Change Ladder 

Before finalizing what the problem really is, it will help if you determine what type of change the client believes is needed, what the ‘real; problem is and the likelihood of being able to effect a sustainable change within the given confines. However it can be difficult to really gauge the issue being addressed in the early stage of the change programme because of the vagueness that surrounds the problem. Since the client is often influenced by subjective needs, the views of other political players and the vagaries of history, the issue offered to you might well consist of a hotch potch of different stories and concerns. Consequently, when the relationship first begins, the client will implicitly be looking for you to help take away some of the surrounding fog. As Schein (1994) suggests:

In reality the manager often does not know what he is looking for and indeed should not be expected to know. All he knows is that something is not working right and he needs some kind of help. An important part of any consultation process, then, must be to help the manager or organization to figure out what the problem is, and only then decide what further kind of help is needed.

The Change Ladder is a simple but effective tool that will allow the client and chart and asses the issue under consideration and in particular the extent to which sustainable change will be delivered. It does this by considering a number of factors:

·         The input side of the consultancy process (or what will be done) as well as the anticipated output.

·         The nature of the intangible as well as the tangible elements within the system being changed.

·         The different types of interventions that are used to effect a sustainable change.

·         How different types of change ladder profiles can cause change to fail

·         How to use the Change Ladder Chart – a diagnostic tool that helps to surface many of the shadow factors that cause problems later in the engagement.

Input – Output relationship

The first thing is to separate out the change being made from the anticipated outcome. All too often these factors get mixed up and talked about in the same breath. In the same way that you must separate out cause and effect it is important to separate out the consultants input effort from the resulting output or business benefit. This is because there might not always be a direct causal relationship between what the consultant does and the end result.

Look in any Sunday paper and it will be full of miracle cures. The latest gizmo or gadget that will cure back pains, ease arthritis, help you find a true love or win the lottery. However, how many of these wonder cures deliver the change they promise, how many give value and to what extent is the value really sustainable. The advertisers are very clever in their sales pitch because they confuse the reader by intermingling the product with the supposed solution that it will deliver. They subtly infer direct and causal linkage between the use of their product or service and the benefits you will receive. In one sentence you will get ‘by using product x you will achieve benefit y”. What they rarely do is to break down this causal relationship and explain just how it is that this product can achieve such miraculous benefits.

This can so often be seen in the way that advertising focuses on the positive outcomes rather than what the product will specifically do to achieve the outcome:

 The problem is that many agents will use a range of well-used phrases and statements that are designed to make their products and services sound somewhat more impressive than they might be when considered from an input perspective. I do believe that in the short term they can create client interest and generate revenue, but in the long run feed the increasing concerns about the consulting and change industry.

This is because we often use similar promotional processes as the charlatans in the press! For example ‘this quality processes and your organization will be transformed into a quality focused business’; ‘adopt this new customer service software and your customer will come flocking back’; or ‘upgrade your software and all the operational glitches and problems will be sorted’. Only when you look at the small print the firms don’t quite explain just how this will happen. There is a real act of faith on the part of the client to accept that by using product x then improvement y will occur.

The problem is that six months after the project is complete the client starts to wonder just why their new customer service system isn’t delivering improved satisfaction ratings; why quality hasn’t improved even after the new statistical process control programme has been implemented; or the costs are still rising even after the reorganization. The problem is often that the client has focused purely on the output of the change process or the anticipated benefits and has been less than rigorous in really testing out what will be ‘done’ rather than what will be delivered.

Tangible and Intangible factors

The next factor to consider in any change process is the balance between the tangible and intangible elements involved in the transformation. The tangible factors are the fixed assets, hard processes, policies or manuals. These are the touchable, sustainable and concrete things you know exists and can readily verify both before the change and once it is complete. This might be the provision of new pieces of hardware, the construction of a building, writing new procedures or the development of a training programme.

However, with all these tangible changes there will be intangible factors that need to be understood and managed. These indefinable factors are the innate and latest skills that people have, their motivation and willingness to make a change and finally the deep internal sense of purpose that drives the choices people make.

The important thing is that virtually all change actions will impact both the tangible and intangible factors. There is little point in providing a new piece of computer kit if the user cannot be bothered to use it or if they don’t have the necessary skills. There is no point in developing new training or operating procedures if people don’t understand what value they will get from using them; and there is little point in setting up a new building if customers or employees don’t like it and prefer to use the old one.

The consultant must understand what tangible and intangible factors will impact upon the change and use this knowledge to challenge the client about the viability of the project. For example imagine a client who wants a to install a new computer system that will enhance the customer service process. It can be quite easy as a consultant to take the order and implement the system. However, history and experience suggests that the simple act of dropping in a new system will not result in sustainable benefits. For any new system to deliver the anticipated benefits the client must be prepared to invest in other processes; specific training for the users; coaching where people might have difficulties with specific aspects for the system; motivational packages to help encourage people to use the system; and processes to aid any behavioral changes required to support the new system.

The factors shown in the table below suggest why so much change is managed at the tangible level. Because of its ease of management, reliability and tangibility it is simpler to spend time talking about and dealing with the tangible factors. However, it should also be easy to see why a failure to address the intangible factors associated with the process will result in non-sustainable change being delivered.

Industry reports often suggest that change programmes are not delivery the anticipated benefits. In many cases the rate of failure of change sits between the 60-90% rate. One industry review suggested that £25bn is wasted each year on change management errors. The Challenge of Change 2002 found that UK businesses undertake at least three major change projects a year - costing companies £52bn in management charges alone - around half are a waste of time and money. The study also suggests that more than 100 directors reveals that UK company boards devote 35 per cent of their time to managing change but only half of this is well spent. Many mergers, restructures, acquisitions and downsizing operations are ill-conceived and poorly managed, finds the Change Management Online study. Shining through this study is the realization that real organizational transformation is a people issue. 

Unless you as the consultant are prepared to challenge the client on the intangible people issues then the likelihood is that all your effort will result in a non-sustainable intervention. The difficulty can arise in developing a set of questions that will help to challenge the client without appearing confrontational. One of the most powerful ways that the consultant can challenge the client around their readiness to effect change at the intangible level is by educating them as to the problems that will arise downstream if they fail to address the softer issues. However, to do this it can help to open out the tangible/intangible model into a more structured series of intervention levels that indicate what specific actions can be taken to effect sustainable change.

Change Levels

One way to make the tangible and intangible factors easier to understand and change is by overlaying the two areas with a graduated set of change levels. These change levels are the core aspects that need to be addressed when managing any sustainable intervention.

The vast majority of change actions will fall into one of these categories.

These five factors can be seen in Figure 9 as the Change Ladder. However, the important point with the change ladder is less above these aspects, but more around the deeper issues within each level.

Change Drivers

For each of the five levels there are further drivers that have a significant impact on the nature and likelihood of success for the change you and the client are embarking on:

Only by understanding the ten drivers that reside within these five levels can we truly begin to chart the problem that faces the client and develop solutions that will deliver sustainable value.

Associated Asset

I used to work for a communications company that serviced a large automotive design center. This place was absolutely huge with hundreds of people all involved in the design and development of the next generation car. For me the amazing thing about this place was the design center. This was a huge room full of design engineers, laid out row after row all with their individual workspace, desk and telephone. Around the edge of the room was the manager’s office. They too had their work space, but in their case an office rather than a desk.

As a new-field engineer I used to visit the office to repair the phones and do general maintenance on the system. One late afternoon I was called out on a call because one of the design engineers had telephone fault. It was late in the afternoon and I wanted to get off home to see the family. Rather than trying the fix the phone I simply gave him a new one. The following morning I had an urgent message to rush back to the design center because all sorts of complaints were being hurled about. I rushed back to see what the problem was only to find that it was about the phone I had changed.

As I was very new to the subtleties and politics of work life I had missed a key factors that underpinned the managerial structure in offices. In the same way that the size of the company car, office or expenses budget will indicate the level of superiority, so in this place the color of the phone indicated the rank of the user. The design engineers all had gray  phones whereas the managers has white phones. In my rush to get away I had given the design engineer a white phone and this caused all sorts of problems. Other engineers were surreptitiously destroying their phones in the hope of getting a new white one and the mangers where grumbling over the coffee about the waste of spending budget on quality phones for the workers.

The root of the problem is that I regarded the phone as an asset. A functional tool used for making telephone calls and did not tacitly make the association with power within a complex hierarchy. By treating it as an asset without understanding the associative symbolic meaning my change failed to deliver the sustainable benefit required by the client.

We see this time and time again with so many change programs, where the client and consultant believe they are simply changing a functional asset, but the end result are problems because of the associated symbolic meaning attached to the object. Moving people from one location to another. Where the new office offers great facilities and the client see all the benefits, but to the staff signifies that the company is loosing its home grown family values and it bucking to be more of a corporate giant; migrating engineers to new plant that are computer operated and offer functional and cost savings but is viewed by the teams as a sign that management is reducing their personal skills set. 

The challenge for the consultant in the client stage of the engagement is to be clear as to the level of association with the asset. If the plant, equipment, or fixed asset has a low level of association then the change is likely to proceed with little resistance. However, if the asset is highly associated then there is a real chance that the change process will be fraught with risk. It is important that this associative assesmetn is undertaken not just with the client, but also with the end consumers. It might be that the their association with the object might be strong enough to trigger a wave of resistance that would cause the change to fail to deliver sustainable value.

Blueprint Blockage

Take any generic industry problem that has surfaced over the past 30 years and there is always a simple solution that promises to fix the process. Time and time again consultants have offered blueprint solutions that notionally seem to resolve the problem in the short term but fail to deliver limited value in the long run and in some cases can be detrimental as they add fixed cost to the business.

The usual suspects seem to be things like quality standards, changes to organization design and structure, process redesign, knowledge management, training standards, policies updates, benchmarking, etc. These are all practical solutions that in the short term can offer a solution to a problem but in the long term may only offer limited value. The reason why these types of solution don’t always deliver a sustainable answer can be quite complex, but one common reason is can be found in the differing psychological types of people who work in organizations.

In simple terms the human population can found to consist of a mix of two types of people. Those who like to operate in tight structured environment and operate best with plans, policies and procedures. The other type is those who prefer to operate in a loose environment. They will work best when the process allows them the desired freedom and flexibility. Characteristics of the two can be seen as:

The challenge at this stage of the change process is to determine a number of things:

Once these three factors are understood it will become easier to understand the true nature of the blueprint change and the chances of it failing to deliver the anticipated benefits. If for example the client and consultant have a structured preference but the consumers have a Flexible preference then the change will incur problems as the users start to react against the perceived high level of control. Alternately, I have been in a situation where the client has requested a flexible intervention, but the consumers were desperate for a more structured approach and felt the need for guidance and direction. The is clearly no right model – the answer will sit between two options; chart the various preferences and create a solution that will fit the particular preferences, or; if the new blueprint style does not fit the current preferences, ensure that the change programme has sufficient time and resources to help people adapt to something that sits outside their comfort zone.

Cocktail Capability

It is not enough to say that by training people a problem will be resolved. So often this is the quick fix solution offered by consultants and coaches and lapped up by the client. The customer service staff are not getting high enough customer satisfaction figures so lets put them through a customer care workshop. All might be great in the short term as people get the quick fix of fun, a few skills and more frequent visits by the senior team to give the rousing speech, but what happens 2 months later once the programme is over? If the training isn’t sticky and hasn’t embedded itself deeply into how people think, feel and behave then little long-term benefit will be delivered.

 The important things to test and understand the type of knowledge that the client group should end up with once the assignment is complete. Knowledge is typically seen in two forms, Explicit and Tacit

The issue for any consultant working with a capability intervention is what type of ‘capability’ does the client group requires. Does the client want a simple shift in explicit capability, such as a new set of procedures, operational routines or machine instructions? Alternately, does the client organization need the capability to be made at a deeper level, such as the capability to manage client relationships, leadership style or influencing techniques?

Failure to understand and address the differences can lead to costly mistakes and change interventions that fail to deliver sustainable value. So often change programmes are managed at the Capability level that fail to address the fundamental difference between these two types of engagement. This can be seen in the following examples:

Although there are many ways to address the idea of Explicit and Tacit learning, as a rule of thumb it is useful to use the following simplification:

This is why e-learning is so often sold as a low cost option and the costs of training processes like coaching and mentoring can be seen as expensive in comparison. The whole point is that they should not be compared as they address fundamentally different capability changes and this must be understood and carefully managed at the very outset of the engagement.

Double Desire

We can see two competing forces interacting and competing at the Desire level of the Change Ladder. The first is the stated, overt or ‘Primary Desire’. This is the action that the client suggests they ‘wish’ to take. Over a coffee they will spend an hour convincing you just how serious their problem is and how much they want to effect a change that will resolve the issue. The second force is the ‘Secondary Desire’ – this is the unspoken motivation to do something that might actually negate or act against the primary desire. It is the resisting force that causes people to not take action, even if they say they want to.

 For example, over coffee someone tells you that they are determined to give up smoking. However, you know the person of old, and as you take another sip of the cappuccino you hit a ‘déjà vu’ moment and realise that they are telling you exactly the same thing they have told you three or four times before. They always have this really passionate desire to fix the problem but somehow it just never seems to get better. This is a common pattern that can be seen every Sunday morning as someone decides (yet again to give up smoking, drinking or sweets).

For example imagine someone called Mary whose espoused desire is to give up smoking. This makes sense, will save money, is ecologically sound and benefits those around her. But she continues, even though her biggest desire and goal in life is to stop. It turns out that smoking fills several useful roles in her life. Among other things, her husband can’t stand the thought of her quitting while he still smoked,  so it ensures that this relationship is maintained; she smokes in the morning to "wake up"; during the day in order to "reduce stress," "concentrate" and, paradoxically; at night in order to "relax; It also helps her to maintain the group of friends who also smoke, relaxes her at times of stress and acts as something to fiddle with. While the Primary Desire is to stop smoking, the secondary one is to hold on to these other factors that actually give her immense value in life. The net result is that the espoused desire is acting as a future force – hopefully pulling Mary into the required or ‘To Be’ state. At the same time, the actual desire is acting as a rubber band or brake keeping her at the current state.

 The gap between the espoused and actual desire can emerge because people will have different parts of themselves. One aspect of a person may believe something is important while another part may believe it is unnecessary. As a result, an individual may have different parts with different intentions. These intentions may come into conflict with one another, or lead to behaviors that seem bizarre and irrational to others and even to part of a person's own consciousness. As a parent I will fight for the right to install cameras in the high street to make the town a safer place for my children, as an adult I will fight not to have cameras in the high street because it affects my civil liberties.

The goal is to determine if the client has a secondary desire that will hinder or block their capability to change as requested by the primary desire. For example if you are speaking with a client who has been doing all the "right" things, planning, organizing, preparing and implementing and still are not getting better maybe they have a secondary desire holding them back. Dealing with this may not be as easy as it looks. Many clients do not want to admit that they have been stopping themselves from improving. Often, the secondary desire issue is subconscious because consciously, they consider it to be undisscusible.

However, even when the actual Desire is quite obvious to the consultant it is not always something that they can point out to the client. It is entirely natural to protect oneself from the truth – especially if it hurts. When the consultant try’s to tell the client what the retsraining desire might be they will often reject the proposition and in some cases reject the consultant. Clients often will "fight for" their belief in their cause because they do not want to think that anything is wrong with their desire to change. Try telling someone who is dieting that they don’t really want to lose weight!

However, in many cases, only once the client begins to fight you might you be have found the secondary desire. It may that when they get emotional, resistive or affective it may be that you have found the blockage that is causing them not to want to let go of the past. For example if you challenge the smoker about the fact that they like to smoke because it helps them to make friends, their response might be one of emotional indignation and anger. However, the simple fact that the emotional trigger has been armed maybe gives a clue as to it importance.

In trying to understand the actual desire the objective is to find out what the real motivational drivers are that causes someone to behave the way they do – not the way they will. So although you will need to ask question about where the client what’s to go – it is also important to ask question about current behaviour. “Why do you do this at the moment?” “what is important to you about this?”, “What does that give you?” Listen to your clients exact words including their ‘needs’ ‘wants’ and ‘likes’ for each criteria and try to tune into the emotional moments and spot they because emotionally engaged in describing the great things about the current situation.

Compare this level of engagement with how they describe the future or ‘To Be’ state. Is there a gap between two and is the current or ‘As is’ state likely to give a stronger hold over their desire than the future state. If so then you might need to seriously challenge the client about their level of conviction about the change process they are describing. In the same way if the smoker describes with great passion the pleasure they get form a drag on the cigarette and then mundanely describe why they will not smoke in the future – my suggestion would be to not bet on the chances that they will overcome the addiction in the short term.

Elusive Ethos

The Ethos level can be quite a complex area to understand. So often a client will present one set of beliefs and principles that they and the organization abide by only to discover later that another set of principles run that might be counter to those offered in the first instance. On one hand we have all worked for a company that espouses its values/mission/purpose by emblazing them in large letters across the company brochure and coffee cups. But the real killer question is would someone be challenged if they failed to fulfill the stated ethos; if they persisted in the counter behavior would they be disciplined; and if they still failed to align with the company wishes would they be asked to leave, even if they were the biggest revenue earner the division. The key point is that there is nearly always a gap between the espoused Ethos and the Actual Ethos. Although we see this in organizations across the world, it is also a trait that people demonstrate on a fairly consistent basis; someone’s espoused ethos that addiction is wrong whilst tucking into a bottle of wine every night; an espoused ethos of it is wrong to break the law whilst slowing down just for the speeding camera; and telling the kids that it is wrong to eat sugar whilst tucking into the thirds croissant.

For any person, team, organization or even country there will generally be an Espoused Ethos – which is the stated criteria used to make choices, and the Actual Ethos, which is what choices are really taken buy. The consultant must be prepared and able to take a number of actions:

In essence what you are looking to manage is the degree of separation seen in Figure 11 and to bring this gap to the surface so that is can be dealt with in the Client stage and not quietly swept under the carpet as will often happen! The trouble is that when the se things are hidden from view they always pop out in the change and confirms stage – typically when it is too late to do anything about them.

The end result is that the 5 rung change ladder actually has two steps within each rung that give it ten aspects to be considered when developing the opening picture with the client.

Change Ladder Profiles

One important use for the Change Ladder is to diagnose the nature of the problem and if the change is likely to provide a sustainable solution. The nature of the 5 stages on the ladder allow for a simple analysis and mapping of what can be very complex problems. By understanding the different combinations that change can be effected on each of the ladders rungs it is possible to begin to benchmark common transformation patterns and the results they will deliver. The table below shows six different change patterns that can be found to have taken place in most organizations:

The important thing about these six profiles is that they can be found to occur where change is being managed on such a regular basis. The Fix is being sold as a short term organisational solutions; the Miracle cure can be seen in countless magazines, and the Cult can be seen to take place every time a senior level reorganisation takes place and the leading light moves on. The trick is to be able to recognise the patterns before they take place and build compensatory action to prevent your consulting assignment from being another short term success but long term failure.

Change Ladder Chart

Building on the idea of ‘The Grip’ profile, the primary construct with the change ladder is that successful change must always be delivered by managing across all five levels. No matter what the change being managed, these five factors will have to be understood and considered with care by both the client and consultant. The goal is to ensure that reinforcing forces are acting across all five levels on the change ladder.

For example in the situation where a new Customer Relationship Management computer system is being implemented, one might expect the following aspects to be considered on each level:

 As with Newtonian law, for any force there will be an opposite and equal reaction that will oppose the action. In effecting a change on the organisation the client and consultant have a responsibility to understand the forces being used and what opposing force will arise from the consumers.

As in Figure 13 - in most cases a Blueprint intervention like a company reorganisation will provoke a range of opposing forces on the other levels. The teams may ask question: