Welcome to Ask Dr. Change. I’m Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson. I’m happy to have you join me today to explore how to seriously up level your leadership and consulting to transformational changes all through conscious change leadership.

Welcome. Today’s episode is about managing organizational energy for results. Results from change. So this is a new topic for me to discuss with you, not new to me.

I had such an enthusiastic response to my episode on creating critical Mass, where I introduce the notion of energy because that’s what we’re mobilizing around critical mass. And I thought, okay, given that response, I’m going to take this further. In the mid 1980s, I wrote a book and several articles about organizational energy, managing energy for results from change. fortunately, life happened.

I never published the book. I did publish a couple articles, got married, had a baby. And so I have a lot to say about organizational energy. And so I’m happy to share it with you via this podcast.

Over the years of observing and codifying organizational energy, what this is and why look at it and what’s its importance. I found that when leaders could identify, mobilize, unblock, direct or guide energy towards their desired outcomes, inevitably they’d be successful. And if they couldn’t deal with, couldn’t find or unblock their resistant forces or confusion or chaos, or organize themselves forward, they would fail. I saw it over and over and over again.

And so I really tried to articulate what am I seeing and what can we do about it in pragmatic, real terms. So my focus today is to define energy in the organizational context for you. I’ll describe the elements of energy have got five of them within an organization or any large system how to do an energy scan of your organization and give you some relatable examples of each of the elements the results of your scan will Have you generate strategies for how to alter the existing dynamics that may be working against you or fortify those that are working for you. Obviously, we’re all about organizing towards the positive, towards the outcome that we’re attempting to achieve.

So it’s all in a relevant context in my next podcast. And then to do this in two parts, I’m going to talk about strategies for changing energy patterns and dynamics. Today I’m going to define them, illustrate them, and then next time we’ll talk about how to actually change them. I also want to reference timely examples of energy so you can easily see what I’m talking about.

And the most obvious application right now is what’s happening here in the United States given our presidential election process going on. So all of the campaigns, whether or not they know it, they’re using all these elements on behalf of their campaigns. And it doesn’t matter to me what your political affiliation is. It’s a matter of seeing these dynamics in play as we look at our campaigns.

So my intent today is to introduce you to this quite nontraditional way of seeing and influencing what’s happening in your organization in relation to its changes. I invite you into this different way of assessing and shaping your change strategies and give you some new language. Perhaps it’s all fairly grounded. None of it’s weird, but some new language to make sense out of what may be happening in your organizations.

My call to action to you is to let this in, experiment, inquire, explore the various elements as you might begin to see them in your organizations, those that are working for you and those that are working potentially against you or blocking your ability to succeed at your changes. And so please take this in. Imagine what I’m saying. See if you can find real examples in your actual work or life or family.

If you can make relevant sense out of this way of seeing, you’ll actually be adding a whole new set of tools and strategies to your change repertoire. And so I’ve been using this for decades and decades and decades. I don’t haven’t necessarily talked about it. I have taught it a few times, but I decided it’s time to share it via this podcast.

So I want to define organizational energy for you. Energy is the potential for action. It’s the fuel of progress, productivity and performance. It’s the capacity to perform work.

It causes motion, all ideally towards an outcome that we want to create. You could call it the life force of the organization. One might be positive, healthy and active. Or it could also be negative, repressed, chaotic and stagnating.

I’ll mention a quick story to you. I remember now this is decades ago, early in my career. I was invited in to a large utility in the East to make a presentation leading change. And I walked into the headquarters building.

I was going to work with a group of leaders, and immediately felt, you know, what is going on here? It didn’t feel good. It felt constricted, it felt repressed, actually felt really stagnant and fear based. And I went ahead and I did my presentation.

But I have to say, I had the experience that that organization was one of the most toxic places I had ever experienced. it was early on I hadn’t done all this work on energy. But while could I feel it and I did not want to continue doing any work there. It was a bit stunning to me how exaggerated and strong the effect was of the negativity in that organization.

It’s palpable when you can really feel it. So obviously we go for the positive, which is the source of our ability to make change. It’s the source of our ability to adapt and thrive in our organizations. So we wanted to make positive use of the energy forces at play.

Well, science has many other terms for types of energy. We’re going to stay in the organizational context and what people bring to their ability to work. Their ability to actually achieve the outcomes from their changes. When energy is flowing, we get productivity when it’s blocked.

We get struggle and resistance and chaos and waste. And so what we’re about here is how to actually see what’s going on, scan what’s going on, evaluate it and create greater flow towards the outcomes that we want to create. So again, I invite you to think about your own experience of what’s happening now in your organizations. Do they feel good and positive and proactive?

Do they feel tense and repressed and chaotic? and you might also think about any other circumstances that you’re a part of, even your family, to try and understand and illustrate what I’m going to be talking about with you today. So our challenge is to get leaders and us as consultants to create the conditions for the flow of energy. To do that, we need to acknowledge the power of energy dynamics.

Hopefully that’s an outcome of today’s podcast. We need to be able to see current reality. So I’m asking you to begin to do an assessment, do a scan, assess the dynamics going on in relation to the outcomes or goals that you have set, whether it’s a change project or just performance goals in the organization. And then we have to be able to influence against those dynamics to enable them to flow in sync towards the outcome we want to create.

That’s what we’re about here. I want to state this a second time because it’s so important. We need to create the conditions for the flow of energy. To do that, we need to acknowledge their power.

Assess what’s going on in our current reality. Determine if What we see is working for us or against us towards a clear outcome and goal. And then to be able to influence them to align towards that outcome that we want to create. Seeing the energy dynamics is done through what we call an energy scan.

It’s like an assessment. The scan is done in the context of what you’re trying to create your desired outcomes or goals, as I’ve said. Otherwise, we can’t get energy to move in a certain direction because energy will take the path of least resistance. That’s kind of a truism of it.

If we are not organizing it and guiding it, directing it, it will go where it has the least resistance, which may be clearly misaligned to what we want to do or against what we’re attempting to do. I want to say a little bit more about desired outcomes in the context of managing energy in Alice in Wonderland. The Cheshire Cat says If I don’t know where I’m going, any road will get me there. And so again, the need for desired outcomes.

Not knowing where we’re going in any road will get you. There is chaos in organizational change. People will do their own political agendas. Their own ego needs will play out.

However, when you set a clear outcome that immediately mobilizes the dynamics in the organization, it doesn’t matter if the goal is large or small, it has an effect on people’s ability to align and move. So it’s much easier to understand this in terms of energy outlay. When people move towards a goal that is perceived by them as positive. Then it takes much greater outlay of energy to move away from something that is perceived of as negative.

So we’re seeing that play out a lot in what’s happening in our organizations. People are become attached to old ways of operating hard to get them to let go versus in like appreciative inquiry, focusing on what we want to create and getting people mobilized to choose to create something more positive. So your clear goals give context for your energy scan. It’s based upon that that you’re looking then at what to assess what’s working for you?

What’s working against you. Now how will you know? What are you looking for? So I want to define the elements of energy based on your scan.

There are five elements I’d like to talk about, for each of these, I would ask you I’m going to give you plenty of examples, but I’d ask you to identify them. How is this element showing up in my current circumstances? The first element I want to talk about is sources of energy, who are what is affecting the energy for action. Affecting people’s understanding or motivation, Their emotional state, their ability to move forward towards a desired outcome or what you’re asking of them.

What is their existing energy coming from? What’s the source of it? Is it coming from an individual, perhaps your CEO, a champion, a group, or a faction of the organization? A critical mass?

Given my prior episode on consciously creating critical mass, that’s a source of energy. Is it coming from the doers in the organization, those that really take on action or supporters of it? Positive sources of energy give the effort life. Negative sources of energy.

Drain life from anything you’re attempting to accomplish. Positive sources generate fuel. They release human potential. They can even unblock stuck energy for action.

And so we’re really looking at how to create positive sources of energy. So let me give you some examples. Key people who have a you know, they’re big influencers are typically sources of energy. You want to know who are the mobilizers in the organization.

Important events can be sources of energy, you know, gathering up all of management in the organization can mobilize a lot of energy. A big announcement a year right now. The example here in the United States of the announcement of President Biden stepping away from his campaign and then acknowledging and putting Kamala Harris at the head of the ticket. Big announcement, massive change.

I’ll say a little bit more about this massive source of energy, that announcement. Stories can be a source of energy rumors, clearly, especially if they’re allowed to spread unchecked rewards. As I said, goals, political relationships can be a source, shared values, and clearly your desired outcome, if is perceived of as necessary and important and powerful, can be a huge source of energy. The question is, are these lined up in support of your effort or are they working against it?

So that’s where your scan goes. What are they? Who are they? Are they lined up towards the outcome that we want to create?

I will share with you one story about lining up a lot of energy for a big source of energy. We worked with a major utility in the Midwest and we did a whole series of leadership breakthrough trainings for the top 300 people. We gathered them together to revision the organization and the top 300 had never worked and never been gathered together ever in the history of that organization. All 300 people, they’d all been through the breakthrough training and so it was a very clearly designed visioning effort for several days.

And then we proceeded to train the next 1500 people in the organization. It was a huge impact. Everyone got lined up in support of the effort. At the time, it was about deregulation.

Everyone got lined up in support of this effort was very powerful, very culture changing the training itself was a source and the visioning conference, huge source gathering everybody together since we also included union leadership and that so they too became aligned to doing their part to support the organization’s future. In the absence of a source of positive energy, you’ll clearly here, I don’t know where we’re going or why are we doing this? Why should we be changing? If it’s unclear to people, why should they move?

There’s no there’s no fuel. So we’re after one identifying the sources and secondly, channeling them in a positive direction. Which brings me to the next element channels of energy. How clear and direct is the pathway through which the energy must flow toward your desired outcome?

These are like pipelines or tunnels processes through which the energy has to flow. The direction of the flow ideally is toward your goal. If there’s not a clear path to the goal, it can get blocked or derailed or splinter or anything that prevents it from getting to where you want it to go. If your channels are designed to accomplish something different than your goal, you won’t get there.

So understanding what the channels are and are they aimed toward your goal, that’s the critical thing here. Now, organizations are a complex set of channels. Those impacting your change are the ones to be assessed. Each must be aligned and sequenced to be able to produce the outcome that you need from them.

So examples of channels, the structure of workflow, communication networks and vehicles, decision making processes, supply and distribution systems, planning and review mechanisms. These are all channels your project management processes, the channel production lines and sales systems. Key relationships that know how to work together are channels. Quick story here.

I worked with a huge defense contractor part of their organization that was producing and wanting to accelerate the production of fighter jets. So huge effort, very costly, really important. And I went and I did assessment of what their current reality was. I met with management and what became very clear to me is that the design and engineering function that was crafting the streamlined design of the fighter jets.

They didn’t talk to production, those people who were manufacturing and needing to speed up manufacturing. So design and engineering never talked to or didn’t want to talk to production. They hated each other. There was huge conflict.

They didn’t listen to each other. How in the world were they going to create this accelerated production of the streamlined jets if we couldn’t open up this channel in their relationship, there was no flow. Obviously the work aimed in that direction. But I just wanted to give you that example of what a relationship can be, a channel as well.

So to achieve your goal and to get work done, energy must pass through these channels. if the channels are clear, then they’re well designed to support your effort. If they’re blocked or messy, they will hinder your ability. Just like this relationship showed.

So how do we address energy channels? Leaders and consultants need to explore a variety of things to get proactive about this, I have a series of questions to ask you to consider around dealing with channels. First of all, what kinds of channels are necessary to achieve your goal? What must strategically and practically happen to reach the outcome you on your channels might include key meetings, decisions, communications, production, sales, engaging stakeholders who have to make the change and training people, integration mechanisms, the whole variety of channels to consider what has to be in place and clearly designed to support your goal.

What channels exist that might be contrary to your outcome. Consider poorly designed processes people’s political motivations, rigid mindsets, blind spots, attachment to old ways of doing things, theories that are passed from person to person. So what needs to be redone? What may need to be cleared or redirected?

One example I’ve seen a number of times is too many signatures required before an action can occur. Do we really need four levels of people to review something in order to sign off on it to get some action? Maybe so, but maybe not. And so just as a simple channel needing to be redesigned.

Lastly, what channels may need to be designed or created brand new in order to help achieve your outcome? In our approach to change leadership, our Change Leaders Roadmap talks about creating temporary systems and processes, which are temporary channels to speed up and accelerate the achievement of a goal. Great example. Let’s say you have a massive reorganization and your typical job placement system to fill all those new spots may take six months.

Well, that’s not possible in a major organizational change. And so we crafted a selection and placement process that was highly accelerated with a special team of people that was able to identify candidates, make selections, get people placed in a very short period of time. Another example of a temporary structure is a payroll, all change structure that works at the same time as your normal operating structure, but just focused on supporting the change effort to take place. It works in parallel.

Leaders may wear two hats, one for operations, one for the change. All of that’s fine, but it’s a temporary channel set up to ensure the change effort is being led appropriately. Course corrected, navigated appropriately. The next element I want to talk about is energy Fields.

This is the climate or the mood that impacts your change. So what climate or mood will most serve your purpose? Energy fields are widespread impact created as a result of some action or message or information. Morale is an example of an energy field, like a magnetic field.

It has influence. Fields occur because some event or communication either upsets or excites the workforce. In general, fields are generated by deep emotion and beliefs. Culture is a great example of a field in which everyone participates.

Everyone contributes and is affected by the culture a big announcement can create a field, a big celebration, can create a field leadership style. Often generally creates a field like it creates culture. Consider fields in organizations with an authoritarian leader versus a more inspiring are engaging leader anything symbolic or something desired or feared by employees will create a field. So I want to give the example again here in our election cycle now of the fields of the Republicans and the Democrats.

And again, it to me I’m being objective about whatever political motivations or orientations you may have, that that’s not what’s important here. What is important is looking at the two fields currently battling each other. So upon the announcement of Kamala Harris, a huge field of support, motivation, hope came to play and it replaced the prior field in the Democratic camp. When Biden was questioned about his ability to proceed of fear and worry.

Was that going to happen? That quickly ignited the shift when Kamala Harris was announced. Contrast The field of that has been created with this energy of hope and choice and excitement and working for the common person. The middle class versus the field created by the Republican side of things, the Trump campaign that is division driven, fear driven, critical negative.

You know, they’re doing what they think is best to get to impact their audience, to get their votes. But I think it’s a great example to be able to see two very different fields at play towards the outcome of electing a president. So it’s not easy to change an existing field. It depends on how entrenched it is, how aware people are of the field’s effect on them personally and potentially how skeptical they are of the aspired new reality you’re asking of them.

A lot of these are factors to take into account when considering fields and what you want to be different. Again, I want to use the example of the word being used in our political scene right now is momentum created by Kamala Harris. Momentum that’s a field in play. And so already gave you the example and the question that has also been surfaced that’s being talked about is can Kamala Harris maintain the momentum, maintain this field all the way until the election?

Because this is a very real energetic dynamic, the momentum in the field being created. So lots of positivity in contrast to a lots of negativity and really important to understand the dynamics of the fields in both cases. Now how do we change an existing field? So this is something I feel very strongly about.

So in our again, our our campaign environment that Harris Trump Battle of Fields is creating some really interesting dynamics. Kamala Harris is attempting to strengthen her momentum while Trump is attempting to hang on to his, which is actually shrinking to some degree given what’s currently happening. You know, at this point in time, who knows what will play out over the next several months. So in the question of how to change fields in the organizational setting, I want to share some strategies with you to consider, if at all possible, directly engage with the individuals in the field that you are trying to change.

First strategy. Clarify people’s perceptions or assumptions about what’s actually happening in the organization. And you might also describe what you see actually happening. What’s important here is to objectively help people to understand what are you thinking, what are you assuming, what are you basing it on?

No blame, no shame. That’s really important here is to stay objective. Let’s just figure out what is going on in your head and in your heart around this particular situation. Secondly, provide a newer, more accurate set of data or facts or examples about the goal that you’re asking of them.

And so expanding the conversation. Yeah, making the data, reassessing the data so that they understand it’s actually different than what you’ve been assuming or believing. Make some symbolic gestures that might model your intent. Maybe it’s a bold action.

Maybe doing something radically different that will get their attention is like, wow, I didn’t think it. I didn’t see it that way. In our election cycle, people are saying if you are a true, hearted Republican and therefore you want to vote for Trump, but you’re uncomfortable with that. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote not as a Democrat, but a vote as a patriot for our country.

That’s an interesting, huge shift of context that will alter what’s happening inside of people if if they go along with that. And lastly, potentially getting them engaged in some kind of action. Never previously asked of them just to shake up their world, shake up their reality, ask them to do something of value relevant to their world, but that you’ve never asked of them before. Be persistent and repeat over time, support over time.

You’re creating a different reality for people, a reality that needs to stand on its own value because fields can be changed and they can change very quickly from unpredicted events as we also saw here. And so we’ve got to stay on top of what’s actually happening. Will the momentum sustain until election? That’s an important dynamic competency in understanding how to manage energy.

Your job in relation to managing the fields of energy, read the existing fields in relation to your outcome. Assess if they are supportive or blocking strategies, how to change them or create new ones to support your outcome and aim to touch people’s emotions and beliefs to influence their reactions most deeply. Importantly, stay objective and neutral. Except, of course, when you’re modeling your enthusiasm for a better future as long as it doesn’t railroad someone so object tivity is really important in the context of helping someone see how they think and feel and whether or not that’s actually serving their needs.

The fourth element I want to talk about is environmental forces. These are external forces that play a role in achieving your goal, but they may be outside the boundaries of your organization, outside the boundaries of your influence, and yet they may impact how the organization functions or how your change can proceed. Examples. Economic Trends.

Government regulations, unions, technological changes, competition or marketplace needs that are shifting legal mandates. Again, many of these may be out of your control, but you must be aware of them and attempt to build their influence into your energy strategy. Another political example here for us two major environmental forces that are impacting what’s going on, how the legal system works, in particular, who has permission to alter what’s going to happen in what trial or not, how long things take to get judgments. The influence of our Supreme Court, huge external for having an impact here.

And so it’s really important to keep these things in mind as you’re creating a strategy within your own organization. Use them to your advantage where you can and try and minimize their negative influence. Now, the last element that I want to talk about is patterns. This is really important, really present in our organizations.

Patterns are those things that are repeating behaviors or events that will help or hinder the flow of energy toward your outcome. There are observable ways to detect energy movement or blockage along the way to your goal. And importantly, they’re indicators of what’s influencing the flow of energy, positive or negative. They’re created by the structure of the organization or by people’s behavior.

Now, to make sense of patterns, the best way of describing them is, I have found, is by analogies that illustrate them visually. It also makes them much more relatable. So examples of energy pattern analogies getting stuck in a vicious cycle, creating a bottleneck, railroading a decision and sending up test balloons. These are all analogies for patterns.

I’m going to give you a bunch more here shortly. Just to consider, I had a whole lot of fun identifying things that I saw that actually had an impact on an organization’s ability to function. And it’s certainly a change to be created once you identify an existing energy patterns on the way to your goal, you assess whether or not they’re positive, neutral or negative, and then select strategies to alter them if necessary. So that’s how to deal with them.

Now, some more examples of energy pattern analogies for you. I’m just going to list these off for you and just to have you visually imagine each one. Each one is relatable, but are you seeing any of these in your organization as relates to the work you’re attempting to do? So first, missed negative pattern analogies, battles, skirmishes, kitchen starts, scapegoating, pressure cooker, roller coaster setting fires, dissipation of energy, uphill climb, whitewater spinning wheels.

You know, there’s even a longer list. But you get the idea. These are negative pattern analogies that help explain what might be blocking the energy from moving towards your outcome. Positive pattern analogies, building critical mass, sending up test balloons, a flowing river, gearing up, bolstering, rowing in sync eddies or opportunities to rest on a roll, and more neutral patterns that can be shaped to be positive, cascading decisions, information, sprinkling water, trickle down, a burning issue, taking a stand, pushing through, buffering or shielding.

Any of these can be at play in your organization. This is just to give you a fun example of how energy patterns will impact the flow of energy towards your result. So in conclusion, today I’ve presented the power. Hopefully you’ve seen it that way, the power of seeing energy dynamics in your organization as they relate to being able to plan for, oversee and guide the process of achieving the outcome of your change.

Energy being the potential for action. We looked at the five elements of energy sources, channels, fields, environmental forces and patterns. Leaders and consultants must be able to read the energy dynamics at play, do an energy scan, assess if the dynamics are in support of their inspired outcome or not, and strategize how to influence them to do so. To be of support, to be aligned as a key part of their change strategy.

Energy scanning is an ongoing effort as the energy dynamics and the elements will likely change over time. In my next podcast, I’m going to talk about strategies for how to change the energy dynamics you find, so tune in. It’s one thing to see them and assess them. It’s another thing to know how to influence them on behalf of succeeding at your changes.

Now, as always, I promised you a pro tip and a personal reflection. My pro tip for you is your ability to see energy dynamics at play is both a subtle and a very powerful competency. It’s non traditional. This is different.

It’s important that you stay grounded and find ways to talking about to ground in words that your leaders can understand. Find ways to begin scanning for the energy dynamics in your organization. Just as an experiment. Have some fun with it once the outcome of your change is cleared.

That’s the context for your scan. It will give relevance and meaning to the assessment that you create. Share what you find with the change leaders or your colleagues in words they can relate to and use analogies if possible, which is why I think the analogies are both fun and so powerful. Experiment in some other environment if you want to from the organization, perhaps your family dynamics or another social setting you participate in, it’s just fun to start looking at things through this set of lenses.

Personal reflection for you. What energizes you? What do you find most meaningful and exciting? Managing your own energy is key to your well-being.

Is everything lined up? Head, body, mind, heart, soul in working in ways that are supportive of you? What elements are present in your own life and how do they impact your well-being, your balance, your clear headedness, your sense of flow? Life is good?

And how can you better manage the dynamics to align with your intentions, both for your life and for your organizational work? It’s an ongoing practice. I will call this a practice. I do this every day checking in with myself.

What’s working, What’s not working? What am I feeling? How’s my head, how’s my heart as my energy level? Because I’m doing my very best to maintain my well-being.

And it’s all through the lenses of energy elements. So I hope you found some value today. This is a chock full episode, perhaps worth listening to and thinking about what we’ve been talking about. Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Today’s subject is one of the key topics that we feature in our leading transformational change online program. If you’d like to learn more about leading transformation social change, go to beingfirst.com/LTC. Thanks for spending some time with me today. I hope you gain some valuable insights for your work.

Please send me your questions and challenges by going to askdrchange.com.