The Power of Feelings

[Guest guest]

The Power of Feelings-An Interview with John P. Kotter ohn P. Kotter, Harvard Business School professor, award-winning author of more than a dozen books on leadership and management, was recently rated by Business Week as America's

Number One "leadership guru." In his best-selling book, Leading Change, he demystified the change process by distilling an eight-step process for implementing successful organizational transformations: 1. Increase Urgency, 2. Build the Guiding Team, 3. Get the Vision Right, 4. Communicate for Buy-In, 5. Empower Action, 6. Create Short-Term Wins, 7. Don't Let Up, and 8. Make Change Stick. His new book, The Heart of Change, written with Dan Cohen of Deloitte Consulting, shows how to use the power of feelings effectively to navigate each of the eight steps. Leader to Leader recently talked to Kotter about today's challenges to leaders and the need to pay careful attention to feelings in implementing change. Leader to Leader: In an earlier book, A

Force for Change, you said that most organizations have a leadership deficit of 200-400 percent -- that they ignore leadership potential and don't offer training or relevant role models. That's pretty damning. Do you still feel that way? John Kotter: I wrote that book in 1990 and I think in 12 years, we have all learned a lot. So there is no question it is not as bad as it was then. But it is a long way from what we need to make the kind of society and the kind of organizations that you and I and about anybody else want. L2L: Do you think this lack of leadership contributed to the recent scandals at Andersen, Enron, and WorldCom? JK: If you use the word leader to mean somebody who can get others to follow them no matter what direction,

then no. If you mean good leaders -- people who can get others to move in a direction that is sensible for themselves, the community, the business -- there's no question that lack of leadership is a part of those stories. The problem that I've written most about in the past has been that we have too many people who are skilled at management and not enough people who are also skilled at leadership. The current scandals are a different issue. Today, we need more people in positions of leadership who can help groups come up with visions that aren't self-serving -- that are really serving the enterprise. Unfortunately, we have too many people who talk enterprise-sensible vision but don't act that way. If you look at history, great leaders are all very self-confident people. They have extraordinary capacity to make decisions when other people crumble. There's a solidness to them. Yet it never tips over into arrogance. As a matter of fact,

the great, great leaders are often described with some astonishment by observers as having a certain humility and willingness to make themselves vulnerable. I mention that because as an observer of these recent events I am struck by the extraordinary arrogance of some of the players involved -- an arrogance that basically says, "I'm above the game." They think, "I am smart and accomplished and you are not. I therefore know what's best, yet have to put up with rules set by petty small-minded thinkers. It's only logical that I should maneuver around those rules." You don't find that same self-centered nastiness with the great leaders that we talk about in history. So the answer to the question is no. If we had the leadership we needed, we wouldn't be in this mess. We also would be less likely to be wringing our hands right now if more people in the business community and in the business schools had stood up earlier and talked about some

of these problems. Too few people did. L2L: In fact, Arthur Andersen, as it was then called, and Enron were held up as great exemplars of corporate change not too long ago. But now they look like examples of change run amok. Change isn't the issue; arrogance is. JK: But you have to remember change for change's sake is not the point. For change to be good, you've got to make it happen, yes, but more important it's got to be in a good direction. At first, Enron was probably an incredible transformation. It started as a regulated regional gas pipeline company. My own sense as an observer, lacking insider information, I admit, is that the initial stages of the transformation were really quite

good. But it got perverted as it became successful and its executives became more and more arrogant. Change isn't the issue; arrogance is. As they started running into problems, in their arrogance they said, "We can handle all this stuff, we can cut corners and make our own rules, because we're Enron." Arthur Andersen also was held up as the number one leader by far in the audit consulting world. It was the brand. In a situation like that, if you don't have people at the top of the enterprise who are very careful, you develop an arrogant culture. And that is really dangerous for everyone. L2L: In your new book with Dan Cohen, The Heart of Change, you say that the single biggest challenge in the change process is not

strategy, structure, culture, or anything like that, but just getting people to change their behavior. Why is that so difficult? JK: All through our lives we have been taught to over-rely on what you might call the memo approach -- the 19 logical reasons to change -- and we've under-relied on what Dan Cohen and I found is much more effective, which is presenting something that is emotionally compelling. People change their behavior when they are motivated to do so, and that happens when you speak to their feelings. Nineteen logical reasons don't necessarily do it. You need something, often visual, that helps produce the emotions that motivate people to move more than one inch to the left or one inch to the right. Great leaders are brilliant at this. They tell the kind of stories that create pictures in your mind and have emotional impact. Imagine, someone once told me, if Martin Luther King

Jr. had stood up there in front of the Lincoln Memorial and said, "I have a business strategy." King didn't do that. He said, "I have a dream," and he showed us what his dream was, his picture of the future. You get people to change less by giving them an analysis that changes their thinking than by showing them something that affects their feelings. L2L: Intellectually, then, people may realize the need for change, but still not do anything differently. JK: Yes, because they don't have the passion to break out of their habits. It's tough to break habits. Ask smokers. The momentum from history -- from how we've always done things -- can end up making our future look like our history. Overcoming complacency is crucial at the start of any change process, and it often requires a little bit

of surprise, something that grabs attention at more than an intellectual level. You need to surprise people with something that disturbs their view that everything is perfect. Take one story we have in the book, the "Videotape of the Angry Customer." (See sidebar) People who saw that video were caught off guard. Their mouths dropped open in surprise. Successful change leaders show people what the problems are and how to resolve the problems. They use things that people can see, hear, or touch. This may mean showing a video of an angry customer rather than a report of a customer survey. Change leaders make their points in ways that are as emotionally engaging and compelling as possible. They rely on vivid stories that are told and retold. You don't have to spend a million dollars and six months

to prepare for a change effort. You do have to make sure that you touch people emotionally. L2L: Is the ability to move people emotionally a special gift? JK: I don't think the ability to speak to people's feelings is something many of us are born with. You learn it. In The Heart of Change, we found all sorts of people who had learned it. Some certainly didn't look like leaders. But somewhere along the way, they stumbled across or they learned or they got lucky in figuring out this kind of method. If they can do it, I'm sure that most of us can learn to get a lot better at it. That is why we packed the book full of these stories . L2L: One story in the book stood out because it involved people who came to realize that they had to start with changing their own behavior. Don't many managers skip over that

part and start with, "Here's how you need to change." JK: This is a big issue. Part of the problem is that it's easier to tell other people that they are acting incorrectly than to admit that you're not perfect. Sometimes people, as they get further into their careers and become more successful, get less and less feedback. So they have less information showing how they are a part of the problem. I suspect a lot of people just haven't been taught, always start with yourself. It is a great rule of thumb for so many things. Start with yourself first! And then go out from there. Don't try to teach mathematics until you've learned it yourself. One of the most powerful methods that can hit feelings and facilitate change is the example of the leader. But when leaders haven't examined their own actions, they might give the wrong example, something that is

inconsistent with what they are saying to people. We've known this problem for eons under the rubric that people pay attention to deeds more than words. L2L: In the book you talk about change leaders as heroes. Could it be that the reason change is so difficult is that many people don't want to be heroes? JK: I think that deep in everybody's heart they want to be a hero. And I mean everybody. I mean the janitor. But it is buried so deep few people recognize it. As a matter of fact it is buried so deep that they look at the people who are labeled heroes, who tend to be these larger-than-life examples, and they notice that it's a mixed deal. Once you become that visible, you are also a target. Heroes get shot down, sometimes literally in assassinations. A little voice in our minds says, "You know, this isn't worth it." But I would bet you that deep, deep down every one

of us would love to be a hero. It doesn't have to be a hero in the sense of Churchill. It could literally be just a hero to your children or your team members. Today's organizations need heroes at every level. And today's organizations need heroes at every level. To truly succeed in a turbulent world, more than half the workforce needs to step up to the plate in some arena and provide change leadership. Most of this leadership will be modest. It might be a young sales rep who makes the company see a critical new opportunity, or a summer intern who helps put together a vivid demonstration of a problem. It is the sum of all these heroic actions -- large and small -- that enables organizations to change in significant ways. L2L: You point out that heroes

sometimes get shot at. This leads to something you don't talk a lot about in the book: self-preservation. How do change leaders come through the process alive? JK: We went out looking for stories of successful change because I concluded years ago that people need more positive examples than they need negative ones. People are seeing too much negative stuff, and they know it. They can all give you 53 negative stories. What people need are positive examples of what works. And in the stories of what works we didn't find ones where the main theme was self-preservation. Therefore it doesn't show up in the book. Why would that be? I think that people who end up being change leaders in big ways or small aren't obsessed with self-preservation. They aren't that self-centered. When you are focused only on yourself, you're not going to stick your neck out and help lead the team to new glory or help

create some short-term win. You're going to be self-protective. People who are effective have a larger vision beyond saving their own skin. L2L: Fear can be a powerful motivator for change. Yet you say that you shouldn't use fear to motivate people. The only lesson your people are really learning emotionally is that you've got power and the need to watch out. JK: If you're frustrated and you're powerful it is very common to fall back on fear. It's human. You say, "I know the right thing to do here and you guys aren't doing it. Enough is enough. Do it or you're all fired." While that's a natural tendency, it's usually not effective. The only lesson your people are really learning

emotionally is that you've got power and they need to watch out. They're not learning anything about the enterprise, its challenges, and the need to do things differently. Fearful people don't listen carefully to customers. Fearful people hide. They come up with all kinds of schemes to try to protect themselves. Fear can dynamite a cement wall, but we haven't seen fear used in a single successful transformation effort as a sustaining force. What we've sometimes found is fear used as a surprise element. It's the "hit them upside the head with a board" approach to getting their attention. But then you've got to move quickly to convert it into something positive or you get all of the drawbacks of fear. L2L: Even if people are motivated to change, they are often blocked by a feeling that they can't. We all know smokers who sincerely want to quit but just don't believe they can. JK: Pessimism can create a real emotional block to change. Effective change leaders use inspirational stories that aren't baloney, that are really true and inspiring, to bring out the natural optimism that is also in everybody. Of course the great, great leaders are superb at that. They know how to inspire confidence even in the most awful circumstances, where people are really depressed. They know how to paint a hopeful picture in such a credible way that it soothes the pessimism and leads people to get out of the trenches to do something. L2L: Even if a change program seems very successful, it can unravel. Larry Bossidy created huge amounts of change when he was leading AlliedSignal, but it all seemed to fall apart after he left. In fact, he was brought back to set things on course again. (Bossidy tells his story in "The Discipline of

Getting Things Done," Leader to Leader no. 25, Summer 2002.) Is the lesson here the change leader is never free to move on? JK: No, the lesson is that the change has to get into the culture. The new formula for how people should behave has to maintain itself for a minimum amount of time and demonstrate that it works. When that happens culture is transformed and supports the change. It kind of seeps into the bloodstream and you no longer have to have the one guy there supporting it all. The problem very often is that people don't allow enough time or have enough time or they don't get enough of the right kind of behavior producing the right kind of results. So the new way of doing things doesn't take hold. It's always being propped up by the key change leaders. And to some degree that's because they assume once you've got it working the right way you're done. And they don't recognize

that you must nail it to the floor, because when you leave the momentum of history will begin the creep back in. And it is possible to nail it to the floor. That's what a new culture can do. L2L: You say the focus is essential, especially creating short-term wins. With everything going on today, and everything being so complex, how can people stay focused? It is amazing how many vision statements boil down to lists of unrelated items. JK: This is where vision helps a lot. If you really have clarity in your own mind and heartfelt commitment to a vision, then you stay focused. But the vision literally has to be something you can see, not some blur and certainly not a list of 43 items.

Whenever you have lists of unrelated items, you start to lose focus. It is amazing how many strategies, how many statements of values, how many vision statements, how many so-called goals for something boil down to lists of unrelated items. Under those circumstances, it is really hard to stay focused. Depending on the way the wind is blowing, your focus bounces from one item to another on the list because you don't have any framework to guide you. You might even let something else that is not on the list blow over you and push you in some other direction. A good vision is always focused. I can literally look out there and I can see, let's say, a boat. It's not a blur, not a plane, and not a list. That helps enormously. The other thing that helps enormously is to pick, very carefully, a couple of short-term items where you can achieve successes. You might have one group focus on one item and another group focus on the other. Employees need to

understand that the changes are not oddball ideas being pushed by the bosses. They need to see short-term wins that demonstrate the validity of the change vision. If the win is not ambiguous, is visible, and is of value to people, then people will say, "yes, I get it" and be more likely to help make change happen. 2003 by John P. Kotter. Source: Leader to Leader Institute Warm regards & thanks.. Ajay Singh Niranjan

http://greathumancapital.wordpress.com/ AJAY SINGH NIRANJAN [ If Problem exists .....Solution can not wait ...Think & Try ] NEW DELHI "I AM STILL LEARNING" .....Peter Senge

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