Part of our Series on Leading & Adopting Change
A major transformation effort cannot succeed without broad support, in attitude and in action, across your organization. In order to get this support, people need to be inspired by the vision and empowered by leadership – in this case, “empowered” means that employees feel capable of helping, that their help is needed, and that organization structures, systems, and supervisors are also in alignment with the vision.
Stages 1-4 of a transformation effort are:
These four stages can inspire people to support the transformation effort, but there are numerous obstacles that can still block them from having the power to do so.
In this article, we summarize Stage 5 of John Kotter’s Leading Change, sharing how leadership can remove these obstacles and enable the people in their organization to give vital support needed for success.
The 4 Biggest Obstacles to Empowering Supporters
1. Structures
In the early stages of a transformation effort, structures are not always a barrier for transformation. However, once people in an organization are being broadly encouraged to engage in a vision, it will become apparent whether the structure of the organization is an obstacle for transformation.
Here are three examples of how structure can undermine vision by disempowering people:
Structure undermines change when:
When structural barriers are not removed, leaders take the risk that employees will grow frustrated and give up trying to support the new vision. It’s important to quickly address structural barriers, or to even take them into account where possible during the vision creation process (Stage 3). If structural barriers are initially allowed to remain and only later removed, you will have lost key momentum and urgency, characteristics that are needed to sustain a change effort.
If it’s so important, why are structural obstacles not removed by leadership? Here are some of the main reasons:
2. Training
During the transformation process, hard work and commitment to the vision can only make up for a lack of skills for so long. Eventually, employees who have experienced changes to their work will get tired because they don’t feel equipped for their new tasks. This fatigue eventually leads to frustration with the overall effort and thus training can be an obstacle to empowering broad support for the new vision. It’s wise for leadership to plan for and provide training, considering the new knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will be needed as the changes are put into effect.
The barriers related to this lack of training fall into three categories:
Once again, if training is an obvious way for leadership to empower people across the organization to support the transformation effort, why isn’t it always provided? There are two main reasons:
Ultimately, training is worth the investment because it can quickly and effectively show employees that their support for the change vision is needed and valuable. In other words, employees feel empowered. The message that leadership communicates by providing the right type and amount of training is, “We will be delegating more, so we are providing this course to help you with your new responsibilities.”
A few last thoughts on training:
3. Systems
When do people resist change? When they don’t believe it’s in their best interest. When do they support change? When they believe the change will be for their long-term good.
When considering whether your organization’s systems create obstacles for empowering people broadly, here is a list of some of the key systems that need to be aligned with the vision:
Barriers associated with an organization’s culture are very difficult to change until the end of a transformation effort, when performance improvements are clear. Until then, systems are easier to change, but the main consideration is: which systems?
The guiding coalition cannot change every system nor fix every inconsistency between the organization’s existing systems and the new vision. The process of aligning systems must be gradual; therefore, the leaders of a change effort need to focus on the systems that present the biggest barriers to the vision. These are often HR systems — anything with big, built-in incentives, especially if those incentives are not aligned with the vision, they need to be changed to fit its goals.
Kotter states in his book that in successful transformations, he often sees that it takes leaders in HR who are willing to boldly change systems to fit the new vision, even amidst pressure to maintain the status quo from line managers or colleagues.
4. Supervisors
If powerful people who have not bought into the vision are not brought on-board early (i.e., in Stages 1-4), it is at this stage where problems will arise. The reason for this is that Stage 5 is the first stage of the transformation effort where visible changes to an organization’s structure or systems take place, and if people with power or influence don’t agree to the changes, they can bring the entire effort to a halt.
Ultimately, when there are influential people who oppose an organization’s vision for transformation, there are no easy solutions, especially because people like this have often been positive contributors to the organization. However, the best solution to this kind of problem is rational and honest dialogue. Leaders can communicate a message along these lines:
“Here’s the situation with the industry, our company, our vision, the support we need from you, and the time frame in which we need this. How can we help you, help us?”
In most cases, this dialogue will lead to one of four results:
Approaching the problem with rational and honest dialogue is difficult, but has many benefits:
Many executives regret not confronting inflexible managers, not only because the issue grows with each stage of transformation, but when employees observe that such a situation is left unaddressed, they lose confidence and get discouraged.
The Power of People in your Organization
No matter which of these four obstacles is blocking progress for your organization, discouraged employees create significant problems for change:
On the other hand, with the right structure, training, systems, and supervisors, the people of your organization will provide the support necessary for a successful transformation.
In Summary: The 5 Keys to Empower Supporters