Making change happen is easy. Making the change that happens the one you want is quite a bit more difficult.

But first a tangent … not much of a tangent, but a tangent nonetheless … meat. And not just any meat. Unicorn meat, as discussed by a fascinating piece in The Atlantic (“Open Your Mind to Unicorn Meat,” Annie Lowrey, 7/9/2023).

I say fascinating, not because it’s particularly surprising, but because it lays out all of the complexities those who want us to substitute non-meat meat for meat in our collective diets have to contend with.

The core message: Such a substitution would be better for both the planet’s and our personal health, but promoting it on the basis of its planetary and personal health advantages is a non-starter.

Want people to eat non-meat meat? Make non-meat meat whose taste and texture are indistinguishable from meat, or, even better, more enjoyable (unicorn meat).

This is why the Impossible Burger has been more successful than the black bean patties that preceded it.

Which gets us back to what intentional organizational change takes and why too many leaders fail at it. And so, here are a few tips, and anti-tips if there is such a thing, business leaders leading a change should keep in mind:

Insist that “It’s really very simple.” No, it isn’t. I don’t even know what you’re trying to accomplish, but if it’s an important change in how your organization does something, it isn’t simple, any more than creating a recipe for non-meat meat and then scaling that recipe up to factory-scale production is simple.

The closest to simplicity you can come is agility. Which is to say, there’s no such thing as a perfect spec. What there is instead is a well-managed backlog – an iterative and incremental list of change ingredients whose priorities are set based on the law of diminishing returns.

“What do you mean, ‘persuade’?” Like the dark side of the Force, there’s something seductive about authority and the power it confers. Far too many executives and managers figure that telling is better than persuading. And it is, if your definition of “better” is “requires less effort.”

So if you’re among those who prefers to rely on their authority to make things happen, keep in mind that power comes in five levels – change leaders can control, tell, persuade, influence, or be a victim.

Those whose habit is to control or tell turn those they control or tell into victims, defined as those who have no power. Wiser and more effective change leaders rely on their ability to persuade, and, should they lack sufficient authority for persuasion to work, to influence.

Bob’s last word: Which gets us to the meat of the issue: If you want to push a desirable change into your organization and don’t want your organization to push it back out, make sure you’ve defined the change so you can broadcast it, as the old joke goes, on the radio station every employee listens to on the way into work every day: WIIFM, which stands for “What’s In It For Me?”

Don’t, that is, design the change so it’s good for the organization and then try to figure out how to get employees to like it, or at least to not dislike it so much that they’re willing to sabotage it.

Design the change as something employees see as, first and foremost, something they’d want for themselves. Then and only then is the time to fiddle with it so it benefits the organization as a whole, too.

Make your change taste, that is, like unicorn meat.

Bob’s sales pitch: Want something book length on the subject? Check out Bare Bones Change Management and There’s No Such Thing as an IT Project.

They’re complementary takes on how to make intentional change happen.

Now on CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: The ‘IT Business Office’: Doing IT’s admin work right.”

What it’s about is that you shouldn’t run IT like a business. And it’s about what you should do instead – how to run it in a businesslike way, by establishing an administrative group within IT to shoulder much of IT’s bureaucratic burden.

The first task of leadership is setting direction.

It’s also the most confusing, largely because, if you peruse the available leadership and management literature and leaven your findings with the maunderings of management consultants, you’ll find at least six different categories of direction-setting planning to choose from: (1) Vision, (2) strategy, (3) strategic planning, (4) mission, (5) values, and (6) key messages.

There are probably more, but let’s stick with these so we don’t overwhelm the already overburdened.

Vision is an explanation, in primary colors, of how a leader would like tomorrow to be different from yesterday. Vision can be about the leader’s organization, its work products, or a constituency’s perceptions.

Vision is at risk of being the most self-important of the directions. If that point isn’t clear, imagine you hear someone in a leadership role say, “My vision for our products is …”

“My” vision? “MY” vision? Vision had better be the result of multiple conversations within the leadership team at least, and even better if it’s the result of a wide variety of conversations, so that “Our” vision is a meaningful designation.

Strategy is a succinct explanation of what an organization plans to win on (if it’s for an entire company). For IT and other segments of an organization, it’s the centerpiece of the value it’s going to create. So, a company’s strategy might be to win on price. IT’s strategy might be to enable and support opportunities for operational efficiencies throughout the enterprise.

Strategic planning might apply to the vision, or to strategy. Either way the strategic plan lists the steps an organization will take to make the vision, strategy, or both real.

Mission explains why an organization exists. Also known as a charter, it’s a prosaic understanding of the reasons the organization’s leaders have decided to add this box to the organizational chart.

“Mission” is often confused with mission statements. It’s an easy conflation to make. Just think of it this way: Everyone in or near an organization needs to understand its mission – what it’s supposed to do and deliver. “Mission statements,” in contrast, rarely have any actual meaning and may be safely ignored by everyone involved.

Values (and their associated “values statement”) are a safe alternative to leaders having the courage to create and lead a business that exhibits behavior we would consider moral were an individual human being to exhibit it.

Somewhere and sometime in my untraceable past I suggested that “It isn’t ethics unless it hurts,” the point being that if a decision does no harm and doesn’t hurt then it’s nothing more than “moral luck.”

Also in my distant past was the admirable “gray zone” training I participated in during my tenure at Perot Systems. Its purpose: to help its employees recognize that ethical decision-making isn’t just hard the way digging a ditch is hard. It’s also hard the way differential calculus is hard. Which is to say, there’s little point in admonishing employees to “do the right thing” because often, figuring out the right choice is complicated and ambiguous.

Values, that is, have the same relationship to values statements that missions have to mission statements.

Key messages are a tool leaders use to communicate. Out of everything the leader might want their audience to understand about the direction they’ve decided on, their key messages about that direction are seven or so simple declarative or imperative sentences that summarize it. So key messages aren’t directions leaders set. They’re a vital means by which leaders set whatever the direction is they need to set.

Bob’s last word: Setting a well-chosen direction is satisfying. It’s important, and, done well, is a key ingredient in an organization’s success.

But when setting direction, effective leaders don’t lose sight of the Edison Ratio, Thomas Edison’s observation that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Which means that when an organization’s leaders choose its direction they’ve expended a whopping one percent of the total effort needed for success to happen.

Bob’s sales pitch: As I wind down Keep the Joint Running, I’d like to make sure I cover topics of interest. That is, topics of interest to KJR’s subscribers, not just of interest to me.

So please let me know of any topics that fit these three criteria: (1) their appeal shouldn’t be too narrow; (2) I should know enough about them to have formed an opinion worth paying attention to; and (3) I haven’t already beat them to death in previous posts.

To let me know, either use the Contact form, or post a Comment.

This week in CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “6 ways CIOs sabotage their IT consultant’s success.” The point? It’s up to IT’s leaders to make it possible for the consultants they engage to succeed. If they weren’t serious about the project, why did they sign the contract?