Mixed Emotions
/Change initiatives usually span months, sometimes years. Team sentiment follows predictable patterns through the inevitable ups and downs. Understanding the psychology helps us all manage.
Nothing worth doing is every easy, right? Changing the way a business works is a challenge; implementing new systems, changing the details of day-to-day activities, shipping a new product, onboarding a major new customer.
If we graph a typical project team's level of stress, we see a bell curve with the peak somewhere around the three-quarter point, only dropping off after the project is done. With forethought, it’s possible to render this closer to a straight line, or at least a shallow bell curve with a lower peak. In short, a happier team, and happy teams do better work.
Uncertainty is one of the biggest causes of work-related stress. Comfort with the status quo is a natural sentiment. At the outset of a major initiative, it’s vital to manage uncertainty by communicatiing a vision for making things better, emphasizing the positives of improvement, and engaging the team in how best to achieve the goals.
Time seems plentiful at the start of a new project. But there’s a danger here. It takes effort to build inertia, and I've seen many a project get off to a slow start due to a lack of urgency. The danger is, of course, that you reach the half-way point and only a quarter of the work has been done. As the challenges become clear, the stress can grow. Then the time pressure kicks in.
Get ready
Prepare for the worst and expect the best. This is Change Management in the raw. Time for calm heads, for leaders to step up, deal with the issues, and make sober assessments of the best way to win.
Here are some key turning points to prepare for:
- Initial anxiety : Communicate and engage.
- Launch : Focus on building inertia to overcome complacency.
- Planning : Spend the time to identify foreseeable issues and allow time to deal with the likely setbacks.. This doesn’t guarantee against pleasant surprises, but it does mean you’ll have the capacity to deal with a much smaller list of adjustments.
- Tension : You can leverage a little stress as a motivator. But don’t burn your team out.
- Resourcing : Focus on small teams handling an even workload throughout the project. Adding people at the back end is not cost effective and rarely brings completion forward.
- Milestones : Design frequent milestones into your plan. Deliver useful work early and often. Ticking stuff off a long list is a great meter for progress.
- Wins : Do not let wins pass unnoticed. Celebrations and recognition are a great way to refuel the team’s energy levels.
- Bad News Days : There will be days when it seems there's nothing BUT bad news. Keep your chin up and break on through.
- Testing : The rubber hits the road when testing begins. Issues will surface and may not be checked off fast enough to hit the go live date. Start component testing as early as possible.
- Tipping Point : Keep an eye out for the tipping point when things suddenly fall in to place. It usually happens (trust me) but you can’t plan on it.
- Go Live : Do not take shortcuts, overtax the team, or declare success too early. You need to make this last step as easy as possible
- Stabilization : You’re not done with Go Live. Plan for a period of uncertainty. The work isn’t done until youve realized the benefits.
And breathe …
You will complete the project with a mix of relief and satisfaction in a job well done. And don’t forget those Bad News Days. They teach us resourcefulness, and make the completion celebrations all the sweeter.
Sound Familiar?
- Think back to an initiative earlier in your career. What were the turning points?
- Thinking ahead to your next major initiative, how do you plan to handle the emotions of your team?
As ever, let me know what you come up with. If this rings any bells, contact me at graham@primeFusion.ca and we can discuss.