The 5 Things You Need to Know About Resistance

@lucgaloppin

The 5 things
you need
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about
RESISTANCE
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The 5 things you
need to know
about RESISTANCE
IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER, FORGET IT. LUC GALOPPIN

Dear reader,

Last year I was talking to a project manager who was responsible for the
turnaround in a big plant. He reported to someone who was strong on carrots
and sticks. In his desperation he told me:

‘Pushing the people with carrots and sticks is like pushing a big bag of
water. You know what happens as soon as you release the pressure: the bag will
resume its original position. And you are exhausted.’

He continued:

‘I am forced to ignore the resistance and push all these rules and procedures
through their throats. And as long as we are occupying the plant they will
comply. But a soon as we are gone it will all be in vain. This transformation
is going to be WITH the people or it will NEVER happen at all.’

Sure enough, the project manager was right: the resistance went underground
and as soon as the project team moved on to new roll-outs in other plants, the
old habits reappeared.

They refused to make sense of the resistance and to use it as a tool to fuel
the change project.

With this e-book I offer an alternative to the way we have been taught to
treat resistance. To summarize what this e-book is about:

1. Resistance is a good thing; it’s the energy that fuels change;
2. It’s about emotions, and in the first place: your own;
3. It’s about relations, first on trust and then on agreement;
4. It’s about platforms - a platform for emotions; not a burning platform;
5. It is about you - up close and personal.

I hope you will enjoy reading this e-book as much as I did making it.

Luc Galoppin - August 2010

PS: I dedicate this e-book to C and J, who just moved into their new home.

RESISTANCE: THE 5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW page 2

The 5 things you
need to know
about RESISTANCE

HOW TO USE THIS E-BOOK
If you would ask me to summarize what I
have learned about resistance in 5 points,
this e-book would be my answer. It is a
collection of ideas that inspire me. short·cut
I use it as a companion to my trainings on Pronunciation:
Change Management because I don’t do ˈshȯrt-ˌkət also -ˈkət
PowerPoint. I do People instead.

You will find a bricolage (*) of my formal Function:
knowledge, real issues I bumped into,
solutions that work (and those that noun
don't), tools and drawings. So in a sense
this e-book tells a little bit of who I
am.
1 :
Please use it for your own learning and
teaching and pass it on. a route more direct than the
one ordinarily taken
Here’s the deal:
- If you like it, share it.
- If you think it can be improved, let me
know.
2 :
Happy reading! a method or means of doing
Luc.
something more directly and
(*) When using the word ‘bricolage’ I refer to the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. He said that quickly than and often not so
people don’t use an algorithmic and logic approach in
their thought process but that our mind works
thoroughly as by ordinary
according to the principle of ‘pick and mix’. A procedure <a shortcut to
‘bricoleur’ uses concrete, used materials to create
something new. In that sense, I am a bricoleur. success>

ABOUT ME YOU CAN CONTACT
ME HERE:
Luc Galoppin picked up his organizational change skills on projects with
different scopes and interim management assignments and blogs on this luc.galoppin@reply-mc.com
passion on a weekly basis. He is the co-author with Siegfried Caems of +32 497 399 880
the SAP PRESS book Managing Organizational Change During SAP http://www.reply-mc.com
Implementations. He is managing director of Reply-mc. @lucgaloppin


The 5 things you
need to know
about RESISTANCE

CONTENTS

(4) It's About Managing Platforms
(1) Resistance is a Good Thing
Toolbox: Elegant Organization
Creativity as a Resistance Buster
Do I Need To Paint A Picture?
Which Platform Shall It Be?
Toolbox: Intervention Timer
Toolbox: Resistance Map
Intervention Timer: an Example
The Resistance Map (advanced)
Toolbox: Skill-Will Matrix
Good Lemonade
Skill-Will Matrix: An Example
Sometimes it’s Not Resistance
Learning and Resistance
Toolbox: Cascade or Die!
Group-think
Reading the Same Newspapers
(2) It's About Managing Emotions Do I Need To Paint A Picture?
Emotions For Dummies Remember the Keys?
Revenge, Regret & Rescue (5) It's About You
React, Respond or Initiate?
Suspect Yourself First
Resistance Yourself!
Toolbox: Temperature Reading
The Chameleon Law
(3) It's About Managing Relations The Suffering Is Built In
It’s the Relationship Stupid! Who is Responsible?
The One Downness of Needing Help Always Remember Number 6
Reframing the Question Toolbox: the ‘Board’ Compass
Do I Need To Paint A Picture? Dying Before Going Into Battle
Don’t Take it Personal Epilogue: From Here to the Airport
Toolbox: Stakeholder Mapping
Toolbox: Impact Analysis
Toolbox: Trust Analysis
Trust Analysis - An Example
Teaching Fire a Lesson


5 things you
need to know
about RESISTANCE

(1)
RESISTANCE
IS
A
GOOD
THING

The enemy is a very good teacher.

The Dalai Lama



Creativity as a Resistance Buster
The way I approach resistance is influenced by the way I look at organizational change
management. I see resistance as a crucial ingredient that is needed to make a change
happen. Resistance fuels change. Without it, there is no change.

I get very suspicious whenever I see advertisements for consulting companies or training courses
claiming they will help you to reduce or avoid resistance. They create the false expectation that
organizational change is a mathematical exercise.

They avoid to make sense of the emotional responses. Instead of seeing them for the fuel and energy
they provide, they mistake them for a failure. Then, they move in the opposite direction, as if they were
reading a road sign upside down.

Here is what that road sign says: resistance is emotion; and emotion is the ‘motion’ that is
needed to move through the dip of change. Of course it is a bumpy road, but it is the only way
through.

One example to go forward is by looking at these reactions like Edward De Bono approaches creativity. De Bono
discovered that logical, linear and critical thinking has limitations. It is primarily concerned with judging and seeking
errors. He calls this black hat thinking. The problem is that it scares us so much that we want to move away from it.
But the opposite it true.

De Bono’s approach is to appreciate the value of this negative thinking, instead of avoiding it. Next, he stimulates the
other thinking hats to come to the surface. As a result of respecting the negative thinking and going through, one ends
up with a rich palate fueling a solution for the situation at hand:

★ Negative judgment (black hat) – logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
★ Neutrality (white hat) – considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
★ Feeling (red hat) – instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (without justification)
★ Positive Judgment (yellow hat) – logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
★ Creative thinking (green hat) – provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
★ Process control (blue hat) – thinking about thinking

The bottom line is that we need to go through the roller-
coaster of our own emotions in order to have the respect and
authority to lead others through the organizational change.

The mathematical or linear approach assumes a straight line
from the present state to the future state. This line is best
described as ‘Analyze – Think – Change’.

Inevitably emotional side tips us and our beliefs into the cycle
of change as described by Elisabeth Kübler Ross. Turns out
that in times of change motivation is more important than
math.

The nature of things is ‘See - Feel - Change’. The feel part,
according to Kübler Ross is a roller-coaster taking us through
the dip of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and
acceptance. Trying to avoid those emotions is like cooking
without heat: ingredients won’t fuse.

Edward de Bono (1933) is a Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D.
leading authority in the field of (1926 - 2004) was a Swiss-born
creative thinking. He is the psychiatrist and the author of the
originator of the term lateral groundbreaking book On Death
thinking and he wrote a best and Dying, where she first
selling book Six Thinking Hats. discussed what is now known as
the Kübler-Ross model.



Which Platform Shall It Be?
Why is resistance in the context of an organizational change program always negative? At
first sight that's obvious because the original Latin word ‘resistere’ signifies ‘to stop’ or ‘to
oppose against’.

Also, when we look at what it means in physics, resistance refers to the force that opposes motion. On
the other hand, the resistance of a material against an external influence, the resistance of a human
body against a disease, and even the resistance in the Second World War are uses of the term that
describe quality, health and guts; three terms that I would label as positive.

Wether we see it as positive or negative is entirely up to us. In organizational change there is another
important thing about understanding the nature of resistance. According to Peter Block, resistance is a
reaction to an emotional process taking place within the client. This view is also supported by Karl
Weick, who defines it as:

Resistance is the emotion that occurs when our expectations of ‘the way things are’ are
interrupted.

Two words are important in this definition:
★ Emotion: the essence of resistance is that it creates an emotion. That means: not logical, not
rational and most of all: not predictable.
★ Expectation: resistance does not only occur when things change, but when our expectations
are interrupted, regardless of whether that makes rational sense.

A common misunderstanding about resistance is that it is a phenomenon that gets in the way,
something to avoid, something to prevent, etc. This belief is caused by the fact that the emotion
generates an energy which is directed against the change. But in reality we are a prisoner to our
own panic and fear.

It is not change that people resist, it is us. I don’t like the thought that someone else is
having a meeting deciding how I ought to be transformed.
Peter Block
Emotion is the only thing containing the energy
to move from the current state to the future
state. We are faced with a simple choice, but
a fundamental one: either we highlight the
emotions that occur and create a platform for
them, or we scare these emotions away by
creating a so-called ‘burning platform’.

This burning platform too is created by an
emotion - but one induced from the outside.
You can scare people and they’ll execute
better and faster. But that’s not true of
change situations, where you need to be doing
something new. In that case fear is the worst
motivator because it makes people work
harder at what they did in the past.

Karl Weick (1936) is an American Peter Block is the author of
organizational theorist who is noted several best selling books. The
for introducing the notions of most widely known being Flawless
"Enactment", "loose coupling", Consulting.
"mindfulness", and "sensemaking" He writes and talks about how
into organizational studies. consultants can provide service and
accountability to organizations.



TO
Toolbox: Resistance Map

O
LB
O
X
!
The number one behavior you come across in the majority of the organizational change
programs is never the open ‘in your face’ resistance. In fact, resistance is only 1 out of 4
possible reactions; but it takes a resistance map to see it.

Bear with me, as I will build a diagnostic
instrument; a “Resistance Map”. But
first, we need a frame of reference to
clarify what we are talking about. And it’s
a simple one: WHAT I WANT versus
WHAT I DO.

In other words, we make a difference
between the intention we have inside
of us (INTENT - ‘what I want’) and the
behavior that we demonstrate on the
outside (BEHAVIOR - ‘What I do’).

This is the basic setup: The vertical axis
displays intent and the horizontal axis
shows the behavior that we demonstrate
on the outside. As a result there are four
quadrants:

★ Commitment: what happens when
your intention is willing and your
behavior follows your intentions. Let’s say this is an authentic ‘yes’;
★ Resistance: what happens when your intention is unwilling and when it is in resonance with your
behavior. Think about the common types of resistance that are summed up by Peter Block: Need
more detail, Giving a lot of detail, Not enough time, Impracticality, Confusion, Silence, Moralizing
and Press for solutions. These behaviors demonstrate a ‘no’, but an authentic ‘no’.
★ The Stockholm Syndrome: The Stockholm Syndrome describes the behavior of hostages who
become sympathetic to their hostage-takers. The name derives from a 1973 hostage incident in
Stockholm, when several victims began to identify with their hostage-takers as a coping strategy.
It is the same kind of fear of repercussions that we can find in some organizations. People lose
their perspective as if they were in a hostage situation and start to act against their unwilling
intent. From the outside they gladly execute, commit to the commandments that were made, so
the behavior is a false ‘yes’.
★ The Otis Redding Syndrome: I borrow this one from Bob Sutton, who recalls the line from Otis
Redding’s old song: Sitting By the Dock of the Bay, “Can’t do what ten people tell me to do,
so I guess I’ll remain the same".
Clearly, this describes people with a good intention who are somehow hindered to follow their
intention. In this model I will call this a false ‘no’.

Resistance, like commitment, is a rare behavior. It requires people to be open about what they care
about, and at the same time it goes against what is generally accepted. It takes courage to figure out
what is not important to you and to say ‘no’ to it and vice versa.

The Otis Redding Syndrome is a depressing energy drain, regardless of whether you think people are
victim to it or guilty of it. The point is that it is sustained by confusion (I tend to look at confusion as a
behavior). Otis Redding’s solution was to “remain the same” because he couldn’t please 10 different
people. According to Robert Sutton, that is a rational response to a bad system.

As for the Stockholm Syndrome; it suffices to quote Rita Mae Brown when she says ‘The reward for
conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself’.

In both, the Otis Redding and the Stockholm syndrome, people are acting opposed to their intentions;
which demonstrates the definition of cognitive dissonance.



TO
The Resistance Map (advanced)

O
LB
O
X
!
Like a geologist who is out to find fossil fuel, you can use the Resistance Map to drill for fuel.

Intent and Behavior can be in sync or out of sync, and that is how you can see the energy:
★ The red axis. When they are in sync (i.e.: ‘I want what I am doing’; or ‘I don’t do what I
dislike’), the behavior is authentic and this generates energy.
★ The blue axis. When they are out of sync (i.e.: ‘I want it, but I am not doing it’; or: ‘I don’t
want it and still I am doing it’) the behavior is a coping behavior and it sucks up the energy.

The energy map gives you guidance on how to redirect the energy.
First, get on the Energy Source. Then, channel towards Commitment.
People are being authentic because you provided a platform for their emotions to turn into energy.
That is why, on the Energy Source axis, Resistance and Commitment mean the same:
★ People care about the stuff;
★ People are brave enough to tell you they disagree;
★ People have a backbone and guts;

As for the syndromes on the Energy Drain axis, there is no platform for emotion, no fuel. Most likely
this is the result of creating a ‘burning platform’. Smashed by comprehensive control mechanisms,
emotions go underground, reducing trust to the bottom level. This will undo the return on investment of
any reengineering effort aimed at delegation of control and power to the lower levels.

Counter resistance with the same respect and openness as you allow commitment to result in
creative results. The same goes for the Otis Redding and the Stockholm syndromes. Create a
platform where authentic behavior is acceptable. A platform where a ‘problem’ can be a ‘problem’
without being swept under the carpet; where a ‘no’ can be a ‘no’. A platform where you accept the
expression of resistance.

Seems like you need to change platforms before you can manage resistance in the first place!


When you hear people say that change is hard because
people are lazy or resistant, that's just ﬂat wrong.

In fact, the opposite is true: Change is hard
because people wear themselves out.

What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.

Dan Heath & Chip Heath



Good Lemonade
The subject of this short-cut is borrowed from a book with the same title. The 1976 book
Good Lemonade by Frank Asch and Marie Zimmerman tells the story of Hank who sells
lemonade to his friends.

Throughout the story we learn that the quality of his lemonade is not so terrific and – no matter how
hard he tries to sell and repackage the product – the competing lemonade from his friend Howie sells
better.

Hank is convinced that bad tasting lemonade can be salvaged. All he needs is a little advertising and
promotion. The moral of the story is clear: no matter how good you package and sell your
product – if the quality is no good – people will feel betrayed and turn you down. Don’t
mistake that reaction for resistance. It is not.

In the context of organizational change projects – be it a process re-engineering, an ERP
implementation, a merger or a downsizing operation – you will be selling lemonade as well. Only in this
case the lemonade is called ‘future state’.

Resistance to organizational change is the way lemonade buyers come to your market. If your
lemonade is of good quality an invisible hand will be there to help you. However, if the opposite is true,
no matter how hard you try, people will just see trough your phony slideshows, road shows, posters,
advertising, newsletters, training and management speak.

It only takes one extra step to see where indifference comes from. In business bad lemonade is not
bought and you go out of market, period. In organizational change we tend to ‘be right’ instead of ‘in
relationship’ when the lemonade is bad so we push the initiative so hard that the resistance goes
underground.

Unlike customers, employees have no other choice than to buy your bad lemonade. That is where
stinking indifference starts – sucking every last drop of energy out of your people.

The moral of this story: don’t abuse change management activities to repackage and advertise bad
lemonade. Sometimes it’s not resistance. It’s just bad lemonade.

If the lemonade is bad, be straight about it. Work on the lemonade instead of accusing the buyers.



Sometimes it’s Not Resistance
In his book ‘Flawless Consulting’ Peter Block warns against the paranoid habit of some
consultants interpreting every line manager’s objections as resistance.

Resistance is often a label used by consultants who want to be right – in spite of the customer
relationship. Here’s a quote of that paragraph:

As Freud once said when he was asked whether the cigar he was
smoking was also a phallic symbol, “Sometimes a cigar is just
a cigar”; sometimes client objections are not resistance.
The client just doesn’t want to do the project.

We can all become paranoid by interpreting every line
manager’s objections as resistance covering some underlying
anxieties. If a manager says directly, “No, I do not choose to
begin this project. I don’t believe in it”, that is not
resistance. There is nothing in that statement that blames the
consultant or presses the responsibility for the difficulties
on the consultant. The manager is taking responsibility for
his or her own organization and has a right to choose. If we
think it is the wrong choice, well that’s life.

We are getting paid to consult, not to manage. If a manager
says to me, “I am too vulnerable a position to begin this
project now”, I feel appreciative of the direct expression. I
know where I stand with that manager. I don’t have to worry
whether I should have done something differently. I also feel
the manager understands the project and knows the risks, and
it turned out that the risks were just too high. I may be
disappointed that the project didn’t go, but the process was
flawless.

Peter Block is the author of This excerpt is taken from his 1999
several best selling books. The most book
widely known being Flawless
Consulting. Flawless Consulting: A Guide to
He writes and talks about how Getting Your Expertise Used
consultants can provide service and
accountability to organizations.



Learning and Resistance
A useful way to understand resistance is to see what happens when we learn something
new. Learning is a 4-step process which serves as a reliable indicator to predict resistance.

Learning always takes place in 4 stages, as shown on the first drawing: Unconscious Incompetence,
Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, Unconscious Competence.

Take for example the first time that you drove a car.

★ Until then you have always been a passenger. You are not aware that you are unskilled because
you never tried it. This is unconscious Incompetence: I can’t, but why should I care? There is
no itch to scratch.
★ After getting into the driver seat for the first time and trying to start the car and drive, you know
enough to realize that you are incompetent at driving a car. You are unable, and your first
confrontation with the dashboard, the gearbox, the steering wheel and the pedals made you
painfully aware of your incompetence. You are now the second phase of learning: Conscious
Incompetence. Your innocent and peaceful worldview falls apart, much like the disappointment
that hit you when you found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. This is where most people get in
the roller-coaster of change (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).
★ One day, you are ready to do the tests in order to obtain a drivers license. At that point you are
most probably in the third learning stage: Conscious Competence. You are skilled at driving the
car but it still demands a lot of your attention.
★ Finally, it is only after a long while that you will be able to drive the car as an automatic response,
as doing normal checks, turning the keys and driving off. You accomplished the 4th learning
phase: Unconscious Competence. The skill has become a habit by now, which requires no
extra attention.

People react to change from the moment that they become aware of their own incompetence. What’s
even more important is that this resistance is the learning tension that is necessary to absorb
knowledge. The frustration of one’s own incompetence is the best motivation acquire new skills and
knowledge.

Therefore, when you are introducing a new initiative and you are at the level of instructing people on
new things face to face or in a classroom, look at their resistance from a learning perspective. They are
incompetent at that moment, painfully aware of it, mostly in the presence of their colleagues and peers.
How would you react? I know I would be grumpy! And what would be the best way to overcome that
grumpy-ness? A blaming instructor or a caring one?



The relationship between SIMPLICITY and RESISTANCE.


5 things you
need to know
about RESISTANCE

(2)
IT’S
ABOUT
MANAGING
EMOTIONS


You work and work and work and finally give up.
Then, once you have lost hope, if you keep playing,
you’re a pro.

Brad Blanton



Emotions For Dummies
For simplicity’s sake: there are four basic emotions; four basic fuels that contain the energy
we need in order to move from one state to another: fear, anger, sadness, and happiness.

Mad, sad, glad and scared are the four basic emotions that can be experienced by every person in any
culture. Like salty, bitter, and sour they can be quite good. Whether we like the taste of something is an
entirely subjective matter. This is where it gets interesting. There are three things you should know
about emotions.

1. Perception is a choice. As a result, whatever
feelings we experience are not an outside event but
the result of how we choose to perceive a situation.
Each day you choose how you are going to act or
which "side of the bed" you wake up on. The choice
is yours and, the way you act, affects others.

2. Emotions are fuel. Emotions provide the basic
energy that is necessary to get anywhere from your
current state.

3. Emotions are data. Once you are able to
disconnect the intensity and read the valuable
information that is hiding behind it, you will soon
find out that there is a positive use of these
emotions.

Anger—Clarity
When we are angry, we are often very aware of what we want or don’t want. This leads us to clarity
about our objective and the objective of our team. Anger helps us to take decisions, to stay alert,
and to stop confusion. There is a thin line between destructive anger and a vision that fuels a change.
They both build on the same emotion but with a different sense of responsibility. When you allow
frustrated people to find expression for their anger and you genuinely receive their communication, ask
them what you could do to improve.

Fear—Courage
When we are afraid, this means we are approaching unknown territory. New opportunities arise when
we have the courage to take that direction. Fear often works as an indicator towards dangers, but also
towards new opportunities. Often, the most frightened people are the closest to building the courage to
deal with the unknown. Courage builds on the same emotion that can freak us out. Surprisingly,
when you allow frightened people to put their anxiety into words, they tend to make room for courage
to meet the challenges they are facing.

Sadness—Contact
The essence of each relationship is contact. The measure in which we are in contact depends on the
empathy and the self-confidence that we have. Cynicism, for instance, is a hidden form of sadness.
Cynical people often are very good at sensing which relations are being left behind in a change project.
Again, there is thin line between cynical reactions and emotional intelligence. The underlying emotion is
the same. Although cynical people are tough, they also know exactly who is left out. When they see
the purpose behind the change, they may even be the best relationship builders.

Valerie Lankford is an American Clinton Callahan is an American
counselor who conducts therapy trainer, naturalist and activist
workshops and speaks on currently living in Germany. His
developments in counseling theories Expand-the-box trainings are about
and approaches. In 1981 she the conscious and unconscious use
published 'The Four Feelings', a of the 4 feelings. These trainings
pamphlet that helps people identify go to the heart of resistance and
each feeling and the use of them. are not for the faint of heart.



The relationship between RESISTANCE and QUALITY of your solution.



Revenge, Reg ret & Rescue
Resistance takes many forms, some of them very subtle. In the course of a project you may
encounter a variety of forms. As you begin to deal with it in one form, sometimes it will fade
and reappear in another form.

The problem with emotions is not their intensity, but the fact that they always come in disguise. You will
almost never hear people say that they are scared, angry, or sad because of a certain change.

People communicate their emotions through “playing games.” The classic result is an emotional
competition between people which – regardless of who is the winner –represents a loss for the
relationship. The analysis of these games is the domain of Transactional Analysis. Transactional Analysis
experts have simple decoder for games like these: it is called the Drama Triangle.

1. Persecutor (prefers Anger) 2. Rescuer (prefers Fear) 3. Victim (prefers Sadness)

I am OK – You are not OK I am OK – You are not OK I am not OK – You are OK

REVENGE RESCUE REGRET

★ Only sees errors, is critical, often ★ Always goes that extra mile to ★ Doesn’t answer, doesn’t help,
in a bad mood. ‘help’ others. never holds a point of view.
★ Often feels incapable and is not ★ Is always very busy, tired, ★ I don’t know / I can’t / it’s all the
self-confident. sometimes lonely, does not have 5 same to me.
★ Leadership through threats, minutes to himself. ★ A master at using feelings of guilt.
orders; disallows flexibility. ★ Can be loud but also a silent ★ ‘Super-sensitive’.
★ Can be loud but also calm. martyr. ★ Pretends to be incompetent, but is
★ A persecutor does not accept ‘no’ ★ Deals with feelings of guilt or not.
for an answer. shame in a very subtle manner. ★ Irresponsible regarding details that
★ Often a hand of steel in a velvet can be important to others.
glove. ★ I give up! This provides me with
★ Helps unasked. the ultimate power.
★ A rescuer does not accept ‘no’ for ★ A victim does not accept ‘no’ for an
an answer answer.

As soon as our expectations of ‘the way things are’ are
interrupted, a stream of emotions is set in motion. This is
feedback. Feedback literally means to feed-back: this is
how your message was received. That is when you will
need the drama-decoder provided by this triangle.

As the drama plays out, people may suddenly switch roles,
or change tactics, and others will often switch
unconsciously to match this. In transactional analysis, the
drama triangle is recognized in situations such as: Why
Don't You/Yes But; If It Weren't For You; Why does this
Always Happen to Me?; See What You Made Me Do; You
Got Me Into This; Look How Hard I've Tried; and: I'm Only
Trying to Help You.

The purpose for each 'player' is to get their
unspoken - and often: unconscious - needs
met in a justified way, without having to Steven Karpman is a psychiatrist
acknowledge the real situation. As such, each and the inventor of the drama
player justifies their own position, rather triangle. First published in the late
than acting in a responsible way. 1960s, the Drama Triangle was the
result of 30 pages of football
You will see Revenge, Rescue and Regret in strategy. Even today the drama
all its glory. Your job will be to shape the path triangle is a valuable analysis tool
from here to Responsibility. for any kind of resistance.



React, Respond or Initiate?
The easiest thing is to react.
The second easiest thing is to respond.
But the hardest thing is to initiate.

Reacting, as Zig Ziglar has said, is what your body
does when you take the wrong kind of medicine.
Reacting is what politicians do all the time.
Reacting is intuitive and instinctive and usually
dangerous. Managers react.

Responding is a much better alternative. You
respond to external stimuli with thoughtful action.
Organizations respond to competitive threats.
Individuals respond to colleagues or to
opportunities. Response is always better than
reaction. But both pale in comparison to
initiative.

Initiating is really and truly difficult, and
that’s what leaders do. They see something others
are ignoring and they jump on it. They cause the
events that others have to react to.
They make change.
Seth Godin (1960) is an
American author and an
This excerpt is taken from his 2008
entrepreneur. Godin popularized the
book
topic of permission marketing and
has published 11 books. His books
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
Tribes and Linchpin are invaluable
must-reads for organizational change
managers .


If you are a breathing human being, you are
resistant to change.

Like all your fellow human beings you are incapable
of starting with a clean sheet of paper.

Tracy Goss



Suspect Yourself First
Whether we categorize a certain behavior as good or bad; the difference is in the response
we give. It can either be Revenge or Respect. The point is that we choose our responses to
the world.



A lot of R-words...



TO
Toolbox: Temperature Reading

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Straight from my desk, the below drawing is an example of how I tinker with a concept
before launching it. A temperature reading has a wide range of applications, but the best and
most reliable results are obtained when you conduct it repeatedly over a longer period.


Withheld anger destroys relationships by sucking the
aliveness out of them.
For aliveness to be restored, both to the
relationships and the individual, anger must be
expressed.

Brad Blanton


5 things you
need to know
about RESISTANCE

(3)
IT’S
ABOUT
MANAGING
RELATIONS



It’s the Relationship Stupid!
Resistance occurs when we try to help other people. But needing help and having to ask for
it creates and uncomfortable situation that will produce emotional responses.

According to Edgar Shein, every helping
relationship is in a state of imbalance. The
client is one down and therefore vulnerable,
the helper is one up and therefore powerful.
Much of what goes wrong in the helping
process is the failure to acknowledge this
initial imbalance and deal with it.

The reason the helping relationship has to be
built rather than just being assumed is that ,
although the imbalance is clear, the social
economics of how to fix it are not.

It is when a relationship or team hits a bump,
we need a conversation about the
conversation, instead of short-cutting to the
content.The question then is: "HOW can I be
the cause for relationship to occur?”

There are 4 ways to do so and they are
universal, i.e.: they are available to anyone,
anytime, anywhere - like a Swiss Army knife. They are:

1. Asking for help: The great Peter Drucker once said: "the leader of the future will be a person who
knows how to ask". Asking for help opens doors with honesty and is difficult to resist. It allows your
counterpart to have a stake in the solution - to ‘win’ - while you are the cause for this situation to occur.

2. Listening: Attention here – listening is a two-way act, as it involves listening AND acknowledging
what you have understood. You need to demonstrate that you are totally engaged. Acknowledging is
the part that makes people feel understood and connected.

3. Thanking: Gratitude is a skill we can never display too often. And yet for most people it seems like
they need to wait for the perfect moment … but it never comes. It is always the right time to say ‘thank
you’. Gratitude is not a limited resource and an overdose never harms.

4. Apologizing: Marshall Goldsmith calls this ‘the magic move‘, because an apology is a recognition
that mistakes have been made and it contains an intention to change for the better. But most of all, an
apology is an emotional contact with the people you care about. It is a closure which lets you move
forward.

You will note that these four ways have one thing in common: they require you to be humble and to
position yourself ‘one down’ with regards to the person you are talking to. As Goldsmith concludes:
"When you declare your dependence on others, they usually agree to help." So your only way out is by
putting aside ego. You can only access these tools when you let go of the competition for being
right.

Marshall Goldsmith (1949) is the Edgar Schein (1928), a professor at
author of What Got You Her Won’t Get the MIT Sloan School of
You There. He is a world authority in Management, has made a notable
helping successful leaders get even mark on the field of organizational
better - by achieving positive, lasting development in many areas,
change in behavior: for themselves, including career development, group
their people and their teams. process consultation, and
organizational culture.



The One Downness of Needing Help

Emotionally and socially, when you are asking
for help you are putting yourself "one down".
It is a temporary loss of status and self-
esteem not to know what to do next or to be
unable to do it.

It is a loss of independence to have someone
else advise you, heal you, minister you, help
you up, support you, even serve you.

It never ceases to amaze me when I observe
someone stumbling or falling down on the
street how the first thing out of his or her
mouth is invariably "I'm OK." Even when we
are clearly hurt we are reluctant to accept
the suddenly imposed state of dependency. At
the extreme we feel humiliated, as when we
need help with the bedpan in the hospital.

Edgar Schein (1928), a professor at
the MIT Sloan School of
book
Management, has made a notable
mark on the field of organizational
Helping: How to Offer, Give, and
development in many areas,
Receive Help
including career development, group
process consultation, and
organizational culture.



Reframing the Question
The picture below shows two management consultants unwinding at the counter of a
downtown bar. Note the subtle difference between the white text balloons and the grey
ones:

White = categorized, judging, stuck, isolated, GAME OVER.
Grey = puzzled, observing, searching, DIFFERENT GAME.

When we label a person as “resistant,” we stop the conversation and we place ourselves high above it.
The point of this cartoon is to offer you an alternative interpretation of resistance: grey text balloons.
Rather than sitting in judgment, get out of your cocoon and seek additional information
that would help you understand the person’s reactions.

In one of the discussions on this topic on the Organizational Change Practitioners Group on LinkedIn, a
participant stated:
"Resistance is an expression of fears of loss of control and vulnerability.
It requires 'peeling the onion' to uncover the roots of the affective reaction. Rather
than being a "bad" thing, I have found that resistance is a signpost indicating a
potential problem.”

Another participant continued:
"It’s often seen as a negative, however, it turns the light on to areas that really
need attention. Just like the voice of our GPS saying, 'recalculating'"

Yet another participant continued:
"We struggle to find a place to put ‘resistance’, so that is doesn’t interfere with the
‘work’ or the outcomes. Seems to me that when we stop fighting it and see it for what
it is (without judgment) we may understand better how to use it as a tool more
effectively."


Helpers must be aware of their own emotional makeup
and must be prepared to recognize that certain kinds
of helper/client relationships may not be possible.

Edgar Schein



When resistance happens, you are the one in the room.
It is your doorbell they will be ringing.
How will you respond?



Don’t Take it Personal
The main thing to do in coping successfully with resistance is to not take it personally.
Resistance is often the sign that you have touched upon something they care about.

In his book on Flawless Consulting, Peter Block lists some common types of resistance that are
abundant during the lifecycle of any organizational change project. Dealing with these behaviors
primarily requires allowing, supporting, and acknowledging the complete expression of the
resistance. Often this alone can diminish the resistance.

In other cases, when resistance is blocking the process or the decision of the group, there are effective
ways to address it, such as the following:
★ Identify the form the resistance has taken;
★ Ask a question using neutral language;
★ Be quiet and listen to the response.

Below are some examples and possible responses taken from Peter Block's book.

It is natural to feel that the resistance is aimed at you. It is not. It is not you the client is defending
against. Resistant clients defend against the fact that they are going to have to make (expectation) a
difficult choice, take an unpopular action, confront some reality that they have emotionally been trying
to avoid (emotion).

When people are being defensive, they are defending their own adequacy - a natural thing to defend.
This is what resistance is about: defending against a difficult reality and how one has been handling it
so far.

When you are facing resistance you are bumping into concerns of control or vulnerability.

"How much do you love me?' and "Who's in charge?" ....these two questions of LOVE and
CONTROL undo us ALL, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering.
Elisabeth Gilbert



TO
Toolbox: Stakeholder Mapping

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A stakeholders is ‘any party that affects or is affected by an organization and its policies’. In
other words, every interested party that has a relationship to your project.

This concept was created in the 1960s and has been filling the bookshelves in libraries ever since. No
need to worry because stakeholder mapping is quite straightforward.

If the exercise is carried out well, a discussion will follow in which the different perceptions are tested
against one another. A consensus is then reached regarding the list of interested parties, and this is
how you arrive at a (surprisingly) more complete picture, than if you had done this exercise
individually.

The result can take the form of a stakeholder map and can, for instance, look like the example below.

A stakeholder map is the landscape through which you have to navigate the change. It can look fairly
rough in the beginning and it can change over time.

In practice we must remember two things:
★ It’s about relationships! An organization is not necessarily a thing per se but a series of
relationships between a wide series of parties.
★ Mapping stakeholders is more than making a list. You will soon find out that all the assumptions,
misunderstandings and preconceptions come to the surface. These are harmonized as you
start to map, until your team has a common view of its stakeholders.

Eventually, you are drawing the platform for managing resistance. This map represents the
relationships you will need to manage during your project.



TO
Toolbox: Impact Analysis

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Once you have reached agreement on who the stakeholders are and the relationships you
will need to manage, it is time to prioritize the attention you will invest in each relationship.
But how exactly do you prioritize relationships?

Setting priorities to the relationships you will be managing is done according to two dimensions:

★ Importance of the stakeholder in your organization: What is the stakeholder’s organizational
power? How can this stakeholder influence, initiate or reinforce initiatives in your organization?
This dimension also takes into account informal opinion leaders.

★ Impact of the stakeholder on the implementation: How important is the commitment of this
stakeholder for the success of the implementation?

You may end up mapping stakeholders in the top right-hand quadrant of this chart that tend to be out
of your attention . For example because they are geographically on another location. At the same time,
you may also start to invest less time and devotion than you would normally do to the needs of a
department next door, because they appear in the bottom left-hand quadrant of the chart.

In short, this analysis will help you to set priorities in the relationships with all stakeholders. I have
facilitated this exercise multiple times and I have found that - roughly speaking, most sponsors will be
situated in the top left-hand quadrant, agents in the top right-hand quadrant and targets in the
bottom right-hand quadrant.

IMPORTANT: How well is your target group represented in your current team setup? This analysis
reveals if your team is able to manage the relationships. The point is to make sure that the composition
of your team displays the same complexity as the environment in which you will deploy a change.

As a rule of thumb:
★ The top right quadrant has dedicated representatives in your team;
★ The top left is involved at each project milestone.
★ The bottom right quadrant are the stakeholders who will be part of your core team for specific
tasks, but not for the full lifecycle of your project.



TO
Toolbox: Trust Analysis

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There is a matrix I often use to categorize stakeholders in terms of their resistance. It is an adapted
version from the 1987 model of Peter Block from his book The Empowered Manager: positive political
skills at work.

The major insight here is that conflict has two dimensions:
★ Trust: Can we rely on the stakeholder’s support or are they avoiding ownership of the program?
★ Agreement: Are we in agreement about the content of the program?

The matrix tells us that we need a healthy mix of:

★ Allies who fuel our vision;
★ Opponents who bring out the best in us.

For those stakeholders that are situated low in trust, there are two types you are likely to encounter:

★ Bedfellows (or better even ‘one night stands’): these are the most difficult to get a hold on
because they seemingly agree on the surface of face-to-face discussions and meetings. However,
as we follow up on their commitments and actions we discover discrepancies.
The advice here is to start an individual conversation about what is going on their level of
commitment (a conversation about the conversation) in order to bring to the surface whatever is
blocking them. It takes courage to start these conversations.
★ Adversaries: Just like bedfellows, they are low in trust, but at least they are straight about it. It
is likely that you will run into people of this type, openly declaring that they are against this
program. If you do, you should approach them in the same way as bedfellows: a conversation
about their commitment.

Two points are important on the diagram above:
★ We need to get the most important stakeholders on the right-hand side into a relationship of
trust.
★ Second, disagreement, another word for ‘resistance’, is actually an accelerator, provided
that it happens in a relationship of trust.

Never mistake a lack of agreement for a lack of trust!



TO
Trust Analysis - An Example

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If this all seems a bit too theoretical for you, let’s have a look at a real life example.

The mapping below is one that we did for the stakeholders of a major ERP implementation for a
multinational in the construction equipment industry.

Here is what we learned:

★ First, we mapped the
different stakeholders
according to the
dimensions of trust and
agreement.

★ Next we figured out that
the conflicts we have with
keys users, process
owners and business
representatives in the
project are actually
"productive
conflicts" (high on trust,
low in agreement: they
bring out the best in us).

The advice here is to take
their feedback with both
hands because these
people care and they are
brave enough to confront
you with their findings!!

★ At the same time we
discovered that the
agreement with
suppliers and customers
was more of a phony type.

★ Finally, when it came to mapping the support department and end users, we soon discovered that
the conflicts were unproductive because we are low on trust with these stakeholders. That’s
very alarming because both, the end user and the support department are have a high impact
on the outcomes of the project.

The typical trap is to work on more agreement and to fall into a political game of compromises
and ambiguous agreements. Working on the agreement side when you lack trust is the nightmare
of diplomacy.

The point is to work on the relationship with these stakeholders. Therefore, between now and
go-live we will gradually involve both of these stakeholders and to give them a stake / some
ownership of the delivery.

Conclusion:
Think twice before you categorize, because the essence of stakeholder readiness is trust,
not agreement.



Teaching Fire a Lesson

Fire is hot. That’s what it does. If you get burned by
fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry
at the fire doesn’t do you much good. And trying to
teach the fire a lesson so it won’t be hot next time
is certainly not time well spent.

Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it’s
not human. But human beings are similar, in that
they’re not going to change anytime soon either.

Many (most?) people in organizations handle their
interactions as though they are in charge of teaching
people a lesson. We make policies and are vindictive
and focus on the past because we worry that if we
don’t, someone will get away with it.

So when a driver cuts us off, we scream and yell. We
say we’re doing it so he’ll learn and not in danger
the next guy, but of course, he can’t hear you.
There’s a media mogul who stole from me in 1987 and I
haven’t spoken to him since. He doesn’t know I exist,
I bet. So much for teaching him a lesson.

Seth Godin (1960) is an
American author and an
entrepreneur. Godin popularized the
book
topic of permission marketing and
has published 11 books. His books
Linchpin: Are You
Tribes and Linchpin are invaluable
Indispensable?
must-reads for organizational change
managers .


Every truth passes through three stages before it is
recognized.

In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is
opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-
evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer


5 things you
need to know
about RESISTANCE

(4)
IT’S
ABOUT
MANAGING
PLATFORMS



TO
Toolbox: Elegant Organization

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The most powerful tool that I posses is something I found out by hitting my head against the
wall time after time after time ... The secret is called “Fire - Ready -Aim”

1. FIRE!
The target audience needs to be guided through their change cycle, but at the same time the work
needs to get done. The solution then is to combine both and to nudge them with a series of
deliverables that people can shoot at, nicely ordered in the same direction: forward.

The dynamic we are after is what Edgar Schein calls Diagnostic Interventions. By asking people for
their involvement, you also begin to influence their thinking. For example, once you are conducting a
survey, you have influenced the thinking and expectations of the people you are surveying.

2. READY!
Then comes a simple trick but no fun. It goes against your intuition and it sets your ego on fire. The
point is to reengineer all of your deliverables so they allow full collaboration. The hard part:

★ It means downgrading the built-in look-how-great-I-am-
intelligence;
★ It requires you to chop your deliverable down in chunks
that the customer can swallow;
★ It means you have to let the customer tinker with the
deliverable, take it apart and move it forward;
★ It means your prototype will be improved by the
customer;
★ Ultimately, it means that you will not be the most intelligent
person in the room at the end of the day: the community is!

3. AIM!
People make sense of the change as they react to the
prototype of your deliverables. This will get their minds in
motion and their noses pointed in the direction of the change.

Sense making is a process that requires you to build a
platform of psychological safety (knowing that it is OK to step
out of an old habit and to try something new). So listen,
listen and listen because the cause of major setbacks are due to going faster than the speed
of making sense.

In his book What Would Google Do? Jeff Jarvis explains the secrets of the success of Google. The first is
to be a platform for other people to express their uniqueness instead of a big-hit-final-destination.
Sounds familiar? Don't be the burning platform, but a platform for people to express their
needs, make sense of the change and take their destiny in their own hands.

Second, for those of you who would conclude that you can just throw about any unfinished deliverable
at people’s heads to provoke a reaction. Try it. You will soon find out that people have bullshit-
detector and will only accept the very best of your efforts to accommodate their needs. This is what
Jarvis calls elegant organization: you don’t create a community but provide elegant organization
and then the community will let you help them.

Jarvis concludes that you don’t own the Jeff Jarvis (1954) is an American
community, so getting out of the way is a journalist. He is the former
strength. Reverse these insights to your change television critic for TV Guide and
project and you will see what I mean: People magazine. He is the author of
What Would Google Do? and is a
Be a platform and organize your
very influential blogger about media
deliverables elegantly, because it is not
and news at Buzzmachine.com
about you!



Managing resistance is always a balancing act: you need to nudge - but not too hard; you
need to build a sense of urgency - but not a burning platform; you need to be a platform for
hosting the emotions - but the deliverables need to be there on time and in budget.

No one said it would be easy...



TO
Toolbox: Intervention Timer

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By now you know that human beings in the middle of a change need a safe platform to rely
on. The best way to provide this safe place is through involvement. Similar dynamics are at
play in consumer behavior, and they pull our attention to the importance of timing.

This brings us to the insight of John Gourville when he says we need to pay attention to the
psychological costs when new products force consumers to change their behavior. You need to figure
out where the changes for your target audience fall in a matrix with four categories: Easy Sells, Rough
Spots, Long Hauls, and Smash Hits.

Each has a different ratio of WIIFM
(What’s In It For Me) versus
behavior change required from the
person involved.

If you map each aspect of your change
project in this chart, you will be able to
estimate which topics need more
time to digest or in which order
you want to communicate them (I
recommend communicating the bad
news first). To make things a bit more
concrete I have added some typical
examples one can encounter during
ERP implementations.

★ Rough Spots: Limited WIIFM
and significant behavior changes.
These changes typically refer to
tasks that require more clicking
and data entry than before with no visible result for the user. If the communication of such a topic
is restricted to the know-how and know-what (i.e. the instructions and the procedure) these users
(and their supervisors) may quit on data accuracy and discipline. If you want people to commit to
these rough spots, it is going to require a lot of context (know-why) and a good monitoring of
the supervisors as agents of change.

★ Long Hauls: Significant WIIFM and significant behavior changes. These are typically the
transactions that require a complete different way of thinking, a considerable number of clicks
and screens and a lot of parameters to look after at the same time. We really want people to
persist in this long period of learning how to work in a totally different way. This will only work
when we communicate regularly the know-hows (refreshers course, quick reference cards,
coaching on-the-job, etc.), the know-what’s (e.g. feedback about the KPI’s to all the
stakeholders) and the know-why’s (context: why are we doing this?).

★ Easy Sells: Limited WIIFM and limited behavior changes. These are the very small changes of
very basic actions. For these changes, sticking to the know-how and the know-what may work
out fine, although we recommend that you take every opportunity you get to reinforce and link
back to the know-why.

★ Smash Hits: Significant WIIFM and
limited behavior changes. These are the John Gourville is professor at the
time savers and visible process Harvard Business School. His
improvements compared to the old research focuses on consumer
situation. Most of the times, these are decision making. In his current
kind of features that users themselves are research investigates when and
keen on telling their colleagues about, why innovative new products fail to
although initiating them yourself can do gain traction in the marketplace.
no harm.



TO
Intervention Timer: an Example

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I am in the business of shaking up traditional organizations by means of an ERP program.

Most of the times this is regarded as a pure software roll-out: ‘design it, configure it, test it, and roll it
out’. That is how most software engineers look at it and that is what traditional managers expect of it.

Only, with an ERP it’s
slightly different: it is
quite rigid as to which
standards, timings,
methods and data you
should manage from
then on. Very soon you
will find that it pretty
much dictates your way
of working – that is – if
you want to get
things done you
better align to the
‘way of the system’.

ERP brings with it a
number of changes like:
different working
methods, different
documents, a change in
an organizational
structure, a change in a
procedure or a dramatic change of existing SLA’s (Service Level Agreements). Some of these changes
are pretty easy to sell, but others a bit tougher.

So where do you start, and how do you prioritize the communication? That is where the two dimensions
of John Gourville (previous page) help me out: degree of behavior change and degree of WIIFM
(‘What’s In It For Me’).

★ First, I make a big inventory of changes. There is no structured approach to doing that apart from
keeping your ears open and being there when people start to worry about the future. This
inventory always comes to the surface when ‘old’ meets ‘new’.
Mostly a bunch of consultants and a bunch of dedicated business people work together in
blueprinting sessions and design workshops. That is when these conversations happen and
that is exactly when you should have your notebook ready. Soon you will have an inventory of
changes.

★ Second, it is time to plot them on the Gourville matrix. As a consultant, you should resist the
temptation to do this task by yourself. As part of the exercise you should ask the
stakeholders (mostly key users or process owners) to map the changes on this matrix.
This is what Edgar Schein calls a ‘diagnostic intervention’. Your intervention triggers a change
process: people are forced to start thinking about the changes in terms of ‘will we resist or
not?’ or ‘do I feel comfortable selling this change in my department?’.

★ Third, when all changes are plotted you are ready to prioritize the communication in terms of
timing. ‘Rough spots’ and ‘Long Hauls’ will need a lot of context (i.e. why-communication) to
settle in – and this takes time. The reason is simple: you are introducing a foreign element that
will shake up the way things are.

People need the time to resist, to say ‘over my dead body’, to bargain and to come to terms
with the new reality. Your job is to provide the platform where these reactions can be hosted and
channeled towards commitment. Plotting changes on this matrix is one way to do so.



TO
Toolbox: Skill-Will Matrix

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One of the tools that I often use is the so-called Skill-Will matrix. I discovered it about 10
years ago in the book ‘The Tao of Coaching’ by Max Landsberg. I use this tool to predict and
to plan how often my support is needed.

But it goes further than that. The skill-will matrix allows you to make a distinction between support and
supervision.

Landsberg explains how a coach can divide her time with the team she has been assigned to. The
easiest anchor point for coaches is found in the combination of motivation and skills. In order to know
the type of interventions that is needed, you need to examine the combination of these two ingredients.

★ Supervising: The coach clearly defines the roles and tasks and supervises their execution.
Decisions are made by the coach and communication is unidirectional;

★ Coaching: The coach still determines the tasks and roles but also asks the coached person for
suggestions. Decisions are made by the coach, but communications are dialogue-based;

★ Support: The coached person accepts the decisions and executes against them. The coach
facilitates decision-making but is no longer in the driver’s seat;

★ Delegating: The coach is still involved in problem-solving, but the coached person is in the
driver’s seat. The coached person decides when and how the coach is involved.

After a day or two of walking around and helping out people, you should be able to map the people on
the Skill-Will Matrix. However, in practice we often find that coaches use this matrix to confirm their
prejudices – so be careful with the self fulfilling prophecy that is hidden in these coaching styles.
Supervision for instance, will not inspire people to take responsibility and to work independently.

The skill-will balance of a person is not fixed; it
evolves as time goes by. Nevertheless, it is a Max Landsberg is an authority on
good guideline for estimating your timekeeping executive coaching. During the last
as a coach, especially when you are coaching an ten years his books on Coaching,
entire team. Motivation and Leadership have
sold more than 200,000 copies and
You can map every individual of your team on have been translated into fourteen
this matrix and balance your time-keeping as a languages.
coach accordingly.



TO
Skill-Will Matrix: An Example

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If this all seems a bit too theoretical for you, let’s have a look at a real life example.

The application below is a skills assessment that we did for the users of a major ERP implementation for
a multinational in the fast moving consumer goods industry.

It consisted of a two step approach, based on the framework of the skill-will matrix: assessment and
measurement.

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One warning though: don’t think that the exercise is done once you have made this assessment.

From now on you know where to start and how you will need to invest your time and attention best.
The actions you will take where support is needed are far different compared to the instances when
supervision is needed.



Everybody needs a platform for their emotions to be turned into contributions.



TO
Toolbox: Cascade or Die!

O
LB
O
X
!
The first sign of resistance in any project: ‘something is wrong with the communication’. The
first person they look at: you. So, how to you organize the communication in a large project?

Awareness of the strategic objective of each channel is a must. Below is an example portfolio.

1. Monthly (or every three weeks) newsletter
★ Strategic objective: create context and communicate decisions
★ Type: top down communication; need-to-know
★ Method: Push to the recipients per email
★ Content: the 4 P's => 1. Pull: an introduction of the sponsor to reinforce the project goals in
respect of the current activities; 2. Progress: what have we achieved so far; 3. Plan: what are the
milestones ahead; 4. Push: what are the latest decisions of the steering committee
★ Form: Pictures; Lots of them. And names of real people. Lots of them.

2. Direct letter to stakeholders
★ Strategic objective: inform stakeholders on the details of a specific project milestone
★ Type: top down communication; must-know & acknowledge receipt
★ Method: Push to the recipients per email, indicating precisely to whom it is intended
★ Content: I use a specific format with a know-feel-do backbone (i.e.: these elements are the
strict minimum of the letter): KNOW =>‘What is the one thing you want me to know?’ / FEEL =>
‘Why is it important?’ / DO => ‘What do you want me to do as a result of your communication?’
★ Form: regularly accompanied by a training document, procedure,etc.

3. Emails one-to-many
★ Strategic objective: follow-up and precisions for stakeholders on a specific project milestone
★ Type: top down communication; must-know & acknowledge receipt
★ Method: Push to the recipients per email, indicating which instructions or corrections apply to
whom
★ Content: can be short, but should at least contain 3 sentences: Know-Feel-Do
★ Form: factual, no images, can contain links

4. Project blog on the intranet
★ Strategic objective: visualize and share what is going on in the field and the showing tangible
outcomes of the project in plain English
★ Type: bottom-up communication; nice-to-know (put people really want to know: 'how are we
doing')
★ Method: publish regularly on the project blog, clearly indicating the names of all the participants
that are involved in the subject. Upon publication we inform the persons involved that they are
now a local celebrity and that they can share this blog item with their colleagues. We found out
that this viral.
★ Content: lots of pictures of people implementing 'project things' and sharing their experiences:
'what's in it for me'
★ Form: like a journalist reporting on an event: pictures, people, headlines

5. Specials (outside of your regular communication cycle)
★ Customer communications, supplier communications,etc.
★ Milestone kickoffs and official sign-offs
★ Temperature reading (I recommend to report the results in special issues of the newsletter AND
to be very candid about what is working and what isn’t)

What matters most is that you can run these channels during the X years of your project. Therefore you
should arrange them into a CASCADE starting with the conclusions of the steering committee which
deliver the topics for the newsletter. These, in turn, are the umbrella for blog topics. Finally: every
project member has ears, eyes and ideas for blog topics. They will show you: What’s In It For Me

If you fail to organize the cascade, you are in for a hard job. Cascade is the only way to sustain a
communication plan on the long run. That is why you need to cascade or die!


The 5 Things You Need to Know About Resistance

The 5 Things You Need to Know About Resistance

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