At the same time, optimism can be overdone – especially when optimism turns into overconfidence or turning a blind eye to problems and challenges.

Eric Klein recently blogged about this phenomenon, calling it “the problem with being positive.”  He wrote about leaders who shut down conversation and shy away from conflict by overdoing an emphasis on the positive.

The balance of realism and optimism is critically important for change leaders.   Leaders who squash any expressions of concern or who react negatively to problems run the risk of missing major issues that will ultimately impact performance. For this reason, some researchers have started to use the term “realistic optimism”. Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.  writes that realistic optimism consists of two parts:

Hurd goes on to say that:

My take on this is that effective leaders proactively look for facts, data, and opinions on what could go wrong.  They then take positive action – either personally or by empowering others – to overcome obstacles.  Their actions and words convey confidence and optimism, thereby positively impacting others’ emotions and commitment.

Check out the following resources for some good suggestions on being realistically optimistic:

• The Balance Needed to Lead Change HBR article by Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay, Kerry A. Bunker and Michael Wakefield
• The Problem with Being Positive, blog post by Eric Klein
• Just Enough Anxiety, book by Bob Rosen

Interestingly, there are several new books and articles on this topic that are hitting the market right now.  In May 2010 Forum corporation released their new book, Strategic Speed.  The book addresses these critical concerns for leaders:

• What role does speed, or lack thereof, play in the high failure rate of strategic initiatives?
• What are the barriers, or traps, to execution?
• Do faster companies financially out-perform slower companies?
• How can I engage people in accelerating our strategy?

The book’s authors found that many change efforts fail because leaders act so quickly that they ignore the people factor.  Conversely, efforts that succeed are characterized by the presence of three people factors: clarity, unity, and agility.

Watch the the video below to see  Ed Boswell, Forum CEO and one of the book’s  co-authors talking about key findings:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In a May 2010 HBR article, Need Speed? Slow Down,  Jocelyn R. Davis and Tom Atkinson, also of Forum Corporation highlight the differences between strategically slow companies and the more successful strategically fast companies.  Among their findings:

• In strategically slow companies, groups move on to new projects without taking time to debrief whereas in strategically fast companies, groups make it a point to capture and communicate lessons learned.
• In strategically slow companies, time is rarely made for training and education whereas in strategically fast companies, even experienced employees receive training when initiatives are launched.
• In strategically slow companies, people work at cross-purposes due to competing objectives whereas in strategically fast companies, objectives and systems are aligned.

What about your own firm?  Is overdrive causing you to be strategically slow?  Is it time to slow down in order to speed up?

Spring is very different at an altitude of 8700 feet in Colorado.  Two weeks ago our aspens and lilacs barely had buds.  Today everything is gloriously green and the lilacs are literally unfolding their flowers right before our eyes.

The difference in the two springs has me thinking about speed and urgency.  The trees and flowers here know that they only have a few weeks to execute so they make the most of every minute.

Earlier this spring, I volunteered on a committee that organized a large community event in less than 6 weeks.  Initially, I and others in the group felt stressed and overwhelmed with the short time frame.  In the end, not only did we pull off a great event, but I learned that the short time frame actually helped.  We knew would couldn’t just meet and talk endlessly – we actually had to act . . . fast.  We kept meetings short and focused. We each committed to action items and we followed through.  We acted with urgency.

Change expert John Kotter has written extensively about how leaders need to instill a similar sense of urgency in order to lead change successfully. Urgency is a sense of pressing importance.  As Kotter writes, “A real sense of urgency is a highly positive and highly focused force.”

The challenge, I believe, is finding the right balance between urgency and overdrive.

As I’ve written about previously, overdrive is the state of dysfunctional momentum caused when leaders put extreme pressure on their people to get things done faster and with fewer resources.  Researchers have found that overdrive ultimately causes individual and company performance to suffer.  In my work on change initiatives, I find that overdrive causes leaders to miss or ignore key problems, to skip the critical communication and engagement phases, and to plow over resistance.

So how do you create a sense of urgency without pushing your organization into overdrive?  Kotter provides many specific guidelines and suggestions in his book, A Sense of Urgency.  It’s a quick and enjoyable read and one I highly recommend for all leaders.

But if you don’t have the time to read the book just yet, start by staying focused on no more than one to three specific and clear goals.  Every day communicate the importance of the goals, ask what progress is being made, reward progress and proactively investigate problems, listen, and address barriers.

In addition, I recommend having explicit conversations with your people about the speed with which you and they are operating.  One technique that works well is to draw a long line on whiteboard.  Label the far left with the word, “complacency”.  Label a middle/right point with the word “urgency” and the far right with the word “overdrive”.  Invite people to place a dot or an X with where they feel the team or organization is.  Talk openly about the results.  Doing so will help you and your team and/or organization operate in a state of energized alignment.

For more on this topic, see my previous posts on Avoiding Overdrive and Is Your Team Psyched Up and In Sync?

In his books, Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith uses the term “criteria” to get at the concept of being specific.  For example, when coaching an executive who wanted to spend more time with his kids – Goldsmith pushed the executive to be specific.  Exactly how much time with which kid? When?  Committing to spending 4 one-on-one hours with each child allowed this executive to track his progress and truly change.

The authors of Influencer present a similar idea in their book – claiming that for change to succeed, we need to get specific about who needs to change which exact behaviors.  They use the term “vital behaviors” to describe the concept and share scores of examples where change succeeded because the leader got specific.

Most recently, Chip and Dan Heath provided support for the need for specificity in their book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard.  The Heath brothers use the term “black & white goal” and argue that a concrete goal of zero defects, zero safety incidents, or zero snacks results in much more real change than a vague goal like reduce accidents, or calories.

There you have it – three books from the experts – saying the same thing (albeit a bit differently).  If you want change, you have to get specific.   So NO sweets for me until I lose the pounds I gained eating BBQ all week in Austin!

I use the term “Overdrive” to describe this tendency.  Overdrive is basically the overuse of the “get it done” style. Many business leaders I work with move into overdrive without even realizing it and recognizing its consequences.

It so happens that two premier business publications (HBR and the MIT Sloan Management Review) addressed the issue of overdrive this month, using different terms.

In Harvard Business Review, Heike Bruch and Jochen Menges write about a phenomenon called “The Acceleration Trap.” They argue that the constant pressure that executives are putting on their people to get things done faster and with fewer resources  ultimately causes company’s performance to suffer.  Sample grab:

The MIT Sloan Management Review article written by Michelle Barton and Kathleen Sutcliffe is titled, “Learning When to Stop Momentum.”  Barton and Sutcliffe, both from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, studied the connections between teams that fight wildfires and business teams.  They found that groups in both situations often fall victim to “dysfunctional momentum” – which occurs when people continue to work toward an original goal without pausing to recalibrate or reexamine their processes, even in the face of cues that suggest they should change course.

Both articles provide suggestions for overcoming the traps associated with moving too quickly.  While all of the suggestions are good, I think the success companies will have with implementing them will depend on the support of the most senior level leaders.  The very people who have a tendency to go into overdrive themselves must realize that sometimes we all have to slow down in order to speed up.

As Peter Bregman writes in his book, Point B: A Short Guide to Leading Big Change, providing information is important in any change.  But, he writes,  “tell & sell” isn’t enough.  Real change happens when every person impacted is actively engaged in the process of change – to the point where they become owners  – not targets of the change.

Just last week, Melissa Dutmers of RiverFork Consulting posted 9 questions to ask when leading a change:

1. What do you think about this change?
2. How do you feel about this change?
3. What do you see your role as in this change?
4. What is your opinion about this change?
5. What is your experience with this type of change?
6. What are you working on and how will you be impacted by this change?
7. What are your ideas about this change?
8. Would you change anything about this change?
9. Why do you think this change is needed (or not)?

Her readers added their own suggestions, including:

• What are you already doing in your day to day work that supports the change?
• What areas do you feel will be a challenge for you to adjust?
• How can I support you?
• What’s most important to you about the change?
• How will this proposed change be different from past changes in this organization?

Great advice from people who know that the job of a change leader is to educate, engage, and empower others.

Conduct Conversations – Not Training

While the manager sessions were called “training” and were accompanied by workbooks and slides, the experience was much more of a facilitated dialogue than a one-way download of information.  

Course evaluation feedback indicated that managers were pleasantly surprised at the level of open, honest conversation that took place in the sessions. I believe this point is essential for future programs of this nature.

Lesson Learned: When is comes to gaining support for a change, conversation matters more than content.

Make Space for Emotions

While it was important for managers to learn the content of the course, in every case it became apparent that the managers themselves needed an opportunity to vent, express their concerns, and name the emotions that they and their people were experiencing.  

We started the sessions by introducing the change cycle and the emotions that typically accompany a change (shock & denial, anger, uncertainty & anxiety, understanding, and ultimately acceptance).  We drew the performance dip that typically happens when people move into anger, uncertainty and anxiety and discussed the fact that the dip is not avoidable.  Rather than pretending there are not emotional reactions to change, we encouraged managers to accept and acknowledge emotions.  

I knew this model would be helpful to managers in communicating with their employees.  What surprised me was how helpful it ended up being for them.  In every single session, managers would speak up and say, “Okay, I realize I am in the dip, but here is my concern . . .”  By having the model posted, we gave managers permission and space to name and work through their own emotions.   

Lessons Learned:
1.    Allow and encourage emotions to enter the conversation early on.
2.    Along with content and key messages, provide models or frameworks to help managers understand the emotions they and others are experiencing as a result of the change.  

Don’t Overcome Resistance – Explore It

The final point I want to address here deals with resistance. Overcoming resistance is the most searched term in the field of change management. All too often change leaders looks to “nip resistance in the bud.”  What I have learned over the years is that the best way to deal with resistance is to get it out in the open and to talk about the reasons for resistance.  

In these workshops, my colleagues and I stopped delivering content about 30 minutes into the session and asked what questions people had.  Usually we got one or two mild questions.  We then asked people to share what rumors and concerns they were hearing.  Managers started to open up and discuss the harder aspects of the change.  Finally we asked managers to “channel their inner skeptics” and ask everything they knew their most skeptical employees would ask.  In some cases the managers would say, “Really . . .are you sure?”  Often one would test the waters and when we listened, acknowledged and openly discussed the concern the floodgates would open and the questions would flow.  

This point is counter-intuitive but essential. When communicating a change, our natural tendency to shut down and overcome resistance forces concerns underground.  Once suppressed, resistance grows stronger and becomes harder to resolve.  It is important for change leaders and communicators to welcome, acknowledge and explore resistance in order for it to dissipate.

Lessons Learned:
1.    Make it okay for managers to ask skeptical, cynical questions.  
2.    Dialogue (don’t debate) about the change.

1. When senior leaders invited and answered questions
2. When leaders who were involved in the process talked about their personal experience with the details, especially tough decisions they made along the way
3. When leaders acknowledged that the transition would be difficult for employees and simultaneously emphasized that it was the right thing to do in the long run

What struck me about each class was the fact that it was leader involvement throughout the workshop that was particularly powerful.  The cases where a leader kicked off a session with a few words and then left were not nearly as effective as the times where a) the division head participated in the whole sessions or b) the division head kicked off the session and one or more of his/her direct reports who worked on the details of the transition stayed and participated in the session.

Where we saw buy-in really start to happen is through dialogue in the classroom. In many cases, I as the facilitator would explain how the overall process of mapping jobs worked.  When managers had questions, the most powerful and effective answers came from people in the room who had been involved in the mapping for the departments represented in that room.  

I don’t think this implies that a senior leader kickoff isn’t important.  Rather, this experience showed that a 5-10 minute kickoff isn’t enough to get manager buy-in and support.

Lessons: Hearing from the most senior leader that he/she supports a change is necessary but not sufficient for getting a group to support a change. Two-way dialogue with leaders about the details and tough decisions is where buy-in really happens.  

Click here to view the embedded video.

Are you leveraging fun and curiosity to interest people in your change effort?