Building Resilient Performance in the Face of Disruption
Consider communities that survive and bounce back from natural disasters. There is a direct correlation between their degree of preparedness and how well they managed during and after the crisis. The same is true when organizations face disruption and disaster. My 30+ years in organization development have taught me that resilient performance hinges on solid change management and employee engagement strategies.
The stronger your change management strategy and employee engagement strategy, the more resilient your team will be to disruption, depending on the magnitude and frequency of the disruption.
The Change Management Piece
Managing change requires well-thought-out, coordinated efforts to manage speed, direction, and inertia. Traditional notions of change often assume that change has a predictable path. In other words, they assume that change is like a drama with a clear beginning, middle, and end. However, modern notions of change subscribe to a more fluid notation that equates change to a multi-axis trainer.
If you were ever lucky (or unlucky) enough to try out one of these fantastic training machines, you would see firsthand how every little response and adjustment causes a series of predictable and unpredictable responses. In addition, inertia has much to do with the ultimate outcomes of change. It is often difficult to change the course of people and organizations once momentum begins pushing events in a given direction.
Those of us who have spent decades following the evolution of change management theory know that there has been growing acknowledgment that change does not occur linearly or predictably; therefore, change management models should not suggest that we can deal with change in a highly prescribed manner. Consider the difference between traditional views of change (Kurt Levin and others) and modern experiences with change. Traditional views are that change is predictable and can be managed. Today, when we experience change, it is anything but predictable, linear, or easy to manage.
Traditional View of Change
What Change Looks Like in Practice
The literature of the past 30 years also supports this perspective on change’s increasing complexity and unpredictable nature. Consider these three quotes from “The Three Peters,” who are well-established experts in change management.
“Change, unfortunately, cannot be installed and engineered, and so it always takes longer and is more difficult than we ever imagined.” —Peter Block, Flawless Consulting
“Change is a series of predictable and unpredictable events cascading off of each other, and so all of the conditions of change cannot be planned away.” —Peter Vaill, Permanent White Water
“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed!” —Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline
There are several specific things that we can do to manage change effectively:
- Assume the best about people and remain positive.
- Avoid letting a few sour incidents create malaise for everyone.
- Remember that people don’t resist change; they resist the unknown and the undesirable. We have much control over these—more than we probably think we do!
- Think about “the people piece” a lot.
The People Piece
Although managing change well directly affects employee morale, there also needs to be an intentional approach towards employee engagement. There are many definitions of employee engagement. People often use the phrase to describe “employee satisfaction.” But engagement is more than just enjoying your work, colleagues, and company. It is all about employees “leaning in” rather than “leaning out.” It’s being enthusiastic about your company and your work. It’s choosing to spend your limited, discretionary time to make an aspect of your job and your work better. It’s constantly thinking about the mission and how to innovate new approaches to getting there. This type of engagement is critical when disruption happens.
We are fortunate to live in a time when much better research is being done around workplace motivation and the impact that better employee engagement can have on organizational performance. Whether you subscribe to Daniel Pink’s research and book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, David Sirota’s book The Enthusiastic Employee, or the multitude of studies from the Conference Board, Gartner, and many others, there are adequate resources out there to help build a comprehensive employee engagement strategy.
For example, in the Wharton School’s 40 years of research (represented in Sirota’s book), employees have three core needs: achievement, camaraderie, and equity. Leadership practices and effective management drive these. Engagement drivers include challenging work, recognition, career paths, a compelling mission, partnership culture, respectful managers, supportive teams, and fair pay and benefits. Detractors include micromanagement, lack of feedback, limited resources, an unclear future, poor communication, destructive conflict, poor internal service, high distrust, favoritism, a climate of disrespect, gossip, and workload imbalance. There are many similar models, and finding one engagement model best suited to your environment is essential.
The Disruption Piece
Disruption can have both positive and negative effects on the workforce. Adverse effects include uncertainty and stress; indecision; feelings of loss, resistance, and lower morale; increased turnover; apathy; loss of psychological safety; and “head down, mouth shut.” Positive effects include renewed energy, challenging the status quo, excitement over new possibilities, opportunities to learn and grow, new team members, renewed courage and risk-taking, and increased innovation. A key piece of ensuring resilient performance is assessing the magnitude of the disruption, its likely effect on people, processes, and performance, the temporal nature of the change, and how pervasive the change will be across the organization.
Some predictable human reactions to disruption include physiological, emotional, and behavioral responses. To truly gauge the level of disruption, there must be systems in place to detect and measure this range of reactions. It’s not just looking for obvious signs of resistance (increased conflict, absenteeism, turnover, decreased volunteerism, etc.). It is also surfacing the more subtle forms of disengagement, such as attitudes of “this too shall pass,” “no news is good news,” “just tell me what you want me to do,” “I’ll do exactly what they tell me to do, but they can’t blame me for the results,” and “we’ve tried this before, and it didn’t work.”
Strategies for Turning Disruption into Resilience
The primary strategy for navigating disruption is authentic and transparent communication. This type of communication affects facets of transformation, ensuring that every stakeholder understands the change journey and feels an integral part of it. Leaders must strike a delicate balance, projecting a compelling vision while fostering a participative environment where employee involvement is welcomed and actively sought. Organizations empower their workforce by leaning into employee development during disruption, equipping them with the necessary tools to adapt and thrive. Complementing these personal growth efforts with well-orchestrated change management strategies allows the purpose of the change to remain at the forefront, consistently reminding everyone of the purpose behind the pivots.
Setting a precise tempo and trajectory for change, with well-communicated timelines and milestones, helps steer the collective energy toward common goals. Anticipating resistance is also crucial; organizations can navigate obstacles with agility by forecasting friction points and crafting countermeasures. Inviting dissent opens channels for feedback, stipulating that critiques must be constructive, pushing the change forward rather than anchoring it to the past. Aligning change initiatives with the organizational culture reinforces the congruence of actions and values, adapting a natural progression rather than a forced march.
Ultimately, the emphasis on flexibility and the ethos of resilience ensure that businesses not only survive disruption but are transformed by it, emerging more robust and fit for future challenges.