Topic: Leadership, Innovation, Organizational Change, Culture
Audience: Leaders, CEO, COO
Author: William Lindstrom, CEO, The Culture Think Tank
I believe most leaders will agree that change and innovation are essential for growth.
Leaders are not employed and rewarded for doing the same thing or maintaining the status quo.
They are employed and rewarded for driving growth, which inevitably requires change and innovation. This leadership demand raises the obvious question.
How do you implement change and innovation within an organization?
This is a critically important question that typically is accompanied by a very generic answer, “buy-in”.
Throughout my career, this was the typical answer and I find remains so today. “A lack of buy-in” was the explanation from a senior leader for why their recent project failed, which was shared with me as recently as last month.
But what is “buy-in”? How do you define it? How do you measure it? How does it explain why some initiatives fail while others succeed?
When I posed these questions to the same senior leader, I was met with a long pause and could feel the eventual shoulder shrug of uncertainty even though I couldn’t see it.
I guess we didn’t communicate properly was the summation of the reply, which I am still not sure was expressed as a statement or a question. And that is the problem and the fallacy of “buy-in”. “Buy-in” is something every leader is taught, trained, encouraged, and believes is important but can’t specifically define or repeatably implement.
In my experience, most leaders attempt to build “buy-in” using a best-practice roadmap or methodology that was developed based on prior projects that worked. The problem is I have yet to find a roadmap or methodology that articulates why the defined steps work and are repeatable. “Because they do.” isn’t an acceptable answer in my humble opinion. So, let’s move beyond “buy-in” and address the core question with theory.
How do leaders systemically plan, implement, and lead successful change initiatives?
Making Sense of Who We Are: leadership and organizational identity by Daan van Knipperberg is an excellent place to start to address this question because it addresses two critical theories leaders need to implement change. It begins by defining what change is from an organizational perspective and helps explain how change impacts individual and group performance. It concludes by applying the theoretical implications of change to a leadership model that provides a framework for leaders to systemically and repeatably implement change (Knippenberg, 2016).
Organizational Change
Implementing change begins by understand organizational change; and understanding organizational change begins by understanding the importance of organizational identity. Organizational identity, from a theoretical perspective, is defined as the core attributes of an organization that are central, enduring, and distinctive (Knippenberg, 2016).
Put into more practical terms, organizational identity addresses a critical factor that impacts employee performance and retention. Namely, how do employees connect to the why of the organization?
Every organization has a why because every organization exists for a reason. How employees connect to and see themselves within the why of an organization is through organizational identity. The employees are connecting their why to the central, enduring, and distinctive attributes of the organization.
My first job is an illustrative example. I joined Price Waterhouse Consulting, now PwC Consulting, straight out of college. The consulting team I worked for focused on turning around struggling companies through process change and technology. My connection to that team was through the sense of challenge. In turnaround, our job was to do what no one else could do. That was how I identified with my team and PwC: I got to work on the impossible.
Now reflect on your career.
Reflect on those moments where you felt aligned and part of an organization where your why resonated with the identity of the organization.
Remember how energizing that felt.
Now imagine it was suddenly taken away.
That is organizational change.
Organizational change is the outcome of the leadership decisions and initiatives that disrupt the connection employees have to an organization. The sense of disruption occurs because the employees perceive the changes as impacting the central, enduring, and distinctive attributes of the organization that connect to their why. When their sense of why is threatened, employees begin to resist the change to protect the organizational identity and their connection (Knippenberg, 2016).
This need to protect their sense of why is why change is difficult to implement as leaders, which bring us to a key point: Change won’t be accepted until it is framed in terms of the employees why that connects to the organizational identity.
Organizational Identify vs. Organizational Commitment
Before delving into how leaders can mitigate the loss of why and lead through change, I believe it is important to distinguish between organizational identity and organizational commitment because they are not the same thing (Ashforth and Mael, 1989).
I believe these concepts are often treated interchangeable and contribute to the fallacy of “buy-in” and help explain why some change initiatives work and some don’t.
Organizational identity differs from organizational commitment in terms of loyalty. When employees feel strongly connected to the why of the company, they feel a strong sense of loyalty to the company because their sense of self aligns with the central, enduring, and distinctive attributes of the organization (Knippenberg, 2016). As a result, their actions and behaviors are congruous to the goals and objectives of the organization. Commitment on the other hand is different because commitment is about values and how the values of the individual align to the needs of the organization (Ashforth and Mael, 1989).
Social Identity Theory and the Organization by Ashforth and Mael delves deeper into the distinction between loyalty and commitment and argues that employees’ commitment to a project or initiative are causal. When the needs of the project align with the personal values of the employees, they are engaged or committed. When they do not align, they do not engage and do not support change (Ashforth and Mael, 1989).
The distinction between organizational identity and organizational commitment is important for leaders because it implies that employees that are connected to the why of an organization will support the decisions of a leader even if they disagree with a decision as compared to committed employees who will only support a leader’s decision if their personal values align (Ashforth and Mael, 1989).
Which brings us to a key point, the implementation of change needs to start with and focus on organizational identity not commitment.
Organizational Impact
That last aspect of organizational change to consider before reviewing how to implement change is impact. This is an important consideration because not all types of change have the same impact on organizational identity or pose the same level of risk to leaders in terms of success (Knippenberg, 2016). There are two broad types of change that impact organizational identity: adaptive and subtractive.
Adaptive change is change that requires leaders to help employees shift or adjust their understanding of the organizational identity and how they fit within the organization as the organization responds to competitive changes in the marketplace (Knippenberg, 2016). Adaptive change is incremental in nature, which basically breaks down to making something new fit within the employees’ why and the organizational identity.
Subtractive change is a very different situation. Subtractive change is a change that causes the organization to lose its central, enduring, and distinctive attributes. This situation often arises as a result of a spin-off or merger when an old organization is replaced by a new organization (Knippenberg, 2016).
Identity Ambiguity and Change in the Wake of a Corporate Spin-Off by Corley and Gioia takes a deeper look into the impact of subtractive change on performance and organizational identity. Core to the findings is the conclusion that subtractive change can result in a significant rise in workplace tension that dramatically impacts performance as employees’ different visions of their why and how they should operate conflict with each other (Corley and Gioia, 2011).
Rephrased from a practical perspective, subtractive change strips the employees of their sense of why which results in a significant increase in workplace anxiety that will cause conflict until a new collective sense of why is established.
As a result, when leading through subtractive change, the concentration or focus of effort leaders apply to organizational identity needs to be greater as compared to adaptative change (Corley and Gioia, 2011).
However, what I found most interesting is that the recommended actions or approach leaders should take to lead through subtractive change are the same as adaptive change. The primary difference between the two, from a leadership perspective, is effort and focus, which bring us to a key point:
Subtractive change requires more effort and focus than adaptive change to implement but the approach to implementing either change is the same.
Implementing Change
The framework for implementing change outlined in Making Sense of Who We Are: leadership and organizational identity by Daan van Knipperberg is based on leader prototypicality.
This is a framework that defines how leaders can implement change within a workforce by acting as a bridge between the existing identity of the organization and the desired or new identify of the organization (Knippenberg, 2016).
From a theoretical perspective, this is accomplished by the leader adopting the central, enduring, and distinctive attributes of both the original organizational identity and the desired or new organizational identify (Knippenberg, 2016).
By adopting both identities, a leader is able to demonstrate how the why that connects a workforce to the current organizational identity aligns to the why of the future organizational identity (Knippenberg, 2016).
From a more practical perspective, this is accomplished by walking the talk where the leaders’ actions, communications, interactions, and presence reinforces the value of both the existing pre-changed organization and the vision of the changed organization (Corley and Gioia, 2011).
By walking the talk, leaders can create a narrative to help employees begin to see how the vision of the changed organization algins to their sense of why within the existing pre-changed organization.
Which brings us to a key point: when a workforce can see itself and its why in the future vision, that is when a workforce commits and buys-in and adopts the change.
Walking the Talk
Creating a narrative and using rhetoric to bridge the gap between existing and future organizational identities is more of an art than a science in my opinion because it is largely about storytelling and sharing (Knippenberg, 2016).
Every leader is going to have a different approach and tone that represents the nature of the change, includes industry norms and vernacular, and reflects the personality of the leader. However, although leadership style may vary, there are three leadership theories that help provide a framework for a repeatable and supported approach for walking the talk and implementing change.
The Continuity–Change Duality in Narrative Texts of Organizational Identity by Samia Chreim delves into the concept of how language can be utilized to shift a workforce’s connection from an old organizational identity to the new organizational identity, which not only promotes acceptance but also commitment to the new vision. The approach focuses on utilizing existing labels and meaning (Chreim, 2005) to walk the talk.
Labels are the words that define the who and what of an organization.
Examples of labels include innovative, creative, high-tech, passionate, and caring. Meaning are the words that describe how the organizational identity is defined by the labels. In many instances of change, the labels do not change only the meaning of the labels do (Chreim, 2005).
This provides the opportunity for leaders to maintain a connection between the old and new organizational identity using labels while shifting the meaning that describes the labels from the old vision to the new. By utilizing labels to maintain the connection between old and new, leaders are able to reduce the impact of change on a workforce’s sense of organizational identity while fostering a shift to the new organizational identity.
The Motivational Effects of Charmismatic Leadership: A Self-Concept Based Theory by Shamir, House, and Arthur focuses on the role of the leader in developing organizational identity.
What I like about this theory is the focus on a leaders’ need to be charismatic but not in the classic sense.
This new theory of charismatic leadership focuses on the actions and behaviors any leader can take to inspire followers to transition from self-interests to collective interests and improve followers’ connection to the mission (Sharmir, House, and Aurthor, 1993).
The fundamental leadership behaviors of a new generation charismatic leader provide an additional framework that can be adopted to help leaders connect with a workforce and inspire the acceptance of change and a new organizational identity.
An Image of Who We Might Become: Vision Communication, Possible Selves, and Vision Pursuit by Stam, Lord, van Knippenberg, and Wisse is a fun theory to read and apropos to leading change. This theory focuses on vision communication.
What I like about this theory is it is all about how to sell the future vision of the organization so that it inspires followers to chase the vision of the new organizational identity (Stam, Lord, Knippenber, and Wisse, 2014).
The core of the theory is still grounded in the need to focus on organizational identity to drive change. This theory provides a framework for how leaders can use images of the future to build collective acceptance of change and a shift in organizational identity (Stam, Lord, Knippenber, and Wisse, 2014).
By no means exhaustive, these theories reinforce the importance of organizational identity when leading change and provide a theoretical toolset leaders can use to walk the talk and help connect a workforce’s why to the identity of the organization.
Challenge
As we come to close, I do feel that it is important to point out a challenge with this theoretical approach to implementing change.
There is a lack of quantitative data and supporting research to validate the assumptions (Knippenberg, 2016).
Although qualitative research supports the effectiveness of implementing change by connecting a workforce’s why to the future vision of an organization, the lack of qualitative data limits the ability to measure or predict the outcome and return from an operational or financial perspective.
I believe additional quantitative analysis will help provide the numeric backing to improve the adoption of utilizing organizational identity as the primary driver for implementing change.
Conclusion
Although Making Sense of Who We Are: leadership and organizational identity by Daan van Knipperberg does not provide a definitive step-by-step approach to successfully implementing change, it does provide a framework that lets us move beyond the fallacy of “buy-in” and leverage theory to develop a deliberate, supported, and repeatable process to implement and lead change.
However, I recognize the development of a practical step-by-step guide is necessary; and until such a guide exists, many leaders will remain bought into the tried and trusted approach to leading change: “buy-in”.
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REFERENCES
Ashforth, B. E. and Mael, F. (1989). “Social Identity Theory and the Organization.” Academy of Management Review 14: 20–39.
Chreim, S. (2005). “The Continuity-Change Duality in Narrative Texts of Organizational Identity.” Journal of Management Studies 42: 567–93.
Corley, K. G. and Gioia, D. A. (2004). “Identity Ambiguity and Change in the Wake of Corporate Spin-Off.” Administrative Science Quarterly 49: 173–208.
van Knippenberg, D. (2016). “Making sense of who we are: leadership and organizational identity”, in M.G. Pratt, M Schultz, B.E. Ashforth & Ravasi, D., The Oxford
Handbook of Organizational Identity (pp. 335-350). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shamir, B., House, R., and Arthur, M. B. (1993). “The Motivational Effects of Charismatic Leadership: A Self-Concept Based Theory.” Organization Science 4: 577–94.
Stam, D., Lord, R. G., van Knippenberg, D., and Wisse, B. (2014). “An Image of Who We Might Become: Vision Communication, Possible Selves, and Vision Pursuit.” Organization Science 25: 1172–94.
