WE QUEUE. DO YOU?

Darn:  Got in the wrong check-out line!

If you’re like us, chances are you’ve got a litany of to-dos (or not) when trying to cash out at a store.  Look for female cashiers.  Get behind those with less than half-full carts.  Avoid shoppers with kids.  Re-jigger the number of items to qualify for the Express Lane.

Do these strategies work?  Not always.  So it should come as no surprise that brick-and-mortar retailers have made this a science, beginning with Little’s Law (calculating the wait of a particular line) and, perhaps, concluding with PayPal’s latest product, Beacon, recognizing your smartphone the minute you enter a store.

[Okay, we do shop online.  But, somehow, Peapod just doesn’t get our produce right.]

Our point is the waiting.  Once you hit three minutes, experts tell us, the perception of wait time multiplies exponentially.  And patience isn’t our strong suit.  If the queue takes too long, we’ll most probably abandon our purchases, mumble under our breaths about the store, and leave pronto.

Imagine, then, working with a team or a function or an enterprise during times of change.  Say, undergoing an acquisition, when the deal itself might be moving at lightning speed, but the information isn’t.  That wait time will be interminable for employees who don’t know their status, where they’ll be sitting, and/or what they’ll be doing.  Granted, there are good and legal reasons for not releasing the information.  On the other hand, it’s also humane to, at the very least, give workers an idea of the process, the calendar, and a wide swath of times when decisions will be made and communicated.  Broadcasting factual information regularly mutes the gossip and discontent, and psychologically lessens the waiting time.

Then again it’s nice to linger by the “impulse buys” aisle …

OF FENG SHUI AND FORECASTS

With any new year, East or West, almost everyone succumbs to the temptation to predict.

This time, it’s the Lunar celebration, with more than a billion of our Asian neighbors at home with family.

Some of the media’s annual visions are way too easy … and snore-able.  Like Canadian pop star and “we’re so over him” Justin Bieber will get into more trouble again.  Setting records in temperature and natural disasters, unfortunately, seems to prevail, given climate change.  Fighting looms over local conflicts – in the Middle East in particular.

Other forecasts depend on a wide application of common sense:  The economy’s slated to be up in the West, subdued in the East, with scaled-down spending on luxury items.  The Affordable Care Act will still be in the hospital, holding a diagnosis of “wait and see.”  Cost-cutting continues in the business arena, with corporate chiefs still uncertain about full-speed-ahead profitability.

This Year of the Horse, though, doesn’t address the trends in our profession.  Again, instinct and experience say that change is our constant.  What will matter is how well we accept change, indeed, how smartly we anticipate it.  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to recognize that digital dominance is here and now.  Or that employees will continue to seek meaning in work.  Or that consumers need to be segmented into even more and smaller cohort groups.  Or that advertising is forever searching for the magic metric.

Our task is to figure out how to best use these trends, these changes – to our advantage and to our employer’s.  Why wait for the next best disruptor?  We could, using what we’ve learned, develop our own crystal ball – and what’s more, activate it.  Master the realm of the new and newer and yet-to-be media.  Emphasize individual contributors, holistically.  Network with and review group formations on different e-platforms.  Apply New Age measures to campaigns. 

No crystal ball needed.  Just wisdom, a shot of courage, and the ability to take change in hand. 

CUSTOMIZED CHANGE? DUH.

We call ourselves “change agnostics.”

As many do.  There are so many change management frameworks to apply that it doesn’t matter which is chosen.  Really. 

You could be a disciple of John Kotter.  A devotee of William Bridges.  Even ProSci certified card carriers.  To us, if clients prefer one architecture over another, so be it.  We’ll adopt it, embrace it, even.

But what we won’t do is slavishly follow the principles, from Point A to Point Z.  Why?  If you think about it:

• ·       Change is never linear.  Though the business case/reason for the shift might be apparent to some, trust us, it won’t be to all.  Somewhere, someone (or most likely, some group) will either have a hard time recalling the “why” or are troubled about the connection between the why and the what.  Too, a number accept the change at first, without whimpers.  Then, suddenly, in media res, they start questioning and erecting barriers.
• ·       Corporations are not the same.  Even if they inhabit the same industry.  There’s that elusive, differentiating culture, for one.  Everyone will admit that a Lenovo differs from Dell – not just in terms of products, but also in how things work around here.  And though many internal programs might appear to be the same, say, HR benefits or performance management, the determinant is in how employees think and feel about them.  So why would the same framework and tools work for each?

What caused our tirade?  One not-to-be-mentioned global professional services firm recently issued a white paper about the mandate for tailored change, driven by analytics, precision, and insights.  It advocates pairing objective and subjective data, ensuring leadership is on board, and following three roads to sustainable change through head, heart, and wallet.

Our response?  [The quick one:  See our headline.]  The more thoughtful answer:  Tailoring or segmentation is something our marketing and communications and advertising brethren have practiced for years.  Today, most of us apply customized change inside as well as outside, along with good hard looks at big and small data and a philosophy that uses change as a momentum, not isolated events. 

It’s never an easy path, this notion of change.  What are your thoughts, dear reader?

THAT FUD FACTOR

Change management professionals know the acronym FUD well:  Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

Most of us, in fact, are familiar with apprehension; it faces us almost every day.  Are we doing what’s right for our clients/employers?  How will we know this strategy-tactic-technique will succeed?  What will happen if it flops?

Lately, we’ve been hearing more of this anxiety in our conversations, subtly, quietly, in a hard-to-detect undertone.  Often, it’s a premature prelude to recommendations:  “I’ve only got a few people to implement this, so it’s gotta be simple to do.  Otherwise, we won’t do it.”  Just as frequently, it’s accompanied by budget caveats:  “We’ve got X dollars.  We need to make this count!”

It’s all fear-propelled, deep down.  That emotion could come from an unsteady economy, working in a volatile industry, personal concerns, new management, and all of the above. 

Understandable … yet disconcerting:  As professionals accustomed to the slings and arrows of continual crises, ongoing changes, and never-ending accountabilities, that fear-of-failure gene doesn’t inhabit our minds naturally.  It takes a great deal of courage to convince a CEO of the importance of a media interview, present a completely different brand strategy, champion a new campaign, and tell clients that this particular change won’t be easy.  Taking risks, in many circumstances, is embedded in how we earn our livelihoods; we prepare, we benchmark, we consult, we execute, and we measure.

Look at it from the corporate point of view:  In times calling for growth and innovation, overcautious, even negative-thinking employees become a distraction, if not detraction.  How do you shake colleagues out of the NIH* or paralyzed mindsets into taking calculated risks and, yes, managing possible failures?  Sure, upper management and executives can and should set the stage, even broadcast the “it’s okay to fail” message.  Is that enough? 

History gives us cues – in the form of Thomas Edison, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, and Michael Jordan (among hundreds of others).  It’s up to us, as brand and design and marketing and communications bearers, to translate those hints into a “let’s go for it” encouragement, every day.

*Not Invented Here