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MANAGING CHANGE
Conversations On The Leading Edge Of Knowledge and Discovery With Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove COPYRIGHT (C) 1998 THINKING ALLOWED PRODUCTIONS Reprinted with permission from Thinking Allowed Productions MISHLOVE: In fact, all of the research on stress would suggest exactly what you're saying -- that change of any kind stresses the system. SCOTT: If you feel you don't have the coping skills. See, stress only comes when you feel like you don't have enough wherewithal inside to do something about it. And then you look at the buffers. One of the things that seems to help people go through change better is that they have either been through it once before and they know they can survive it, or you add skills and give them a greater pillow, if you will, of buffering, so they feel more competent. It could be like a client who I have in my practice who both lost her job at a large bank system, had her husband die in the same month from cancer after a long illness, and her dog get squished. Those are three major changes; I don't know anybody who has enough buffer to get through those three without some assistance. It's a very tough time. You have to see that change hits people in different ways at different times. MISHLOVE: So what you seem to be suggesting is that when an organization or an individual is going through a major transition, that they allow for the grieving process. SCOTT: That they even enhance it, and invite it, actually, Jeffrey. Because the organizations I see that heal fastest do something to ritualize the whole grieving process, as you say. It's like when I'm in doing a piece of work with an organization, I run into ghosts. You have to stop and do something. I ran into that a couple months ago when I was with a company, and about four people said, "Well, we still work for this other company." I said, "Did I show up in the wrong place? It's Tuesday; am I in the wrong place?" They said, "No, no we merged, but we never arrived." I said, "Oh, ghost time." I said, "We've got to do something here." So what I asked them to do was bring everything that reminded them of the old company, and it was plaques and it was cups and it was things and it was pictures and stuff. And in the next session what we did was we talked about the old company and we laid it to rest, and we gave it a lot of its due, and said what was good, and why it's gone now, and allowed people's hearts to arrive. Because what I find is if people don't say good goodbyes, they never say good hellos. So you as a manager have to help people say goodbye -- whether it's burying the sign of the company, whether it's having vicious volleyball to the very end, whether it's putting the past in a time capsule -- whatever it is. But people do better if they can say goodbye. MISHLOVE: I guess getting in touch with that level of feeling sometimes entails moving beyond just rationality. You talk about ritual, which implies something that's not totally rational, but allows for emotional expression. SCOTT: I find the people who don't experience emotional expression of the resistance do what I call Tarzan's swing across the curve -- we didn't tell the four phases, but they go from denial into commitment -- and they think it's all fine, and they don't know what's the matter with the people who have feelings of upset. Often they turn around and yell at the people in a way that says, "What's the matter? You know, we did this; it was two weeks ago. The merger's done. What's the matter with you?" And what happens is the people are in grief, and the Tarzan leader is over in commitment, never having felt the loss. I just worked with a merger, and experienced two ways of CEO's that dealt with the merger. One was more of a Tarzan type that got over into the commitment because he was a visionary, a very potent visionary, and saw where things were going. And then he turns around and says, "I'm not going in front of my people until they're profitable again." So what happened is, the people all freeze up in resistance, because their leader doesn't understand where they are. The other leader of the other company, the other CEO, has this meeting that just puts you in tears. He sits down with a thousand people and tells people about his own process, about what it's like for him not to be CEO anymore. And this whole meeting just allows people to say goodbye to the past. So that to me is a very potent leader -- not only someone who can manage the process of the resistance, but then take people back up into the commitment. MISHLOVE: In other words, a Tarzan type, as you express it -- someone who can go from the moment before the transition, the denial phase, directly into commitment to the new reality -- is leaving a lot of people unable to move that quickly. And he has to recognize that people have to go through this, as you call it, a four-stage process, and we've talked about going from denial to resistance. The next stage, as I understand your work, has to do with exploration. SCOTT: If you imagine a trough, and at the top is the denial, and then the resistance, and at the very bottom is the thing, the shift, where you finally experience that you're going to survive the process. And then people start into exploration, which is a nice word for chaos, actually. It's where people just are so ready to try anything, and they want to try these four ways, and these three things, and this new accounting system. They have lots of energy, and what a manager and leader has to do during that point is begin to focus his people, begin to help people not overprepare, because they feel so glad to be out of the pit, and they're coming up the other side into commitment. But they need that phase of regrouping. It's when you're coming out of a transition in your own personal life, and all of a sudden you want to take this course, and run here, and try this job, and do this, and do this. It's a very exciting time, but it needs focus. So in the exploration phase, that's when you use your training, that's when you spend your money on training, because then they're ready to listen. MISHLOVE: And I guess the difference between resistance and exploration is the sense that there are options. Things aren't hopeless; they have some control. SCOTT: Yes. And they're actually through the grieving period, and they're ready to see, well, what's in it for me in the future? You listen to what people say in the organization. When they start to talk about the future -- "Well, in two years, we could . . . " That's the kind of language that starts to be heard in the halls when people are in exploration and going towards commitment. When you are listening to an organization in resistance, it's as if you had a stethoscope on them. They are sounding like, "I can't do this; I have so much self-doubt. I just can't get through this." The resumes are being churned out on the Xerox machine. The organization sounds very different. People are not wanting to be there; they're withdrawn. MISHLOVE: This phase of commitment sounds really exciting to me, on the other hand. Let's talk about the nature of commitment. SCOTT: Well, I think at that point you have people who have gone through the denial, the resistance, and the exploration, and at that point people want to put their sights on the future. They're ready to understand what their mission, vision, and purpose is. They're ready to go through a goal-setting process. That's when to do your team building, because they're ready to come back together. They're not ready in the middle of resistance. They don't want anything to do with team building, because it seems like being strapped to a dying organization. But in commitment, that's when you really channel people towards the vision of the leader and get the sense of leadership from them as well. And then you get to the top of commitment, and you're ready to go again, and again and again. Change doesn't stop. MISHLOVE: It's an ongoing process. SCOTT: But what I also found out, Jeffrey, is the companies that have not been through it, have not done one of those well. Then it's much harder to do the next one. But if they have done one of those transitions well, they go more easily through the next changes that they have to make. MISHLOVE: Well, when you've got a group of people and they're into resistance, or they're in exploration, and you're a manager, let's say you've got to get this group committed. And you need to do it, or you feel you need to do it, as quickly as possible. What I think I hear you saying is, no, you've got to let it take its own time. SCOTT: Well, you can push it a little bit. You can put a little Drano in the process. I think what I recommend that people do, is you've got to push them out of denial. You've got to confront them that what they have been doing will not work. You have to stop acknowledging that, and sometimes it's a very tough conversation you have to have, but it's compassionate, because it's not compassionate to leave someone in denial. You see that the managers sometimes collude in that, because it's easier to manage people in denial, because when they get into resistance they're very upset. You know you've succeeded in moving them from denial when they do get angry. You see, that's a success, but it doesn't feel like a success because then you think you're in the middle of it. What I say to people is they have to get what I call their tomato suit on, and they have to go stand in front of their people -- poom! poom! poom! -- and get hit with all the resistance. Actually, I had one whole team that went out and got yellow slickers, because they knew it was not going to be nice. But managers need to understand -- and this is almost a transcendent sort of thing -- they need to understand that the people are upset at the role, but not who they are as a person -- that you can wear the tomato suit, take the grief, take the upset, the disappointment, the failed expectations -- "I thought I was going to get, and I didn't" -- receive that, and turn it around. Because the minute people get that heard and let loose, then they move on. So you can make it faster, and help people through. END PART II
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