Month: January 2013

The last couple of days I've been feeling a little discombobulated (a more expressive word than disconcerted or confused). Why this state of mind? Well I left Khartoum on the 1:55 a.m. flight – so no sleep to Frankfurt + time zone difference of 3 hours. Two hours later 8:20 a.m. I flew to London and had a four-hour layover in London Heathrow. Next flight was 7.5 hours to DC fortunately from the same terminal I'd just landed in or I would have been even more discombobulated as getting between LHR terminals is not, to use the IT term, intuitive' (or even signposted). DC is 8 hours behind Khartoum. I then got home on public transport – my choice that one as a nod towards a carbon offset – via dinner with a friend. So discombobulation is due to aircraft, airports, time zone changes, and lack of sleep. I forgot to mention temperature drop. I left Khartoum in a temperature of 37 C. (98 F) and arrived Frankfurt to – 4 C. (28 F) and then London 1C (34 F) and Washington (- 6C) 21 F. I was dressed in sandals and a thin top to begin with and in London changed into thermal gear ready for Washington.

Despite discombobulation I was interested to get some information from a colleague on 'Salutogenic Design'. Ever curious I took a look and then a deeper look. It turns out that it's about the role of the built environment within the context of health and well-being. This isn't a new concept, in fact I wrote about it in my book on Organizational Health – Chapter 7 is all about healthy space – but I hadn't come across the label before.

A name in the field right now appears to be Alan Delani who founded the International Academy for Design and Health. He tells us that

"Research on salutogenic design highlights the impact of design factors that inspire the designer and planner toward healthy society to develop conditions that stimulate health and well-being and thereby the promotion of health and prevention of diseases in all levels of society. An increase in the consideration of salutogenic design approaches leads to social innovation and economic growth that requires [the] interdisciplinary application of sciences such as architecture, medicine, public health, psychology, design, engineering, along with culture, art and music."

Good to hear that there's now a fully-fledged Academy for this and here's hoping that they immediately start work on the salutogenic design of aircraft, and airports. Maybe that would help me feel less disoriented and then I could actually work productively as I travel. I don't think they're currently designed with all the most up to date research on promoting productivity, though they do seem to be well designed for mindless shopping in expensive outlets and reading trashy detective stories while waiting in the security clearance line before having to strip off and unpack only to re-clothe and re-pack ten steps later.

Those in the field of salutogenic design are already talking about healthcare, schools, and offices. And it's the last that links to my interest in organization design – the aspect that I pick up in my book mentioned earlier. Workplaces need to be designed to stimulate motivation, productivity, and well-being. Presently there is too little linkage between facility managers and line managers, organization development people, and workplace employees. As I say in my book (in a quote from Working without Walls) healthy business functioning and the capacity for organizational adaptability 'demands attention to all four elements, challenging traditional approaches to change which often ignore the role and dynamic of the physical environment. Arguably, space has the strongest psychological impact on people and behaviours allowing it to become a key catalyst for wider change.'

Not paying attention to the physical design of the workplace in the context of the wider organizational design is a missed opportunity. Apart from any health and well-being considerations, 'the physical environment is a reflector of the culture, values, and preoccupations of the organizational members. Even now, the corner office, for instance, is the prime example of a physical space status symbol, usually reflecting positional power. The choices of marble, wood or other surfaces give clues on organizational values – lavish use of hardwood, for example, might be at odds with corporate statements about sustainability.' (Quote from Chapter 7).

A second piece that came my way this week also caught my attention. This was on napping in the workplace. That's another thing that intermittently crops up: the value or not of 'power naps' (are these a management fad – see the chapter 8 in my book. It's on management fads).

So now I learn that:

"One-third of American workers aren't sleeping enough to function at peak levels, and that chronic exhaustion is costing their employers $63 billion in lost productivity according to researchers from Harvard Medical School.

Managers at a growing number of companies, among them Procter & Gamble Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are waking up to the problem, investing in programs from sleep-hygiene courses to melatonin-regulating lighting to help employees improve their slumber."

That's pretty interesting because if the argument for power napping prevails then architects and designers might have to include sleep rooms in their office designs and managers will have to be 'developed' to think that allowing workers to sleep while at work is a good investment in improved productivity. I don't think I'll put my hand up to facilitate this program.

However, it's worth thinking about in terms of worker well-being, productivity, and organization design (systems and architecture). It might also stimulate innovation as people aim to design sleep pods, office approved pyjamas, etc.

The design that intrigued me recently on these lines was the 'ostrich pillow' – an innovation funded by KickStarter.

"OSTRICH PILLOW offers a micro environment in which to take a warm and comfortable power nap at ease. It is neither a pillow, nor cushion, bed or garment, but a bit of each all at the same time. It's soothing cave-like interior shelters and isolates both your head and hands, perfect for a power nap. You can use the Ostrich Pillow at your desk, on a bench, on the train or while you wait at the air …"

I haven't yet seen one in any of the airports I've been in recently and I can tell you that I will not be buying one in the immediate future but I say that now. Maybe next week when I'm traveling back to the UK I'll change my mind. But will an ostrich pillow clear security I wonder? (Last time I came through I had a baked sweet potato in my rucksack as a snack on the flight – it failed the security agent test. Clearly cold baked sweet potatoes have an incendiary property unknown to me. Or perhaps the security agent was hungry.)

Where am I now (not location) in my thinking about salutogenic design? Though the word 'salutogenic' isn't easy, I do think the field is well worth further exploration and if it brings together HR, IT, Facility Managers, and business operations, so much the better. The partnership of these four groups of stakeholders would, I think result in powerful new workplace designs that did improve productivity, motivation and well-being. Whether the design of aircraft and airports will achieve similar is something I keenly hope for but am not overly optimistic about at this point.

What's your view on the value of salutogenic design in your working practice?

The received wisdom is that the majority of change efforts fail: the commonly quoted number is upwards of 60%. Indeed I got a white paper telling me just that earlier this week.

Whether or not this is true is open to debate. Consider the introduction of the i-pad as a 'change management' effort. Did this fail? Not according to sales statistics. Is Facebook a 'change management' effort? Did this fail? Not so far anyway. Did we change our views of the financial sector as a result of a 'change management' effort? I don't think so, but society's views (at least in the UK and US) of this sector have changed following the financial crash.

For some reason organizational 'change management' is held to be a planned effort aiming to convince employees that what is usually a pre-determined management course of action is exactly what the employees should – in the jargon – 'embrace'. There may well be 60% failure to 'embrace' a subtle, or not so subtle, form of coercion. But that is more likely due to the programmatic aspects of an 'initiative'.

Just take a look at Google Images on the search term 'change management models' and it becomes clear what change management programmes look like: linear, phased or steps, levels of maturity, defined activities, and generally a kind of marshaling of the troops along the route we want them to go. It's not too surprising that these efforts fail.

But a slightly different picture starts to emerge if you think of change in four dimensions:

• Continuous incremental change e.g. Organizational members leaving and joining an organization as part of normal staff turnover
• Intermittent incremental change e.g. Hand written letters, typed letters, email, social media
• Continuous radical change e.g. Stream of policy changes, leadership changes, restructurings, acquisitions, etc.
• Intermittent radical change e.g. Whole office move to new building

People are well able to cope with both continuous and intermittent incremental change, and very often with continuous radical change. Rarely do you see 'change management' expertise called in to help with any of these three types of change.

I've observed that change managers are drawn like magnets to the quadrant 'Intermittent radical change' perhaps because it is associated with planned disruption that is time bound – like a move to a new office location, or a merger or acquisition. And it is this type of change management effort in relation to a planned intermittent radical change that I think is the target of those who think change management fails.
Note that an unplanned intermittent radical change like a warehouse fire that destroys all stock does not attract change management rather this falls under the remit of business continuity or disaster recovery planning, and it's the stuff of organizational legend how well people manage when they're pulling together in crisis mode.

So, of the four types of change mentioned only one appears problematic. That is the one where there is a wish to 'manage' it. My contention is that it is precisely the desire to 'manage' that creates the failure. Let us give up trying. Let's think about how people cope with the other three types of change (and it is generally well) and see if we can support them in getting on with managing the planned radical change in their own way as they do in their personal lives. Think about change:

• Not as a 'thing' to be managed in 'project' way, but as a continuously present process
• Not that people resist change but that they are innately equipped to handle change and given choice and control love change. (Who can now do without their favorite app?)
• Not as an orderly process to manage via a methodology but as an emerging process to manage via a combination of, among other things, flexibility, pragmatism, trial and error. (How do people manage life changes like marriage, moving house, and death?) – this is where ongoing radical change develops those skills and in organizations that have continuous radical change attract people who like it.

Now think about some principles that I think are useful in thinking about organizational change differently. German designer, Dieter Ram has ten principles of good product design that are equally applicable to organizational change management (here with the word 'change' as a substitution for 'design').

Good change is innovative -— traditional change management frameworks, tools, and methodologies stifle innovative change management possibilities. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative change without the need for 'change management'. No project manager or five step program was involved in the development and uptake of apps, for example, in the general population.
Good change helps people thrive -— good change management is not a manipulative management tool to convince people that they will be better off, say, working in open plan offices rather than their own private office. Rather it is a participative process that involves people in voicing their preferences, being heard, and having a positive stake in the outcome of any decisions made.
Good change is unobtrusive -— change can be brought about unobtrusively without the need of a 'change management' initiative. The UK government, for example, is achieving significant change in the way citizens save for their pensions, by asking employees to opt out of pension schemes rather than (previously) opting in to them. See the work of their Behavioural Insights Team
Good change is understandable -— where an organizational change is obviously inevitable, for example, moving from one location to another, being clear and unambiguous about the choices that led to the decision, and the outcomes expected from it makes the situation self-explanatory. Transparency of information is one of the tools for healthy change. (Qualtrics is an example of an organization working towards transparent management – where all data is available to the whole workforce).
Good change is pleasing -— Think of a crowd-sourcing exercise, moving towards a planned new situation where neutral and restrained activity within the context of an understood purpose leaves room for employees' self-expression . This means no razzamatazz of creating a 'sense of urgency' and the 'burning platform' stuff of conventional change management.
Good change is honest -— it does portray something as more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate employees with promises that cannot be kept.
Good change is continuous -— it avoids being fashionable: 'the flavor of the month', or 'an initiative/program/effort' .
Good change is thorough down to the last detail -—nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the continuous change shows respect towards the stakeholders
Good change is people friendly -— Look at Meg Wheatley's principles discussed in my previous blog Do you have a roadmap for people centered change precepts.
Good change is as little change as possible -— Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the stakeholders are not burdened with non-essential, extra change management work. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

What are your views? Has traditional change management had its day?

As I'm writing the current book – the second edition of my first one – and as I learned to do in writing previous books I collect a lot more material than I use. I fling these into a document or folder called 'spare bits'. Then I wonder if I'm ever going to have any use for them as I pretty much instantly forget what's in them!

However, I was watching a film the other day on a DVD and it had a series of clips that weren't in the film. I found these more interesting in some respects than the film itself. Because they made me ask myself a whole lot of questions: why had the editors cut out those sequences? What impact would it or would it not have had on the story line? How did leaving them in or taking them out affect the way the actors thought about their role? Were some actors more deleted than others? And so on.

Unfortunately, there was no-one in the know to address these to. The person I was watching with was not really watching – he calls it having his eyes closed but I think it's more akin to sleeping – so no fascinating theoretical debate there. And in any event he hadn't been party to the making of the film so would have been hypothesizing just in the same way I was.

Anyway, this took me on to the notion of what I was doing when I was selecting things in or out of a book chapter. What exactly does go into the deleted pile and why am I hanging on to them in their own special file that quickly becomes a mysterious black box? I decided to take a look at some of these and see what treasures the search yielded.

Well here's one of the out takes from Chapter 1 of my just published book on organizational health:

• The process of staging cancers offers both an apt analogy and good model for assessment.
• Staging describes the extent or severity of a person's cancer. Knowing the stage of disease helps the doctor plan treatment and estimate the person's prognosis
• Staging systems for cancer have evolved over time and continue to change as scientists learn more about cancer
• The TNM staging system is based on the extent of the tumor (T), whether cancer cells have spread to nearby (regional) lymph nodes (N), and whether distant (to other parts of the body) metastasis (M) has occurred
• Most tumors can be described as stage 0, stage I, stage II, stage III, or stage IV
• Physical exams, imaging procedures, laboratory tests, pathology reports, and surgical reports provide information to determine the stage of the cancer (National Cancer Institute, 2010)

The notion of stages of health is useful because it confirms that organizational health is not an all or nothing static state. One of the key characteristics of organizational health is the capacity to learn and adapt. The question is how to do this consciously and systematically in a way that "brings the same degree of rigor and robustness to the development of health as to the development of performance".

I think I cut this for two reasons. First, because it is a potentially scary example, or perhaps one that people would be put off by, and second because at the end it appears to contain a quote which I see I didn't keep the reference to.

I don't like not knowing where I got things from and aim to always keep a record, but more often than I'd like I fail to achieve that aim and have to search around (again) which in the jargon is 'unnecessary rework' and/or lack of ability to 'control variance at source'.

So then I turned to the current book I'm writing (a second edition of the first book I wrote in 2004). Chapter 3 that I completed a couple of weeks ago had its document 'spare bits' that contained a list of websites. So what was on those?

Well I came across the SCARF model of 'applying insights from social cognitive neuroscience to enhance leadership effectiveness'. I remember that at the time I was rather taken with the idea that you can manage change better by looking at Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. But suddenly I felt my 'fad meter' on high alert. And I think that's why I rejected that one. Lots of good ideas but is it a sales pitch? The word 'neuro' seems to be attached to a lot of things right now and I haven't got enough knowledge to know whether to go with this flow or treat it with skepticism.

I think I must have investigated a bit because the next rejected item was 'Your Brain on Organizational Change but my take at the time was to keep an eye on this neuro change and see where it goes, meanwhile trying out some of the principles myself. One of my tasks is to write a Point of View paper for my organization NBBJ on organizational change so those particular out-takes will be worth a re-visit. (If I remember they're there).

The next reject in the chapter was social business predictions. I've read so many of them in the past few months(for my future of work TEDX talk and at the end of the year) that I find it hard to make any sense of any of them. They could all be right or wrong in some dimensions. Nevertheless I am attracted to them as thought provokers, more or less as I am attracted to reading my horoscope, so they have a purpose. I rejected this one because I found some better ones on social business predictions (but can't lay my hands on the reference right now!)

In this spare bits document I also found a link to the Association of Change Management Professionals a new body about which I know nothing so again I will check back on this at some point. Its site is embryonic but it will be interesting to see how it shapes up and whether it has a different take on being an association than other professional associations. (Can we change the organization design of associations?) I decided not to mention it in the chapter because it is too new and may not be around when the book goes to print.

In the book on Organizational Culture I have a folder called 'Chapter 1 Spare Bits'. The chapter is titled 'What is culture?' In this, I found an interesting statement 'National cultures belong to anthropology; organizational cultures to sociology.' Why didn't I put this in the book? I think because it is too complex a suggestion to debate in the number of pages that I had available.

So this small trek through the 'spare bits' proved interesting – the next challenge is to make it findable i.e. design a personal knowledge management system, and then remember to look in the system. Maybe Google can help on this?

And of course it has raised yet another question in my mind. When we are doing organizational change, design and development are we out-taking people and events that we should leave in? What are we seeing in the organizational film and how are we developing the story of it by what we cut and what we leave?

Your thoughts welcomed.

Last week a client said that what her employees were really looking for in the coming months, as they go through a change in responsibilities was a roadmap. That set me wondering what a roadmap is, what it is used for and what I've learned about them.

What a roadmap is
People in the organizational development and design fields often talk about roadmaps. Just take a look at Google Images response to the question: 'What is an organization development roadmap?' and you will see a huge number of possibilities. I was struck by the one that's actually a book title: Roadmap: How to Understand, Diagnose and Fix Your Organization. There seems to be some mix-up in ideas here. The sub-title is more like a car maintenance manual, though I guess if I'm driving along and the car breaks down then the maintenance manual might help.

I think one of the issues with the term 'roadmap' is just this kind of confusion. The word 'roadmap' covers a multitude of ideas. The Google images for organization development roadmaps include (among many other types) the following. You'll see a hyperlink to an example of the type.

• Fairly detailed project plans Look at Google images and you'll mainly see Gantt charts on this one.
• Maturity models
• Photos of a sign post or road
• Flow charts
• Pyramid structures
• Circles (not such a great roadmap if you want to end up in a different place from where you started)

My takeaway from the twenty minutes or so that I spent scanning these was that the common ground is that a 'roadmap' is some form of static representation that shows a sequential 'journey' from where you are now to where you think you want to get to. Despite the lure of that idea it is not quite so simple.
Thus I rather liked the single page graphic which combined a pyramid, an inverted pyramid, a flow chart and lots of arrows pointing up/down and left/right. I liked because it illustrated in one image that organizational design and development work is often immensely confusing and you never know whether you are progressing or back-sliding or working in different directions simultaneously.

And then I read an article about Google maps which says 'the old map was a fixed piece of paper … the new map is different for everyone who uses it. … A map has gone from a static, stylized portrait … to a dynamic interactive conversation.' I'm hoping that this is shades of things to come as far as organizational roadmaps go.

So I'm only a bit clearer about what a roadmap is. Just to repeat it's a representation of a sequence of activities that take you in a particular direction. And there's a future possibility that people's 'dialogue with the map [will become] much more personal'

What are roadmaps used for?
What the client I mentioned wanted from a roadmap was, in fact, two things

a) Something to show staff that the organization redesign that they were about to initiate was planned carefully and that they would be able to see, and for some be involved in, activities along the way. So really she wanted what I would call a project plan.
b) An explanation, again for staff of how the proposed new design would gradually build individual and organizational capacity. In this request she wanted a maturity model.

So these requests were really for communication tools that would help her explain to people the plan and the outcome.

Other clients are looking for security and risk mitigation when they ask for a roadmap. They want to have confidence that investment in the design or development process is going to take them along the path they have agreed to at the start, and there will be orderly progression. I think that's a completely understandable requirement but a little worrisome if the right review points and go/no go decisions are not in plain sight in the plan. It reminds me of the Winston Churchill quote that 'Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.' I have seen rather a number of projects stick to the plan when the plan needs revision and, in the jargon, 'recalibrating'. It is very rare that a plan goes according to plan.

Confidence in the plan can work wonders however. Karl Weick, the organization theorist, tells a story of Hungarian soldiers getting dropped in a mountain range and finally discovering one of them has a map which they use to make their way to safety only to find that the map in question was of a different mountain range. The notion around the story is that 'any map will do' but it requires you to both believe the map to be true and not look at it too closely. An excellent article, Substitutes for Strategy Research: Notes on the source of Karl Weick's anecdote of the young lieutenant and the map of the Pyrenees, by Thomas Basboll and Henrik Graham discusses the story and Weick's role in using it to illustrate points.

In summary then roadmaps are communication vehicles, security and risk managers, and confidence builders.

What I've learned about roadmaps
I've seen a variety of roadmaps (all of the types mentioned above) used in a variety of ways. In one organization the change maturity model – we called it the change continuum – was immediately adopted as an easy way to see what the end point was intended to be. Walking around the building we could see the model pinned up on individual notice boards, brought out at meetings, and progress along it was discussed at regular design team updates. It served a purpose for a time but then a change of leadership swept through and wanted to see less of a maturity model and more of a project plan.

What I learned from this was that choice of roadmap format is important. Some appeal to some people and others to people – which is perhaps why so many types of map exist. Akin to this are questions I haven't yet answered for myself: Are roadmaps culturally specific? Do roadmaps reflect the perspective of the person drawing them and/or influence the way the users experience the journey? Certainly cartographers present their world view in different ways. And Google maps is showing that people use maps in different ways. What subliminal messages are the roadmaps we choose giving to people because of the way they are constructed?

I've also seen the project plan type of roadmap used as sticks to beat people 'You said we'd be here by now, why are we so far behind?' This can happen when people are asked to do the impossible and deliver a project in a given time-frame. They may know that this isn't going to work but don't have the skills or confidence to predict a more realistic timeframe or argue the trade-offs between time, cost, and quality. (Or time, resource, scope).

What I've learned from this is that the sponsor of the project and the consultant working on it must regularly review and update the plan in the light of changing circumstances – this takes time and courage but is better than ploughing on against the odds.

The third thing I've learned is that roadmaps are the tacit representational elements of the project. They are not the project. The project has people, culture, and politics all involved. I am often reminded of a literal car journey. We have the physical paper map, (or GPS system) we know the route and we set off confident. Along the way we are talking and don't hear the GPS voice telling us to make a left. Too late and we have to detour. We decide to stop for coffee but suddenly traffic slows and we find ourselves in a long tail-back. We get irritable and so on …

So roadmaps are good for some things but they are not the whole thing. People are taking the journey along the road. Roadmaps should be accompanied by some principles in how they are used and deployed.

Meg Wheatley has 10 excellent principles for managing change that fit what I have in mind. You can look at them here. In brief, the principles are:

• People support what they create.
• People act responsibly when they care
• Conversation is the way human beings have always thought
• To change the conversation, change who is in it
• Expect leaders to come from anywhere
• Focusing on what is working gives us energy and creativity
• The wisdom resides within us
• Everything is a failure in the middle
• Humans can handle anything as long as we're together
• Generosity, forgiveness and love

Summary: Choose the right roadmap(s) for your journey, involve the people taking the journey, and be prepared to change the route. Even better think about changing the destination if circumstances seem to make that a wise choice. Sticking with the original destination may be foolish in some circumstances.

What are your experiences of roadmaps? Let me know.