Beyond “Checking the Box:” Leading — and Measuring — Non-linear Change

There’s rarely a straight line.  We humans very much want things to “go according to plan” and then see results.  And so, the approach leaders generally want to take when planning and implementing a change is to set the course, lay out the way forward — the proverbial roadmap, follow the path they’ve set for others to follow, and then account for progress in quantifiable terms. 

But while installing a new system or policy, or delivering a new product can be a project in the traditional sense where you track scope and cost, and then flip a switch when you’re ready to go, getting people to change their mindset — how they think — about their work and their job, for example, is a whole other matter.  When people need to shift to a new way of thinking, to learn new things, and get on board with doing things differently — that change is far from linear, and can be difficult to measure. In this case, the change process isn’t “one foot in front of the other” to get to an end point.  By its very nature, the process by which humans learn and adapt doesn’t typically follow — or require — a straight line. This often is what’s at the root of challenges teams can face during times of change, and why it can be so hard for many leaders to talk about what’s changing with their teams.  The process is asynchronous.

Change isn’t tidy.  Managers — rightfully! — like results that show measurable progress, preferably rendered in the form of, say, monthly analytics displayed on a cool concise dashboard. Sometimes, though, the imperative to report results can mask the realities of organizational life and we end up with “check-the-box” reporting that says “Yes, we are on time, on budget, and in scope,” but meanwhile,  people aren’t collaborating across the organization, branch chiefs aren’t sharing information with each other (much less down and in), functional leads are telling team members not to bother attending trainings because there’s too much work to be done today, and feedback from customer-facing front-liners keeps pointing to a lack of mission clarity and difficulty “connecting the dots.”  Leaders may be in overdrive trying to swim the ocean where the surface appears calm and the winds are favorable (yes, we are pointed in the right direction), but are experiencing an undertow — unspoken and so not directly dealt with (well, yes, pointed in the right direction perhaps, but movement forward is laborious and disjointed) — that is making their teams swim uphill (read: exhausted and under-performing).  

Checking the box.  Linear thinking at the leadership level is problematic. It sets up impossible expectations and a lot of frustration. Why? Because it tends to create a kind of behavioral “if this … then that” equation, driving an untenable calculation. It goes a little like this:  “We — the leaders — are doing all the right things but you — our people — aren’t getting on board … so stop with the resistance and let’s move forward!”  For example: We are providing training, so why aren’t you coming?  Or: We explained all of this at the all hands meeting last month, so what don’t you understand?  Or:  We posted all the FAQs for this up on Sharepoint — haven’t you read them?  Change doesn’t work this way and so can’t really be accounted for in this way either.  If leadership announces a change at the monthly all hands or requires a training so people can learn “the new way,”  yes,  they can check the box to report that they’ve executed the change, held the all hands and conducted the training, but what difference did it make?  And how do they know? 

Not just top-down.  One way to determine what is changing — or ought to change — and how to measure it is to engage with the very team members responsible for the outcomes leaders seek to assess. Often these metrics are exclusively top-down.  Leaders have a strategy, they set goals and objectives, develop performance plans, brief all this out to staff, and then figure “we’re good for another fiscal…”  But what about this:

• Convene cross-functional teams in settings whose design is structured to enable participants to learn from each other and collaborate on how they think their efforts should be measured.
• Set pre-meeting homework to include learning what the organization’s strategic imperatives are, what the constraints are, and current/historic indicators of success.
• Discuss what teams need to do to advance progress against those goals.
• Answer questions like: Who do team members need to work with across the organization to reduce error, and by how much?  Or, how quickly does the team currently respond to customers and how could they cut that response time down?   
• And about that all hands:  Consider asking those who attend to complete a quick 2 to 3 question poll about what would make the all hands a meaningful must-attend? And then, invite team members to help plan and present at future all hands meetings so that it becomes an experience they co-own with leadership.   

The benefits of not “checking the box.”  People tend to resist less to change they’ve been a part of creating — and measuring.  Resistance often stems from lack of a structured, iterative approach to connecting change with performance expectations that in turn equips teams to engage in decision-making that affects them directly. 

The nature of change today: linearity is out — asynchronous is in.  Some change happens in spurts, fits and starts; other change builds slowly over time.  It is important for leaders to understand that not all change is equal, and to find ways to share this insight with their colleagues and teams. 

Nina is a change management practitioner with Rockwood Company, a woman-owned Washington-based strategy and change management consulting firm serving government leaders and their teams as they work to address our nation’s most complex and meaningful challenges.  In her client work, Nina supports a wide variety of organizational change efforts — from digital transformations and functional re-alignments to the stand-up of enterprise risk management programs, organization-wide policy-change initiatives and more. She has an MA in Communications and an MS in Organization Development, and graduated from both the Johns Hopkins Fellows in Change Management Program and Georgetown University’s McDonough School’s Change Management Advanced Practitioner Program (CMAP). She is ProSci trained, and has written about organizational change for govloop.com, Change Management Review, and Government Executive.

Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash