The Change Model: A Framework For Leading Successful Change With Curtis Bateman - Episode 179

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The Change Model: A Framework For Leading Successful Change With Curtis Bateman

 

Curtis, thank you for being on the show. The topic around change is something that we're dealing with so much today. That's why I loved reading your book that's co-authored and we'll get into that in a bit, but how to turn uncertainty into opportunity. I think it's something that we can all benefit from in this world. If there's nothing that doesn't change, it's that everything changes. Thank you for being on the show. 

Change: How to Turn Uncertainty into Opportunity - https://www.franklincovey.com/change/

It's a pleasure. Thanks for reading the book. I'm looking forward to talking about it. 

You start the book off as a fable. That's where this starts. This idea of who rocked the boat and it weaves through some interesting things, talking about what are the five reactions that we have to change. It also talks about the four zones of going through change, which I found very fascinating. I wasn't sure where you might want to start in terms of that conversation. 

Probably with an expression of gratitude because the whole fable idea came from my years of working with Dr. Spencer Johnson who wrote Who Moved My Cheese? I loved it and I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with him. It helped me realize how important storytelling is as a medium to help people learn mostly because you can leave a lot of white space for people to discover. 

That's what we tried to do as I worked on the parable or fable, people choose different words. It’s trying to say, “What's enough in the story to prompt people to think and then learn from the white space that's there?” I'm glad you liked it. We've had a lot of people react well to it. It's been translated into 4 or 5 languages already, and it's fun to see it start to grow. 

What is it? It's one of those areas where you're able to insert yourself into those characters and think, “How would I operate like this? Whether it's move, minimize, wait, resist, or quit, which one am I?” As I was reading through these, I was also trying to put them with personality types as well. What type of personality is this person based on this style? 

I hope you figured it all out. We spent so much work on those characters' names. You think they are one-word names, but we spent so much work to not have it be constraining. Every one of those is a reaction to change that is fairly common. It's contextual. In a personal change, I might behave or move, and in a professional change where I feel something is happening to me, I might wait or resist. It's contextual and it gives people the chance to read through the story over and over again and say, “What's different this time? What's different about where I am? What can I learn this time going through the book?” 

Let me take a step back for a minute because the book is co-authored. There were four of you that contributed to this. How was that decision made? How did the four of you say, “I think we're the best suited to create the ideal book in regards to change.” 

You'll know and many in our audience will know that FranklinCovey is the organization connected with this. When FranklinCovey gets involved in writing a book, there is a fairly intentional thought process. This is a space I've been working in for twenty years. The basic model was work that I had started years ago. 

We looked at, “We're going to write a book and people want to talk to us about it. Who are the people inside FranklinCovey who have experience in the space using this content? Who are the people who have the capacity, talent, and interest in it?” When you start to put all that together, you start to distill a group of people, you shortlist it, and then we talk about what could each person's role be. 

What's interesting is one of the things we wanted to do in the book is to have each author have a voice. There was a lot of exploration around what could your voice be and does that voice overlaps or stands unique to you. In the book, Marché, one of the co-authors, has a deep connection to the personal impact of change. 

She has stories that are individual and personal in nature. Andy has a lot of executive and organizational context and school education. Christie has an academic background. What we realized is the four of us lined up with very different viewpoints and experiences that gave more breadth and more scope to the book. We felt that would make it more approachable to more people so they could see themselves or their circumstances in the actual book. 

As I was reading that, I was thinking, especially as I got to the end thinking, there were so many different disciplines that came into play, whether it was the influence and getting people to buy in or understanding how people make decisions to get them to want to go along with the change. That to me was the fascinating part. 

One that stood out at the beginning, and I don't know whether it was Marche or whether it was Christie who mentioned John Cotter, who I love his work. I think it's one of those models, Cotter’s especially, that doesn't get very much attention. It surprises me because I think it's such a powerful model regarding change. 

That was Christie and you're right. What I love is there are some great thinkers out there that have talked about change. Sometimes they talk about it from a process point of view, they talk about it from an individual point of view. Sometimes they talk about it from an organizational and structural point of view. None of our work is meant to diminish or even replace that, but to say, “In all of that, there's a predictable pattern and this predictable pattern has people that are involved in it.” Those people, as they go through this predictable pattern or teams or organizations, are thinking, feeling, and doing pretty consistent things. How could we help them at each stage of those four zones that you're talking about? 

In my view, Cotter's work, even Spencer Johnson's work that I mentioned, all fit together nicely with this. I don't think any of them fight against each other. We tried to give an overall framework. One of my experiences has been a lot of the works tend to focus on certain parts or a certain viewpoint. We're trying to give a framework that's big enough to embrace all of that and meet organizations and people where they are with the tools they have and then say, “How can we help you on the way?”
 

Focus On The People

To that point, there was a section in there as I was reading and it talked about one of the mistakes that was made. Oftentimes, we think about changes as a process that needs to be managed. To your point, I think that's a mistake that is probably often made. It’s “Where is my list? How do I get this done?” 

There's no doubt about that. I've experienced that. I've had companies that say, “We brought in this firm XYZ. They gave us all this list and process and workflow, but it's still not happening.” That's because the hearts and minds of the people didn't come along on the journey. That doesn't mean the change was bad. That doesn't mean the work they did was bad. It just that it left out one of the key stakeholders in the change and that's all the people.

We're trying to add to that and say, “If we focus on the people, we have a point of view that says organizations try and hire capable people.” Let's unleash them rather than try and tell them what to do.” Let's unleash their potential, give them an understanding of the journey they're on, and see what they can bring to the equation to help make the change even more successful. That's where some of the opportunity emerges.

With that intention, if you look at what the majority of change initiatives, especially fail. From your perspective, is that something that you were going through saying that the biggest piece of this is the people? 

That's right. Depending on the data, the study looks at 70%, 75%, or 80% of change initiatives fail to reach their intended outcome. They make it somewhere. It's funny, we had a company we worked with that as you read the model there, you go through the zone of status quo, the zone of disruption, adoption, and innovation. This organization we were working with kept making it through the dip, the two most difficult stages.

They stopped every time because they were so tired and fatigued that they never got to a point where they were deriving any value from the change. They were just paying the price for every single change. It's those falling short that we wanted to help with and highlight, “Here are where things are going wrong.” Bring your people along, give them some tools and some resources, and let them help you create a lot more benefit from it rather than just surviving it.” 

When you talk about that too, the more times an organization goes through a type of change or brings a different organization in, the more difficult it is the next time because people say, “We've done this before. It doesn't work. We can't make the change.” It almost works against you when you don't experience that success. 

As you would imagine, we've done a lot of research on this and 88% of people think that the change is going to lead to something worse for them. 70% to 75% of people believe the change will be less good for the organization and it's for the reason you described. There is this experience bias that says, “I've seen this movie and it doesn't end well.” You have this pattern that repeats itself over and over again. 

It reminds me of work in healthcare around antibiotic treatments. Oftentimes, if it's a ten-day course, you're always told, “Take all ten days because if you don't, either the bacteria is going to come back or worse, you're going to become resistant to it.” I see that same analogy of what you're talking about in terms of changes. We do just enough, some of the bad habits go away, then we stop taking the medicine, and it comes back, or worse, it comes back and what we tried before doesn't work anymore. We've now become resistant to it. I think it's what you're speaking to there. 

If you apply the change model or that framework we talked about in the book, when you're in the depths of the change and the zone of disruption and adoption, there's a tangible cost related to it. If you do what you're describing, you stop with the prescribed treatment or you become a little bit immune to it, what you're doing is increasing the overall cost of the change.

Imagine how punitive that is to organizations when they find themselves dealing with that negative cycle. We're trying to be clear and make it transparent that there is a cost there. The point about the antibiotics that you raised is interesting because what takes people through the change is usually a vision of something better. 

There's a reason we're going through the change. We want a better outcome. The same is true with the antibiotic. You want better health if you're taking the antibiotics. You want to make your health better and then stop short when you don't allow yourself to get the full benefit. It leads to unintended consequences. 

 

Four Zones Of Change

I would fully agree. When you talk about these in the fable, these four zones of change, you start with the status quo, which is we are going down the river. What does that look like for organizations?

People feel comfortable. They know what to expect when they show up to work. It feels routine. As humans, we like predictable routines. They make us feel at ease. That minimizes the number of decisions we have to make. In that zone of status quo, we feel like we're between changes. We feel everything is predictable and understandable and we know what we're doing.

As humans, we like predictable routines. It makes us feel at ease and minimizes the number of decisions we have to make.

The risk there is it means we're not necessarily preparing for the next change. The moment the change arrives, it can be quite alarming and disruptive to us. Leaders sometimes might find that unintentionally, there's a complacency around change. There's a lack of preparation and it probably feels good to people though, “This is so nice to have a little bit of a break from that last change. Do you remember how miserable that was?”

The reality is it's probably doing them a disservice because, if you use a fitness or a training metaphor, they're not strengthening their muscles. They're letting them atrophy. What you should be doing is taking that opportunity to develop a little bit of strength and capability and prepare for what will inevitably be the next change on the horizon. 

I love the analogy of exercise too. There are times when I hesitate using that because I don't know the crowd you’re in but some people don't exercise. You're making them more reluctant, but it's so true in regards to how you build muscles. It's not through ease. It's through strain that you get stronger. If you did ten reps that was easy to do. Yes, you're doing ten reps, but you're not getting any stronger. 

For all of those who don't have fitness metaphors, pick a musician that may be between performances. You'll find that those who want to be experts still practice so that when the next piece of music, the next performance comes along, their fingers are well conditioned, the calluses, or whatever it is, the trumpet player, they're ready, and at peak performance condition to do the next piece of music or performance. 

You move in from that comfort stage to the disruption, which is the waterfall. We're going over the edge here. You're at this point, I'm blanking on the term that we used or that you used between disruption and adoption, but it's a decision. 

It's called the point of decision, which is such an interesting space. I learned a lot about this particular point in the change process from one of my cheese parables. This is what made it clear to me. In the zone of disruption, everybody is individually trying to come to grips with, “What's changing? Why is it changing? What's the impact on me? What's the impact on me as a leader, as an individual on the organization?” 

You have to transition from figuring that out to saying, “What am I going to do about it?” The point of the decision says, “I get all the questions that I've been asking and I've got the answers and I'm comfortable with it. What am I going to do about it?” The hope is that we engage with the change and start to work through the zone of adoption where we're embracing the change. In reality, not everybody does. 

If you look at an organization, some people opt out and that's where “Quit” and “Quits” show up in the storyline saying, “I don't think this is for me, I'm going to leave,” or “I don't think this is for me, I'm going to fight against it.” Both have consequences. What's interesting is when “Quit” jumps off the boat and leaves away from the change that's underway, “Quit” is initiating another significant change, but it feels better. That's the point of the decision. One engagement process is saying, “I'm going to lean into this change, I like it, I can see where it's going, I'm going to make it work.” The other one says, “It doesn't work for me. I'm going to move away from it.” In both instances though, there's a decision to engage in a change. 

As I was reading that, I thought of a study that I had read. They talk about the same valley, but it’s the Valley of Despair. That's what I thought about when I was reading this because my guess is at this point, this is where disruption comes into play and people say, “Let's go back to the status quo.” It should be where we were. 

Without a doubt, “Let's go back to where we were. I've seen this movie before. I know how it ends. Let's go back.” That all contributes to that 75% to 80% of change initiatives that don't reach their intended outcome. The question then is why in the world did we start to change in the first place? There had to be a reason for it. From a leadership point of view, what we find is if people want to go backward, that means we haven't created a compelling enough vision to engage their hearts and minds in the journey.

Along those lines as we talk about the characters in this, are there certain characters at certain points that become more prominent? 

There certainly can be and I should say these five reactions are the most common reactions that I've seen. It's not to say there aren't other reactions, but most of them fit inside these common reactions. What we experience is as a change is introduced, the move tends to surface because they thrive on something new, either out of boredom, attention deficit, or enthusiasm for this long-awaited change.
 

The Change Model: As a change is introduced, the move tends to surface because they thrive on something new, either out of boredom, attention deficit, or enthusiasm for this long-awaited change.
 

We always see moves emerge early in the change process. That's interesting. It's both good and bad. It provides a lot of positive energy in the direction of the change. It can also provide a lot of misguided energy because you don't know what you don't know yet. You can see that show up there, but other than that, I think the reactions are more about individuals. In the zone of disruption, you can see all five reactions based on the people who are involved in the process. 

That said, in the book, you do a great job of speaking to what are the advantages of each of these reactions and then what are the disadvantages. We all have them, regardless of what your move is. Some things are going to benefit you in regards to that approach, but there are also downsides, which you mentioned too, and I think for all of them, whether you're quit, resist, wait, or wherever you are. I did appreciate that. That was a nice way to balance it to say this person is bad on your team. There are benefits. 

There's no right or wrong reaction. Hopefully, what we're doing is raising awareness so that the reaction moves from being a habitual reaction to an intentional reaction. What reaction is going to create the most value in this change process so that you lean in? I wanted to be careful in the parable, not to paint any one of those reactions as right or wrong, but to give people space to say, “In this context, here's how I'm reacting.” What are the strengths of that and what do I need to watch out for? The old saying that any virtue in excess can become a vice and any one of these reactions in excess can become negative. It's trying to help people be deliberate and intentional about this rather than just reactive.
 

The Change Model: Any virtue, in excess, can become a vice.
 

When I was looking at those from the standpoint of personality, it's the same thing. Every personality style has its pluses and minuses, or where it doesn't suit us anymore or work for us. It was interesting to look at that. As we're coming up the other side of this, we're into adoption. The story goes on about figuring out how we now navigate this ship back to a different location. 

We draw it as this smooth line when you look at the model, but we talk about it being probably the messiest, most difficult space where most changes fail. That's because we know we want to do something different. We know there's a reason for it. We're actively working on it, and we're bound to have some things that don't work. 

There's this two steps forward, one step back at times. Sometimes we talk about it being a place where we need to recommit to our vision and work through the possibilities. This is a difficult space for organizations. There's less tolerance for things that don't work. There's less resource for things that don't work and sometimes there's some cost to it. This is the space though where if we want to start to activate creativity and innovation, we have to permit ourselves to try, have it not work, learn from it, and figure it out. 

As we do that and we build momentum around that process of trying and learning, that's where we start to get into the advantage space and we move up into that fourth zone that we'll come on to in a minute. This is the place where things start to fail because we're thinking, “That didn't work. Why didn't it work? Let's go back to the way it was.” That's a mistake because most of the time we've been clear around, there's a reason we need to make this change. It's important to recommit to that. 
 

Preparing For Change

I fully agree with that in terms of organizations as well. They're mixed messages. We talk about this as a marathon and not a sprint, but we don't behave that way. It teaches other people that there's not a long runway here. I need results now and so people change course too quickly. I do think that is a great point. One of the quotes in there was, “It comes in waves.” I think setting that expectation is important to understand. This is not always going to go linearly we're going to move in a positive direction. Let's prepare for there are going to be times when this is not going to go well. 

People should read that story about the waves that Andy tells about being in the ocean because it is true. It's important to recognize one of the things we believe helps people is if you recognize that what you're experiencing isn't unique to you at this moment, that it's part of the change process, then it feels a little less threatening. It's like, “This is what's supposed to be happening.” It gives you a little courage to say, “I can deal with this. I can figure out how to work through it.” 

Mentally, you prepare for it. When it happens, you’ll say, “This is what we talked about.” That leads us to our fourth stage here. I love this stage right around innovation and what we decide to do with our ship at that point. 

This is, unfortunately, the zone that's least frequented by people and organizations out of the four zones. It's a shame because this is where so many of the benefits start to emerge and materialize. We talk about how you get into that zone, which is that process through the zone of adoption, but once you're there, how do you amplify all of the great things that you've started?

This is where you start to tell the story of the success so that others can say, “Did you think about this? That's interesting, what did you consider when you were doing this?” That challenges our thinking and extends our thinking. It also gives us or moves us into the mindset of curiosity where we say, “That worked. I wonder what would happen if. What if we tried this?” 

That process of getting curious and telling the story of your journey activates and unleashes more potential around the change. The more of that you can do, the more benefit you create from the change. Rather than declaring victory at the point where you're back to the same level of output, you start to explore the other what-ifs and possibilities. It's such a rich space to be in. When you talk to people who have had these miraculous change experiences, it's where they start to get a lot of creativity and the outcomes are amazing. 

 

Resources Vs Resourcefulness

I think of it in terms of resources versus resourcefulness. There are times when we're always going to lack resources as the characters did. Some things weren't going to go their way, but we all have equal access to resourcefulness. People don't tap into it enough because they get shut down. That's not a good idea. We can't do that or whatever reason where you open this thing up for real innovation to happen. It's this what if. To me, that's all about resourcefulness. 

Once you've done it, I'm going back to an earlier point you made about this experience bias in organizations. Once you've made a change where your experience is we did this amazing thing or it led to this amazing outcome, it changes you. It says the next time a change comes along, I don't start with that same experience bias. I start with, “I wonder what this is going to lead to that could be amazing.” That's what we're trying to do help people start to shift that paradigm that they have. 

As you were writing this, anything in particular that you became more aware of as you were writing it in terms of your own experiences? 

As my coauthors and I talked about it, I suppose I've been working on this for so many years that I thought this has got to be obvious to everybody. The thing that came back crystal clear as we talked about it, they would say, “What about this?” I would say, “Why don't people realize that?” I suppose the thing that I was reminded of, the model, the methodology, the parable are all straightforward to understand, but if you don't have those in your toolset, it can feel like this big moment, this big reveal, “I didn't even realize that.” There was this predictable pattern and that this is what's happening. 

I suppose I loved being reminded after years and years of working with it that in the simplicity, there's a lot of power that people can take from it. They can use it with their teenagers. They can use it with their partner, their spouse, or their friends and it works. The framework works in every one of those spaces, personal and professional. I was pleased to remember that it helps you connect with why you do the work. 

The Change Model works in every space, personally and professionally.

I love that perspective. At times, you probably get so close to what you're involved in for so long that you're wondering why everybody doesn't understand that in uncertainty there is an opportunity. The toolbox hasn't been built enough to be able to do that, which clearly, this book provides many opportunities to even refine the tools you have, but also add new ones as well.

We provide a starting point for people. There are other tools that we have, and I'm sure other clever people will read that and understand, “What if we did this here in our organization? It'd be valuable.” Hopefully, we've left space for everybody to think that way. 

As we're wrapping things up here, people can grab the book from Amazon. What other recommendations would you have if anybody is in this space right now but we're going through something or would to initiate something? We want to have it succeed and we haven't for a while. Are there opportunities aside from the book to interact with you? 

Let me mention two. The organization that supports all of this is FranklinCovey. We work with individuals and leaders to improve their capability and outcomes. At FranklinCovey.com, you can learn about me and my co-authors, where we could interact with you as speakers or we have workshops that are on this as well, where we work on developing this capability. The other thing is on my LinkedIn, if people look for Curtis Bateman, you'll find me pretty easily. I'm publishing articles on this 2 or 3 times a month, trying to extend and add to it. 

As I run into interesting conversations, have a fun client experience, and try to share stories or other key ideas that, not every idea is in the book, other key ideas might extend and help people think about it a little differently. Both of those are great resources and hopefully, you'll check out at least one of them, the book or one of those two resources, and get a little bit of insight into what's available in the change model. 

Five Leadership Styles

Before we started this interview, you mentioned that five leadership styles didn't make it into the book. I guess that going to be an error where people could probably read some articles connecting with you on that to plug. 

What we found over the years, me and different colleagues along the way, is that there are lots of leadership skills, but there are five in particular that have relevance in each zone, and how you use these skills in each of the four zones varies a little bit. I talk about that but the five are vision, communication, alignment, engagement, and accountability. 

Vision, communication, alignment, engagement, and accountability are key competencies that leaders can leverage to advance change.

Those five leadership capabilities applied in specific ways in each of the four zones are some of the key competencies that leaders can use to help advance the change. There's a lot that individuals can do too, and we talk about that in the book, but those five play a prominent role in helping leaders be successful in leading change. I write about that. If you go back on my LinkedIn a little bit, you'll see some earlier stories and posts on that and then more coming. 

Curtis, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk about your book Change. I have enjoyed this. I've enjoyed reading it in regards to refining my skills, but also finding ways to add new tools to the toolbox. Thank you for that. 

My pleasure. Nice to talk with you. 

You as well. Good luck.

Important Links

• Curtis Bateman - LinkedIn
• Change, How to Turn Uncertainty into Opportunity - Co-Authored Book
• Stories and posts - LinkedIn posts about Change
• Who Moved My Cheese - Book
• FranklinCovey.com - Website

About Curtis Bateman

Curtis Bateman is FranklinCovey’s vice president of international direct offices. With over twenty-five years of experience in the training industry, Curtis is an internationally recognized presenter, content developer, change consultant, business leader, and coach. His passion for enabling organizations “at change” resulted in the co-creation of transformative, industry-leading solutions, including Change Element, Leaders@Change, Managing Millennials, Millennials@Work, and the Change Practitioner.
Formerly the president and CEO at Red Tree Leadership, Curtis managed the world-class brand Who Moved My Cheese? and created a practical approach to help individuals and leaders succeed with an ever-complex world of change in the workplace.
Curtis joined FranklinCovey as a senior change consultant and co-practice leader. In 2016, Curtis became managing director of the U.K. and Ireland, in 2018 was asked to assume additional management responsibilities of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and in 2019 took on additional responsibility for China, Japan, and Australia.