Glenn Allen-Meyer

Glenn Allen-Meyer is a full-time consultant with the Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. (www.kjcg.com). He is
the author of Nameless Organizational Change (Talwood-Craig Publishers, 1999) and the founder of nameless.org,
a consulting consortium created to further the use of nameless change principles and practices.
W
hich would you rather hear in your
organization as you sponsor major
change?:
Here we go again! This time, the ``program of the month'' is about
``intrapreneuring'' and ``partnering.'' Just as with quality, we'll have
a big kick-off event, where all the vice presidents show up and tell us
how ``mission critical'' this change is. Then we won't see or hear
from them again, and we'll be left with two weeks' worth of training
to attend. I tried to tell my HR representative that we did our own
training on this last year, but we're all still required to attend. Since
I know that my boss is accountable for our attendance, we're just
going to have to take deep breaths and deal with this. It's going to
be a scheduling nightmare trying to get all this training in at the
same time as we're all trying to meet our bottom-line
accountabilities.
or . . .
What amazes me about this organization is the way senior leaders
always seem to understand how to implement change real change
on the line, where change takes root or dies on the vine. My
people can tell you ten ways right now by which elements of this
change help them to get their jobs done better today. Hey, there
aren't many who work for me who wouldn't love a chance to take
more ownership of their work and partner more openly with other
parts of this organization! The people who implement change
around here have credibility, because they use change to solve real-
world problems in real time.
If, as a leader, you have spent any time sponsoring major
change in your organization, the chances are that you
have heard the first quote or a disguised version of it.
Why is the second quote more rare?
Leaders recognize the cynicism of the first quote as a
common response to change initiatives. It falls well short
of the optimism and excitement of the latter quote,
which is the aim of every change effort. Change is
supposed to be propulsive and improve the organization.
Why have so many people come to dread change efforts
and doubt any good coming of them? Why do leaders
find themselves spending so much time positioning
change efforts instead of reaping the gains such efforts
are purported to bring?
One major reason is the way in which change
initiatives are presented to people. The process has
become familiar: leaders devise new strategies, a steering
committee creates slogans and logos, and then the
process of sharing the message and persuading people to
participate in ``the change'' begins. Members of the
organization are implored to give their consent to the
change and are promised certain benefits (and liberal
amounts of self-actualization), if they will only comply.
This amounts to a marketing approach to change. We
can hear it in the terminology we use: ``selling'' people
on the concept, getting ``buy-in,'' getting ``traction'' for
the messages of change. This is the language of
marketing, and we use it because it serves us so well in
many other things we do in our organizations. Whether
we lead corporate giants or small, local not-for-profits,
we are schooled in the language of marketing it's part
of the ``genetic code of leadership'' we inherit through
experience and education. We market change to people
in our organizations in the same way that we market our
goods and services to the world. And why not? A good
marketing campaign (or fundraising campaign, or
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promotion) can turn an organization around. So why
shouldn't an internal change that is carefully marketed
provide benefit and get people to buy in? The answer lies
in the difference between the marketing of products and
services outside of work and marketing the illusion of
choice inside.
Buying in or opting out?
Treating change as a commodity as a discrete thing
with a particular brand identity creates several
problems that defeat the very goal of the effort. For one,
this ``commodification of change'' presents change as a
discrete product rather than a comprehensive
transformation that reaches into every area of work life
and organizational culture.
Commodified change is always in
some way compartmentalized, finite
and tightly proscribed.
In one organization where I served
as an internal consultant, a
reengineering effort was presented to
the organization via a grand
announcement followed by the
implementation of a comprehensive
training plan for a significant
percentage of the workforce. People
came to the training (they were
strongly encouraged to do so)
wanting to learn more about what
they had heard in the announcement and to see if this
effort was not just another program. While the
commitment of the organization to this effort was
laudable, they set their sights too low: training was not
the tool for change they envisioned it to be. Those who
attended the training grew frustrated at their inability to
work across functional boundaries to improve processes.
One attendee said, ``They told us that this was going to
help us do our jobs better, but all I see are a lot of great
ideas that no one gives a damn about at the manager's
level.''
The people who heard the early hype for this program
were excited for change. As time went on, however,
some became frustrated. Some looked for other jobs in
other departments. Others left the area or the company.
Productivity dropped, all because this company
promised something it could not deliver: a culture
change driven by a programmatic effort featuring
training. When organizational culture change is seen as a
thing, rather than as a process, the stage is set for failure.
Be very afraid of high-powered leaders or consultants
who promise big returns on a change initiative. Rather
than asking, ``What do you think we should do to change
this culture?'' try asking, ``How do we enroll the people
on the line doing the work?''
Commodified change, when it comes to accepting or
rejecting change, puts the people of the organization in a
consumerist role. Just as we are free to purchase a
product or not, the marketing approach implies that
people may equally opt to participate in the change
process or not. No change effort can afford such a
subjective, near-whimsical approach to enrollment.
(And, indeed, no change effort allows such an approach
people in the organization know that they must
ultimately give at least nominal consent to the change.)
There needs to be a stronger, more compelling drive for
people to participate. What's more, many people today
have a jaded, caveat emptor attitude toward marketing.
They often distrust it and equate it with manipulation; it
puts people on their guard, and/or they do not feel
confident that the seller has their best interest at heart.
Commodified change also
assumes an incorrect, out-of-date
model for the employer-employee
relationship one of marketing as
opposed to negotiation and co-
operation. Ironically, most
organizations do utilize negotiation
in their hiring practices. The
company and the individual come to
mutually agreeable terms for the
details of employment. Once the
person enters the organization,
however, this model disappears and
leaders begin marketing.
Perhaps the biggest problem with
the current marketing approach is that it can create
unnecessary resistance to change initiatives within the
organization and foster needless stress among people.
Change may always bring some level of anxiety, but
commodified change can add needless layers of difficulty
and backlash. As people feel sold to rather than
partnered with, they do not see the change as something
that will support and aid them in their work. They see it
as a product being pushed on them. Change becomes
the telemarketer at dinner-time or the unwanted banner
ad slowing the downloading of a favorite Web site. Being
implored to implement change on top of all other job
responsibilities can feel like receiving SPAM e-mail if it
is going to be considered, it had better be good. And, if it
happens too frequently, it will be relegated to the ``trash
pile'' or the ``feign commitment'' category of behavioral
response.
How we got here
It used to be that organizations could change by fiat.
John D. Rockefeller did not need a committee to
reorganize a division. Henry Ford did not require the
buy-in of his managers to sell only black Model Ts to the
USA. In the age of industrial capitalism, it was the
charismatic leader usually the holder of the capital
who made and changed the rules. This was a simple
exercise of power.
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It worked because everyone understood who had the
power and who did not. Rank-and-file members of the
organization were glad for whatever piece of the pie they
could get, and they expected to serve the directives of the
leaders, however whimsical or nonsensical such
directives may have seemed. Even if the changes
wrought in this fashion did not improve performance,
strengthen the organization, or accomplish the goals for
which they were designed, people generally complied
because they had little choice, few options, and a
cultural norm of ``staying put'' as reinforcement for
doing what they were expected to do.
The simultaneous growth of large organizations and
powerful unions changed the nature of change. While
CEOs could determine the change
and expect the bureaucracy to
implement their vision, they could
not expect the same speed of change
as before the bureaucracy was built
for compliance, not for speed.
Eventually, however, people in the
organization would learn of their new
responsibilities and would change.
But, in the process, they generally
viewed the workplace as foreign
territory, separate from their ``real
lives,'' and they saw dutiful
compliance as a central tenet of
employment.
Today's people at work are better
educated, better skilled, better
informed, and better prepared to leave for other
opportunities than their counterparts in any other
organization at any other time in history. They have also
experienced countless change efforts preceded by
tremendous amounts of hype and faux participation.
They know when they are being sold a change, and
they keep their options open, ready to leave an
organization for one more likely to support their unique
talents. While today's people at work know that they
may learn or gain something from a particular change,
they expect the right to determine the course of their
own development.
Today's people at work and, to a greater degree,
tomorrow's expect inclusion, and most organizations
lag behind. Today's workers stand as equals to their
organizations in terms of their ability to find
employment elsewhere, their guaranteed protection
under the law, and the amount of information they have
about customers, suppliers and markets. And they can
resist changes they do not value, see themselves a part of,
or personally support.
Organizations should not be trying to sell to this
modern worker, in part because the modern workers'
options for buying come at a high cost, despite other
opportunities. If they do not like the change, they can
leave (if affordable), they can forgo advancement (for
not being seen as a team player during change), or they
can be fired or laid off at the earliest opportunity. Or
they can choose, as many do, to act as if they support the
change even when they do not. It is a good bet, though,
that they are surfing Internet job sites or spending time
complaining at the water-cooler time you'd rather have
them spend productively and enthusiastically supporting
the change. These cognitive dilemmas cause a level of
resistance and stress during change that slows change,
makes it more costly than it needs to be, and hardens the
organization against future changes.
In many ways, the problem stems from the fact that a
gap exists between the old business world and the new
one. Most organizations are still
organized to administer directives
from a top-down hierarchy. We
maintain structures of authority from
the Industrial Age, while workers are
in the Information Age.
Organizations can no longer say,
``You will change!'' Instead, they
implore, ``Won't this change be
great?''
What we, as the leaders of today's
modern organizations, should say is
``We need to do better. For that, we
need to change. Tell us what you
need to improve your performance;
we'll tell you what the organization
needs to achieve overall. And
together we'll get there in a way that treats each set of
needs as real, vital and critical.''
Nameless change
The term ``nameless'' emphasizes the need for change
that is not commodified or branded. When you name
change, you nominalize the effort, categorize it, and
move it along a marketing path. The kind of change an
organization needs to create must be defined by what the
change does and how it supports both people and the
organization not by a phrase or a slogan. Names are,
for the most part, only useful and satisfying when we're
planning change. For people undergoing the change,
names tend to minimize the effort and reduce it to some
abstract goal that has ``all been heard before.''
Supporting a less-hyped method of change
As a leader, one of the best first-steps you can take when
planning change is to resist the urge to name and
sloganize your organization's change effort. This can be
difficult. In one organization using a ``nameless change''
approach, the executive sub-group tasked with
implementing the change effort has continuously
struggled to keep the name, and the marketing it
initiates, away. As they implemented various aspects of
the change plan, people in the organization became
charged up about the change. The motivation this
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generates causes people to want to market the change via

buttons, banners, and kick-off events. Like Colonel
William Prescott, leader of the Colonial Army at Bunker
Hill, who said, ``Don't fire until you can see the whites of
their eyes,'' this leadership group continuously exercises
patience. They wait for the right moment to implement
the change in a more traditional manner, the time when
people on the front lines of work in the organization have
used elements of the change to personal and professional
advantage.
Help your leadership team realize that Industrial Age
models drive organizations toward creating internal
marketing plans designed to compel compliance. Today,
when so many people are working at or beyond capacity,
pay attention to whatever supports
their ability to get their real work
done in real time. Look for the links
between this real-time work and the
goals, tools and processes of your
change. Everything else may be seen
as SPAM. Spend time at the top
creating mechanisms that position
elements of the change to support the
work being done at the local level.
Have confidence that people who
work in your organization are
interested in discovering what they
can do to perform some aspect of
their jobs more effectively, more
efficiently, or with more satisfaction than they currently
experience (even with aspects of their jobs not at all
related to the change you are hoping to make). Help
people use some element of the change to satisfy this
interest and you will create a ``pull'' for your change
efforts.
As a leader and change agent, help people in the
organization use, to their advantage from their own
frame of reference, some subset of the tools and
principles of the change the organization needs to make.
This approach provides an architecture for the self-
selling of the merits of the change. It is, in this way, a
highly functional as opposed to theoretical model.
People become sold on the change not because they
have been enticed by clever or relentless marketing, but
because they have seen and felt first-hand the benefits of
the change in their own work lives. The self-interest is
evident.
Why this approach works
All people have something they would like to address in
their jobs. When they experience a change initiative as
being one that allows them to improve their own
performance, bolster their own success, and decrease the
stress in their lives, they will not only support the
change, they will understand clearly what it is and why it
is being conducted. They will get behind it. They will
pull for it. They will speak to others favorably about it.
The marketing approach to change only tangentially or
sometimes accidentally imparts this perspective, all the
while enervating feelings of resistance and decreasing the
return-on-investment of the change. The personal
usefulness of a change is the most compelling revelation
people in the organization can have when considering a
change effort. The change is constantly reinforced as
useful, practical and necessary.
A nameless approach to change does not alleviate all
resistance and stress caused by change those will
always be evident to some degree when implementing
change. And, the case can surely be made that a certain
amount of stress and/or resistance to change provides
useful benefit, as it helps people separate from the old
and move toward the new. A
nameless approach to change gets rid
of the unnecessary resistance and
stress caused by marketing-driven
processes of change. It allows
everyone to stay focused on the issues
the organization is confronting
without being distracted or
sabotaged by the busy work of selling
an initiative.
The model also requires less faith
on the part of people in the
organization. The marketing
approach evokes all the stereotypes
associated with slick manipulation:
leaders selling change to the organization become the
grinning used-car salesperson saying, ``trust me'' to the
wary consumer. Nameless change does not ask, ``trust
me,'' it says ``see for yourself.'' It allows people to
contribute to change by experiencing what's in it for
them. In this sense, it guarantees its own effectiveness.
Creating true change
If a change initiative has merit, there will be merit for
each person, and some piece of that merit will become
self-evident, as people at work apply the change to their
unique jobs. This may not be true for downsizing or
mergers but, in general, changes that are positive on a
macro level also contain benefit on a micro level. The
nameless model enacts change on a macro level by
proving the merit of a particular change on the micro
level. Change does not have to be achieved by clever
pitches, catchy slogans and eye-catching logos; indeed,
lasting, meaningful change cannot be accomplished this
way. Well-informed people will change when they
recognize, in the change, the very tools they need to
do their jobs more effectively on a minute-by-minute
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