Tag Archives: Change Management

Breaking Those Competing Commitments To Change

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Volunteer! Business metaphor

Even the most supportive team member can derail organizational change

Change is always difficult in an organization. For a myriad of reasons people resist being taken out of their comfort zone and asked to take on new tasks or modify old ones. It is for this reason that “we’ve always done it that way” is such a comforting way of doing business (see my article 15 Excuses For Not Changing And 5 Reasons To Change The Way We Make Change). But good organizations need to change to keep up with new customer demands, competitive pressures or just to grow and remain efficient.

In life change happens and people adapt. In business change happens and people react. Those who are resistant to change are usually easy to spot and equally as easy to manage and therefore rarely derail a change initiative. However, it is the person that generally supports change and outwardly appears to be working for the implementation of a new initiative that can sometimes harbor a “competing commitment” that can have a more deleterious impact on the success of a new initiative.

The unknown hidden agenda

I know this comes as no surprise to all of you savvy managers, but yes there is a psychological reason that people don’t actually effectuate change despite good intentioned efforts.

Harvard Graduate School of Education lectures Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey state in their article, The Real Reason People Won’t Change, that “even as they hold a sincere commitment to change, many people are unwittingly applying productive energy toward a hidden competing commitment” causing change initiatives to fail. In fact, they go on to state, “competing commitments cause valued employees to behave in ways that seem inexplicable and irremediable….” These valued employees aren’t deliberately trying to undermine change but rather there is an underlying hidden agenda that conflicts with their stated desire to support the initiative.

According to the authors, competing commitments stem from deep rooted beliefs or underlying assumptions that are formed early in life.  Understanding those underlying beliefs and identifying the “big assumptions” will help to break down those hidden barriers.

I had a client, Joe, who was the head of claims for a large organization.  Joe was one of the biggest supporters of a large change initiative to reorganize and modernize the operation. Joe’s management style was to take on work that should have been done by subordinates. He had a very difficult time delegating, and even when he did, he would often re-do the work to ensure it was being done correctly.  Joe knew the organization had problems with technology, staffing and most importantly the ability to deliver consistent results.  As initiatives in the project were designed, Joe was supportive and helpful in identifying problems and offering ways to change and improve the organization.  However, as a particular project was being implemented suddenly Joe would be unavailable or would find a reason why the change he supported, and agreed to, wouldn’t work. Joe’s competing commitment was that the work couldn’t be done if he didn’t do it. His underlying big assumption was if he delegated the work and it was done wrong it would show that he truly didn’t have the management skills to warrant his position.

Joe was someone who started as a field adjuster and worked his way up through management. He worked with many around him that had formal training or advanced degrees and Joe felt the best way to succeed was to become the expert on certain issues and hold them close to ensure his value. This underlying belief system was subconsciously impacting his ability to make change.

Manager = Psychologist = Results

So how does one break the underlying big assumptions?

Whether you realize it or not, part of being a good manager is developing skills akin to a psychologist.  You have to listen, be empathetic to the issues, and help to provide solutions and coping mechanisms to elicit results. Kegan and Lahey give three steps managers can take to help break through and employee’s resistance to change. This is not some quick hit magic pill and takes time and energy to achieve results.  Each step is designed to help draw out what drives a person to be adverse to change.

Step 1 – Diagnose the competing commitment

Digging up a competing commitment will take a small commitment of its own and a few hours to to realize there is another voice countering an employees desire to make things work. The authors suggest these questions be worked through:

  • What would you like to see changed at work, so you could be more effective, or so work would be more satisfying?
  • What commitment does your complaint imply?
  • What are you doing, or not doing, to keep your commitment from being more fully realized?
  • Imagine doing the opposite of the undermining behavior. Do you feel any discomfort, worry or vague fear?
  • By engaging in the undermining behavior, what worrisome outcome are you committed to preventing?

Step 2 – Identify the big assumption

Big assumptions are the elephant in the room within your subconscious.  It is fairly understood and can be identified but often hard to make the connection to the actions a person takes.  “People often form big assumptions early in life and then seldom, if ever, examine them.” One way to understand the big assumption is to invert the competing commitment. Like Joe who couldn’t delegate because he felt the work wouldn’t get done would have a big assumption that would be that if he didn’t do the work it won’t be done right and people would discover he didn’t have the skills to manage.

Step 3 – Test – and consider replacing the big assumption.

Sounds easier said than done. However the trick here is to get the employee to understand their big assumptions and test them as situations come up. From there, the employee can try and behave differently and try and replace those assumptions holding them back.  Changing deep rooted behavior is obviously the goal but even getting an employee to understand and test these assumptions will have a positive impact on a projects success.

It’s worth the trip

Kegan & Lacey point out that “while primary commitments nearly always reflect noble goals that people would be happy to shout from the rooftops, competing commitments are very personal, reflecting vulnerabilities that people fear will undermine how they are regarded both by others and themselves.” Achieving success is no easy task but managers should not be deterred.  Trying to understand and get to the bottom of such competing commitments and big assumptions will in and of itself provide management with additional insight that will undoubtedly help to move the project forward.

How do you deal with stalled projects and understanding people’s resistance to change?

 

15 Excuses For Not Changing And 5 Reasons To Change The Way We Make Change

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96005727Going Along With How It’s Been Done Is Not The Best Way To Go Through Business

I have a client that is so entrenched in its way of doing things that a significant part of my job has been to manage change. Change is hard for everyone and how and when to change has been debated and discussed in companies since the first company was formed.  What is never debated are some of the excuses used for not changing. People are resistant to change and despite the need to move forward people generally prefer to live with what they have. Fast Company put out a list of Reasons Why We Cannot Change and these are my favorite 15:

  1. We’ve never done it before
  2. We’ve been doing it this way for 25 years
  3. It won’t work in our company
  4. Why change — it’s working OK
  5. It needs further investigation
  6. It’s too much trouble to change
  7. Our company is different
  8. We don’t have the money
  9. We don’t have the personnel
  10. You can’t teach old dog new tricks
  11. It’s too radical a change
  12. I don’t like it
  13. You’re right, but….
  14. We’re not ready for it
  15. We’re doing all right as it is

“Men Plan, God Laughs”

This list was originally complied in 1959!!! by E.F. Borish a product manager for a Milwaukee company.  Amazingly these excuses are as true today as they were over 50 year ago. So we plan to make change and address the list of excuses to help achieve a positive result. Regardless, in addressing these excuses it is important to accept that change is difficult and also understand that great strategic plans may still not yield desired results. Management must acknowledge during any change process that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” (a quote attributed to management guru Peter Drucker).

5 Changes To The Way We Change

To help address the culture and achieve success, Harvard Business Review’s Bill Taylor suggests changing the way to approach change in his article The More Things Change, the More Our Objections to Change Stay the Same.

Mr. Taylor continues asks –  “so what have we learned in the twenty years since Fast Company was created, or the 54 years since E.F. Borisch compiled his list?”  He suggests 5 possible principles to consider to change the way we make change:

  1. Originality – For leaders to see their organization and its problems as if they’ve never seen them before, and, with new eyes, they need to develop a distinctive point of view on how to solve them
  2. Break from the past without disavowing it – The most effective leaders…don’t turn their back on the past. They reinterpret what’s come before to develop a line of sight into what comes next.
  3. Encourage a sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo – persuade colleagues that business as usual is the ultimate risk, not a safe harbor from the storms of disruption
  4. Requires a sense of “humbition” (humility and ambition) among leaders – enough ambition to address big problems, enough humility to know you don’t have the answers. When it comes to change, nobody alone is as smart as everybody together.
  5. Be consistent in the approach – If, as a leader, you want to make deep-seated change, then your priorities and practices have to stay consistent in good times and bad times.

Change does not have to be a bad thing but managing the change process must be addressed. Strateigic plans must have an approach to dealing with change to achieve a measured success.

How Do You Address Cultural Issues During the Change Processs?

Leadership: The Change Process In Claims Requires A Different Approach

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SuccessMeaningful and Successful Improvements to Claim Departments Require a Different Approach to the Management of the Change Process

Successful organizations are always changing and adopting to improve their operations, lower costs and increase efficiencies. Claims departments are no different and have been under pressure to transform their operations and live by the mantra of doing more with less.  Good claims organizations continuously evolve and adapt to ensure they add value to the overall business. Regardless, changing to meet the challenges of the marketplace is often fraught with problems and difficulties.  Many initiatives fail to get off the ground or fail in the implementation process. Change can be very successful and if managed and led correctly.  To change effectively there must be a strategic approach and a change in how these initiatives are led.

Why is claims transformation so difficult?

One reason claims transformation is so difficult is that claims departments are generally linear organizations. The claims value chain, or the process of moving a claim from first notice to resolution, is always looked at in a straight line. A claim comes in, is evaluated, reserved, and then resolved.  Of course there are many steps in between depending on the claim, but generally all claims follow a similar pattern from beginning to end.  Claims departments are often structured in a linear pattern as well. From intake units, to claims handlers, adjusters, managers, and operations – the claim moves through the organization in a linear pattern. Claim managers know this pattern and manage it well. However successful transformation does not follow a linear path. As such, many claims managers fail to have the transformational leadership skills needed to move projects to a successful outcome.

Change Leadership is Different Than Management

Management of the claims process is not the same as providing leadership to change processes and the culture that has been entrenched to those processes. Leading change is very different than managing change. Management guru and Harvard Business School Professor Dr. John P. Kotter puts is best when he said that:

[m]anagement makes a system work. It helps you do what you know how to do. Leadership builds systems or transforms old ones. It takes you into territory that is new and less well known, or even completely unknown to you.

Although most claim managers are well suited to managing core business functions such as staffing, claim volumes, customer satisfaction, budgets, day-to-day process and other operational and technical aspects of running a claims department, they often lack the skills necessary for effectively managing strategic change initiatives. In order to successfully lead change, a strategic vision and a specific program for management of a series of transformational projects to support those visionary objectives needs to be developed. Taking short-term approaches to individual tactical solutions will not create the strategic outcome needed to transform the organization successfully. Achieving this type of Strategic Transformation requires a new paradigm and skillset to deal with managing multiple interconnecting projects.

Another reason transformation is so difficult is that in response to problems, claims executives will initiate a variety of complex transformation projects to improve operations based upon the same linear task based approach to their day-to-day management. Claims executives use this linear approach to identify problems, conceive and implement solutions, manage expectations and results all within an enterprise environment where multiple interdependencies and stakeholder interests may impact outcomes.

Transformation Requires a Different Appraoach

Despite good intentions to improve operations many initiatives become ad-hoc responses to an immediate problem rather than a holistic solution to operational ills. This reactive focus means that projects will often get initiated in a vacuum, not managed fully, delayed or simply never implemented. To transform organizations, and achieve Total Outcome Management, executives need to adopt a proactive holistic Strategic Transformation approach to changing the organization for the better.

How Should Organizations Approach Change?

Claims Predictive Modeling: Using The Numbers To Improve Operations And A Change Worth Exploring

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A recent article in Claims Magazine discusses the “Human Capital Impact of Using Predictive Models.”  The article, written by the presented by consultants in the Actuarial, Risk & Analytics practice of Deloitte Consulting, discuss what it means to the claims professionals and suggests methods for implementing a Claims Predictive Model.

What Is Claims Predictive Modeling?

Claims Predictive Modeling (CPM) is one of the big buzz words in the industry. After a few decades of improving claims technology systems and creating vast databases of claims information, CPM is an attempt to use that information more effectively. It is an attempt, as the article infers, to provide better information to the claims handler to let them use their skills to make better decisions, apply resources more effectively and really allow claims departments to do more with less.

As the article notes:

“Leveraged effectively at first notice of injury or loss (FNOI/L) and throughout the lifetime of the claim, advanced analytics can have an impact on various aspects of the claims lifecycle: claims assignment, special investigative unit (SIU) referral, medical case management, litigation, subrogation, escalation and, ultimately, claims settlement and outcome.

No who wouldn’t want to have a positive impact on claims settlements and outcomes?

Change Can Be Good

Claims professionals are a rightfully proud group. We have always taken on the role of analyst and investigator and understand that there are nuisances in claims that a computer can’t possibly see. We live in the world that handling claims is a science and an art that requires a combination of elements and not just data on a spreadsheet. CPM and other tools are inherently perceived as a threat to the professional as another way to diminish our skilled judgment.  We point to years of decreasing staff and being asked to do more with less as evidence of the erosion of our profession. Unfortunately, as the industry continues to struggle attracting new qualified staff, there may be some truth to these perceptions that the profession is under attack.

Regardless, we are an industry that needs to embrace and welcome new technology.  CPM is not a means to further refine the profession to the point of not needing a true skilled professional.  The tool is designed to highlight claims with greater risks and focus the claims handler’s attention to where it is best served. While the statistics vary slightly from company to company it is fairly well understood that 10-20% of claims volume make up 70-80% of a typical companies claim dollars.  Ensuring that those claims are most effectively handled quickly is one of the best ways to manage loss and expense costs. And these same data analytics will also help to manage the high volume of matters that make up the remaining matters.

The authors point to several key elements to consider when implementing a CPM program as a way to improve the process with the claims professionals:

  1. Communication
  2. Making CPM Champions
  3. Buy-in from early doubters
  4. Closed claim reviews and comparative models

These issues are excellent suggestions no matter what type of change is being implemented. The bottom line is people need to be engaged when change is being implemented. When people perceive their jobs are being threatened they get defensive so it is important to help make the transition easier by being open. Regardless, times are changing and we as claims professionals need to adopt.

How Do You Think New Modeling Metrics Will Change Claims?