The Heart of Change

1. See-Feel-Change: The Heart of Successful Transformation

People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.

Emotional connection drives change. The core of successful large-scale change is not strategy, systems, or culture, but changing people's behavior. This behavior change happens most effectively when people's feelings are influenced, not just their thoughts. The see-feel-change pattern is more powerful than analysis-think-change.

Visual and visceral experiences catalyze transformation. Successful change leaders find creative ways to show people the need for change through compelling, eye-catching situations. These experiences evoke emotional responses that facilitate useful change or ease feelings that are getting in the way. Examples include:

• Piling 424 different types of work gloves on a boardroom table to demonstrate purchasing inefficiencies
• Creating a video of an angry customer to highlight service problems
• Redesigning office space to foster collaboration between departments

2. Increase Urgency: Spark the Initial Motivation for Change

You can't manufacture urgency where none exists, but you can remove the blinders that prevent people from seeing the imminent hazards.

Create a compelling case for change. The first step in any successful change effort is to create a sense of urgency among relevant people. This urgency is not just intellectual understanding but an emotional commitment to action. Methods to increase urgency include:

• Showing concrete evidence of problems or opportunities
• Bringing in outside perspectives, such as customer feedback
• Creating experiences that confront people with organizational shortcomings
• Using symbolic actions to highlight the need for change

Avoid complacency and false urgency. Beware of complacency driven by past success or lack of visible crisis. Also, avoid creating anxiety-driven false urgency that leads to frenetic activity without productive results. The goal is to create genuine urgency focused on critical business challenges and exciting opportunities.

3. Build the Guiding Team: Assemble a Powerful Group to Lead Change

A strong guiding coalition is always needed—one with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective.

Assemble a diverse and influential team. Successful large-scale change requires a powerful guiding coalition with the right mix of skills, credibility, and leadership capacity. This team should:

• Include members from different parts of the organization
• Have sufficient power and influence to lead the change effort
• Work together effectively as a team with high levels of trust

Build trust and teamwork. Creating a cohesive guiding team often requires:

• Carefully selecting team members based on expertise and chemistry
• Engaging in team-building activities to develop trust and shared commitment
• Structuring team interactions to foster open communication and collaboration

4. Create a Compelling Vision: Develop Clear and Inspiring Direction

A good vision serves three important purposes: It clarifies the general direction for change, it motivates people to take action in the right direction, and it helps coordinate the actions of different people.

Craft a clear and motivating picture of the future. An effective vision:

• Is imaginable: Conveys a clear picture of what the future will look like
• Is desirable: Appeals to the long-term interests of stakeholders
• Is feasible: Comprises realistic, attainable goals
• Is focused: Is clear enough to provide guidance in decision making
• Is flexible: Is general enough to allow individual initiative and alternative responses
• Is communicable: Is easy to explain quickly and succinctly

Develop supporting strategies. Along with the vision, develop strategies for achieving that vision. These strategies should be bold enough to make the vision a reality while remaining grounded in the organization's capabilities and market realities.

5. Communicate for Buy-In: Effectively Share the Vision and Strategy

Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of the troops are never captured.

Communicate consistently and repeatedly. Effective vision communication:

• Is simple and jargon-free
• Uses metaphors, analogies, and examples
• Uses multiple forums (meetings, memos, newsletters, informal interaction)
• Is repeated frequently
• Is led by example from the guiding coalition
• Explains seeming inconsistencies
• Uses two-way communication

Address emotional barriers. Successful communication goes beyond information transfer to address people's anxieties, concerns, and aspirations. This might involve:

• Using stories and analogies to make the vision relatable
• Providing opportunities for dialogue and questions
• Demonstrating how the vision connects to people's values and goals

6. Empower Action: Remove Barriers and Enable People to Act

By removing barriers to implementation, leaders provide the freedom necessary for employees to work across boundaries and create real impact.

Identify and remove obstacles. Common barriers to empowered action include:

• Structures: Reorganize to align with the vision
• Skills: Provide training for new skills and attitudes
• Systems: Align information and personnel systems to the vision
• Supervisors: Confront managers who undercut needed change

Encourage risk-taking and nontraditional ideas. Create a culture that supports innovation and experimentation. This might involve:

• Encouraging and rewarding new ideas
• Providing resources for pilots and experiments
• Celebrating both successes and productive failures

7. Generate Short-Term Wins: Create Visible Successes to Build Momentum

Without short-term wins, too many people give up or actively join the ranks of those people who have been resisting change.

Plan for and create visible improvements. Effective short-term wins are:

• Visible: People can see for themselves whether the result is real or just hype
• Unambiguous: There can be little argument over the call
• Clearly related to the change effort

Use wins to build momentum. Short-term wins serve multiple purposes:

• Provide evidence that sacrifices are worth it
• Reward change agents with a pat on the back
• Help fine-tune vision and strategies
• Undermine cynics and self-serving resisters
• Keep bosses on board
• Build momentum

8. Don't Let Up: Sustain Acceleration and Drive Ongoing Change

Until changed practices attain a new equilibrium and have been driven into the culture, they can be very fragile.

Maintain urgency and drive deeper change. After initial successes, it's crucial to:

• Use increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision
• Hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision
• Reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents

Tackle bigger problems. As the change effort progresses, take on larger, more deeply rooted issues that were too challenging to address earlier. This might involve:

• Changing longstanding organizational structures
• Addressing entrenched cultural norms
• Tackling complex interdepartmental challenges

9. Make Change Stick: Anchor New Approaches in the Culture

Culture changes only after you have successfully altered people's actions, after the new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time, and after people see the connection between the new actions and the performance improvement.

Connect new behaviors to organizational success. To make change last:

• Articulate the connections between new behaviors and organizational success
• Develop means to ensure leadership development and succession
• Create new employee orientation processes that reinforce the new culture

Institutionalize the changes. Embed the new approaches in the organization's systems and processes, including:

• Performance management and reward systems
• Hiring and promotion criteria
• Onboarding and training programs
• Organizational structures and reporting relationships

By following these key takeaways, leaders can guide their organizations through successful large-scale transformations, creating lasting change that positions them for success in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

Last updated: January 22, 2025