To start, what are covert processes?
Unlike overt processes, which can be observed, covert processes are hidden, unspoken, and unacknowledged. They are the collective unconscious dynamics that exist within organizations that regularly impact the interactions and responses of people within the organization. If change management leaders do not account for them in their plans, these processes or dimensions can impact the workflow and stand in the way of achieving organizational goals and change objectives. It is important to know that covert dynamics occur outside of our awareness and you and your employees can be engaging in them without knowing it.

The 6 dimensions of change
Marshak lists six dimensions of change: Reason, Politics, Inspirations, Emotions, Mindset, and Psychodynamics. The first is the only overt dimension out of the six whereas the latter 5 are covert.

1) Reason
Reason is the only overt dimension and shows up when organizations are making the case for change. It is the rational and logical process organizations follow to come up with a compelling reason for why they need to implement a change. Today, reason is paid the most attention to when planning for organizational change. Organizations understand that they need to make a change to survive and remain competitive.

This of course is a very important part of any change initiative to get buy-in. However, solely emphasizing on it, negatively impacts the change process. This tunnel vision can reduce common and expected resistance to irrationality, when in fact it is the result of other dismissed yet valid and powerful forces. Therefore, it is important to account for the five other covert dimensions that can hinder any well thought out change effort.

2) Politics
The covert dimension of politics refers to the events in which individuals, teams or work units work towards their own interest. While this kind of behavior is deemed inappropriate in work environments, it is something that is bound to occur. It might even be the case that the change effort itself was initiated to fulfill a groups’ or maybe a leader’s own interest. Therefore, it is quite necessary to anticipate what political dynamics might surface when managing a change and think through the different courses of action to take to address them.

3) Inspirations
Marshak describes Reason as the head and Inspirations as the heart. Making the case for change rationally is not enough to get the ball rolling; people need to be inspired to be bought in. So change efforts need to be accompanied by value-driven vision statements that evoke inspiration; the third dimension. It is important to look beyond the numbers and logic and inspire people to do ‘better’ or ‘be more impactful’ or ‘make a difference’. This covert dimension of organizational change can be quite powerful. When unaddressed, it can be a missed opportunity for moving change along more smoothly. Moreover, reason might at times clash with and oppose unspoken yet existing values within your organization if both are not addressed, which in turn can hinder the change effort.

4) Emotions
With any change comes a normal and predictable wave of emotions across the organization. Some of these emotions can be acceptance or excitement, but they can also be denial, anger, fear, or sadness. More often than not they are expected to be hidden and unexpressed as they are considered inappropriate in the workplace. However, it is important to engage the workforce and allow them to express their sentiments and emotions. Unexpressed emotions can impact the change effort and if they remain unacknowledged, they can lead to inefficiencies, delays, and maybe even sabotage. Therefore, it is just as important to make space for these emotions as it is to reiterate reason.

5) Mindset
Marshak describes the mindset dimension as the unexamined assumptions, beliefs, and premises that people have and use to interpret the world and in this case, organizational change. These mindsets are covert frameworks that we are generally not aware of having. Mindsets vary from one person to the next and can impact how change efforts within an organization are perceived. Mindsets limit the perceived possibilities of the outcome of change. Moreover, these perceptions significantly vary from one person to the next, so there is a lack of uniformity in how the change is being perceived. Not addressing this dimension can ripple into the other dimensions such as emotions and in turn negatively impact the change process. Therefore, change management includes challenging these mindsets and making them more overt, because it is only by doing so that people can recognize the limitations of their assumptions and entertain alternative possibilities and outcomes of the change.

6) Psychodynamics
The psychodynamic dimension, which includes our unconscious reactions to change, is the most covert out of all dimensions… and the most taboo and off-limits topic to bring up in a workplace. Yet, it can greatly impact any change effort. Psychodynamics might show up as defense mechanisms such as avoiding the whole change effort, arguing and fighting about it, shutting down emotionally transferring feelings for certain figures in your life to your managers or colleagues etc… and a lot of these dynamics might actually be related to other parts of your employees’ lives outside of work. While this might seem like a sensitive topic that is beyond the scope of work, it still shows up and impacts the work. So, there is something to be said about acknowledging it. I am not suggesting setting up group therapy sessions but acknowledging that these forces are at play. Acknowledgement of your own psychodynamics can help you as leaders identify how they impact your interaction with the change and in turn model to your people how to approach it.

I realize that these dimensions are relatively broad and can be dealt with in several different ways. How you choose to integrate these six dimensions into your change analysis will be highly dependent on time, resources, and the nature of your organization, leaders, and people. But, if you set the intention to go beyond Reason and address the covert Politics, Inspirations, Emotions, Mindset, and Psychodynamics, you are more likely to achieve a successful change.

Reference: Marshak, R. J. (2006). Covert processes at work managing the five hidden dimensions of organizational change. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

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I recently attended an interactive seminar on change leadership with a group of 30 or so organizational development experts and HR leaders to explore how real-life organizations will need to address the challenges of returning to the office (or not). We huddled up and discussed actionable change management plans we would implement to make the transition successful. My colleagues in the virtual room had brilliant ideas to share, and it was evident that while there was agreement around some aspects of the change management plans, people had very different ideas of what needed to be done. And they all seemed like really good ideas.

So the first assumption to keep in mind when putting a change management plan together is that there is no one right way to do this.

The past year has been a breeding ground for experimentation. Some actions were taken on a hunch and while some of them proved to be effective, others completely backfired. To start, you need to figure out what it will take for your organization to thrive. It might be a hybrid model but it also might not be. If the hybrid model is for you, it will look very different than it would at other organizations.

Now is the time to gather the learnings. In order to figure out what will work for your organization, you need to identify what has worked so far.

You need to take stock of everything your organization did to manage the pandemic. Here are some of the big themes to explore:

Leadership & Management
A key if not the key task of leadership is to set vision and direction. It will be important to explore your employees’ perceptions of how responsive and proactive your leadership team was in pivoting and setting the direction and strategy for change. While it is important to assess whether or not people found the outcomes of the strategy to be successful, it is equally important to see if people trusted leadership to take action.

Middle management seemed to be a common clog in the execution of many change management plans this year. There were complaints about middle management’s inability to execute on the vision set by leadership for the changes. Therefore, it will be important to assess how well your management did in rolling out plans and determine how to set them up for success.

Technology
Technology is by far one of the most important factors to explore as you assess your organization’s performance. Understand what technology-enabled collaborative teaming, open communication, and efficient work. Ask your employees about what they found to be the most useful, what was detrimental and what was missing. Technology should be a top priority when it comes to budgeting for this change.

Mental Health & Wellbeing
Mental health issues were up by 102% to 305% (Total Brain’s July Mental Health Index) this year, with an overwhelming number of complaints around burnout and fatigue. If your organization offered support services, now is the time to assess how useful your employees found them and what else needs to be done to ensure their wellbeing. Ask employees about their concerns when it comes to returning to the office and gather their suggestions on how to manage them.

Workload
Based on our experience with different clients, this year was one that challenged everyone’s ability to draw the line between work and personal life. We heard over and over again that people worked more than usual and were overwhelmed by the work. It is important to identify what balance needs to be struck and boundaries need to be established between achieving organizational objectives and managing workload.

Communication
When it comes to a change of any sort, communication can really impact how smooth of a process it can be. Aside from exploring how effective communication tools were, it is important to assess the perceptions employees had of leadership’s communication. Ask your employees about how they felt about the frequency, clarity, consistency, transparency, and methods of communication shared with them.

Collaboration
The shift to remote work pushed people to explore new means of collaboration. While it did pose some challenges, it also made it clear that the team can work together virtually, given the right support. Learning the specifics around effective virtual collaboration will be key in determining your direction for change.

As you assess your organization’s performance, you will notice that a lot of these themes ultimately tell you about your organization’s culture. Think about these and potentially other big themes in relation to your organization and flesh out the specific questions you need answers to. Most importantly, try to get as close as possible to the ‘why’.

Tips from Pivoting Organizations

This past year, gC conducted its first ever global State of Culture study to explore how aspects of culture impact organizational performance during the pandemic using our proprietary Culture Mosaic. The Culture Mosaic is a framework that enables us to understand and communicate culture in ways that ensure organizations are equipped to manage change successfully.

While it is of utmost importance to understand your own organization’s performance, there are a couple of key learnings we extracted from our research you can use to set your own strategy. Based on our research, here are some of the key practices that impacted the participating organizations’ abilities to thrive and pivot during times of change:

1) Reassessing company values and having company-wide conversations around how values can be lived out across scenarios of change

2) Defining culture by being clear about how things are done at the organization and the behaviors expected of its people while tying it to the values

3) Reassessing the culture strategy or investing in setting one by:

• Assessing how environmental changes will impact business
• Aligning the culture strategy with the business strategy
• Having a common definition and getting leadership involved in setting it
• Encouraging concepts such as adaptability, collaboration, leadership engagement and openness, vision setting, communication strengthening and encouragement of a growth mindset, trust in employees, and transparency
• Ensuring it incorporates flexibility and agility in a way that makes sense to them
• Becoming more customer-centric – whether they are internal or external
• Defining what collaboration would look like in the organization across scenarios of change and identifying ways and tools to invest in to enable collaboration and achieve success

4) Investing time in setting a capability development needs assessment and strategy

5) Reassessing competency frameworks to ensure they are aligned with changing needs

6) Developing reliable culture assessment and measurement strategies and procedures

7) Contextualizing issues such as social justice to organizations’ different regions of operation

Identifying what has worked for your organization during this past year and incorporating it into these different practices can help set you up for success to return to the office and weather any other change.

Learn more about the Culture Mosaic.

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I was struck by a thought I had, and that it was the exact same thought I had the day before, and the day before that. It’s a thought that comes to me with such clarity, such simplicity, and urgently. “This is so weird.”

We will be going through our day without leaving the house (except to take another walk around the block ), without interacting with other people (except for our neighbors from an awkward distance across the sidewalk), and without physically connecting with our friends and family outside of our home. Now, more than ever, I am grateful for technology and video conferencing.

I wonder, when will I wake and say, ‘this is normal.’ Or not have any thought or judgment of the day at all. And what I’m learning is that it isn’t without the other experiences that I’m able to truly observe my current reality.

Without a sense of normalcy, I wouldn’t be able to see this current reality as weird. As I reflect on the changes and differences and losses of today, I can see more clearly all the things that I perceived as normal.

Throughout this pandemic, we have all been thrown off our daily routines and ways of interacting. My personal challenge, in all roles – mother, spouse, daughter, friend, and leader – has been how to help others to find a new sense of peace and balance. My personal grounding comes from my yoga practice – both physical and philosophical – and so I’m accustomed to borrowing from the philosophical symbol of Yin / Yang, and thus the leadership philosophy: Yin/Yang Leadership.

Yin Yang illustrated from the Tao Te Ching

When people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created.

When people see things as good, evil is created.

Being and non-being produce each other.

Difficult and easy complement each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low oppose each other.

Fore and aft follow each other.

~ from What is Yin Yang? by personaltao.com

A concept used in Taoism, originating in the 4th Century BC, emphasizes living in harmony.

“A starting definition Yin/Yang: Two halves that together complete wholeness. Yin and yang are also the starting point for change. When something is whole, by definition, it’s unchanging and complete. So when you split something into two halves – yin/yang, it upsets the equilibrium of wholeness. Both halves are chasing after each other as they seek a new balance with each other.”

I hear examples of Yin/Yang in most every conversation I have lately. People are struggling with balancing resistance with acceptance, the concept of abundance with scarcity, with considering essential and non-essential. In many of these discussions, it feels as though people are trying to be on one side or the other, and that one side is better than another.

In this time of fear and uncertainty, it is paramount that leaders begin on a path of more balanced leadership. This concept has helped me respond in conversations where we are grappling with this sense of opposition. Yin / Yang gives us a model for considering when something is out of balance, and where to look to bring things back into balance. As one element increases, the other decreases. We need to fully understand the experience of one in order to understand how to move toward an experience of the other.

I am grateful to be in a position to have these conversations with my team, my clients, and colleagues, and I recognize my role in helping them appreciate the current experience, and gain a new, more comprehensive understanding of the experience they are longing for. When it comes to leadership, the concept of Yin/Yang is more practical than philosophical. During challenging times, leaders are in a position of helping others come to peace, and even fall in love with our current state, so that we can more clearly see, define, and find our way back to our previous or desired state.

For those leaders seeking balance, whether in their own life or with their teams, here are three things you can do now to successfully leverage both sides of the emotional spectrum:

3 Steps to Balance: Applying Yin/Yang Leadership

Assess and Accept. Listen for the emotions and experiences that your team is having today. Acknowledge that different or opposing feelings or experiences (Yin and Yang) can coexist. We are in a period of exceptional uncertainty, with new information and guidance coming at us daily. While we happen to be in the midst of a pandemic, this is a very common experience for those going through organizational change, such as a merger or a restructure. Allow people to share their experience as it is today, without judgment of whether it is good or bad. Pay attention to the words people are using, and how they are feeling. Acknowledge that both experiences are valid and that we can gain insights from each other to shape the path to the alternate perspective.

Recognize and Encourage. A core concept of Yin/Yang is one of movement. There is no status quo, and our experiences are not static. Help your team to recognize where they are each day, and how their mental and emotional state is continually shifting. This can be particularly helpful when someone is having a difficult time; encourage individuals to reflect on times when things were different.

Explore Possibilities. With a better understanding of the full range of experiences and emotions, we can gain more empathy for each member of the team. For example, when we are used to functioning from a mindset of abundance, but now we see experiences of scarcity, we are encouraged to look for and find different ways to meet a need. If you are finding your team is focused more on what is no longer available, begin a daily practice of appreciating those things that are now available to them. While the list may look different, simple acts such as these go a long way to building new pathways in the brain and helping build resilience during these challenging times.

When I reflect on the experiences of today and feel the urge to label it differently, I am inspired to look for ways that it is the same. In doing this, I’m able to see and appreciate the little things, be it the people who I still talk to over the course of life, every day, or the rituals I still get to do to get myself ready for the day, or the way the flowers continue to bloom on my walk each evening. In appreciating the duality of our experiences, we can now see the many possibilities for how I can move more fully into acceptance of this new environment, context, and way of operating.

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The belief that organizations must master the ability to innovate and drive new products and services to market in order to beat out the competition has contributed to the focus on agility as a critical success factor. These organizations must “fail fast”, quickly learn from mistakes, and adapt to changing market conditions in order to outperform their competitors in the long-term.

Another term that has promulgated organizational life in recent years is resilience, or the ability of an individual or organization to bounce back from the adversity that has thrown them off course. A prime example of this can be observed in the case of Amazon’s Fire Phone. The company took a big risk that failed but they didn’t let it derail them. They kept moving forward. The speed and efficiency at which an organization can recover from adversity can be the difference between success and failure and resilience at the individual, team, and organizational levels all play a role.

I have long been a believer in the power of dynamic tensions in business. The relationship between agility and resilience, in my opinion, is yet another example of the dynamic tensions that exist in business that require companies to develop capability in both areas (flexibility to adapt to stay ahead as well as the ability to quickly recover when they get surprised) in order to ensure they are not exposing themselves to risk. This can be quite a challenge as these forces fundamentally oppose each other and require organizations to spread their focus in ways that can sometimes conflict.

Recent research of 325 organizations by Pulakos, Kantrowitz, and Schneider suggests that the, “… chaos and complexity of disruptive change [must be counterbalanced] with strategies that simplify, clarify, and help people focus”. They go further to suggest three imperatives that organizations should focus on in order to effectively thrive in these situations.

1.     Rightsize Teamwork, Instead of Driving Teamwork

The most successful companies are those that are best able to create a “flexible fabric” of effective interconnectedness that spans the organization. This allows organizations to utilize people’s time efficiently so that time is not wasted in chaotic situations. Knowing when and how to collaborate and work together or separately based on the situation is key.

2.     Drive Stability, Instead of Focusing Too Much on Driving Change

Another key dynamic tension highlighted by this research is the need to temper the need to constantly “drive change” by ensuring an adequate focus on, and appreciation of, creating stability to help organizations perform. When people are frayed by constant change, having stable systems and processes to rely on to ground themselves and enhance their ability to absorb and recover from disruptive change.

3.     Relentless Course-Correction, Instead of Periodic Performance Reviews

The final critical factor is an organization’s ability to create a shared value of continuous monitoring and adaptation in order to adjust to changing conditions. Continuous monitoring and adaptation help organizations to correct deficiencies as well as identifying potential opportunities before their competitors. The integration of processes and tools that help people to adjust to this relentless focus on continuous course correction can help them to move past their discomforts with effectively managing performance issues.

This research supports the notion that dynamic tensions exist in organizational life and that, in today’s hyper-competitive and hyper-fast environment, the ability to effectively adjust to manage those dynamic tensions is a key differentiator between the high-performers and those that struggle. Knowing this and executing on it can be two very different things though in the real world. I suggest that an organization’s ability to sustainably drive the ability to manage these and other dynamic tensions comes down to the culture of the organization.

If organizational culture consists of all of the values, beliefs, assumptions, and collectively agreed upon “right” ways of doing things in an organization then that culture would have a direct influence on driving peoples’ behavior. Those behaviors can result in an organization being able to successfully and sustainably exhibit the behaviors required of agile and resilient organizations. If the culture of your organization doesn’t see the value in these behaviors, it will squash them and put tremendous pressure on any individual who attempts to behave in these ways.

So how do you evolve your culture, over time, to begin to shift your organization’s ability to master the ability to be both agile and resilient? This is a pretty meaty question that I have covered in a variety of other articles so, rather than rehashing the content here, I recommend you check out some of the following articles for some thoughts and tips.

• The Art of Unlearning What Works
• Navigating Change in Deeply Rooted Organizations
• How to Overcome the Anxiety of Change with Organizational Empathy

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. 

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As someone who has dedicated his professional life to the topic of organizational culture, I realize that groups of people, over time and through collective experience, figure out what works and what doesn’t. Doing so allows them to begin to bake into their organization’s systems and processes methods for repeating successes and minimizing failures (or they cease to exist). Doing so allows members of these organizations to routinize processes and behaviors that lead to success so they can utilize their mental capacity on other things. Easy enough in theory.

The real challenge presents itself when the old ways of doing things that once yielded success stop working (or stop working as well as they once did). It is during these times that I often get people reaching out to me to help them figure out what to do in order to right the ship before things go too far afoul. In all of these situations, some common realities have bubbled up that are important to acknowledge.

Reality #1: You don’t operate in a vacuum. 

If we all operated our businesses in an alternate reality where outside influences didn’t affect us we would simply need to figure out the most effective way of delivering our products or services, optimize those processes, and watch the billions roll in. Unfortunately, the world has a funny way of “rewarding” companies that operate without adapting to external changes in the market. Just ask those typewriter manufacturers. Or Kodak. Or any of the countless other companies that were leaders in their fields until the world evolved around them and they had their lunch eaten (technical term) by a competitor who evolved faster than they did.

Reality #2: Technology will force you to evolve faster than you may want to. 

No other external evolution has rocked the worlds of so many businesses as the advances in technology that we have seen in the last decades. To make matters worse (if you’re on the lagging side of things technologically speaking) is that the pace that technology continues to innovate and evolve is getting exponentially faster over time.

This reality means that organizations that may have been comfortable having mastered life in a more static environment can now be quickly stymied or disrupted by competitors who are able to adapt more quickly or by a pesky startup that can nimbly adapt to changes to better meet customer needs and expectations.

Reality #3: The networked nature of our economy means that incremental change is increasingly being replaced by exponential change. 

While this is largely due to the advances in technology discussed above, it warrants its own call-out here. Mark Bonchek suggests in his article in Harvard Business Review that, “Companies like Google, Uber, Airbnb, and Facebook focus on how to remove limits rather than set them. They look beyond controlling the pipe that delivers a product and instead builds platforms that enable others to create value.” It is precisely this approach that unleashes the possibility of massive change.

Reality #4: Ignoring realities #1, #2, and #3 won’t make them go away. 

You can certainly take the “head in the sand” approach and argue that Realities #1 and #2 don’t apply to you or your industry for one reason or another. Your market share is significant or your balance sheet has never looked better. Famous last words.

Ignoring reality doesn’t inoculate you. You have spent years learning what works and your customers have rewarded you by doing business with you. Yeah, things are changing around you but your performance is still strong (for now). If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sound familiar?

Reality #5: There is a way out for you and your teams. 

The good news is that there are ways to position yourself for future, long-term success in this fast-paced operating environment but it involves doing something that comes very unnaturally to us from an organizational culture perspective. We must learn to “unlearn”.

Those organizations that are able to outperform their competitors will be those that are able to see an impending change in the environment and unlearn what works today in order to adapt quickly to what requirements the new operating environment will hold.

And therein lies the real problem. We have forever focused on the importance of learning. What we’ve failed to master is the power to unlearn – our ability to take an honest look at our mental model and make the conscious decision to work outside of it. Destin Sanlin does a great job of demonstrating how difficult it can be in this TEDEd video. But how, exactly, do we master the art of unlearning in ways that drive long-term performance? Here are a few things to think about.

1. Continually prove that what you believe to be true actually is.
2. Force yourself to ask, “Is there another way?” </l/span>
3. Acknowledge that you may, in fact, not actually know what’s best.
4. Challenge the beliefs and assumptions within your organization and be open to letting people challenge the beliefs and assumptions you, personally, hold to be true about what ‘right’ looks like.
5. Give yourself time and space to master new ways of thinking and behaving.
6. Ask a trusted third party to give you feedback on their observations of your mental model and how it shows up in your interactions with others. 

Those individuals and organizations that will excel in the dynamic markets of tomorrow will be those who are able to knock themselves out of the “rut” of success and challenge themselves to unlearn what has always worked for them in order to test their assumptions and beliefs. Only in doing this will they be able to identify areas where their “usual way of doing things” may threaten their future success.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. 

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Why has CX become such a fundamental component of brand success?

While certain brands that have understood the power of the customer experience for many years and have continued to refine their CX delivery in new and profitable ways, the notion that all organizations need to consider the experience that they provide to their customers as a competitive driver has really only become something of note over the last decade. One primary reason for this is due to the great leaps and continuous improvements that these CX leaders make to their customer experiences which continue to raise customer expectations.

Brands like Amazon, Apple, and even Uber Eats have provided customers with the ability to engage in experiences that are designed around their specific needs and wants- and they like it. As expectations around experiences evolve those brands that are unable to deliver will undoubtedly lose the affection of their customers. This reality creates the need for organizations in all sectors and industries and of all sizes to ask themselves what they are doing to both understand what their customers want and need and what steps are they taking to be able to evolve their experiences to deliver on those expectations.

The experience that a customer has with your brand, positive or negative, can have a significant impact on your organization. Several years ago, I wrote a column about my experience at Walt Disney World- a trip that I was not looking forward to. To my great surprise, the experience that Disney created at every touchpoint that I had with their brand completely won me over. Since this experience and my reflection on it, I find myself continuously taking mental notes of the way in which my experiences with other brands live up to my expectations (or fail to do so).

A study published in 2018 by Forrester Research compared the stock prices of a sample of CX leaders and laggards to the S&P 500 and found that leaders significantly outperformed both laggards as well as the S&P. The message is clear, those organizations that are better positioned to meet and exceed the experience expectations of their customers in a consistent and repeatable way and those that are best able to adapt to the changing needs of their customers are those who will continue to outperform the competition.

The performance benefits of improving CX make it hard to ignore. From increasing customer engagement, trust, and likeliness to forgive a brand for making a mistake, to improving voluntary compliance to requests, CX has been shown to make the delivery of services more cost-effective. Oftentimes, in fact, the savings gained by improving CX delivery can make the financial arguments against the investment moot. Many organizations that embark on improving their CX delivery find that the effort becomes, in effect, a “self-funding” activity where the savings they see from improving CX delivery outweigh the investments to improve.

Who is your customer?

For many, day-to-day contact with end-user customers is rare. If this is the case for you, it doesn’t mean that CX is not important. Support, or back office, personnel may find themselves serving multiple customers though they may be internal customers. The same principles that serve organizations well when enhancing the end-user customer experience can be applied internally to your internal customers to help facilitate your interactions.

I asked David Hicks, CEO of CX advisory firm TribeCX to weigh in on what differences may exist between improving CX delivery for end-user customer versus internal customers. “There really aren’t significant differences, CX is a way of thinking. Seeking out, what is it that I do in my job that really makes a difference for colleagues/customers and then being fanatical about persistently and consistently improving on it and delivering it can benefit customers regardless of who they may be,” Hicks suggests.

CX in government agencies.

Recent research by McKinsey & Company shows clearly that government agencies, particularly those in the federal government, are lagging behind when it comes to the level of customer experience that they provide. Government organizations have their own, sometimes unique, challenges that make delivering high levels of consistent CX a challenge without a doubt. Many subject matter experts are retiring, draining critical institutional knowledge. Legislative and regulatory rules can make collecting data from customer difficult. Agencies may collect a great deal of data but a lack of integration of legacy systems can make drawing insight from this data a real nightmare. In addition, the role of CXO seems to still be something akin to seeing a unicorn in the public sector indicating that CX has not been at the forefront of managers.

What the most successful organizations do.

McKinsey’s (2018) research on the topic found that the most successful organizations do three things exceptionally well and consistently:

1. They put themselves in the shoes of their customers. Really, truly taking a hard look at the brand experience through the lens of the customer can be tough but opening the curtain to understand the realities that exist is critical to understanding the opportunities that exist.
2. They understand their end-to-end customer journeys.
3. Isolate the moments that disproportionately shape the experience.

Where do you start?

Understanding that you have an opportunity to take a long, hard look at your current customer experience and committing to improve that experience over time is a good first step. David Hicks suggests that leaders begin by, “… buddying up with a front-of-house colleague for an entire day and to listen carefully to them and to the customers with whom they interact. Ask them what the single most important thing is to focus on first. This sends a powerful explicit and implicit message to your staff.”

Regardless of your sector or industry, customer experience is a factor of organizational life that is here to stay. Those that are best able to adapt to meet the changing needs of their customers and that are able to continuously increase the ease of interacting with their brand at key touchpoints are those who will enjoy a substantial and sustained differentiator over their competitors. As customer continue to get comfortable with their newfound new-found power to choose when and how they interact with brands, those that are unable or unwilling to make the effort to truly understand what their customers want and need run the very real risk of becoming irrelevant.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com. 

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1.) CONVEY AN INSPIRED FUTURE

Why It Matters: OKRs are powerful, yet they rarely convey the vision. A vision needs to be aspirational, emotional and functional—beyond just financial growth and moving the metrics. Why should we be excited about what we can create together? Your vision needs to demonstrate faith in the future.

Where & When? 

• CEO messaging
• Annual summit
• Quarterly all-hands
• Keystone videos & collateral

2.) STAY DISCIPLINED

Why It Matters: Transformation doesn’t happen by just “winging it”. You need catchy, repeatable keywords and slogans. Develop memorable frameworks, mental models, and taglines that can be repeated on a frequent basis. That message has to be personalized by every leader for believability.

Where & When?

• Cascade down the line
• Internal comms channels
• Marketing touchpoints
• Coaching execs for consistency

3.) ADDRESS THE EMOTIONAL

Why It Matters: Successful business transformations require speaking to the emotional thrash of change—the fears, the hopes, and the uncertainties. In the midst of a storm, leaders hold the center, demonstrate calm, and provide space for their team members to process the changes. While you might live in the new story, many of your people are still attached to the old story. You want to bring them along without making them feel judged, bad, or defensive.

Where & When?

• All-hands and town halls
• Monthly team meetings
• 1-on-1 check-ins

4.) BE TRANSPARENT

Why It Matters: Transformation moves at the speed of communication. It’s vital to provide team members with frequent access to information, especially during times of change and uncertainty. Not everyone can see the executive view, and a regular cadence of communication can both overcome skepticism and address a fear of the unknown. Moreover, a culture of disclosure and openness engenders trust. People need to constantly be reminded of their place and importance in the company story—great leaders are constantly reinforcing context, outlining priorities, and showing they care.

Where & When?

• Weekly newsletter
• All-hands and town halls
• Quarterly updates
• Regular team meetings

5.) NAME THE STAKES

Why It Matters: Why is the transformation worth the effort? Bring us back to the big picture: What are you unlocking, enabling, or improving for your customers, employees, and partners? It’s worth the time to map out the payoff for each audience you should be communicating with. All audiences should have a clear understanding of the value the business creates for its customers or users, as well as a dedication to improving that value, service, and lasting impact.

Where & When?

• Sales message and materials
• Investor pitch deck
• Recruiting story

6.) STRENGTHEN BELONGING

Why It Matters: What are you inviting people into? Team members should have a clear sense of how they contribute, with a feeling of being seen, heard and appreciated. All team members should know and feel that they belong inside the company and see themselves inside its story. When change makes the waters choppy, they not only need a calm center, but they also need to know everyone is in it together.

Where & When?

• Employee onboarding
• All-hands and town halls
• Regular team meetings

7.) DEMOCRATIZE THE STORY

Why It Matters: At its core, culture is simply the stories we share in common. It’s not just the enlightened few who can tell the story. Everyone needs to be empowered to represent the brand and to evangelize the narrative. All team members—from IT to marketing teams—need to be able to speak with confidence about who we are, what we do, who we serve, and why it matters. To do this well, your people need the tools to develop their own relationship to the story, as well as the confidence to deliver it.

Where & When?

• Team training & coaching
• Professional development
• All-hands & annual events

This article was written by Michael Margolis, CEO, and Founder of Storied.

The post 7 Best Practices for Delivering on Business Transformation appeared first on gothamCulture.

While organizational change can be difficult, regardless of the circumstances, it can be particularly challenging to create change in organizations that have long-standing histories and deeply embedded cultural norms, beliefs, and assumptions. Organizations that are solidly grounded in legacy and that place significant value on an enviable history oftentimes have the most difficulty creating change. This is especially true when these organizations are attempting to create transformative change (completely disruptive) as opposed to evolutionary change (small slices of change over time).

Why is this?

Organizations with deeply ingrained beliefs about how business should be conducted have likely developed these beliefs based on many years of success using those methods. In these situations, it is not difficult to see that asking people to do things different may generate levels of dissonance, anxiety, and discomfort that affecting disruptive change may present a rather significant challenge.

Any real or potential change creates the potential for people to lose power or control of their environment. This, not surprisingly, can create anxiety and resistance.

Asking people who have done things for a certain way for a very long time to do things differently can create anxiety. “I have mastered my job despite any frustrations I may have with process. If you expect me to do things differently, I may not know how to be successful.”

Employees having longer tenures in such organizations can adopt deep personal and psychological connects to the legacy of their employer, making any suggestion of change an affront to their own identities. “Suggesting that we need to change means that I have been doing something wrong this whole time.”

Finally, in the absence of factual information, people tend to fill in the gaps and this is rarely helpful or a fully accurate representation of reality as it tends to be laden with peoples’ deep-rooted fears and anxieties about the situation.

What can you do to help facilitate change in these types of environments?

Focus on little victories. In the face of seemingly overwhelming change, people can often become paralyzed. Transformational change takes time and requires the alignment of many people. Find ways to create and acknowledge small steps along the way. Showcase examples of employees who are successfully exhibiting new behaviors and the impact that they are having on the organization.

Provide ample opportunity to help employees develop and master new skills. In organizations with deeply rooted culture and business practices, employees, especially those with long tenures, have learned how to survive and thrive in that operating environment. Often, their professional identities are closely tied to their ability to thrive in such an environment. Asking people to do things differently can be extremely difficult to process. “I know how to succeed now. If things change, will I still be successful?” Providing people ample opportunity to develop new skills and the psychological safety to fail and learn will go a long way in helping them to navigate the complex and nebulous transition period.

Acknowledge that disruptive change is a process. It won’t happen overnight but it may need to happen more quickly than people are ready to adapt to it. Be patient and provide continuous feedback. As employees and leaders are practicing new skills and behaviors, find ways to provide ongoing and timely feedback will help increase their confidence and begin to provide a sense of stability. It will also help you identify those who may be unwilling or unable to successfully adapt.

Include employees in the process. This takes effort and can sometimes feel like a nice-to-have but the benefits far outweigh the costs. Disruptive changes impact people differently. Actively including people in the change process allows you the ability to decrease the distance between people and factual information. It creates trust and transparency and helps to create lines of communication with other employees through informal networks.

Create psychological safety and space for people to process the changes together. Providing opportunities for people to come together throughout the change process allows leaders to understand where their people are at in terms of processing through the transformation while providing additional opportunities to communicate factual information and to dispel rumors.

Honor the past. In organizations that have deeply rooted cultures and subcultures, people have often done things a certain way for extended periods of time. Asking people to change the way they work, regardless of the obviously visible business reasons, can unintentionally send a message that what was done in the past was wrong. In order to minimize the unintentional slighting of the work, people have done to this point, creating opportunities to honor the past in both word and deed can be extremely beneficial.

Be courageous enough to have the difficult conversations and to make the tough decisions. It’s no epiphany that change is tough. The opportunity during change in organizations with deeply embedded cultures is that leaders must be prepared to negotiate challenging discussions, to respond to uncomfortable questions, and to make decisions that may test their leadership mettle.

Be intentional about evolving your systems and processes to reinforce the new behaviors you expect and need to compete in the new operating environment. Evolving an organization’s systems to support and reinforce the new behaviors you will require is a necessary step in order to help ensure that behavior changes take root and solidify into the fabric of the organization moving forward.

In a world where technological advancements are causing massive disruption in every corner of our lives, those organizations that have long relied on operating in a certain way are faced with the overwhelming task to creating disruptive change. If they fail to adapt or do so too slowly, they run the very real risk of becoming irrelevant. While it is widely accepted that organizational culture is a key aspect of performance, many leaders fail to clearly grasp how to sustainably evolve the cultures of their organizations with the speed and agility required to keep up with changing realities in the markets. One way to do this is to develop the agility muscles in the organization early so that when it is time to adapt to significant changes, it can be done in a more thoughtful and intentional manner.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com.

The post Navigating Change In Deeply Rooted Organizations appeared first on gothamCulture.

One way to shape peoples’ interpretation of the past is to remove and replace the physical artifacts of a people. The statues, monuments, images, the schoolbooks and stories that do not align with the version of history that you wish to promote.

The destruction of cultural artifacts by invading forces, for example, is nothing new. These acts have been an effective way to exert control and power over groups of people and to shape the telling of history to promote one’s own goals. To reinforce one’s own values.

By replacing existing artifacts of opposing ideologies, invaders are able to construct new ones; ones that align with and reinforce their own beliefs, thus, changing peoples’ shared understanding of history over time.

Most recently, reports of ISIS fighters razing ancient structures and antiquities in an effort to erase ideologies that conflict with their own have made headlines. Their destructive efforts aimed to wipe out history in an effort to replace it with their own narrative.

Last month, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly caught some heat in the press stemming from some comments he made during a recent interview on Fox News. He was discussing efforts around the country to dismantle memorials commemorating leaders of the Confederacy.

During the interview, General Kelly suggested that an inability to compromise, from parties in both the North and the South, played a significant part in the slide toward war. Kelly referred to Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, as an honorable man- his way of suggesting, I imagine, that memorials in honor of Confederates were acceptable as a way of acknowledging honorable men rather than focusing on the philosophies of what they represented.

In a following press briefing led by White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, the narrative quickly turned to the notion that history can’t be erased. Simply removing Confederate monuments would not change history. Specifically, Ms. Sanders responded to a reporter’s question by saying, “… because you don’t like history doesn’t mean that you can erase it and pretend that it didn’t happen.”

While, in a literal sense, Ms. Sanders is correct that actions today can not change the events of the past. That said, history has shown that the destruction of artifacts can certainly have a tremendous impact on the course of the collective narrative in the future.

Organizational Artifacts. 

Organizations in the business world also acquire unique histories over time. Values and beliefs about what is right and wrong develop and become solidified in the collective unconscious as the members of the group learn what works and what doesn’t. These beliefs then become immortalized in a variety of artifacts within the organization that serve to reinforce those beliefs.

As your organizational journey becomes etched in the annals of history and your culture develops and embeds throughout the team, inevitably, the artifacts of the organization will evolve to support and reinforce what is valued in that particular culture.

Artifacts can take many forms across your organization. Physical artifacts like the way space is utilized in the office, the building décor, the layout of the parking lot and the way in which people dress all convey subtle (or not so subtle) messages to people about what is acceptable and what is not in your organization.

What topics get the lion’s share of focus during meetings, the way in which people are compensated and the way in which performance is managed represent physical manifestations of what is valued as well. All of these processes reinforce the beliefs and assumptions about the “right” way to do things.

The stories that are told within your organization can serve as artifacts to help people understand what is acceptable (or not) in your organization. These stories perpetuate a perceived reality from person to person and shape collective beliefs over time. These stories can have a tremendous impact on behavior within your organization and can serve as enablers to driving performance or can serve to derail you- depending on what values are conveyed through those stories.

So, how do leaders create a narrative that can serve to enable behavior change in ways that support the intended direction of the organization?

Rewriting the History of Your Organization.

In even the most dysfunctional organizations there are certain things that work well. I have never encountered a group where absolutely no glimmer of hope existed. So, when I talk about rewriting the history of your organization, this is not to be interpreted as needing to completely wipe away everything that got you to the place you are today.

Wiping everything away would imply that everything that people did in the past was wrong and that it should be devalued. It also implies that nothing could possibly be learned from the past.

What I mean to suggest is that, if used intentionally, leaders have the ability to shape the events and stories of the past to drive behavior change in the future. In fact, what I’m suggesting, is that leaders must consider the ways that the artifacts of the organization should evolve in order to support and reinforce the new values that must be present in order to drive performance in the current operating environment.

Take, for example, an organization that has always compensated its sales force for individual performance, for example, it might not be a surprise to find that people do not value teaming behavior. Even if the future success of the organization requires teaming behavior to drive performance, the history of focus (and reward) based on individual success is going to continue to be the default behavior people go to, making sustainable change a challenge.

In order to help change behavior in this example, not only would the organization’s compensation model need to adapt to reward teaming behaviors but many other aspects of the organizational system would also likely need to evolve as well.

For example, the leadership narrative would need to evolve to help people understand why this change is essential to the future success of the organization. Employees might require education or training on what this new way of operating looks like so that they can perform successfully in the new environment. Internal processes may need to evolve to reinforce these new ways or working. The feedback that supervisors provide would need to change as well.

And, finally, as people begin to experiment with these new behaviors, they would need tangible proof that these new ways of working actually yield positive results. If this happens, then these new ways of operating, over time, will begin to replace the old narrative as the right way to do things in the organization.

This is a process that takes time and collective experience. Leaders who understand their role in this process and who take the time to proactively shape the various support systems within their organizations to reinforce new behaviors are those who can make these transitions more quickly and sustainably than those who leave it to chance. Some organizations make intentional efforts to create organizational artifacts like culture books to help make a certain set of beliefs tangible and explicit to members of their organizations.

Application and Summary.

While the history of a people cannot literally change, the values that are reinforced by the artifacts within the organization can be evolved to reshape what members of the collective value. Over time, new values and behaviors can be promoted and reinforced. In practice, this does not have to be a process that just erases the past. Those leaders who are most effective are those who are able to honor the past and who are able to use the lessons of the past to help the organization learn.

So, General Kelly, you may have a point that applying today’s beliefs about what is right and wrong and trying to apply them to the past can be, “very dangerous.” In a business context, the past is the past and applying our sense of what is right and wrong to the past can be just as dangerous.

Rather than condemning the past as something that was wrong and trying to erase it altogether, we may take a play from the history books, endeavor to understand it in its context, and attempt to learn from it as it may apply in our current situation. The real challenge in situations like this is that artifacts memorialize ideas and ideals and those ideas that either no longer serve our needs or that possibly never should have been valued in the first place should not continue to be honored with physical memorials.

Image credit: Pixabay

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