"(F)our basic conditions are necessary before employees will change their behavior:
- a compelling story, because employees must see the point of the change and agree with it;
- role modeling, because they must also see the CEO and colleagues they admire behaving in the new way;
- reinforcing mechanisms, because systems, processes, and incentives must be in line with the new behavior; and
- capability building, because employees must have the skills required to make the desired changes."
And that's why left-brained change management initiatives so frequently fail, say Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller, writing in the April 2009 McKinsey Quarterly on the psychology of change management.
The Irrational Side of Change Management continues with useful, counter intuitive bits of advice collected under nine subheads:
1. What motivates you doesn’t motivate most of your employees.
2. You’re better off letting them write their own story.
3. It takes a story with both + and – to create real energy.
4. Leaders believe mistakenly that they already “are the change.”
5. “Influence leaders” aren’t a panacea for making change happen.
6. Money is the most expensive way to motivate people.
7. The process and the outcome have got to be fair.
8. Employees are what they think, feel, and believe in.
9. Good intentions aren’t enough
All too frequently, management is the problem, not the solution.
P.S. While you're wandering around their website, look for the video interview with one of my all time favorite business authors, Robert Sutton, the former business school dean and co-author of The Knowing Doing Gap, talking about being a good boss in bad times.
