Small shifts in the words we use when we talk about change can make a big difference.

The way we communicate and engage with others, along with the way we absorb incremental change in our personal and professional lives, is all accelerating and continually being reshaped.

This makes it a good time to closely look at the words we use (or over-use) in conventional change management to realign our practice and language to the dynamic nature of the business environment. It’s time to nudge, reframe, and yes…challenge the language.

Here’s my top three:

1. Less about resistance, more about response

Are we hardwired to always resist change? It’s time to re-visit our assumptions that people will resist when devising our change plans and interventions. Thanks to insights from neuroscience, we know that as humans, we experience a range of responses, from resistance to support.

The key is to uncover why the same change can trigger these varied emotional responses. David Rock’s SCARF model eloquently explains the human response to change in terms of loss or gain. Loss equates to threat while gain equates to reward. For each element of SCARF - Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness - our responses to each change we experience are individual, and can be based on perception alone.

Let’s replace the word ‘resistance’ with ‘response’.

In an earlier LinkedIn articleI wrote more on this and why it’s time to reframe our mindset about resistance.

2. Less about change fatigue, more about change fitness

We all know that change is relentless, continuous – that ‘new normal’ stuff.

We also know that organisations and leaders need to become more adaptive and build change resilience into their DNA. So is change fatigue still a thing? Or is it an outdated construct? Just saying…

Dr Jen Frahm explores this very thing, with some tips in her recent postto address the sentiment of fatigue:

Introduce change with context. Explain the ‘why’ and the ‘what’s in it for me’, particularly as part of a bigger change program underway.Leverage the benefits of the retrospective.You could consider the retro as a ritual to mark endings, note lessons learned and welcome new beginnings. This re-energises a team with optimism and purpose.

Enough about change fatigue – the word ‘fatigue’ itself is already priming us for a state of being tired.

To build enduring change capability, let’s reframe our conversations to omit the word ‘fatigue’ from our vernacular!

Let’s replace the term ‘change fatigue with ‘change fitness’.

Dr Jen Frahm and I also covered the topic if change fatigue in this #brainpickers episode.

3. Less about hierarchy, more about influencers

Stakeholder engagement plans often focus on the business leaders who have authority to make or recommend decisions, and hold a position of positional power. These are the ‘senior stakeholders’ in our organisations we must engage with.

It’s not only the senior people or those directly involved in the change who we need to consider. Look for the influencers who have informal power through their association with key stakeholders, through their ability to influence.

In his book, the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell identifies these people with a ‘rare set of social gifts’ as connectors, mavens and salesmen. It’s their message, or ‘social mojo’ that can create the tipping point in influencing and spreading the message.

Let’s replace the word ‘senior stakeholders’ with ‘business influencers’.

On the topic of influencers, I recommend watching Jeremy Heimans’ TED talk on Understanding What New Power Looks Like,and checking out this related articlein HBR. Jeremy talks about how traditional, hierarchical models of power are no longer hitting the mark in motivating people. Command and control is being replaced by connection and collaboration.

Traditional power, or old power, is challenged by digital, social networks, 24/7 connectivity and access to information. New power is challenging conventional communications which rely on cascading information from the top down, as the prescribed way to vertically trickle information through organisational layers.

There’s more about hidden influencers and how to find them in one of my earlier articleshere

These are just three areas I’ve observed that indicate we need to consider the language we use when we communicate, engage, collaborate and deliver change.

I’m keen to hear about what else you’ve seen?

And what are the implications for when we lead and deliver change?

There’s been numerous posts around about 2018 being the year for many things. How about we make 2018 the year when we think about how we think? You know…that meta-thinking or meta-cognition process very few of us take time out to do? Which takes us to a conversation about mindset.

There’s the growth mindset, the learning mindset, the agile mindset…to name just a few. Overall, the ‘mindset’ we’re hearing about is mostly about being open to new ideas and being adaptive in a fast paced, changing world.

It’s the mindset we need for relentless and continuous change. And, thanks to the field of neuroscience, we are finding out more about how to optimise our mental agility for our professional and personal lives. But how do we nudge our mindset, and hack it to prime ourselves for change?

Start with the power of now

One way to hack our mindset is to be in the moment, by being mindful. Mindfulness is described as a form of meditation that also changes the brain. In the chaotic busy-ness of our lives we’re accessible around the clock, so we rarely pause in our waking moments. By focussing awareness on the present moment, our breath, our thoughts and surroundings, we can tap into the power of now.

When we hear about mindfulness, we often think of meditation. It’s too easy to think - well I’m too busy to do that! But you don’t need to meditate to be mindful.

Being mindful is also about pausing to think about:

what we’ve accomplishedhow we perceive the world around uswhat we have the potential to achieve

2018 is the year to ‘ponderfy’

In my work with executive teams, change leaders and change practitioners, I’ve made two key ‘mindset’ observations:

Many people want to work on their mindset, and help their team members, but don’t know where to start.Very few people are tapping into the power of now

In workshops, I wanted to find a way to nudge their thinking, both during and post-workshops, with a focus on new ways of working and a learning, growth mindset.

I designed a set of question cards to encourage mindful thought in two ways -

to on achievements, past thought processes and actions takento ponder action and possibilities

As more clients requested the cards, I realised that I needed to produce them, in decks, as a tactile, mindfulness tool for busy people. And so ponderfy was born…

Ponderfy, as a word, doesn’t appear in any dictionary, but may soon. I’ve defined it as:

(v) To induce a ponder-like state for meaningful and reflective thought.

Ponderfy is a set of 52 cards that can be used by facilitators, team leaders, coaches, teachers, counsellors, friends, family members and individuals to:

Nudge the mindsetPrompt mindful thought and reflectionOpen meaningful conversations

The case for mindfulness

Being mindful has many known benefits. It can calm our minds, reduce stress and anxiety, resulting in a positive physiological effect on the brain.

What often holds us back is not opportunity or luck, but our own mindset. For all of us, a better understanding of our brain function is empowering and helps us improve our performance at individual, team and community or organisational levels.

So ponderfy this:

What will you do for your mindset in 2018? And beyond?

Find out more about the ponderfy cards here.

Yes we can! The field of neuroplasticity assures us that we can rewire parts of our brain. Whilst the physiology of our brains hasn’t changed in over 200,000 years, our neural pathways within that structural physiology are constantly changing. Imagine our neural pathways as roads. The freeways and highways are the ones that process ongoing, frequent information and activity. New activity can create a traffic jam on that existing highway, often demanding a new road. Eventually, with repetitive activity, and even thoughts, a new road is formed. By continually bedding down neural messages, that new pathway becomes a more defined highway, allowing greater speed and traction.

During my workshops, I fine-tune this neural pathway concept with a story about piano players. Harvard University carried out research on two groups; both had never played the piano before and were of the same intellect. One group was asked to practise piano scales every day for a period of time. The second group was asked to visualise themselves playing the same piano scales for the same period of time. The pre study and post study brain scans revealed very interesting results. The brain area that relates to finger movements of BOTH groups had shown considerable growth.

So the group that only thought about playing the piano had changed the same neural pathways as the group that actually played the piano.

So a new cord has been struck when we ask people to change or learn new things, as we’re asking them to rewire their brains by forming new neural connections. Yet, very few leaders know how to approach this.

One way is to provide the opportunity to discover their own insights. Instead of providing answers when coaching or teaching others, give them the time and space to reach their own ‘AHA’ moment, which also activates a reward response in the brain. Neuroscience has taught us that it’s at these moments of insight we create new pathways, enabling learning and new behaviours to stick.

For rewiring to take place, the brain must be engaged and open to learning. This can only occur when the right conditions are in place, with a comfortable, non-threatening learning environment, where it’s okay to experiment and fail. Reducing or eliminating the threat response also creates the right conditions for people to reach their own solutions; arrive at their personal moments of epiphany. We learn best, and therefore rewire most effectively, when we feel comfortable and involved.

The increased use of neuroimaging technology, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) means that 90% of what we now know about the brain has only been discovered in the last 7 to 9 years.

These new insights not only have implications for people recovering from brain injury, but can also be applied in in our professional and personal lives to help us navigate through change. Science has proven we can change the structure of our brain. Knowing we can do this by thoughts alone is empowering.

For all of us, a better understanding of our brain function helps us improve our performance at individual, team and community or organisational levels.

This article first appeared in Living Now magazine in September 2016.

Change management newbies…it’s time to become even more curious!

I haven’t forgotten my entrée to change management. The internet was trending up, I had to dial up to connect, LinkedIn was its infancy and largely unheard of, and there was no Twitter or bloggers to follow. Armed with a background in L&D, I joined whatever dots came my way and cobbled together a change plan. Mentors were rare, and experienced practitioners emerging and sparse.

Luckily, for newbies today, the online landscape is fertile with information and people willing to share their experiences, thoughts, knowledge and wisdom. Perhaps at times, it’s too fertile as we can be overwhelmed by the amount of information that awaits us. It’s common for newbies to ask:

Where do I begin?What do I need to know?

Starting in a new occupation that assumes underpinning knowledge of theories, models, terminology, and emerging trends can be just as overwhelming as the volume of information you’ll find when you start with that Google search ‘change management’.

I’ve given this some thought and have identified five things you should find out more about if you are in one of these two groups:

A newbie to change managementA potential newbie to change management

Keep in mind this list is not exhaustive, just the ones that bubble up as ‘really good to know’. Your greatest asset is your curiosity, so start by getting curious about these five things!

Also summed up visually, in an infographic for you on the Resourcespage on this site.

Five things for change newbies

1. Change frameworks and theories

Be familiar with the well-known change theories and frameworks. You will hear about them and see them referenced in change plans and other documentation. There’s a plethora of information out there. Luckily, there is one brilliant SlideShare compilation by Mark Simpson called ‘The Taxonomy of Change Models’ that has collated many in the one place here.

2. Enterprise Change Maturity Models

Change capability, built at an organisational level, relies on sponsorship and support from senior leadership team members. Enterprise change capability has been represented in change maturity models, where the phases or steps indicate varying levels of change capability and maturity. Maturity models have been developed by industry bodies such as Prosci, Change First, and CMI, and are helpful to read as they describe the characteristics of each level of maturity, from no change management to an optimal level of capability across the business.

3. Find out why the 70% story is a myth

Myth buster alert! You will hear this 70% ‘thing’ quoted again and again. Oh dear, how did this start? Before I start even trying to explain it, I’m grateful that some great work has already been carried out by Dr Jen Frahm in her postto uncover the source of this mis-quoted statistic, along with a great infographic.

I could go as far as to call it a ‘conspiracy theory of change’!

4. What ‘agile’ means for change practitioners

Whether you regard this a hot topic or over-used word, it’s out there and often misunderstood. You will hear the word ‘agile’ used many contexts. Find out as much as you can and keep in mind:

You can apply agile practices to any change initiative - it doesn’t have to be a project that is officially declared as ‘agile’. Agile practices are people-centric ones that promote deep engagementThere is no ‘one way, same way’ to do ‘agile change’. I explain it as a smorgasbord of practices that you pick from to suit the organisation and the change initiative you’re working on. It draws on a range of agile and lean practices and needs an agile mindset and approach to adapt it so it’s right for your environment.

5, Follow the industry and the buzz

Stay abreast of what the industry leaders are thinking, observing, experimenting and learning. There are industry associations, such as Change Management Institute (CMI) and the Association of Change Management Professionals(ACMP) which offer events and networking opportunities.

Luckily social media has made it easy to find further information at no cost in the form of blogs, tweets, podcasts, vlogs, YouTube talks - the list goes on… There’s no excuse for not knowing what some of the hot issues are in the industry are right now!

To get started, look at Dr Jen Frahm’s valuable posts on who to follow on Twitterand change management blogsto follow.

Parting thoughts…

So, if you’re relatively new to change management, I’m keen to hear what you found was was ‘good to know’ for a newbie, so we can build some tips for the ones in the pipeline or just starting out.

I’m also interested to hear what experienced practitioners are advising the newbies - what else is really good to know?

Of course, newbies are finding out lots by reading my book ‘Hacking for Agile Change’,as will experienced practitioners and change leaders.

As more organisations explore agile ways of working and approaches to build organisational agility, it’s time to rethink how we engage with each other, share knowledge and showcase our work. This changing nature of work, where traditional models of power are shifting, there is a demand for greater transparency through practices such as ‘working out loud’.

It’s less about hierarchy and top-down communication and more emphasis on involvement. The communication is two-way, openly inviting discussion and dialogue in real time.

With new ways of working, we are seeing these channels for co-creation becoming more mainstream as we subscribe to the principles of collaboration and transparency.

The Kanban board is one of many great examples of how agile teams ‘work out loud’ with their peers and engage with their stakeholders. As a practice, Kanban can be easily adopted by all teams (not just project teams) to plan, visualise and demonstrate their work, in a way that invites a conversation as well as collaboration.

Making it personal

But what about using Kanban to manage your own to-do list? And to drive a discussion that may not have otherwise taken place?

It’s a great visual way to see your work flow on a page. I use my own Kanban (as a visual to-do list) on an A3-sized sheet with sticky notes to manage and monitor my work progress.

A bit about the Kanban board

For the uninitiated, Kanban is the Japanese word for ‘visual signal’ or ‘card’.

Inspired by the lean manufacturing practices at Toyota, the Kanban board is an effective, visual way for agile teams (and any other team) to display what they are working on and where their work is at. Combine it with the stand-up meeting and you have a visual tool at hand to discuss the progress of your work with your team in a transparent and mutually accountable way.

One of the objectives of Kanban is to bring attention to the volume of work in process - in the ‘doing’ column - in order to reduce it. The idea is to move work along the flow, to the ‘done’ column. The ‘rule of thumb’ for a personal Kanban is to limit your work in progress to no more than three items.

At a glance, you see not only the progress, but also the scope and scale of work in the pipeline, and what’s been completed.

What about the flexi-desk people? I can hear you asking that as I move post-it notes around on my own Kanban sheet. There are online tools to visually manage your work and can share with your team members, such as Trello. However, for the optimal expression of ‘working out loud’ I find the manually managed A3 sheet of paper, with the small post-it notes, works well for me, and makes it visible to all in my location. It’s easy to fold in two at the end of the day and pack it away in your locker.

My personal Kanban experience

Here’s some of the benefits I’ve seen from using an individual Kanban in the workplace:

Keeps me on track with a visual workflow for myself - all on one page, instead of hidden away in a notebook across numerous pagesProvides a channel to ‘work out loud’ so my team members can see what I’m working on and what’s coming upHelps me limit my work in progressReduces the temptation to ‘multi-task’ which we know isn’t the way our brains are wired to operate if we want optimal performanceEasy to move, remove and add itemsKeeps you focused on priorities and can help you say ‘no’ to unnecessary, distracting requestsA portable and visual ‘to-do’ list to take to team meetings to talk about what I’m working onIgnites conversations with colleagues who come by my desk, opening two-way dialogue about my workSets an example - people ask me for copies of my Kanban template so they can do the same. Ah, the power of social contagion!

Yes, I do use it at home too!

You can download your PDF of the Personal Kanban from the Resourcespage on this website.

Working with a personal Kanban is one of over 50 #changehacks in my recently released book - Hacking for Agile Change. The book defines agile as an organisational capability and features practical and proven approaches to hack your mindset, your behaviours and your practices, with consideration to the human response to change and disruption.

The Hacking for Agile Change workshops are run on-site, at your organisation.

In my last posta few months back, I defined agile as an organisational capability. This was intended to be the one of two or three blogs to make sense of agile, agility, Agile with a BIG A, and how it’s understood in an organisational context.

Through discussions with clients and industry peers, it’s become increasingly apparent that a conversation on Agile BIG A and agile little a is most valuable. to establish a common understanding of what ‘agile’ means to that business.

Start the conversation…

You may have heard your agile-savvy colleague ask you - do you mean agile with a BIG A or agile with a little a? Or perhaps you are asking the question yourself?

The first time I heard that had me spinning over to Google! So to drive the conversation that many of us are facing, here’s how I kick it off to explain the difference:

BIG A Agile

It’s common practice in the Agile community to use the big A when referring to the Agile Manifesto and its associated practices. You know the deal - scrum, stand-up meetings, work flow on a visible Kanban board, typically when working in a project environment.

For the newbies to this, here’s a quick overview: The Agile Manifestowas established in 2001 to bring about a balanced view of software development that would welcome adjustments and pace.

In this Manifesto we can see the elements that are core to change practitioners and leaders in an agile world: a focus on the customer, a nimble approach and value placed on people over process.

So, whilst this type of Agile was established for software development, the principles and values have a human-centric focus.

The application of BIG A Agile can be extended to non-software projects, especially with the themes of lean, team behaviours and customer-centricity.

Little a agile

Little a - that’s agile without the capital A is the adjective we use to describe the characteristics of being adaptive, flexible, and nimble of mind and in action. An athlete is nimble in action just as someone with a growth mindset and insightful thinking is agile of mind.

In my workshops and in one-on-one conversations, I draw up a flipchart (the title image) and post it on the wall to open the discussion. As the session progresses, I invite the participants to add their interpretations and any other relevant comments that come up, so they can start to shape what organisational agility looks like in the context of their business environment.

Let’s look at a definition of organisational agility, borrowed from McKinsey Quarterly:

…the capacity to identify and capture opportunities more quickly than rivals do…

When an organisation wants to become more agile, they look for ways to be responsive to external forces, be adaptive, deliver services and products to customers faster, think outside the box, and eliminate waste to improve effectiveness. To help them achieve this, they often recruit coaches and project managers who have experience in Agile software and product development. However, projects using Agile practices associated with software implementations will not necessarily make the organisation agile. Organisational agility needs people across the whole organisation (not just project team members) with the right mindset, behaviours and practices. Agile (yes, big A) project approaches will help, but will not achieve this alone.

Organisational agility is agile with a little a

We can see how the principles and values of BIG A also apply to little a. But little a is agile about everything, with an application that is broader, particularly an organisation being agile. Taken beyond software development, agile becomes a way of thinking and working that forms part of the organisational ecosystem.

It’s likely that you’ll also hear the two versions of the word ‘agile’ (that’s a BIG A and a little a) used interchangeably. When you hear the word ‘agile’ brought up in conversation, it’s a good idea to ask if they are talking about little a or BIG A.

So, if you haven’t already, kick off this conversation to plan how you will build organisational agility in your organisation, starting from a place of common understanding.

It’s not every day I have the luxury to sit down with a cup of coffee to look through the Australian Financial Review. But today I’m glad I did!

On AFR’s front page, ANZ announced its plans to ‘blow up bureaucracy’ with agile practices. And I was happy to see the planned approach considers all aspects of agile and how it transforms the way we work, lead and engage with others.

This is timely music to my ears as I’m finalising my book and am facilitating workshops on Hacking for Agile Change, where I explain agile as an organisational capability. In these sessions, the participants find the conversation about Agile Big A and agile little a helpful - this will be more on this in a follow-up post.

Making sense of agile

In workshops I’ve run over the last year, I’ve learned that agile, as a word, can mean different things to project and change people, at times also confusing them.

We know the word is used almost everywhere! Recruiters are asking for agile experience because employers want agile people. Organisations want to be agile. Agile is interpreted as many things and needs to be defined so we can understand it better.

Defining agile as a capability demystifies the word and helps us understand what it actually means for organisations, teams and individuals. Agility, or agile, is not a methodology; it’s a mindset, along with set of behaviours and practices.

In my soon to be released book, I use this pyramid diagram to explain the layers of agile as a capability:

The fourth layer, at the base, is organisational agility. For an organisation to become agile, it needs people who are agile in their thinking, their actions and in their practices.

Let’s take a closer look at the layers:

Organisational agility

An agile organisation is one that is responsive to external forces, is adaptive, delivers services and products to customers faster, thinks outside the box, and eliminates waste to improve effectiveness. Wow, this is sounding like a change-ready organisation! For organisations to achieve this, the starting point is usually to recruit coaches and scrum masters who have experience in Agile software and product development.

These agile projects and practices alone will not make the organisation agile; it also needs people, inside and outside projects, across all parts of the business, with the right mindset and behaviours. Agile project approaches will help, but will not achieve organisational agility without capability in mindset, behaviours and practice.

And, of course to embed agility into the organisational culture, the leaders need to model and reward the behaviours they want to see, recruit the right people, and gather and retell success stories.

The agile mindset – how you think

An agile mindset underpins our capability to be truly agile in what we do and deliver. It’s a way of thinking that is nimble, open to all possibilities, learning and new ways. It evolves and adapts to meet ambiguity and challenge in a fast changing environment. An agile-minded person explores possibilities with intense curiosity. It’s what we know as a growth and learning mindset.

Agile behaviours – how you act

Agile behaviours at a team, and individual level, can be broadly described as ones that rely on collaboration, transparency, honesty, willing to work outside their area of expertise, adaptable and open to feedback so they can continuously improve their practices.

The behaviours are underpinned by the mindset, with all team members modelling agile thinking. They are comfortable adopting collaborative practices such as working out loud, enterprise social networking and visual management.

In principle and definition, an Agile team is a self-organised one; a group of motivated and proactive individuals who have the authority to make decisions, and don’t wait for their leader to assign work.

Agile practices – what you do and deliver

The practice is the application that brings the agile mindset, behaviours and Agile software development approaches together. Agile practices work best when the team members demonstrate agile behaviours and thinking. Of course, you don’t need to be working on a project that’s officially declared ‘Agile’ to apply and reap the benefits of Agile/Scrum practices such as Kanban and stand-up meetings.

To be agile is a mindset and a skill set.

So what, now what?

In adopting different approaches, we don’t want to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. We can apply agile approaches, behaviours and thinking in any setting, to any change initiative, regardless of the change framework or approach already in place.

In a disruptive business environment, we’ll find ourselves in agile projects, or partially agile ones that are labelled as ‘hybrid’. Either way, there is a compelling need to demonstrate agility in our mindset, behaviours and practice. It’s time to make sense of what it really means, and identify what change leaders and practitioners can do to create and support an agile environment.

This is a very brief overview of what’s covered in my workshops and book coming out in July 2017 - Hacking for Agile Change. The book will feature over 50 approaches to hack your mindset, your behaviours and your practice, with consideration to the human response to change and disruption.

The two-day Hacking for Agile Change workshops are run on-site, at your organisation.

To find out more about what I do, check out more on this website and follow me on Twitter @LenaEmelyRoss.