Tag: Responsive organizations

How to create more buy-in

Change which is ignited by motivated employees goes better and faster than change which is ‘imposed’. How can you tap into the intrinsic motivation of your employees so that it matches the ambition or priorities of the organization?

Support base
Lack of support is one of most the important causes of frictions that hinder change. Differences in understanding of priorities exist between management and teams (in 40% of the cases, see graph) and within teams (70%). They lead to resistance. How can you convert that into support?

Source: dissertation by Dr. J.M. van de Poll,
Ambition Patterns in Strategic Decision-Making.

The trench of one’s own right
We live in a highly opinionated society with an abundance of information. We only need a little information to form our opinion and we are strongly inclined to hold on to it.

We have all experienced it: you have a discussion about a problem and you are convinced of your opinion. But… the better you put forward your arguments and supporting facts, the harder your conversation partner seems to cling to his or her conviction. Instead of coming together, it seems that everyone is digging themselves in the trench of their own right.

Trying to convince others of your opinion often leads to more resistance and controversy

Persuasion leads to resistance
This is a well-known phenomenon in clinical psychology: people are well aware of their behavior – and the improvement it needs – but when you want to convince them that they have to change, resistance arises. What if we don’t try to convince others but instead let people find the motivation to change themselves?

Change by listening
That’s exactly what motivational interviewing is about: it’s a technique, developed by Bill Miller and Stephen Rollnick1, that originated in addiction treatment.

1 Motivational interviewing: helping people change, William R. Miller en Stephen Rollnick, third edition, 2013

In motivational interviewing, the interviewer – or: the manager, the colleague, the parent, the coach… – mainly asks questions and listens, with the aim of finding out what would motivate someone to change. Not by telling people what to do, but by letting them discover alternatives themselves2.

2 The results of this method of interviewing in mental health care are good: 75% of the studies on this method report positive results and psychologists and doctors who use it report a success rate of 80%. Source: Think again: the power of knowing what you don’t know, Adam Grant, 2021, page 149. 

Suppose a manager has an employee on his team who often delivers his work too late. That is annoying for colleagues because they depend on it. The manager would like the employee to plan his work better so that the team can rely more on him. When the manager tries to convince him to change his behavior, the start of the conversation could go like this:

Manager: I notice that you often deliver your work late. You need to plan your work better.
Employee: Oh, what’s wrong with it?
Manager: The people who depend on your numbers get in trouble if you deliver late. They must be able to rely on you to keep your promises.
Employee: Well, I keep my promises allright…
Manager: But your numbers are often too late.
Employee: If different things are asked of me all the time, it becomes difficult to keep everyone happy.

This does not seem to be going in a direction that leads to motivation and agreement. What if the manager is eager to find out what would motivate the employee to organize his work differently? That conversation could go like this:

Manager: Could you explain to me how you plan your work?
Employee: Of every request that comes in, I note when it has to be finished.
Manager: So you have a good overview of all deadlines?
Employee: Yes.
Manager: And that works well?
Employee: The problem is that people come up with additional questions very often. As a result, I lose the overview and some activities will be delayed.
Manager: I understand that’s difficult. What could you do to keep the overview and meet the expectations of your colleagues?
Employee: I could schedule activities for each deadline and stick to it more closely when new requests come in.

Now an open conversation arises in which the manager understands the nature of the problem better – ‘planning’ is not so much the problem, but what the employee does when shifts occur. The employee, in turn, feels safe to think along about changing his behaviour. Now the door opens to a structural solution.

Change from within
Motivational interviewing enables the other person to find his or her motivation for change. Such motivation is always stronger than when behavioral change is imposed. It also leads to greater mutual understanding and support. It enables you and your team to become more responsive because dilemmas and problems are solved faster and more effectively, with more creativity and in greater harmony.

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From resistance to aspiration

Details make perfection
In the previous blog we discussed the blessings of micromanagement: if you want to be the best, it pays to go into great detail. “Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail,” said Leonardo da Vinci, and that also applies to top-quality products and services.

So micromanaging products and services pays off, but micromanaging people does not: it distracts and undermines self-confidence. Moreover, nobody likes it when people are constantly told in detail what to do and how. People thrive when they can indulge in a task that suits their talents and ambitions, with a certain degree of autonomy, in good cooperation with colleagues.

Resistance
The micromanager’s urge to control creates resistance. Because people feel affected in their autonomy, while they want to have the feeling that they are masters of their situation. In addition, people under micromanagers experience insufficient recognition. And that is a basic social need: people want to be seen for who they are and what they can do. Lack of recognition also causes resistance.

Out of the stranglehold
How do you get out of the stranglehold of the urge to control? How can you achieve your goals without the resistance that a micromanager typically evokes? Without giving yourself and others the feeling that you have to interfere ‘really on everything’ in order to get the work done properly? How do you involve people in your ambition for quality and results?

Trust
In micromanagement, the self-confidence of team members is undermined because they experience insufficient confidence in their qualities. The primary task of management is to build that trust. You do this by being explicit about the qualities you value in your team members and the potential you see in them. One of the most influential thinkers in the field of leadership, Stephen Covey, once summed it up like this: “Leadership is communicating the value and potential of people so clear that they will eventually see for themselves.”

Whenever I work with others I experience how true this statement is and how much people need to be confirmed in their qualities and potential. We live in a society that is disproportionately focused on mistakes and imperfections. More than on potential. Early on in primary school, children learn how much “mistakes” their work contains. But which perspective is better for self-confidence, “two wrong” or “twelve right”? Whenever I ask people about their qualities, I always notice that they are much better able to name their ‘bad’ qualities and ‘weaknesses’ than to talk about their strengths and potential. But when we only talk about their talents, possibilities and ambitions, the relationship transforms: people feel understood, seen and recognized and a better energy is created. The energy of trust.

Team
At team level, the principle is the same as with individuals. I regularly apply the following to teams I work with to build trust and engagement: after we have developed a strategy or change plan, I ask the team members to imagine it is five years later. And that all ambitions and goals from the plan have been achieved. Then I ask the people to write an email to each other, also dated five years later, in which they describe three things:

  • why they are so proud of the organization;
  • what they value in each of the other team members;
  • what they value most in themselves.

It is arranged in such a way that everyone receives all emails at exactly the same time. They are invariably full of positive energy, ambition, enthusiasm and appreciation. The potential that people see together is very tangible1. When the team members have done this, there is always a noticeable increase in energy: there is more appreciation, trust and fun. And that is reflected in the cooperation and better results.

1 This approach is inspired by Benjamin Zander’s YouTube lecture “How to give an A” and the book “The Art of Possibility”, which he co-wrote with his wife Rosamunde (Penguin Books, 2000).

Aspiration
Through such a way of collaborating and forming ambitions – primarily based on possibilities and appreciation – you unleash an aspiration in the team. The aspiration to realize ambitions together, to realize goals, to grow. Aspiration is a much more powerful source of energy than resistance. Resistance lowers the team’s energy, atmosphere and agility. Aspiration increases energy, enthusiasm and decisiveness.

Now the team is ‘on the road’ to realize its ambitions. It is important to maintain the energy and to allow both the individual employees and the team to come into their own. In addition, they benefit more from a facilitating manager who supports, advises and coaches them than from a controlling micromanager. But managers who have arrived at this point will have little interest in the arduous path of micromanagement, which saps too much energy and fun from all involved.

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Avoid the Beethoven mistake

Companies that have the most agility and resilience create differentiation. This requires responsive organizations that effectively anticipate changing (market) conditions and adapt organically. For this to be possible, a number of principles apply. These relate to employees, teams, departments and the way in which they work together. To become more responsive, a culture and behavioral change is often required. It is often assumed that realizing this change is closely related to structures and processes. But nothing is less true.

The Beethoven Mistake
In his book “Our Inner Ape”, biologist Frans de Waal discusses the relationship between the behavior of great apes and humans. He explains that for a long time people’s morals were explained by religion or culture and not by nature. Because by nature people would have no morals. But we now know that even great apes have a moral sense. According to De Waal, the earlier assumption arose out of confusion: because natural selection is a cruel and ruthless process of elimination, it was argued that it must produce cruel and ruthless creatures. In other words: the process is confused with the result. De Waal calls this ‘The Beethoven mistake’: Beethoven composed great and unparalleled music. You wouldn’t expect such a person to be unkempt and sleazy and living in a dirty and smelly house. Yet that was the case.

Confusion of process with result
In doing so, De Waal points out a fallacy that is often made in change projects: the tendency to develop structures or processes in the assumption that the intended behavioral change will arise naturally from this. But processes and structures are inconclusive about the success of cooperation between people.

Why is that?
Processes and structures work according to the laws of logic. You can set up a mechanical production process in such a way that the quality is statistically almost perfect. Six sigma is based on it. But people function according to ‘psychologica’ with their motivations, conditionings and (unconscious) beliefs.

As a result, collaboration in organizations is always a bit of a ‘black box’. You make agreements about objectives, responsibilities, tasks, way of working, et cetera. But just like with a football team, it is not yet certain how the match will develop and what the exact result will be. The outcome is largely determined by responsiveness: how events and setbacks along the way are dealt with.

Responsiveness and motivation
Effective behavioral change occurs when teams are given the space and freedom to determine the implementation of the plan themselves, based on a shared vision and goals. People are motivated to do this when their work matches their ambitions (am I doing what I want to do?) and talents (am I doing what I can do?). It is important that there is room for personal interpretation and a certain degree of autonomy.

Motivated employees connect easily, take responsibility and come up with solutions to problems themselves. As the production manager of a factory once put it: “If I let the employees focus on delivering the products to our customers on time, they are smart enough to order the necessary parts on time.”

Breeding ground to inspire change
It works the same way with behavioral change: the task of management is more facilitating than guiding. Aimed at the right breeding ground for change. One that brings people together and inspires change.

This requires managers to let go of control of the process and focus on the motivation of the people in the team and their mutual relationships. Employees need growth and inspiration and derive their meaning from the extent to which they are challenged and contribute to success. Not following processes ‘as such’. Successful managers understand this and focus on the emotional dynamics between people. As a result, they bring people together and create the right atmosphere. The creativity and connection that arises as a result often produces astonishing results. It is not without reason that there is increasing interest in working with self-managing teams.

Realizing the unique potential
In nature, the simple rule is that organisms exist by surviving and reproducing. How they accomplish this is left open. That is why nature has such a great diversity. The same law applies to responsive organizations: successful behavioral change ties in with the unique potential of an organization and can take many forms. Good processes and structures are of course helpful, but not decisive. Or, as De Waal puts it: ‘the process does not specify the path to success any more than the interior of a house in Vienna tells us what kind of music is coming out the window’.

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Responsiveness and the communication dilemma

Personals advertisement
“Man, 39, is looking for a girlfriend to share joys and sorrows with. I am sporty, I have humor and I like good food with a good glass of wine and a nice conversation. “

What’s wrong with this ad? It conveys what the advertiser in question thinks the partner of his dreams wants to read and therefore hardly shows what kind of person he really is. The keywords with which that happens – like sporty, humor, good glass of wine … – are so generic that it will be almost impossible to get the correct image for the advertisement. If someone responds, it will be out of curiosity rather than a convincing feeling that this is really the one. The chance of a good “match” has been significantly reduced.

Suppose the person had written the following about himself: “Because I believe in a healthy mind in a healthy body, I lift weights and study philosophy (the 19th century, John Stuart Mill is a particular favorite). I am a fan of Seinfeld, I love red Bordeaux and prefer to walk through the woods early in the morning.” Now a more concrete picture of the person in question emerges – because generic terms such as ‘sporty’ and ‘humor’ are made specific. This makes the unicity of the sender more visible and increases the chance that the ad will catch on with the right potential life partner.

Personals ads in business…
Unfortunately, a lot of business communication gets stuck at the level of a personals ad. All too often, a connection is made with fashionable and generic terminology that sounds good, but says little about the organization. And that is often a lost opportunity, because every organization is unique. And that unicity appeals to certain types of leaders, employees and customers.

To test it, I invite you to study the job advertisements in any medium. See how often you come across generic terms that are not made specific: good communication skills, open, professional. These terms mean something different in different organizations and in different situations. For example, the term ‘academic level of thinking’ is charged differently for a scientific research institute than for a company that markets consumer products. “Open” means a different kind of informality for an advertising agency than for an asset manager at a merchant bank. The disadvantage of the use of generic terms is that they lead to “hail shooting” and a waste of time, money and attention.

Communication dilemma
Convincing communication, internal and external, is always authentic. Do you want to convince by communicating in the way you think it appeals to your target group? If you organization has encounters success and there is a lot of positive things to say, then that is of course no problem. But organizations struggle with numerous issues, events and plans that do not go (completely) according to plan, but about which clarity is desired. Especially internally. “What are we really doing in the field of sustainability?” “Why is there still no clarity about our reorganization?” “How do we deal with these unexpected setbacks?”

These are all questions to which certain – internal and external – target groups – would like a clear answer. But what if that answer is not (yet) there? Or if arriving at a solution is even more difficult than expected?

Attractive and credible
Responsive organizations usually have little trouble with authentic communication. They face the facts, act on them, and rely on their own strength. By consistently and clearly showing who they are, they avoid the communication dilemma. Their message is genuine, natural and powerful. And it automatically becomes attractive and credible for the target group. That strengthens the bond and reputation with their target groups. Especially when there is not only good news to report.

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Responsiveness is more important than the plan

Where will you be in five years?
A question that many entrepreneurs, career tigers and top athletes ask themselves is: “Where do I want to be in five years’ time”? Asking this question will help you plan your future and take the necessary steps to get there. Or so is the assumption…

“Life got in the way”
Yet I know very few entrepreneurs who at any point have arrived at the place they had thought of for themselves five years earlier. There are always events and developments that influence the direction and the result – both positive and negative. Life came between them and their plans.

Relative value
Of course your organization has a vision. But that vision is not limited to time. It is about what can be improved in your market, how products and services can be marketed in distinctive ways, the possibilities of technology, new value propositions. And with that vision comes an ambition. Call it a mission: market leadership, most innovative company, best employer. You name it. It’s good to make that ambition “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Acceptabel, Realistic and Time-bound). This is your potential! And people will get excited about it. But the answer to the question “Where do you want the organization to be in five years’ time” has relative value. For example, if you are an ambitious hospitality entrepreneur who wanted to open your restaurant in the spring of 2020. Or someone who envisioned to open their online brand of consumer goods. In either case, the strategic plan doesn’t make much sense anymore – for one entrepreneur the COVID 19 outbreak could mean bankruptcy, the other one is growing faster than he had anticipated. In any case: for both entrepreneurs it means finding an answer to the circumstances and events now. In other words: it’s about being responsive. Either by changing your business model – delivering meals at home and setting up the processes and logistics for this – or invest in scaling up your operation and finding a solution to the financing problem that this creates.

The dot on the horizon versus now…
Entrepreneurial life is full of unexpected events and developments, opportunities and threats alike. But what is more important then? The best possible response to events and developments? Or sticking to that “dot on the horizon”? The answer, of course, is the best possible response right now. Because that’s what the future of your company hinges on!

Doing business in the present moment
No company can afford anything else: if reality “happens” to your company, responsiveness is required. Because you do business and manage it in the present moment. By responding to and anticipating change. By improving and innovating. And that takes you and your organization somewhere. Very often this is not at the predetermined end point. The journey turns out to be more important. And if you are able to look at it that way and take your organization along, the journey will also be a lot more fun and adventurous. Full of unexpected windfalls.

John Lennon once sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” That does not apply to responsive organizations. They are of course inspired by their ambitions and strategy. But these are not set in stone. As Daniël Ropers, former Managing Director of Bol.com, put it: “Responding to change is really more important than following a plan!” (‘The Responsive Entreprise’, by Rini van Solingen en Vikram Kapoor, Publisher Boom, 2016).

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Monkey See. Monkey Do.

Psychological safety is something people must experience.
Anyone who has children will agree: children copy what you do. Because your behavior as a parent is exemplary. This is a natural principle. It is stronger than words: you can explain to a child that it has to tidy up his room. But if you always make a mess of it yourself, that becomes reference. Not the words, but the deeds. It is no different in organizations.

Psychological safety
There is growing attention for psychological safety in organizations. An organization is psychologically safe, when people feel accepted and included by it. This is reflected in, among other things, employees who are open about their opinions and ideas. And colleagues who are inclined to admit mistakes – because the organization stands behind them and helps them solve problems.

This attention arose specifically after a study by Google into the effectiveness of teams. A few years ago they researched 180 teams, with the question: how can you develop the perfect team? Psychological safety emerged as the basic condition for well-functioning teams: people must experience their team and organization as “safe”. Only then will they take “risks.” Such as expressing their opinion. Or experiment. And – inevitably – make mistakes to learn how to improve things. That’s how teams and organizations learn and grow.

Are you serious?
Psychological safety is therefore a precondition for developing responsive organizations. Here lies an important task for management. But how do you do that?

For this, employees first look at their management: to what extent are they serious when it comes to psychological safety? Is it just words or also actions? Example behavior is of the utmost importance here to confirm that the organization is really safe. Or not.

In addition, managers should refrain from using their position of power to “enforce” certain behavior. Because that is the ultimate signal for employees that the organization is not safe – and people will hide back into their shell, in one way or the other.

Ford
The book “Insight1” gives a good example of this dynamic: in 2006 Ford Motor Company was in a deep crisis. Ford had lost 25% market share in the previous 15 years, and that year the company lost $ 17 billion. The new CEO, Alan Mulally found a deep-rooted culture of fear in which people put their careers above the interests of the company. Needless to say there was much resistance to change. Mulally wanted to transform the corporate culture, starting with his executive team. He encouraged members to be open about anything that went wrong. To his surprise, managers continued to report stubbornly positive about their activities. Week after week. Despite the huge losses, nothing seemed to go wrong ….

1 Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves And Why The Answers Matter More Than We Think, Tasha Eurich, 2018

The reason for this was the deep-rooted culture of fear, in which mistakes were not tolerated. No one ever felt safe reporting problems under the former CEO. Until a manager could not escape reporting a major problem with one of the new models, which meant that production had to be halted temporarily. The person in question had actually already prepared mentally for his dismissal after the meeting. But Mulally complimented the manager on his openness and asked the other team members how they could help.

This made it clear to the team that it was truly safe to face facts, discuss problems and resolve them together. This exemplary behavior turned out to be the “turning point” in the culture that Mulally had been pursuing for months. And that contributed to Ford’s recovery, which returned to profitability in 2009 in the midst of the economic crisis. Incidentally, at that time the only one of the big three car manufacturers in the United States.

Seize the moment with exemplary behavior
You can of course include psychological safety in the values ​​of your company. You can communicate about it and tell people how important it is. However, it will only exist if and when it is experienced by the organization. And especially at times when that safety matters. For example, when something goes seriously wrong, when someone comes up with a seemingly absurd idea or in a conflict situation. At that moment you as a manager have the opportunity to seize the moment, with the behavior that you propagate. As with raising children, psychological safety must be demonstrated.

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In the flow

Your organization wants to become more responsive. To this end, the vision & mission have been thoroughly revised, a strategic plan has been developed. In short: the “why”, “how” and “what” have been established. Everything has been shared with the employees, their feedback has been processed and there is wide support. How do you know whether your organization is able to make the plans come true? Where do you start then?

The basis
An organization or team can only perform well if a number of conditions are met. The basis is that every individual can come into his or her own. Compare it to a football team: one or two players who do not play in the right position or have an off-day, can destroy the performance of the entire team.

How can you create the conditions that allow employees to come into their own?

Flow
If you achieve your full potential, often you are in a state of “flow”. You become so absorbed in your activities that you forget the time. In such a state you feel great and perform best. We have all experienced that at one time or another. The concept of “flow” was invented by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.

Characteristics
He described the characteristics of flow in his book: “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”. We will not consider all of these characteristics here, because several are the result of a state of flow. For example, the lack of a sense of time or a strong sense of well-being. We focus on the four characteristics that can be influenced: willingness, ability, focus and feedback:

  1. Are people doing what you want to do? This is about people’s motivation. If the organization’s vision, mission and objectives are aligned with this, people have found a place where they can spend their ambitions and energy well.
  2. Are people doing what you can do? Does the job fit well with the talents and skills? If people are not challenged enough, they will get bored. When too much is asked of them, they get stressed.
  3. Can people focus well on their tasks and responsibilities? For some organizations, “death by meeting” or “death by email” applies. Or there is so much uncertainty about the demarcation of responsibilities that people are too busy with each other’s tasks. Constant distraction does not improve the quality of the work or the well-being of employees.
  4. Continuous feedback is important to keep people engaged and motivated. They need to know how they are doing and how they can improve. This is not about the (semi)annual appraisal: if feedback is continuous and properly applied, it is also a mechanism that improves the quality and spirit in the team.

Get it going
The aforementioned factors help people to get into their flow. The starting point is mapping the position of each employee on them. So there is a clear picture for each team which employees are in the right place or not. The following diagram is a summary example of what such a mapping might look like. Other HR factors could also be included, like in this example the fit with the team or the professional maturity of team members:

Example of mapping of individuals in a certain team

A number of things become clear immediately. For the entire team, the feedback must be improved: there is too much orange or red here. The employees do not know enough about how they are doing. On an individual level, a number of other things become clear: Melissa does what she wants to do, but still has a lot to learn (“Can” and “Professional Maturity” are both not good yet). For Brian and Julie the question is whether they fit into the team. Brian has the capabilities (“Can” is green), but does he really want this role? And for Julie, she is doing what she wants, but, at least for now, is lacking skills or capabilities.

From this overview, the team can develop and grow. For example, based on the personal development plans of each employee and a plan for the team, possibly supplemented with a change in team composition. Now, each individual can come into his or her own and alignment is obtained with the whole of the organization.

The next step is to make sure every team is functioning properly. In other words: flow at team level. That’s what next week’s blog will be about.

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