more VUCA in nature.  Have you heard? Their engagement will foster buy-in. Sure, nice words … easy to say but hard to do? Rubbish.  START being more resourceful and practical.  Go where the change is on the ground – collaborate with Project Management. There are many practical tactics to incorporate into Project Change Management – your great CM leads are actually doing this already.  Do more of it.
      • START stretching – have a look at:

Did you find this interesting? Challenging? What’s next?

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