What a SWOT!

woman sitting at a train station looking at a map

I mentioned previously that a lot of traditional change management models seem to boil down to how to move from A (where we are now) to B (where we want to be).

diagram showing current state transitioning to new state

In order to know where we want to go, we first have to understand where we are now. What’s our current situation, and how then might we need to change to have a better future?

A well-known tool for getting a better understanding of where you, your team, or your organisation is now, is a SWOT analysis. You’ve probably already heard of this, or completed one in your workplace.  This is where you brainstorm your current Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Your strengths and weaknesses are internal factors A useful starting point is to ask yourself questions for each section.  For example, if you were doing this for your own personal development you could ask:

Strengths – What am I good at?  What do I find easy? What knowledge do I have?  What do people praise me for?

Weaknesses – What do I struggle with? What do I hate doing? Where are gaps in my knowledge?

SWOT questions

Opportunities and threats are external factors I’ve already talked about using PEST to analyse your current environment, and the outcome of your PEST analysis can help you complete the Opportunities and Threats sections of your SWOT analysis.

Beware subjectivity!

We are often unaware of our real strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps because we find something easy, we don’t realise that it’s a strength.  Or we have blind spots and we don’t realise the things we are doing that may be holding us back.

So it’s important to gather data for your SWOT to become more aware of what’s really going on.  What evidence do you already have, and where might you need more data? 

If you’re brave, you can ask friends, family and/or colleagues for feedback to discover how other people view your strengths and weaknesses.  You can also take diagnostic tests or complete questionnaires (eg a personality test) to discover more about what you are like.  This is where a coach can help, and a programme of coaching or personal development often starts with diagnostic tools or exercises to help you discover more about yourself. 

So what?

Like any tool, just completing a SWOT doesn’t give you the answers. But taking the time to think through each of these areas should not only give you a better understanding of your current position (A), it should also start to give you ideas about where you need to go (B).  How you can capitalise on your strengths, overcome some of your weaknesses, make the most of any opportunities, and try and minimise the threats?

Further resources:

CIPD (2020) SWOT Analysis
Mind Tools – SWOT Analysis

References

Bassot, B. (2016) The Reflective Practice Guide: an interdisciplinary approach to critical reflection, London: Routledge

Easy vs Hard Change

sandcastle next to pile of sand

I’ve talked about change being hard and the brain being hardwired against change, but humans cope with change all the time – we are pretty good at adapting to change and learning new things.

But some things do seem to be more difficult.  Losing weight, perhaps.  Or getting up early.

I’ve recently read Michael Bungay-Stanier’s book “The Advice Trap” where he distinguishes between Easy Change and Hard Change.  I love his flow diagrams for these so I’ll share them here.

Easy Change is straightforward.  You start out not knowing something, understand what you need to learn, practise it, and improve.  All you need is access to some knowledge (a book, a teacher, a YouTube video) and then you try it.

flow diagram for easy change
© 2020 Michael Bungay-Stanier

Hard change is much more of an effort.  You think you know what you have to do, but you fail, try again, fail again, and keep coming back to it.  Knowing how to do something is not enough. You need to shift your mindset and behaviour, but something’s stopping you from making progress.

flow diagram for hard change
© 2020 Michael Bungay-Stanier

What’s easy or hard depends on the individual and their previous experience.  What is easy for you might be hard for me.  Some people have no trouble losing weight or getting up early.

This idea of hard and easy change is actually based on what Heifetz and Linsky (2002) refer to as adaptive change vs technical change in organisations. 

Technical problems, while challenging, can be solved by applying existing know-how.

Adaptive problems, however, require transformational change, with all individuals within the organisation shifting their behaviour.  This is uncomfortable and will likely be met with resistance and difficulty.

The danger is that people may try to respond to an adaptive (hard) problem with a technical (easy) solution – doing what they’ve done before.  Alternatively, you can waste a lot of time, money and effort thinking something is an adaptive challenge, when really it just requires a technical solution.

Knowing whether you’re dealing with a hard or easy change is an important step in making the change.

References: 

Bungay-Stanier, M. (2020) The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious and Change the Way you Lead Forever” Toronto: Box of Crayons Press

Heifetz, R.  and Linsky, M. (2002) “A Survival Guide for Leaders”, Harvard Business Review, June 2002

Types of Change

goldfish jumping out of a glass of water

We all experience change all the time.  Just think about all the change you’ve experienced in the last 12 months.  Write everything down in a list.  What kind of changes are on your list?

I’ve said before that not all changes are created equal.  There could be major changes in your life that have a dramatic effect, like marriage, childbirth, or bereavement.  Or there could be small changes, like buying a new pair of shoes.  Things might change slowly, like losing weight; or they might be sudden, like the introduction of Covid 19 restrictions.  The same change might be viewed positively or negatively, depending on whether you wanted it or not.

When we’re talking about organisational change, Ackerman (1997) divided change into 3 types:

diagrams of the 3 types of change
  • Developmental – this is incremental change, where there is steady improvement made to the current organisation.  This is either planned or emergent.
  • Transitional – this is where you want to achieve a desired new state that is different to the existing one.  The change is planned and the transition is managed over time.  It’s a fairly radical change.
  • Transformational – this is the emergence of a new state, which is unknown, following a crisis

For the purposes of the module I teach on Managing Change, we focus on transitional change, as this is what a lot of traditional change management literature refers to.  In later posts I will outline some of the models used in planned, transitional change.

But it’s interesting to note we also use these terms and ideas when coaching individuals.  We talk about having goals for improvement and we steadily work on improving skills (developmental).  Or we ask people to think about their vision of a ‘future you’ to aim towards and we plan the best way to get there (transitional).  We also talk about ‘transformational coaching’ where there is a shift in thinking and a different ‘new you’ emerges through the coaching.

Looking back, what types of change have you experienced?

References:

Ackerman, L. (1997) Development, transition or transformation: the question of change in organisations In: Van Eynde, D., Hoy, J. and Van Eynde, D. (eds) Organisation Development Classics. San Francisco:Jossey Bass

Image from:

Balogun, J. and Hope-Hailey, V. (2008) Exploring Strategic Change. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Ltd, 3rd ed.

Watch out for PESTs

snail sculpture on a roof

I mentioned when talking about the brain that humans are constantly scanning the environment for changes to see whether they might indicate a threat or a reward.

However, on a day-to-day basis we often get on with our habitual routines of daily living, and we may fail to be aware of what’s going on in our wider environment.  In the previous post I explained that things are constantly changing and so there is a need for us to be aware of these ‘big picture’ changes so we can adapt as individuals, teams or organisations.

One well-known tool that can help us is PEST analysis.  PEST enables us to stop and consider in turn what’s happening in the Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural, and Technological aspects of our environment.

Doing a PEST Analysis

To do a PEST analysis, go through each of these areas in turn and brainstorm what’s happening that might be most relevant to you or your organisation.  Doing this will also help you discover where you are lacking information and may need to do some research. 

Here are some questions you might consider:

Political – eg What’s happening with government policy, regulations and laws? How stable is the political environment?  What’s the likelihood of change in the next election?

Economic – eg What’s happening in the economy?  Is it growing or declining? How stable is it?  What is the exchange rate, wage levels, borrowing rate, cost of living, level of unemployment?  How easy is it to access credit?

Socio-cultural – What are current social norms and expectations?  Consider social attitudes, levels of education, health and lifestyle choices. What about demographics? Is the population increasing or decreasing?  What proportion are young/old?

Technological – What new technologies are available?  How is use of technology changing?  (eg for remote working)

You can also go further by increasing PEST to PESTLE, which adds:

Legal – What are potential changes to legislation affecting you or your business?

Environmental – What’s happening with waste/recycling, energy consumption, renewable resources, pollution?

(NB It’s likely that you’ll find some overlap when you try to do this exercise as some items can fit into more than one area.)

So what?

Like any tool, doing this exercise won’t tell us directly what we need to do with the information we find.  That’s the next step.  Once you’ve done your PEST analysis, you should then consider how you might take advantage of any opportunities you discover, as well as overcome or avoid any potential threats.

At an individual level, you might use this to think about your next career move.  What’s on the horizon that might make one job or career more attractive than another?  At the organisational level you might consider what products or services you should develop or remove.  So this helps with strategy and planning, or can be used as input into a SWOT analysis (see an upcoming post).

Of course, this analysis just gives us a snapshot of what’s happening in the environment now. You will need to re-do this regularly to make sure you’re keeping up with all the the constant change.

Further reading:

CIPD (2020), PESTLE analysis [accessed 02/07/20] (requires log-in (free))

The success trap

a smartphone next to an old fashioned phone

Although people are living longer, it seems companies are not doing so well.  The Boston Consultancy Group reported that the life span of corporations nearly halved over just three decades.  And research from Yale shows that the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has decreased from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years in 2012.

We’ve all seen companies disappear in our lifetimes – remember Woolworths and Blockbuster video?  Kodak?

Several authors have observed that it is often a company’s success that sets it up for failure.  Managers rely too heavily on doing the same thing that made the company successful in the first place.  The success is then used as evidence that they should continue with the same strategy.

Nadler and Shaw (1995, cited in Hayes (2014)) observed that this complacency can be the company’s downfall. As the company grows and becomes more complex, the focus switches away from the external environment and instead to internal issues. This leads to declining performance in the market. But managers think the solution is to do more of the thing which has led to success in the past. As the environment has changed, this doesn’t have the success they expect. Nadler and Shaw describe the organisation as becoming ‘learning disabled’. 

Unless the company changes, it can go into the ‘death spiral’:

diagram representing death spiral
Diagram taken from Hayes (2014) page 73

So it is incredibly important to be aware of what’s happening in the environment and to be willing to adapt and innovate for a successful future.

It’s not just companies. We can think of this happening at the individual level too.  For example, we get promoted but keep working in the same way we did before.  We don’t adapt to the role and learn the new skills required.  We double down, working harder and harder with the same strategy that made us successful before. Eventually, if we don’t learn and adapt, we fail.  In the words of Marshall Goldsmith’s book – what got you here won’t get you there.

Past success doesn’t necessarily mean future success. We all need to continuously learn, adapt and grow.

References

Hayes (2014) The Theory and Practice of Change Management, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 4th ed.

Why We Need to Change

taking a picture of an old woman on a smartphone

As humans we are constantly adapting to our environment.  But it’s clear from what I’ve said about the brain that changing just one person (ourselves) can be scary and difficult.  So what about if an entire team, organisation or society needs to change?  That means every single person in that group needs to shift.

There’s a vast array of literature on ‘change management’ and a whole industry built on it.  We’re regularly told that between 50 and 75% of organisational change initiatives fail.  The cost of making changes and the cost of failure can be immense. No wonder, then, that companies spend a vast amount of money on change management consultancy (around $10 billion a year according to the Boston Consultancy Group).

So what’s going on?  Why do we have to keep ‘changing’ and how do you decide what needs to change, if anything?

Change is inevitable

Like it or not, our environment is changing all the time. Managers talk about leading in a VUCA world – one that’s Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous – and there’s debate about whether the pace of change is increasing, but it certainly feels that way.  We’ve all seen big changes in our lifetime.

Changes in Technology

Just think about how we listen to music. I grew up with vinyl records, then tapes and Walkmans and Ghetto blasters, then CDs and portable CDs, then mini-disks, now MP3 players, and now it’s on my mobile phone or tablet with wireless headphones. Social media didn’t exist 20 years ago and now it’s ubiquitous.  How did we manage without it?  The rate of technological change seems to be increasing and every time there’s a change, we have to adapt and learn something new.

Changes in Society

We’re living longer.  Improvements in medicine and living conditions mean that half of babies born now will live to be over 100. 

But many companies and governments are still working on a 3-stage life model.  We get educated when we’re young, we work for 45 years, then we retire.  But that’s unsustainable if we’re all living longer.  We can’t afford to retire at 65 if we’re going to live to 100, and we will need to re-skill and shift careers more often.  This is causing tension.

And the makeup of the workforce has changed.  There are more women in work and dual-income couples with children.  For many the Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 model doesn’t work well.  Employees are demanding more flexibility, and a more educated workforce want more meaning in their work lives.

All this has a big influence on how we live and work.  Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott identify we are now shifting into a multi-stage life.  This means more change, more transitions, more breaks, education across the lifespan and more flexibility:

3 stage model of 'education-work-retirement' moving to a multi-stage model
Image from: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-corporate-implications-of-longer-lives/

Changes in Work

Whole industries are being disrupted as new competitors emerge.  Just think about Uber disrupting the taxi industry, or AirBnB disrupting the hotel industry. And AI is threatening to remove jobs currently done by humans. This has knock-on effects with people being pushed out of jobs and having to retrain.

Technological changes allow many of us to work from anywhere, anytime.  The rise of the gig economy has brought flexibility and autonomy for many but also financial insecurity. 

Even in a ‘stable’ career like medicine there is constant change, with a need for re-education and learning as new techniques and medicines appear.

Managing and Leading Change

So the need for change is clear as we have to adapt to the inevitable changes going on in our environment. The human brain is designed for survival – to avoid threats and seek rewards.  And organisations and societies, too, need to constantly adapt in order to survive and thrive.

Managing or leading change in organisations has huge implications for the individuals working in those organisations. Over the next few posts I’ll introduce some tools and models used in managing planned change. But we should always remember that at a basic level, organisations and teams are made up of individual human beings and knowing how individual humans work will make all the difference.

References

Gratton, L. and Scott, A. (2016) The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, London: Bloomsbury

Changing Habits

close up of mouth eating macaron

In the previous post I explained how the brain develops ‘habit loops’ to conserve energy. A habit loop consists of 3 steps: a cue, the routine, and a reward.  Being aware of what is triggering your habits and routines is the first step to making a change. 

A habit develops when you repeat the same choices.  So in order to change the habit we need to make different choices until a new or different habit is formed.

In the example below, every morning after you arrive at work you go to the cafeteria first, buy a coffee and take it back to your desk.  But this is getting expensive, and you’re trying to cut down on caffeine.  You want to change the habit, but it’s automatic.

diagram of the habit loop

Cues

If you want to change a habit, you need to identify the cue.  What is triggering this behaviour? Research suggests that there are five possible categories for the cue, which are:

  • Location – where are you when the urge hits?  What can you see?
  • Time – does it happen at a regular time?
  • Emotional State – does it happen when you are tired? Angry? Sad?
  • Other People – who else is around?
  • Immediately preceding action – do you always do this after something else?

So in the current example, you can see several possible cues.  You always go to the cafeteria for a coffee:

  • at work (location)
  • when you arrive (immediately preceding action), which is usually
  • at 8.30am (time)

So if you want to change your habit, you need to look at these more closely.  Do you go for a coffee if you don’t arrive till later in the day? What happens at the weekend or if you work from home?  Is it time or location?

Reward

It’s also worth experimenting with the reward.  What is the actual reward you’re getting?  What happens if you still go to the café but buy a green tea instead? Or what if you bring in a flask of coffee, avoid the café and go direct to your desk. Are you trying to avoid starting work?  Do you want to chat to colleagues in the café before you start? Is it the taste of the coffee? Or something else?

Once you better understand the cue and reward, try keeping the cue, but changing the routine or reward.

Have a look at this video to see how Charles Duhigg changed his afternoon cookie habit.

https://youtu.be/W1eYrhGeffc

Starting a new habit.

You can also use the idea of cues and rewards to create a new, good habit.

Set the cue and reward and make a plan. For example:

  • At 9am (cue)
  • I will put on my trainers and go for a 20-minute run (routine). 
  • When I get back I’ll have a piece of chocolate (reward). 

And actually, you only need the chocolate reward while you’re developing the habit.  After lots of repetitions, the chocolate reward will no longer be needed.  The routine is reward itself.

Your turn

Give it a try. Think of one thing you’d like to change, or a new habit you’d like to start. Let me know how you get on!

Further Reading

How Habits Work – excerpt from the book ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg