This excellent, undervalued article should get more attention. According to Grenny, Maxfield, & Shimberg in MIT Sloan Management Review, applying 4 or more of the following helps increase the likelihood by ten times that the change will stick.
Their model says that there are three ways to influence: at the individual, social, or structural level. Then, there are two ways to engage people: through motivation (helping them gain motivation for the change) or through ability (helping them gain the skills needed to support the change). All together, this creates six ways to influence change. Using four or more increases the likelihood of success.
Here’s how to do it:
- Individual Motivation: Tie the change to what matters. Show how the change expresses core values and drives the mission.
- Individual Ability: Build new skills. As Grenny, Maxfield, & Shimberg say, “A robust training initiative is at the heart of almost all successful influence strategies.”
- Social Motivation: Leverage peer relationships. Why should you do anything if your friends all think it’s a bad idea? Get substantial involvement from formal and informal leaders to create a social press towards engagement.
- Social Ability: Make sure people get just-in-time help. When you need help, who do you go to first? Probably, you reach over the cube to ask a friend if she has the answer. Giving people the mentoring, answers, and resources they need helps them support their friends and neighbors through the change.
- Structural Motivation: Align reward systems, track success, and hold people accountable. Yes, reward systems do count for something. By themselves, however, they’re not worth much. Tie them to the other methods here to get a greater bang for the buck.
- Structural Ability: Create systemic support. Remove obstacles and providing consistent reminders and reinforcement.
Check out Making Change Stick for more information on change leadership. If you give it a try, let me know how it goes!
