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 we’re talking about the ten most common mistakes made in leading transformational change. People often have asked us about the patterns we see that prevent the success of change projects during 45 years of observing organizations.

We have identified ten of the most common mistakes made when leading transformational change. They also relate to other types of change projects. And so consider them for all of the projects you may be leading. Today is part one of the series in this discussion, where I’ll outline these mistakes and clarify some of the underlying causes of them.

In Part two, the next episode I’ll offer ideas on how to mitigate or avoid them actually setting up your projects for greater success. As I discuss each challenge, consider if your organization experiences them or worse, repeats them. The methods you use to lead change may need to be up leveled in order to minimize these mistakes or avoid them altogether. So let’s dive into the ten mistakes.

The first one mistake, one I call relevance and meaning. The mistake is not overtly linking the change effort to the market and the organization’s business strategy to create clarity in the minds of stakeholders by relevance. What I mean is why is the change important in the larger scheme of things? Why should your stakeholders care?

Why is it a good thing? Why is it necessary? This is all in the context of the larger organization they work in. Meaning is personal to your stakeholders.

Why? It’s a value to them. Why it makes sense to them individually so they can find themselves in it. How it changes their world, how they react to it.

That’s the meaning piece. So what do we need to ensure that this occurs in the minds of your stakeholders and their hearts? This is where their buy in starts. If they understand relevance and they understand meaning, they’ll begin to get on board and be willing to support the change effort.

Without relevance and meaning, there’s no traction, no engagement, and more resistance. The change may be both relevant and meaningful to leaders first, who have determined it to need for the good of the organization. But how do you communicate that in ways that are relevant and meaningful to the people who must make the change happen? They’re the ones who have to live with it.

That’s key here. How do we actually make it relevant and meaningful to stakeholders? Now, often leaders are very busy acting fast, moving through their daily challenges when launching a change project. They often assume that announcing this is what we are going to do here is adequate.

Or they communicate less about why it’s so important to the business, to customers, to various parts of the organization or stakeholders. So the relevance and meaning, especially meaning are lost and the absence of questions and dialog don’t support any connection being made as to why it’s relevant and meaningful. If stakeholders are not familiar with the organization’s business strategy or their new directions, the change may be of support, but to the stakeholders it lacks that relevance and meaning. The consequence, as I said, no traction, no engagement and more resistance.

Now, second mistake I title this one Change governance. This is about having unclear change leadership roles. Structure decision making and interface with operations. There’s these four pieces to governance, role structure, decision making and interface with operations.

So often projects are started with ambiguous roles. Who’s in charge of what? Who has authority for what? What kinds of expertise do we need or do we bring to the team?

What are our deliverables? A lot of this is typically missed at lunch. How often are we going to meet? How do we interact with each other?

How do we make decisions? How do we work with ongoing operations? These are all the questions that drive, develop of being clear change governance. So often people on teams have operational responsibility as well as change responsibility.

Here’s the challenge. Do they really have the capacity to do their change role? We find this so often in change governance. People are named to a role and don’t show up for it.

We find so many projects stymied from a lack of clarity around how the project is governed. LED course corrected and managed. Typically launch in mid number one may be where the project manager gathers the people selected to be on the team and set expectations for early action and deliverables. Most teams are heavy with content experts and often lack the change management or human resource expertise, communication support or other key peripheral participants.

Governance starts with the selection of a balanced team, content people and process expertise. New teams need to be launched with clear charters roles, decision making and ways of operating. There’s so many startup logistics that need clarification in order for a project team to work effectively. If we link this mistake with the first, the absence of relevance and meaning, the team will take on a checklist mentality.

Get the work done and that is done. Absent from truly understanding what the project entails and the requirements of the organization and stakeholders and the cycle begins. Lack of good governance, lack of relevance and meaning. The next mistake is what I call a strategic discipline for change.

The mistake is leaders not providing a strategic discipline for how change is led across the organization. No enterprise change agenda, no common change methodology and inadequate infrastructure to execute the change successfully. Point one In this, most organizations have many approaches to change at play. Project Management.

Change Management. Lean Six Sigma. Agile Organization development and so on. They often compete, confuse and are not applied adequately or consistently to the needs of complex projects, especially transformation.

There are different ways of doing things, different terminology, different tools, models, metrics, all of this inhibits clear thinking and smooth action. Point two of this mistake is that most organizations have so much change going on that it overwhelms and impairs action, productivity, morale and clear process, let alone the impact on stakeholders. Asked to take on too many things while they continue to do their operational roles when there is no mechanism to address how projects are added to the plate, how they interface, how resources are allocated, how fast they occur, it actually is a mess and its leadership’s responsibility to figure it out.

We call this mistake strategic discipline because it begs for change to be seen in the same way that I.T., Finance and H.R.. They are all strategic disciplines. They’re strategic functions designed with standards, clear process, clear infrastructure to see that they are executed with consistency, effectiveness and efficiency.

This is not the case with change, and it needs to be. Given how pervasive change is in our organizations today and how many often competing approaches we use to address them, this is complicating. Mistake number four. I call it misdiagnosing scope.

This is misdiagnosed in scope of the project, either in magnitude or by initiating only technological and organizational initiatives and neglecting the cultural mindset and behavioral requirements of the project. When change is major, it inevitably affects people’s ways of operating and relating. There are cultural implications that are most often overlooked or delegated to change management For later, attention and resistance grows. This is not well attended.

If SCOPE does not address all of the dimensions it needs to accommodate all aspects of what’s required for a project to achieve and sustain its outcomes. From the beginning, when this doesn’t happen, scope creeps occurs. Making a project larger or more costly or longer than anticipated and adoption never takes hold. So who sculpts the project sponsors?

Project managers only. Content experts. Your subject matter Experts. When does this happen? Before the project team gets engaged.

Before much is understood about what the project really entails. These are important questions to ask in relation to how you typically create scope in your project. Scope needs to be shaped by content savvy people as well as people Savvy people, including those that understand the organization’s culture. Everything that requires attention, resources and time and support belongs in scope from the very beginning.

Okay. Mistake five. I call this one initiative Alignment and Integration. The mistake is running the project through multiple separate or competing initiatives, rather than aligning all initiatives as one unified effort and ensuring the integration of plans, resources and PACE.

Some organizations use portfolio management to oversee complex initiatives. That’s helpful, but many do not. They unleash many initiatives that impact each other, either in solutions, timing, stakeholder capacity when change is complex and include several workstreams or sub initiatives. The work required needs to be aligned for the organization, especially your stakeholders, to make sense of what is happening and what is being asked of them.

In essence, the absence of a mechanism to coordinate and integrate change actions over time is very costly and confusing. It often triggers political dynamics and competition. It creates overwhelm and disenfranchizes impacted stakeholders. It also impacts leadership, credibility and morale.

Think about how many changes are underway and if you have any way of coordinating them to ensure optimal timing, resource utilization and communications. Change is messy enough without good and strategic orchestra. Mistake six. This is a big one.

Capacity for making the change happen. This is not creating adequate capacity for the change. Setting unrealistic crisis. Producing timelines and then laying the change work on top of people’s already excessive workloads.

We have introduced these ten mistakes to thousands of leaders, project managers and project teams asking them to rate all ten for those at our highest and most costly to them. I will share with you that 99.9% of the time, the number one mistake is this one inadequate capacity for change. Leaders make the faulty assumption that change can happen on top of people’s already stretched operating requirements.

It’s not true. We need to find ways to free people up who must work on the change that we need them to have the time and focus to do their change work, their change role. And we also need to attend to stakeholders capacity because oftentimes we’re loading so many changes onto them. We’re asking so many things simultaneously, and it’s impossible for them to take all of that on while they continue to do their operating jobs.

One of the many factors in this mistake is the pressure created by timely wins. How are timelines set in your organization? Are they politically motivated? I need to get this done so I look good ego driven.

I want this done my way. Are they guesses? Impose on a project and then become rigid expectations. Do your external consultants set them and then set up a way of being rewarded for achieving them?

Often it’s too fast for what needs to really happen. This mistake often challenges leaders to understand the true requirements of change, especially transformational change, and the impact that the time to do the change work has on people who must make it happen. If timelines are set at the very beginning, before the team can get into the implications of a chosen solution, capacity and competing priorities, how realistic are they at setting a timeline? We can only set realistic timelines when we fully understand the impacts of the new state solution and how much time and energy it’s going to take.

The targets, especially to put it in place and for it to be sustained over time. I will tell you, this is often a major paradigm shift for both leaders. Project managers and their teams. Timelines have to be addressed against reality.

Mistakes. Seven Culture and Mindset. This is about not adequately addressing the organization’s culture and mindset as a major force directly influencing the success of change. Most content experts do not consider the human dynamics in their solutions or the plans to have those solutions be put into place.

Therefore, culture, mindset and behavior are frequently overlooked or passed on late to change management people. This doesn’t work. Not only does it limit the true scope of change needed as we shared, it shortchanges changes the project’s chances for sustained results. Culture, in particular, needs to be addressed during the initial analysis phase.

What aspects of the culture will support or inhibit the deployment and adoption of this solution? Where considering work practices, relationships, norms, behavioral patterns, underlying human dynamics that are at play in any major change project? In terms of mindset, there are three mindsets that need to be addressed and planned for the mindset of leaders, the mindset of stakeholders, and the mindset of the project team. Setting up and executing the change itself if they are not aligned with the desired outcomes.

In the case for change, the project will not succeed. So attention to mindset is absolutely essential. Mistake eight Leadership Modeling. This is about leaders not being willing to develop themselves or change their mindsets, behavior or style to overtly model the changes they are asking of the organization.

So often busy leaders determine what needs to change handed off to a project manager and team, and then only and periodically get status reports on how it’s progressing. They become, when we call absentee sponsors. If the change is transformational, it’s essential for leaders to walk the talk of what they’re asking of the organization. The goal changed them mentality does not work here.

If there are cultural behavioral mindset requirements at play, sponsors and other change leaders need to understand them, know that their requirements of them as leaders, and to be able to model them first, overtly, visibly. That gives credibility to the effort. Unfortunately, most project managers, project team members, including change management practitioners, do not have the relationship with sponsors or other leaders to establish the need for mindset and behavior change and to support them to develop in these ways. To develop the sponsor and leaders to be models of the new behaviors and mindset.

So consider, do you coach leaders do advise them on this personal development needed? Can you help prepare them to play their part in modeling the change in word and action? I remember one occasion that I thought I was coaching a leader who was presenting to his project team about the importance of the project, and so we talked about the messages and the key talking points, but I didn’t talk about style, and the message was about being able to push more decision making down in the organization, more participative culture, etc.. And this leader announced to this team looking at his watch, well, this is really important.

We need to push decision making down. He got the the message is right, but his affect was so off. It was like people were just like, is he for real? This is not really happening.

He doesn’t really believe in this. So leadership modeling is really essential. Mistake nine Human Dynamics. This is a big and broad one.

Most projects are led to develop and deploy the best content solution. However, this mistake is not adequately or proactively attending to the emotional side of change, not designing actions to minimize negative emotional reactions and not attending to these reactions in constructive ways once they occur. This is a whole added dimension to good leadership. It cannot be delegated or sidestepped.

The project will suffer and results will not occur or sustain. The arena of human dynamics is a profound and essential ingredient in transformational change. So many success factors depend on leaders and their consultants understanding and assessing the human dynamics in their projects. These include emotional reactions, relationships, politics, resistance, stakeholder mindsets.

Not many transformational projects determine strategies up front to consciously and proactively minimize negative reactions and dynamics. This is an upstream requirement of change strategy. They belong in scope and they require leadership attention. They can’t be delegated.

The human dynamics are always at play. And so how do we address them? How do we support in our change strategies, support stakeholders to take on a positive response, buy in in a positive way, and not have so many negative reactions? And lastly, mistake number ten Engagement and communication.

How do you get your project stakeholders on board with what is happening and what you’re asking of them? This mistake is not adequately engaging and communicating to your stakeholders, especially early in the change project, relying too heavily on one way top down communication and engaging stakeholders only after design is complete. There are two major pieces to this mistake. First is announcing the project in a top down way with little interaction or reflection time and allowed for stakeholders or worse.

I’ve seen so many times when sponsors are excited about announcing they have put together for them a huge PowerPoint deck to oversee what we’re doing and what it’s going to affect and all kinds of details of what we want out of it. And they present that to a large group of stakeholders, and it’s part of what I call death by PowerPoint. Stakeholders are in reaction when a change is being communicated and all that extra detail is meaningless to them. They’re in.

Wow, what is this mean to me state at that point? And so how do we engage them in our communications? How do we engage them in the change itself? Asking for questions is not adequate, you know.

Do we have any questions here? Do you have any questions? And in a large group, no one raises their hand. The leaders often assume, okay, check the box.

I communicated. Not so. The second major aspect of this mistake is about engagement of stakeholders until deployment, when they are most impacted by the magnitude of change. By engagement, I mean asking them for their input.

Getting them involved in shaping what needs to happen or what the ideal solution might be. The same is true for communications. It needs to be two way and have clarity, think, relevance and meaning. Leaders are typically not involved with stakeholders, only with the project team or the consultants they’ve brought in to contribute their expertise.

So where are stakeholders in their thinking, in their leadership actions? This is an important confront to leaders how, from the very beginning are they considering the needs of stakeholders communicating in relevant and meaningful ways and being able to engage stakeholders so that they actually have some degree of ownership or influence, or at least being asked to think constructively about how to make the change a success. This is important. In summary, then, I’ve shared with you the ten most common mistakes we see in especially leading transformational change.

You may recognize one or two or several of these dynamics. Each is a reflection of how your organization leads change consciously or unconsciously early, and of leaders enabling the mistakes to happen and to repeat because they’re not either seeing them or not doing anything to mitigate them. Be conscious of these mistakes. Discover the underlying causes.

And that brings me to my pro-tip for you today. Find a way to assess with your leaders, change managers and project managers which of these mistakes are actually happening and which are most costly to the organization, to the project, which need attention to be explored, remedied, and altering the way in which you lead organizational change. In many of our trainings, we use these ten as an engagement exercise where leaders and consultants use weighted voting to determine which are the most important, most costly to how they are running their changes. The data is theirs.

That’s really important. No one else does this assessment. The leaders themselves do, and then they get to talk about how these red flags came to be the underlying causes and how they might do them differently. It’s a very powerful exercise when you’re able to get change leaders or executives in the room to look at how the organization actually addresses change.

So today was part one outlining the mistakes. In my next episode, I will explore how to mitigate them in terms of a personal reflection for you. Why do you see the organization you serve doing over and over again with poor outcomes? What mistakes do you see being made?

What mistakes do you find yourself making and wishing you had done differently? This reflection is important. Become aware of these dynamics so you don’t have to continue to repeat them. Take more charge of them, exploring the assumptions you’ve made that underlie them or the assumptions that you see the leaders making that underlie them, and how then to produce different outcomes.

It’s very powerful exercise to be able to up level how you see and how you consult and lead to major transformational change. I hope that you gain some value from today. We covered a lot and I hope that you’ll listen to part two about mitigating these ten mistakes and up leveling your approach to change. 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 transformational 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.