If you’ve followed the last couple posts, you’ve learned about the importance of a purpose and a path to accomplish that purpose. Basically you want to define where you are going and roughly how you can get there. In most organizations the minute you declare the future state (just like traveling with children), the first question is “are we there yet?” Your job as the driver of the change, regardless of whether it’s transformational or evolutionary, is to continually understand and share your progress. As I noted in the first post on the 7 principles:
Progress: Share the gains you see the team making over time correlated to the path you’ve laid out; there will be significant early gains/quick wins just because of renewed energy/focus – make sure to temper expectations relative to the longer journey.
Progress will likely be like the gif above: you’ll likely be facing some headwinds and you’ll find yourself taking a few steps forward and then regressing backwards some. That’s why the change and progress are needed: because it’s hard!
The first activity to measure progress is to have a very firm, quantified baseline before announcing the future state. Why is it critical to do this before announcing the future, you ask? Simple, really: every organization will have the eager early adopter(s) that will immediately try to move towards the new future. Even if the path isn’t clear. And those early movers will skew your baseline.
That same force (the early adopters) allow you to start most essential part of the 7 p’s, however – they will provide early progress that is tangible. The progress is typically organic – not the result of anything you’ve specifically done or the path you’ve put in place but instead a function of laying out a compelling purpose that appeals both to the intellectual and emotional parts of your audience’s consciousness – but still incredibly valuable. Capturing and noting these early moments of progress is very powerful on the change journey. Making sure the broader organization gets the positive reinforcement of celebrating progress is likely the most effective way to spur the change journey forward.
That being said, the early stages of change and progress are critical to manage the messaging. The communication of progress must be very precise: you must balance the enthusiasm of getting early results (through your efforts or simply as a result of energy for the future vision and obvious low hanging fruit) with the reality of the uneven, asymmetrical pace of long term change. The takeaway: don’t let the organization fall into the trap of thinking “the early stages were easy and got great results, so this whole thing should wrap up quickly with amazing results.” That increasing of expectations (higher results with less time and less effort) is one of the most toxic problems that can manifest from seeing early and rapid progress…which seems counterintuitive. In a few cases, I would have been better off failing early in evolution/transformation, than being able to have a quick impact – it made the next 3-9 months very challenging because the expectations became unachievable.
As the process plays out over time, you need to consistently continue to find moments of progress – be it in behavior, metrics, or culture. You want to consistently reinforce those moments and celebrate them for all to see. Celebrate when people attempt to make progress and something doesn’t work…maybe even a more valuable lesson than when things go well. Be vigilant throughout your team in finding those moments and amplifying them. The reinforcement in messaging will propel the folks that are a bit slower to adopt as they see that the “new normal” isn’t a passing fad but the way the world around them is changing. It will help the progress become the new baseline, which is the goal.
Additionally, find some points in time to not just recognize the incremental progress outlined in the last paragraph but also to look back to the beginning of the journey and compare. A true retrospective every several months can remind the organization how far you’ve come from the start line, even if your change journey hasn’t followed your initial path in timing or direction. The contrast of where you are relative to the pre-change baseline will be a powerful message not just for your team, but more importantly for the broader organization – who will always want you to go faster and farther. The reminder over time of where the start line was is a great way for everyone to feel a deep sense of pride about the accomplishments and progress they’ve made so far, regardless of any recalculations on the path or issues that have arisen along the way.
Finally, these milestone retrospectives can be packaged together towards the end of the process to make a very powerful change journey document. If you use some similar metrics, structure, scale, and layout, you may even be able to create a visual “flip book” of your metrics becoming more and more green! The milestone documents will help you recall the journey as a story, sharing with the team and organization some of the highs, the lows, and the “what-the-heck” moments in between – clearly showing the progress you’ve driven.
Ultimately, the best thing you can do as a change leader is to create, be highly attuned to, capture, and celebrate the progress your team makes on your change journey. Progress is the greatest fuel and propellant for the continued journey. Be thoughtful in how you share it and how you allow progress to shape expectations, and you’ll have a wonderful story to tell at the end of the process!
View from the Middle 