Jason A. Belt

Connecting the ‘Why’ of the change to the People(s) impacted…

As a manager, we often are faced with the difficult challenge of pushing initiatives that are very challenging. Sometimes these initiatives are even tough to handle from a human perspective. Like, mandating people to work overtime to meet a deadline. Making some cuts in tools, technology, and maybe even jobs that people truly depend upon for their livelihood.

Changes like this can really stress the fabric of a leader to the point of bringing out the weaknesses we all have. Maybe you are a person that really has a difficult time with conflict, so you may shy away from handling these types of situations head-on. Perhaps you are a person that may come across as lacking empathy, so you fear how you may be perceived when making cuts in a downturn for the business. Or there is the fear of coming off as a tyrant for mandating overtime?

I have been there in each of these scenarios plus many more as a leader over the years with different organizations and teams. Some of the scenarios I handled very well, and others I did not, but then I was taught a very critical concept by a great leader I had the fortune of learning from earlier in my career.

I was navigating a very tough mandatory IT Management System change and this was not going very well in two key ways.

1. The system was very different than the old system which worked well for everyone internally. The grantor agency mandated the change from afar, so agency buy-in was hard to come by.
2. The team that reported to me really hated the way the new system worked during early adoption, and I did not connect with them about the change at the right level.

I had just concluded the latest of many system adoption meetings where the whole agency, including my team, were in a room.  We were working through the current state of the implementation, the next phase that was beginning in a week, and then their issues with the system. My leader was attending the meeting and she sat there in support of me but did not speak up when the meeting turned in a negative direction. She was wise and let me handle the moment as she knew I would learn more from some measure of difficulty, vs her engaging and bailing me out.

When fielding the issues as they were reported by the different departments, I was organized, detailed, and then responded with technical explanations but that was the end of it for me. I would field their questions or feedback with a direct, but robotic and rote tone and then in real-time document their words in the project planning document. So, when the meeting ended, I questioned the success of the project at this time.

All of the people had left once the meeting concluded, but my boss stuck around. She asked me how I was, as she always did because she cared about me and everyone as people first. She then listened as I conveyed my doubts, fears, and feelings about the people and the state of the project. She then smiled and stood up and patted me on the back. She said, ‘Jason, you need to tell them the noble why of this project’. I was confused, so I asked her to explain further. She said, ‘It’s simple Jason, we need to make this change for the highest level reason that our funder is demanding the change, but then overall it will make us better as a program with the new features we are able to implement which will make us better at responding to the constituents we serve and ultimately, that being better is the noble why.”

She always had a way with people and was always concerned with the human factor first, so she was telling me that I could improve the project by leading with the “Why” and then approaching the change from a human perspective and a focus on being the best we could be for the people we served. Of course, I knew she was helping me be a better leader through this situation and for that, I will always be grateful.

In this scenario, I took her advice to heart and approached each member of my team and the agency stakeholders and re-introduced the why, but then truly listened to their fears about the change. I learned so much about each of the people and what they cared about and then was able to then speak to their concerns from their perspective, people furthering a mission vs just users of a new tool.

So, each of us as leaders navigating a tough change, should approach the change first from the highest level ‘why’ and then approached the change from how it impacts our people first, (I feel like this sentence leaves something out like it needs a “what would happen next” element – were you trying to connect the next sentence? I made a change to the sentence to make it make sense to me, change as you need). Knowing the why connects us together as people, but then focuses the change on the short, medium, and long term vs the bumps in the road by themselves. Without a clear destination, the bumps in the road are nothing more than a repetitive annoyance for no reason. The highest level destination, or why we are moving through this, is the most important communication touchpoint.

I hope this story helps frame the importance of connecting the ‘why’ of the change to the people that it impacts internally and externally.

All the best!

JB