Confessions of a Change Catalyst: Three Skills Colleges Don't Teach
By Buckley Brinkman
I hate change! Change causes stress. It makes you lose sleep. It forces you to try things you normally wouldn’t think about doing. Above all, it pushes you out of your normal comfort zone and never lets you relax.
The calm, dispassionate voice inside my head tells me that change is inevitable, change is relentless, and change is renewing. The voice lets me know that change can be for the better. It improves lives and the world we live in.
You’ve heard my confession, but understand I come by it honestly. My dad is a loving, but firm, German preacher and his dad was a rigid, Bavarian man. I believe that my family background makes aversion to change a hereditary problem.
What makes a person with those roots become a Change Catalyst? There is definitely a bit of “crossed wiring” in anyone who constantly puts himself at the vortex of the most violent change: turnarounds and corporate renewals. In these situations, one has the chance to see all the forces of change at their best – and worst. Facing change head-on, helping people and their organizations reach their potential, and making the most of difficult situations is some of the most rewarding work a person can ever do.
I believe for most of us the start comes accidentally. After all, who plans on entering disastrous situations as a career? For me, it was when Jefferson Smurfit sent me to an 88-year-old paper mill in Lafayette, Indiana to serve as its general manager. The corporation had given up on the property, as it was a bubbling cauldron of problems in every conceivable area. This would be where I learned about the practical side of change.
Innumerable words have been written about change and change management. Many of these come from academicians or other people who haven’t lived through the process and directed a major change effort. Often their work involves an exhaustive list of what to do, but very few how-to-do-its. This article seeks to close some of the gap by providing some of those “how-to-do-its” on three critical elements in any change situation: Gaining credibility, building trust, and developing the courage to act.
Gaining Credibility
A key element of any change effort is for the leader to gain credibility; the credibility that encourages followers to break their normal patterns and try a new path. The best way to create credibility and trust is to pick a visible, meaningful issue and make it a pet project. The issue should be a universal item that affects everyone in the company and is easy to understand. For me, that issue was safety.
Safety in any manufacturing operation is critical, and the Lafayette Mill had the worst record in the corporation. Production was always pushed ahead of safety concerns. Reaching into moving equipment and jury-rigging broken devices were standard practices. Every month or so, someone would receive that dreaded call, “Hello, Mrs. Smith? Your husband’s at the hospital and we’re not sure how badly he’s hurt…” I still hear some of the wails that came over the line.
It didn’t take long to put the proper signs up and modify the policies. Requiring eye and hearing protection and enforcing the rules were difficult and didn’t do much to change attitudes. These were tough people who prided themselves on being able to work in a difficult environment. Earplugs and safety glasses were seen as wimpy and getting in the way. The effort seemed firmly stalled.
All that changed late one afternoon while I walked the floor. One of the vacuum boxes that helped to dry the paper became clogged. It wasn’t a big deal. Usually, the operator would reach into the machine and try to dislodge whatever was in the slot, and in fact the operator was preparing to do just that. The intervention to momentarily stop the machine, clear the slot, and restart production cost us about 30 minutes of production, but the message was clear: Safety before production. It only took a few hours before the mill grapevine carried the word: Safety matters and the GM walks the talk.
Safety worked as an issue for me to push change in Lafayette. I’ve also used housekeeping in another plant, customer service in a bindery operation, and maintaining the core computer system in a national equipment service company. In each case, the issue was visible, affected most of the organization, and something that I could impact directly and demonstrate my commitment. People judge credibility by observing what the leader does.
Developing Trust
Change rarely occurs without a strong element of trust between the change leader and his or her key followers. Lou Holtz, one of college football’s most successful coaches, puts it simply: he says that people ask three questions when deciding to commit to a leader:
- Can I trust you?
- Are you totally committed to excellence?
- Do you care about me?
The leader wants his subordinates to try something new and (often) unproven. The answers determine how willing they will be to return the trust and implement the change.
I have found that nothing builds trust like positive predictability. My German/Polish sense of order and structure helps me here. Building an effective structure with consistent routines provides numerous and repeating opportunities to be predictable. It puts people in the same place, at the same time, with the same objective, and the same choices. Correctly designed, routine and structure provide the forums for people to exhibit predictable behavior and judge how trustworthy the other players truly are. It also provides a natural place to inspect performance – an opportunity for the leader to develop trustworthiness opinions of his or her own.
At the paper mill, I created the Morning Meeting and the Weekly Meeting (catchy names, huh?). Four days a week, we met for less than 15 minutes to discuss what we were doing: daily performance numbers, shut downs, critical issues, and major purchases. On Thursdays, we met for an hour to talk about how we were doing things: process discussions, policies, project teams, and long-term plans. The Daily Meeting followed a fixed agenda. Predictability built trust among the leadership team members. It’s amazing what happens when everyone must admit they know what’s going on at least once a day!
I’m not suggesting that a daily meeting is the right answer for every operation… The leader can define the routines and timings, but it is essential that leadership create frequent, repeated, visible opportunities for teammates to demonstrate predictable behavior. The best routines ensure that the behavior is focused on improving the company in a consistent fashion.
Courage to Act
In an organization facing change, managers need not apply. Only leaders possess the boundless optimism and bold creativity necessary to harness the conflicting forces of change. Change creates deep, deep conflict and it takes a unique set of skills to strike the necessary balance between the competing forces. I can’t imagine a more conflicted situation than making fundamental change in a long-term, troubled, unionized operation. It’s management versus union, working people against the ruling class; every issue becomes a titanic battle between good and evil. Managers do very well in this environment because they can preserve the status quo and have the labor contract to protect them. Leaders find it stifling and unbelievably frustrating.
At the paper mill, our operation had slipped into a malaise of complacency and convenience. Grievances were traded, rather than settled on the merits. Line managers’ main job was to survive a shift. Workers found new ways to test the contract and make change difficult. It was time to make a dramatic move to break the pattern.
We had implemented process management throughout the mill, a way of looking at production as an integrated system with areas that all follow a precise process. Unfortunately, the traditional management scheme provided attention across time, rather than area, as the supervisors worked designated shifts. That conflict posed a dilemma for us. We had an operational philosophy at odds with every mill in the Smurfit system – including our own.
That needed to change in order to act consistently, but change would force us to trust our operators to run the mill for most of the day without supervisors present. No other operation did that. And there were serious risks: if anything went wrong during the off hours, there would be no management on site to handle issues. Would operators take responsibility for their peers in a militant, union operation?
Our team considered the final step very carefully. The change was a topic at every management meeting for a month. We held meetings with every constituency and looked at all the possibilities. There was disagreement within the mill and our division management did not support the move. Ultimately, the final decision was mine.
The change was made. Each of the four supervisors became responsible for a process area. No one was responsible for an entire crew, but rather for a part of the mill and the success of the production team as a whole.
All of our hard work paid off. The changes released tremendous energy throughout the operation, as almost everyone in the mill worked hard to make a revolutionary change. Production improved. Labor relations improved. Our supervisors were free to work on improving the business, rather than babysitting. After two weeks, everyone knew the changes were there to stay.
I can’t give you a formula to find the courage to make significant change in a difficult situation. Often, those are the situations that separate true leaders from mere managers. We all face moments with difficult choices. Very few of us have the chance to make decisions that affect the lives of hundreds or thousands of employees. Careful preparation and acting in alignment with beliefs and philosophy make the difficult decisions easier to make. Still, taking the last step requires confidence and faith.
Conclusion
Change is very personal. It affects our lives in many ways. Changing an organization is also personal. No positive, lasting change can occur without the personal involvement of passionate leaders. Those of us who seek out and accept the challenges of deep-seated change enjoy the deep satisfaction that comes from making lives better for many others. It involves applying many unique skills and talents. Some of them you can study in classrooms, books and articles. Others only come through the hard lessons of experience. Still, at the end of the day, each of us plays a role in making our organizations a better place.
